Less zingers, more psychological safety - three steps to effective workplace communication

We have all been there, stewing over an argument, when it hits you. That zinger. The perfect comeback that would have left them speechless, reconsidering everything they thought they knew!

The reality is that clever quips, while satisfying, rarely provoke genuine reflection. Instead, they invoke extreme emotion that creates barriers to effective communication. They are performative, meant to please a crowd and shame the receiver. Once ignited, shame may win you the moment, but it loses you a lifetime of trust, and with that, any chance of influencing someone’s position. Shame triggers defense, and defense shuts down the mind to learning. If you can’t learn, you can’t change and grow.

Today, the world has defaulted to this type of quippy communication, particularly online. It occurs through memes, clips, and punchy one-liners, with real-time conversation happening less and less. We spend more time crafting the perfect ‘gotcha’ response than trying to understand another perspective or motivation. We label those who disagree ‘the enemy’ and, in othering them, have stopped caring what effect our words have. We’ve abandoned meaningful, healthy conflict that considers circumstance and nuance, stymying progress, innovation, and change that results from conflict.

As leaders, if we want our teams to grow and innovate, we must help them engage in meaningful conflict by creating spaces that allow ideation and collaboration to flourish and that embrace our team’s different experiences and perspectives.

To get started, here are a few steps you can take.

1. Create an environment of psychological safety

Ask any artist or creator about sharing something original, whether an idea or a painting, and they’ll likely say it’s intimidating at best and terrifying at worst. Putting oneself out there unprotected, awaiting judgment, requires courage. Employees who fear a wrong response could cost them their job will stick to safe answers and solutions rather than innovative ones. The cost outweighs the reward.

In Google’s landmark Project Aristotle study, they identified that the single most important factor in building high-performing teams is psychological safety. Without it, collaboration, risk-taking, and innovation break down, regardless of how highly skilled your team is.

Employees who feel psychologically safe will let their creativity fly. They will own mistakes rather than hide them, allowing for quicker fixes. They will participate in brainstorming with out-of-the-box ideas that are good, bad, and in-between. They will feel safe to build on their team’s ideas, and allow them to build on theirs, leading to better outcomes. To help create this type of environment, you can:

• Treat mistakes as learning opportunities. Invite your team to create solutions.
• Prioritize progress over perfection. Helping your team recognize the benefit of completing great work can outweigh the time, effort, and stress of making it ‘perfect’. This mindset is often mistaken as lowering standards, but it’s really about valuing continuous improvement, learning from mistakes, and building up momentum. Perfection is an impossible standard that often leads to burnout, ironically pushing teams further from excellence, rather than closer to it.
• Don’t simply encourage feedback and collaboration. Create opportunities to do so and praise the team when they create together.
• Squash ‘gotcha’ communication. See also, talking behind backs and the blame game. These things destroy trust.

Leaders must encourage employees to build on ideas, not tear them down

2. Champion solution-driven problem identification in company-wide culture

Leaders and employers should also encourage language like ‘I noticed X is happening. I think it will be a problem and cause Y, but what if we did Z instead?’

• Lead by example. Own your mistakes and invite the team to build on your ideas.
• Pose questions to encourage others to change their behavior. For example, if someone reports an issue with a product, thank them for bringing it to your attention and then ask about their ideas for solutions. You can always take the ‘Yes, and …’ approach and say something like, ‘I love your second idea, but I worry about X. Maybe we could add on Y.’
• Be consistent with your approach. Employees will come to you, answering those questions before you ask.

3. Encourage curiosity and understanding of another’s perspective

When teams remain curious and work toward understanding rather than making assumptions, innovation takes root. Help your team learn how to actively listen rather than react to each other by setting the following expectations:

• Restate and remain curious. When someone believes something is untrue or misguided, don’t let them assume; encourage them to be curious. Promote the use of phrases like, 'What I heard is X. Is that accurate?’ and/or ask for more information. ‘Can you share more about X?’. This encourages employees to understand before responding. We may hear something differently than what was intended because of our preconceived notions or lived experiences. Encouraging curiosity and reiterating the conversation will reduce misunderstanding and assumptions.
• Remind them to listen to understand, not to respond. Many companies reward those who respond the quickest and with the most authority, so people will be preparing a response while someone else is speaking rather than actively listening to understand. Helping employees be better listeners looks like encouraging note-taking so they can respond without having to hold the thought. Encourage taking a beat and checking with the speaker before jumping in, and when appropriate, restate what they are responding to. This will lead to better conversation, less defensiveness, and more understanding.
• Encourage building on ideas, not tearing them down. Similar to above, so many employees feel they must have the right answer first. This competition stifles innovation, as no one wants someone else to get the credit, so rather than considering if an idea is good, they look to poke holes and tear it down. Poking holes is not bad in itself. It’s important to see if an idea can withstand scrutiny, but what if we poked holes and brainstormed solutions? What if we explored what worked and built on what didn’t? That practice would make room for innovation.
• Set expectations and ground rules. One way you can encourage this type of communication is by setting ground rules and structure. Here is an example of what an hour-long brainstorm could look like:
  • Five minutes – Introduction to the problem.
  • Ten minutes – All ideas welcome – no discussion, just ideas. Write them down.
  • Five minutes – Pick the best to develop more.
  • 40 Minutes – Divide up the remaining time to discuss each one, combining them, changing them, and adding to them until you have a good solution.
• When developing ideas, encourage your team to use phrases like:
  • I see what you’re going for here. I think you might run into a problem with X. What if we considered XYZ?
  • There is a chance that if we do X, Y might happen. If we do Z first, then X, we can prevent Y.
  • Can you explain more about X? I think I understand, but I’m a little worried about Y.

This kind of building language will help your teams take each other’s ideas to new heights. Most of us have little influence on how the world communicates, but within our teams, we must set the bar high. If you build a foundation of trust, encourage curiosity and understanding, and reward collaboration, you will watch as your team lights the way forward!