Your Business Is Not a Great Place to Work If Employees Are Afraid to Speak Up

Imagine this. You are a business owner who painstakingly built an organization, in large part by hiring the most talented, capable people you could find. And you wanted them to be happy and inspired, so you installed a mini basketball hoop by the water cooler and taped some motivational posters to the walls. You keep your employees informed on what is coming down the pike and let them know you have an open-door policy. But for some reason, nobody raises their hand at the end of meetings nor ever requests even a quick chat. Because despite your belief that you have created a positive company culture, everyone on your team is fearful of challenging both you and the status quo.

Culture is a big focus in today’s businesses. Leaders invest in perks, flexible work options, and wellness programs, which are all good things. However, ping pong tables and pizza Fridays mean nothing if your employees walk around on eggshells, feeling like their input is inconsequential, or even worse, constantly shot down.

A truly healthy culture is one in which your team feels psychologically safe to contribute, and take risks. So if nobody on your team is speaking up in meetings or standing at the threshold of your office to run an idea past you, chances are good that your culture isn’t as strong as you think. And that just might be negatively impacting your business in some very substantial ways.

What a Psychologically Unsafe Culture Looks Like

Despite what they believe to be their best efforts, many business leaders unintentionally create cultures that breed a fear to contribute in a meaningful way. Mind you, fear doesn’t always look like fear. It might manifest itself as silent compliance, disengagement, or a team of “yes men.”

Are your employees empowered to speak up to you with their opinions and personal insights? Or instead, do you notice subtle indicators of repression like:

• Nobody asks clarifying questions at all-hands meetings.
• Employees always speak with you in a conciliatory tone.
• A noticeable absence of new ideas or improvements posed by your team.

In all likeliness, you are not intentionally trying to stymy differing opinions or open discourse in your business. But the fear of speaking up can be a common byproduct of a top-down or micromanagement approach. Employees learn that it is not in their best interest to share their perspectives, even if they are sitting on something great.

What All That Silence Is Costing Your Business

Psychological safety includes the understanding that, as a team member, your input is welcome and that you won’t be reprimanded or punished for speaking up with an idea, question, or concern. When employees are fearful to engage in dialogue, it negatively impacts the entire system:

• Forward-thinking and creativity suffer.
• Team members stop caring and become disengaged.
• Turnover increases and you lose your best talent.
• Anxiety increases, which leads to burnout and emotional exhaustion.
• Performance and productivity plummet.

On the other hand, teams that enjoy high psychological safety tend to outperform, innovate, move the needle forward in new and dynamic ways.

Too Much Control Also Hurts Your Wellbeing As a Business Leader

When your employees lacks the agency to speak up and contribute, every aspect of decision-making, strategizing, and planning falls on you, the business leader. And while that weight might disguise itself as power or authority or some sort of leadership crown, it eventually becomes counterproductive and costly.

There is only so much time in a day, so when every decision or workaround needs to flow through you, it is you that becomes the bottleneck. When you are a business owner locked in this mindset, you lose the ability to work strategically on your business because your are constantly trapped in the minutia of toiling away in your business. Faced with every decision and with no vocal support from your team, you transform from trying to maintain control of the business to being completely controlled by the enormous weight of it. Which is exhausting, overwhelming, and ultimately unsustainable.

It's clear. When your team is afraid to contribute in a meaningful way, the system and everyone in it suffers. Even you.

Create a Culture Where Employees Are Valued Contributors

Strong business leaders welcome healthy discourse and understand how to channel disagreements in a respectful and productive way. Nurturing a culture of openness and autonomy leads to some outstanding organizational rewards.

If your business suffers from fear of engagement and discourse, consider these practical strategies to better foster open communication and build a more psychologically safe culture:

• Open Up. Share your own mistakes and misfires with your team. Explain the hard lessons you have learned and how they made you better.
• Show Gratitude for Contribution. Even if someone’s idea isn’t utilized, reinforce that you are appreciative of their insight.
• Don’t Be Defensive. A suggestion for improvement is not a personal attack on your leadership.
• Ask Questions. Directly requesting opinions from your team is an incredibly powerful way to build psychological safety and encourage open dialogue.
• Invite Alternative Views. Create a time and space to hear and openly address different perspectives. And reinforce that open-door policy.
• Train Your Managers. The biggest driver of employee psychological safety is often the immediate supervisor. Make sure your managers are well-trained, walking the walk, and talking the talk.

Powerful Company Cultures Are Built on Freedom and Safety

A high-trust, high-performance business isn't built on motivational speeches or candy bars in the break room. It is created through instilling psychological safety and a culture that encourages team members to speak up, collaborate, and even offer dissenting opinions.

When your team feels safe to share, challenge, and contribute, you will find some remarkable things begin to happen. Your team performs better. You lead better. And the business is far better positioned to innovate and thrive now and into the future, backed by the full potential of your people and their voices.