Psychological safety starts with leadership
The leadership teams and boards we work with at Peridot are full of people who bring experience and expertise, and care deeply about the organisation they’re part of.
What becomes harder to understand from the outside is whether everyone in the organisation truly feels comfortable speaking openly, raising concerns or offering a different perspective.
“Psychological safety” can sound like a broad cultural idea, but it directly influences how people work together: Do people feel able to say what they really think? Can they challenge an idea when they see something differently? And when something hasn’t worked, is there space to talk about it openly and learn from it?
At its heart, psychological safety is about whether people feel able to speak openly and take part fully in the conversation.
Where we see it play out
Most leadership teams and boards are committed to creating environments where people feel comfortable contributing and challenging ideas. Psychological safety isn’t fixed, though, and it can change as organisations do. Changes in leadership, structure or priorities can affect whether people continue to feel comfortable speaking openly and offering different perspectives.
Across the organisations we support, we see this especially where charities are balancing competing priorities and navigating change.
Inclusion: Whose perspectives are heard
Most boards and leadership teams care deeply about equity and inclusion, but in meetings, the same voices still dominate the discussion. Those bringing different perspectives don’t always find it easy to challenge ideas, particularly early on.
Collaboration: How people work together
We often see teams with a strong sense of purpose, but during periods of organisational change, people can naturally become more focused on their own responsibilities rather than working collectively.
Constructive challenge: How decisions are questioned
This is often where things become harder. Teams can appear aligned, but people don’t always feel comfortable raising concerns or offering a different view in the room. Sometimes those conversations happen afterwards instead, which can affect the quality and speed of decisions.
Experience: How teams learn from mistakes
People in values-led organisations are passionately focused on doing good work. That can sometimes make conversations about mistakes or things that haven’t worked feel more difficult than they need to be. When those conversations become harder to have, teams lose chances to learn from them.
The impact on teams and organisations
Research consistently shows that psychological safety is a strong predictor of team effectiveness, often more so than individual capability alone. We see it in the organisations we work with too, through the way boards make decisions, how leadership teams deal with complexity and whether people feel able to contribute fully.
Psychological safety affects the quality of conversations and the decisions that follow. When people don’t feel comfortable speaking openly, important risks can go unspoken and different perspectives can be missed. Teams can begin to assume there is agreement when concerns or different views simply haven’t been voiced.
Teams where people feel comfortable challenging ideas can still have difficult conversations and disagreements. The difference is that concerns are raised openly and worked through together, rather than surfacing afterwards.
How leadership influences psychological safety
Leadership directly influences whether people feel comfortable speaking openly, and its impact on psychological safety can be more significant than a written set of values.
Psychological safety isn’t always obvious because people rarely say they don’t feel safe to speak openly. It tends to show up in smaller behaviours and patterns:
- The same people contribute first or most often
- Questions and challenges happen after meetings rather than during them
- Decisions move forward quickly because people assume agreement
- Mistakes are discussed quietly or avoided altogether
- People become more cautious about raising concerns
The leaders we work with genuinely want different perspectives around the table and want teams where people feel able to contribute to discussions. When leaders are balancing competing priorities and making difficult decisions, it can be easier to move quickly or to protect a decision already made. People will also pay attention to how leaders respond when someone disagrees or raises a concern, because the way a leader handles this influences whether people feel comfortable speaking openly next time.
Boards face a similar tension, with a clear intention to strengthen governance, bring in new thinking and support and challenge in equal measure. But when it comes to appointments, familiarity can still feel like the safer option.
What this means for leadership recruitment
If psychological safety influences how teams work together, it also affects what we look for when recruiting leaders.
Alongside experience and technical capability, we spend time understanding how people work with others and how they respond when situations become more difficult:
- How do they approach disagreement?
- How do they respond when challenged?
- Do they actively bring other perspectives into the conversation?
- How do they talk about setbacks or things that haven’t worked?
For boards and hiring panels, that can mean looking beyond confidence in an interview. The strongest candidate on paper is not always the person who will encourage the most open discussions or get the best thinking from a team.
If you’re a candidate, the way you talk about your experiences and the decisions you’ve made often says a lot about how you lead, particularly in your approach to reflection and honesty.
Building teams where people can contribute fully
Many of the organisations we work with want leadership teams and boards where people feel able to contribute fully, bring different perspectives and make good decisions together.
Psychological safety doesn’t happen automatically. It develops through leadership behaviours and through decisions about who joins the team and how they are supported once they arrive.
If organisations want more open discussions and stronger decision-making, those choices need to carry through to recruitment, leadership and team development.
Teams rarely become more open by accident. It usually comes back to the choices leaders make and the environment they create around them.
Clare Chesworth is our Head of Social Justice, specialising in both executive and board leaders. With an empathetic and driven approach, Clare can find the right leaders to suit your mission. If you’d like to get in touch with her, you can connect with Clare on Linkedin or send her an email.
