A few weeks ago, my wife and I had a really hard conversation.  In fact, “conversation” feels like the wrong word.  More like a “fight.”

It felt especially hard because it rarely happens.  Of course, we bump heads in various ways all the time.  But really “having it out” is very rare.  And when it happens, it’s unsettling.  

But after a night of going to bed angry and waking up feeling disconnected and disheartened, we were able to have a much less contentious and more real conversation.  And it became apparent that - ten years into our beautiful marriage - we’re still finding new ways to be more honest with ourselves and each other.

Feeling emotions is good for us.  We know how to feel sadness.  Humans have this incredible mechanism that’s been fine-tuned over about 6 million years of evolution, in which our body can process sadness physically in a way that expels tension and reduces stress within our nervous system.  It’s called “crying.”  We have a similar built-in response for fear that involves rising cortisone levels, elevated heart-rate and increased adrenaline.  These processes can be physically taxing, but they’re also natural, normal, and innocent.  It’s what we’re designed to do as a way of processing emotional energy and moving it out of our bodies.

I grew up watching Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.  And after a 35 year hiatus, I started watching again with my daughter.  I’m glad I did.  I’m occasionally blown away by the wisdom Fred Rogers offers about navigating life and leadership. 

“What’s mentionable is manageable,” was a reminder that Fred loved to give to children and adults who were having a hard time sharing something that felt honest but scary to say out loud. 

The research strongly suggests that psychological safety is the most important factor to the performance of a team.  It plays out at every level:  teams with psychological safety have incredibly high-impact collaboration, fewer blind spots, and less stress overall.

Given all that, you’d think it’d be the primary focus of coaching and leadership development.  But most leaders have never gotten any development on the specific craft of creating psychological safety.  Let alone effective development.  And there is a core truth about psychological safety that is often misunderstood.

If you’re reading this email right now, there is probably at least one thing about your team or organization that you want to change, but the thought of making that change is scary.   Maybe it’s a staffing decision or someone’s behavior that doesn’t feel right.   In your gut, or in your heart of hearts, you know what you need to do.  

But you haven’t done anything yet.  Perhaps because acting on that feeling could mean making scary decisions or having hard conversations where feelings might get hurt.  

Yesterday, I received a very distressing text from my uncle.  He shared that his husband - who is also very dear to me and has been battling cancer for over a decade - might be reaching the final stage of that battle.  “Not up for talking now, but maybe later this week,” he wrote. 

I felt a shock wave of emotion, but then - almost instantly - that was replaced with a flood of thoughts. My head started swirling with “what-ifs” as I frantically tried to wrap my head around a semblance of a plan for how to react.  

Then I stopped myself.  I sat down and closed my eyes and tried to get in touch with my heart.  After a while it became clear that trying to wrap my head around what this would mean was not only futile, it was actually a detour for me to avoid the pain in my heart. 

About four weeks ago, my back pain returned for real.  With an incredibly busy work schedule, I did everything I could to push through it.  It got worse. Then two weeks ago I spent 36 hours unable to get out of bed because of excruciating back spasms that were triggered by the slightest movement.  It had gotten so bad that I needed my wife’s help to simply turn over in bed.  

Laying there in bed, largely immobile, I did something I should have done many years ago.  I listened to Dr. John Sarno’s bestselling book, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection. 

When I asked someone on our team how they were doing last week, she said, “January has been a long year.”  It resonated. 

I’ve been struggling recently.  Dealing with threats both real and imagined to people I care about.  I feel myself bracing and moving into a defensive crouch.

For many of us, things feel under attack.  Some of the leaders we support are not just in an urgent / reactive mode, but carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders.  And in that state, the temptation may be to gloss over our own feelings and focus on what we need to do - and who we need to be - for the people we lead or care about.  

But we ARE one of the people that we need to care about.  

As leaders, we’re often conditioned to believe the fallacy that we are in control.  “I’m the leader, so all these things that are happening are because of me.” “I can control how other people feel and what they do.”  These are blatant distortions of reality that leaders are frequently invited to embrace.  We’re told that great leaders take responsibility for everything and everyone … they decide what’s going to happen and then make it happen.  Essentially, we’re told - though never in so many words - that great leaders play god.  And for most of my career, I was all too ready to hear it.  That’s often what my ego wanted to believe anyways.  But abundant research shows that the most effective leaders don’t operate that way.

Think about what’s going to happen during the rest of your day.  What are you going to do?  Who are the people that you’re going to be with?  What are things you might say to them?  Now I’m going to invite you to entertain a startling thought.   Imagine that it might be the last conversation you’re going to ever have with those people.  What would you say to them if you knew you may never speak again?  How present would you be in that conversation?  How honest would you be?