With honesty, anything is possible… without it, nothing is.
When people are being honest with each other, almost anything is possible. When they’re not, almost nothing is.
This is the basis of “psychological safety” – the extent that team members can freely share what they think and feel without fear of repercussions. When teams don’t have that safety, they hold back. They spend time and energy playing politics and navigating what is unspoken. Critical information gets siloed and there will be guaranteed organizational blind spots.
Wading through all of that and still trying to do good work is a perilous (and exhausting) task. And even when it appears that something has gotten done, it sometimes unravels in the coming weeks and months because either people weren’t committed to it (but didn’t voice their true feelings out in the open) or the work was based on blind spots (because people didn’t openly share).
So being honest is CRITICAL. But … it's also very scary. As leaders, we’re often afraid of honesty because 1) people’s feelings might get hurt and 2) we may not have the “answers” or know how to respond to what comes out. So we quickly tell ourselves that it isn’t the “time or place” to address it.
But the research, at least, would suggest that until people are being honest with each other, there is no other problem to “fix.” Getting people to be honest IS the crucial thing to address. And even though it’s scary, there’s good news when it comes to the challenges we face with eliciting honesty.
It’s natural and normal for people’s feelings to get hurt. And our job is to make sure they feel invited to share it when they are upset or hurt. In fact, we can help people see that feelings like anger, fear, and sadness are normal human emotions. The research is clear that higher performing teams aren’t necessarily more “positive,” but they are more honest and open.
We don’t need to know how to respond to what is shared. Silence is just great. Or thank the person for being honest. We just have to avoid getting reactive, defensive, or otherwise making them feel punished for taking the risk.
There is no better “time” or “place.” When people aren’t being honest with each other, the opportunity to be more honest is here and now. It IS scary, and waiting to have private conversations after the meeting feels much less scary, but the goal is to create psychological safety with your team, not one person. And getting a group to be more honest with each other is pretty hard if we’re not willing to be honest with the group.
Creating psychological safety is hard but not complicated. It’s the presence to sense what’s happening and the courage to be honest about what we’re experiencing. A very simple idea that is very hard to do. But the research suggests that literally nothing will make more of a difference for the performance of your team.
