How to Guarantee Psychological Safety

The Look & Sound of Leadership

Essential Communications - Tom Henschel

Education, Executive Coaching, Self-improvement, Executive Presence, Careers, Business, Management

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 October 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A toxic boss destroys psychological safety on her team. One of her direct reports talks to his coach about how to survive. And how to keep his own team safe. Core ideas in the episode: Don’t take other people’s bad behavior personally.You are not a victim. You have choice.Document repeated bad behavior.Openly discussing mistakes without blame creates safety on a team.As the leader, be willing to admit your own mistakes.Ask people: “How do you think that went?” and “What could we do di...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everyone. Tom here. A word before we begin. Back in July 2025, we aired an episode called
0:07.8	How to Own Healthy Assertion. The episode began with the depiction of an incident where a leader
0:14.4	was subjected to hostile, aggressive behavior from her boss. That incident in the episode evoked a big response from all of you.
0:24.0	I really appreciated hearing from everyone, and it made me realize there's a topic that needs
0:28.5	addressing.
0:30.0	Psychological safety.
0:32.1	Back in 2020, I aired an episode called Psychological Safety.
0:36.9	I'm rebroadcasting it here today because clearly there's a need.
0:40.4	There's also a PDF that goes along with the episode.
0:43.5	It's in the Toolsbin on the Essential Communications website.
0:47.3	It's free.
0:48.2	Help yourself.
0:49.1	There's a link in the show notes.
0:51.1	I'm going to drop back in to update this month's gratitude,
0:54.1	but meanwhile, here's the show.
0:56.6	I hope it's helpful. Welcome back to the look and sound of leadership. An ongoing series of
1:03.7	executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be
1:09.3	perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today we're talking about how to guarantee psychological safety.
1:17.6	Amit was telling me about an upcoming presentation.
1:22.6	His boss, Regina, a member of the senior leadership team, had asked Ameet to present the results of an initiative his team had been working on.
1:34.4	A meet was preparing to do battle.
1:38.4	He said, it's bad enough how Regina treats us during our own staff meetings.
	...

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