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When do employees share opinions freely? When do they call attention to system frailties? When do they jump into high-risk projects? When do they voice dissenting views?
Answer: When they feel safe.
Even the most miraculous startups face a jagged path to success — system failures, unplanned departures, unruly board members, competitive assaults, regulatory surprises, and a host of other painful but ordinary bumps in the startup road.
Fostering organizational safety is the single most important skill a founder must wield in those moments.
I can hear the counterarguments already. Safety!? In the face of danger, a founder must focus on velocity or decisiveness or steadfastness! They must see the fire ahead and act! These are not the times to coddle the emotionally needy or worry about feelings; these are moments when a wartime CEO is needed!
But these arguments miss the point.
For a CEO to act, they need intelligence. They need humans who are willing to share information, call out risks, be a contrarian, and then jump into the fray. And for employees to share negative, potentially existential news with their CEO, they have to trust that the messenger won’t be harmed. They have to know that the CEO will care more about diagnosis and action than blame. In other words, the employees have to feel safe.
We’ve all seen what happens when employees don’t feel safe raising the alarm — failures are covered up for as long as possible (think Enron, Lehman Brothers, Madoff, Theranos).
Can you identify teams where safety is lacking? Yes. The same symptoms appear time and again:
But can a CEO learn to hone safety as a skill similarly to how they might learn how to hire well, manage a team, develop a forecast, run a board meeting, or raise capital? Also, yes.
If safety means being safe from harm or risk, then promoting safety across a team involves fostering behaviors that ensure those in your care feel that their work and opinions won’t be weaponized.
Statements are not curious. They shut down discussion, debate, and, worst of all, learning. So much of the CEO’s job is distilling imperfect, incomplete data and making hard choices. Impeding learning only makes that job harder.
The CEO sees the entire playing board. They see how all of the pieces — internal and external — fit together, and they often forget that few others on the team have the same lens. Rather than take the extra time to bring people along, an impatient CEO distributes unanchored projects. To give their best effort, people need to care about what they’re working on; to care, they must understand the why behind the work.
A healthy leadership room is the crucible through which well-informed decisions can be forged. But nothing is more coercive or detrimental to open debate than the CEO’s point of view. It’s not that the room would not benefit from hearing from the chief executive, but the timing matters.
Ask questions and facilitate discussion. But if improving group decision-making is at all important to the future of the company, then eliminating bias must be prioritized. That means that the CEO should share a point of view only after all other opinions have been exhausted.
You know the maxim: People need to feel seen. And that means more than just gentle nodding and eye contact. Alignment does not mean everyone agrees; it means everyone has been heard and they accept the resulting course of action.
Prove that you not only heard what they had to say but that you actually listened. Put up the mirror and relay back to them what you understood. If you want your people to follow you, they don’t need coddling, but they do need respect.
Sometimes stuff just goes badly — especially at startups. But retrospectives only work if they are blameless. That way, participants can divorce themselves from the error and engage in an open discussion about what there is to learn. If anyone feels singled out, the conversion will skew toward defensiveness rather than exploration.
“I thought you were going to …” Your employees cannot read your mind. Your employees cannot read your mind. Your employees cannot read your mind.
Don’t settle for expectations. They just cause suffering. Move to clear agreements where any project, task, or exercise is punctuated by a simple list of:
You know when people feel safe? When they know the rules of the game that they’re playing.
Safety is a feeling. And the more people feel it, the more they will share, risk, and strive. I can’t imagine a CEO wanting anything less than that from the very people upon whom they rely to deliver their products to the world.
A team does not luck into safety. It is not magic. Safety is the byproduct of a concerted effort by the chief executive, and it’s a skill that can deliver an enormous amount of value — or just as quickly ruin what otherwise might have been a worthy pursuit.
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Founded in 2015, Enjoy The Work is a San Francisco-based startup advisory firm serving startup founders and CEOs worldwide.
