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Psychological Safety
Psychological safety arises from the commitment leaders and peers have to learning from each other and finding shared understanding and meaning through dialogue.
Really good stuff on psychological safety from Admired Leaders:
Psychological safety is no management fad.
Its role in improving performance is so critical that it has superpower status on the best teams.
The bottom line is this: When people believe they are protected from embarrassment, ridicule, and humiliation for what they say and do, they operate more openly and learn more actively.
A team environment that is psychologically safe encourages people to share their honest thoughts without worrying about harsh judgment or repercussions. Without the fear of rejection, people take interpersonal risks to admit their mistakes and share their concerns.
The end result is higher-quality conversations, decisions, and performance.
But creating psychological safety is not easy, and practicing it correctlyrequires leaders to distinguish between safety and comfort.
Contrary to popular misconception, a psychologically safe environment is not always a comfortable or agreeable domain. While it is always respectful, a psychologically safe discussion does not avoid disagreement, candidness, or passionate expression.
In fact, the most psychologically safe discussions occur when everyone feels they have the group’s permission to speak their mind, including the leaders.
This does not always look like a kind, caring, or comfortable conversation for a reason. It’s not.
What makes an environment or discussion psychologically safe is the freedom to be open and honest without the fear of negative evaluation or judgment. That doesn’t mean people will agree or hold themselves back from passionately expressing their views.
Psychological safety arises from the commitment leaders and peers have to learning from each other and finding shared understanding and meaning through dialogue.
Safety is demonstrated and created with each group interaction that is free of disrespect, evaluation, and contempt. People who take interpersonal risks to speak up are rewarded for their honesty by being heard, included, and respected.
When asking questions, admitting mistakes, expressing agreement and disagreement, and sharing hard truths are met with inquiry and curiosity, rather than dismay and judgment, then safety exists.
A climate of safety elevates openness, learning, and quality decision-making because it rewards candidness, not because it constrains it.
As good leaders know, psychological safety has nothing to do with job security, the acceptance of unpopular decisions, or holding people accountable. It has everything to do with people knowing that speaking up is expected but free of negative consequences.
Psychologically safe environments are candid places where comfort is replaced with a permission to express ideas freely and where every viewpoint is valued for its honesty.
Too many leaders believe that kindness, support, and niceness create psychologically safe environments. Instead, they often get in the way of learning together.
I research organizations and culture. Here’s a lesson the Knicks should heed
You want to make dead sure that the next person you hire is not a system leader but a learning leader. It’s a coach who should say: “I want to learn from the players on what made this team successful, and then I’m going to focus on expanding and maximizing the toolkit.”
By Spencer Harrison for The Athletic
June 7, 2025
Editor’s note: This story is part of Peak, The Athletic’s desk covering leadership, personal development and success through the lens of sports. Follow Peak here.
Spencer Harrison is a professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD and an expert on culture. He is also an NBA fan who grew up in Salt Lake City during the John Stockton-Karl Malone era of the Utah Jazz.
In March, a story about the New York Knicks caught my attention. Mikal Bridges, one of the team’s starters, said he had gone to his coach, Tom Thibodeau, and asked him to ease the heavy minutes Bridges was playing.
“Sometimes it’s not fun on the body,” Bridges said.
What interested me is what happened next. Bridges said that he and Thibodeau had spoken about his workload. But Thibodeau told reporters the two “never had a conversation about it.”
As someone who studies the cultures of businesses and organizations, I found Thibodeau’s response telling. To me, it suggested a stubbornness and unwillingness to consider other options, as if the conversation wasn’t even worth having. And it reminded me of leadership and organizational issues we see in the business world.
Thibodeau is well known for playing his starters heavy minutes during the season while limiting his bench players (four of the top 10 players in total minutes played this season were Knicks). One of the criticisms leveled against him is that while his players usually play hard and he often wins during the regular season, his teams can burn out in the playoffs, and he doesn’t develop a reliable bench for the postseason.
We know that Thibodeau is really passionate about basketball and a really good defensive coach who has won doing things his way. But the question with him has always been: Can he be more flexible within his system? Can he use people with different skillsets in different ways?
I thought about Thibodeau’s response again this week after the Knicks fired Thibodeau, the franchise’s most successful coach in years, following the team’s exit from the Eastern Conference Finals. It reminded me of interesting research on how leaders can get the most out of groups and could point the way forward for the Knicks.
One of my colleagues, Pier Vittorio Mannucci, a professor at Bocconi University in Milan, did a study of the creative teams on films in the animation industry — creative teams at Pixar and Dreamworks, for example. For each film, directors had teams of animators with varying levels of expertise and experience. Some animators might know how to work with many different technologies; others might specialize in one.
The question Mannucci wanted to answer was: What makes the most creative team? Is it the unit where you just have experts? Or is it the team with more generalists?
What Mannucci found, in his words, was that you want a team that has a bigger expertise toolkit, or people who have been exposed to different ways of doing their job. It allows them to adapt as they’re working on projects, and they’re better able to come up with creative solutions to problems.
The study showed that the most creative teams are able to look at the full toolkit and then utilize it, so that when you get to a point where you need an innovative new strategy, you have the capacity to develop it.
It’s an easy metaphor for an NBA team. We know that sometimes you have basketball players who are specialists. There are players who are great on defense. There are sixth-man microwave scorers. And then you have other players who are hybrids; they do a lot of little things.
But do you have a leader, a coach, who can use the whole toolkit?
Using the whole toolkit is a very common problem in business. People sometimes engage in what we call “mythological learning.” The idea is simple: I’ve become successful, and as I begin to get promoted, I assume that my success is based on all the choices that I have made, rather than realizing that some of the choices I made might have led me to success in part by luck.
As a result, some of the lessons that you’ve intuited from your success might be the wrong lessons.
The problem is that what got you there is not necessarily going to get you over the hump in the next role. And if you’re not willing to second-guess or expand your learning, to actually have the conversations to explore what other ideas are available, then it’s hard to see your own blind spots. This might have been a key issue for the Knicks with Thibodeau.
Even so, in moving on from Thibodeau, the Knicks are taking a huge risk. Thibodeau was their most successful coach in decades, and their track record prior to this recent era indicates that they have struggled to find a coach capable of maximizing the toolkit of talent that’s available to them. Thibodeau was able to do that, to a certain level.
To use another business example, there was a study that showed how changing leaders can go wrong. 3M was always well-known as an extremely innovative, creative organization. Prior to the 2000s, 3M always promoted CEOs from within, because the feeling was that a leader needed to understand the culture to make the organization perform well. But then 3M had a couple of years of down performance, so company leaders thought: Maybe what we need is an outsider to shake things up and get us to the next level.
They hired James McNerney, who had been groomed to possibly succeed Jack Welch at General Electric. GE is all about efficiency, cutting waste, rewarding high performance — a totally different culture than 3M. McNerney came into 3M and tried to make an innovative company more efficient, implementing all the toolkits he had learned from GE. It didn’t work. After five years and minimal gains, McNerney left and 3M largely reverted to the culture it had before.
This is the trick for all organizations going through this kind of change, including the Knicks: How do we leverage the value of the gritty, hard-working culture that Thibodeau built with a new coach who’s going to want to implement new things?
In business and in life, we often overvalue and trust specialists vs. generalists. But there’s a key way to succeed with this kind of change.
You want to make dead sure that the next person you hire is not a system leader but a learning leader. It’s a coach who should say: “I want to learn from the players on what made this team successful, and then I’m going to focus on expanding and maximizing the toolkit.”
The Other Side of I Don’t Feel Like It
“Can you be committed to the process… without being emotionally attached to the results?”
“Can you be committed to the process… without being emotionally attached to the results?”
“Champions are built on the other side of I don’t feel like it.”
What You Think They Are
“Your players tend to become what they believe you think they are.”
Wilber Braithwaite
“Learning Takes Place Through Discovery”
“Learning takes place through discovery, not when you’re told something, but when you figure it out for yourself. “
“The greatest teacher makes a few simple points. The powerful teacher leaves one or two fundamental truths. And the memorable makes the point not by telling, but by helping the students discover on their own. Learning takes place through discovery, not when you’re told something, but when you figure it out for yourself. All a really fine teacher does is to make suggestions, point out problems, above all, ask questions, and more questions and more questions…teaching encourages not only discovery, but initiative.” - William Safire
Podcast - How Are You Wired?
Enjoyed this discussion I had with Billy and, two great high school coaches who are invested in getting better and making other coaches better.
Enjoyed this discussion I had with Billy and Joe, two great high school coaches who are invested in getting better and making other coaches better.
The Assistant - Podcast
A good conversation with a former Hamilton College classmate of mine, Damian Digiulian, who is the head hockey coach at St. Michael’s in Vermont. He has a great podcast focused on young coaches, leadership approach and navigating the business.
A good conversation with a former Hamilton College classmate of mine, Damian Digiulian, who is the head hockey coach at St. Michael’s in Vermont. He has a great podcast focused on young coaches, leadership approach and navigating the business.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-assistant/id1767730336?i=1000709188736
Coached Hard
“When your best player can be coached hard, that is going to be good for your franchise.”
“When your best player can be coached hard, that is going to be good for your franchise.”
Tyrese Maxey
I liked this from Tyrese Maxey on the influence of his parents and being able to “sit at the table” and “converse with different people.”
Tyrese Haliburton
“He resonates with the older guys. He listens to everything they say. He fits into everything you’re doing. He takes coaching.”
“Man, I’ve watched him all practice,” the scout said. “He resonates with the older guys. He listens to everything they say. He fits into everything you’re doing. He takes coaching. His presence and demeanor are always positive, he always has energy. He’ll be your highest draft pick.”
An NBA scout to Iowa State Coach Steve Prohm after one of his practices. Halliburton was a freshmen at the time who had only played about 10 games.
“Great Players Don’t Get Tired”
“We are not here to coach your energy and your effort. That’s a given.”
Geno Auriemma on the difference between good players and great players.
You can just about always control whether you are in shape or not.
“Be Authentic”
“Your habits are really who you are.”
Steve Nash on what it takes to be an effective leader.
“Your habits are really who you are.”
What Does Your Instinct Tell You?
Whoever asks the most questions wins. Asking the right questions is a great leadership tool.
Phil Jackson used to say, “When in doubt, do nothing.”
As coaches we are expected to have the answers, and in general there is a lot of pressure in our business. So it’s natural to try and find a solution right away. First of all, that doesn’t necessarily give you the time you need to think the problem through. And secondly, you aren’t teaching your players to solve the problem. You are just giving them solutions. That leads to a compliant team - one where they always look to you to provide the answers. The problem with that is, in the heat of a game, they need to solve the problems. They need to find the answers.
By asking “What does your instinct tell you?” or a similar question, you force your team to think. You ask them to solve the problem. You get them away from relying on someone else to provide a solution. It also allows you to learn more about their mindset, what the root of the problem is, and how you can go about helping them.
Whoever asks the most questions wins. Asking the right questions is a great leadership tool.
Thought-provoking stuff from Admired Leaders:
Immediate answers to questions don’t allow those team members to develop their own insights and wisdom. To develop fully, team members need to wrestle with the issue before they listen to the advice of others.
After fielding an inquiry or request for feedback, good leaders start the conversation with a simple but effective question that asks the other party to think through the issue on their own: What advice would you give yourself?
This temporary pause doesn’t derail the discussion, nor does it suggest the leader doesn’t want to help.
What it does is to ask the other party to be their own source of insight for just a moment. This also tells them that the leader won’t always be around, and they need to think through issues on their own to develop and grow.
Other questions like, “What does your instinct tell you?”, “What has worked in the past?”, and “What have you seen others do?” are equally powerful.
Such questions slow things down and also allow the leader to gain more context before they offer their view. Interestingly, in many cases, the advice they would give themselves is exactly what the leader would offer, further cementing their confidence and insight.
Is it possible that you respond to questions and requests for advice too quickly?
You can help others, including children and those who are highly inexperienced, by asking them to share their own insights first before you respond.
Leaders develop people. They won’t always be there to guide them. Investing in others has a bigger payoff when team members have already invested in thinking through issues for themselves.
Their Voices
The best leaders listen more than they talk.
The Nuggets made the bold decision to fire Mike Malone with 3 games left in the season and the team holding a top 4 seed in the Western Conference. Assistant David Adelman took over. I really liked this from his first game as their head coach.
The best leaders listen more than they talk.
Wednesday night was a palate cleanser for everyone. The Nuggets jumped to a 10-3 lead and only trailed briefly early in the second quarter before cruising to an eight-point win in Sacramento.
Adelman said he made a point of encouraging the players to speak up in huddles and on the court. He wanted to hear their voices, not his.
"I think as far as communication goes, it was probably our best game of the year," Braun said. "Everybody was into it. We had players communicating to each other instead of relying on a coach to tell us everything."
Trust Yourself
“That’s what makes you walk into a room different for the rest of your life.”
Really good stuff here from Mark Pope.
“A bird can rest peacefully on a branch, not because of its trust in the branch, but because of its trust in its ability to fly.”
https://x.com/MVP_Mindset/status/1904908011405271415
“That’s what makes you walk into a room different for the rest of your life.”
Delivering A Tough Message
Far too often, leaders “think” their way through a tough message and create a mess in the process.
Get right to it. It’s never easy delivering tough news. But the best way to do it is to know what you want to say and get right to the point.
I’m not saying it’s easy. But it’s your job. Leadership isn’t easy.
Far too often, leaders “think” their way through a tough message and create a mess in the process.
From Admired Leaders:
Delivering a message others don’t want to hear isn’t easy for any leader, but it comes with the territory.
Good leaders deliver tough messages because it is inherent in their role as decision-makers.
Decisions and actions come with consequences. It is the leader’s job to communicate those choices and outcomes even when they know they will be unpopular for those negatively impacted.
If there is good advice about delivering a tough message, it goes like this: The bad news must come up front — in the first two sentences.
The first sentence explains the why, and the second sentence states the action or outcome.
This helps to keep tough messages simple, clear, and crisp. The idea is to create perfect clarity, not to get the message over with.
Stating the “Why” or reason behind the decision and then the action that follows doesn’t allow room for misinterpretation or a weakening of the decision.
This approach also requires the leader to know exactly what they want to say before they engage in the conversation. This clarity is essential for a resolution to whatever issue is involved.
Here are some examples of the “Why” followed by an action or outcome:
“We have found a better price and a more agreeable contract, so we are not going to re-order your product.”
“You’ve made some critical errors that have placed the project in jeopardy. As a result, we are taking you off the assignment.”
“Your skills are not a good fit for our team, so we are going to make a change and find someone else.”
“The coach doesn’t believe you are 100 percent committed to improving. That’s why you will be asked to sit on the bench this game.”
Far too often, leaders “think” their way through a tough message and create a mess in the process.
By knowing exactly what they want to say and communicating the heart of the message right away, the remainder of the conversation can be focused on how to implement the action or outcome.
In fact, good leaders move the conversation toward future implementation as quickly as they can.
After hearing of this strategy of stating the “why” and outcome in the first two sentences, some leaders believe this makes delivering the tough message even harder.
They claim it is better to “ease” into the message and allow people the room to debate or argue about the issue before landing on a decision.
This is true if a decision hasn’t been made or an action has yet to be formulated.
In that case, exploring the issue by listening intently to what the other party believes about the issue and what has occurred is the best course by far.
But that suggests a tough message is not required yet, although the conversation may portend one.
When an unpopular decision has been made for known and rational reasons, putting the message upfront projects integrity, candidness, and firmness.
It produces the clarity and deep respect that the other party requires.
Waiting to get to the point is akin to ripping off the band-aid slowly. It is usually much more painful for both parties.
Placing the bad news up front with the “why” followed by an action doesn’t prevent a leader from setting the stage for the message and helping others get prepared to hear something uncomfortable.
Telling others that this will be a difficult conversation before entering it is a wise approach. But then, good leaders get right to the point.
If the decision or action can’t be negotiated, then a leader’s integrity won’t let it unfold any other way.
Houston BLOB
“Joe's personal trainer was a blacktop court and a double rim."
What a great instinctive play by Houston’s Jo Jo Tuggler to go back to the inbounder with 2.8 seconds left.
"Nobody on our team has played on outdoor courts more than Jo," Kellen Sampson said. "And so the fact that was an instinctive play, that's him. We got a lot of guys that have personal trainers. Joe's personal trainer was a blacktop court and a double rim."
Great Minds
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt
“Championship Level Effort”
“Eventually… it evolved to where everything mattered.”
Ben McCollum on what he learned as they started to win on a high level.
“Eventually… it evolved to where everything mattered.”