How you respond matters

“Everything you do is important to your organization. People are watching you. The people in your organization determine how to move forward after both successful work and how to recover after failure by watching how you as a leader respond to bad and good information. People are watching closely to see what type of information you welcome and what you don’t welcome. How you respond matters.”

This quote by Todd Conklin in “The Five Principles of Human and Organisational Performance” (one of our core texts in the Psych Safety Online Course) speaks directly to one of our key principles: the observer effect is a powerful driver of psychological safety. People will observe how we respond to others when someone admits a mistake, raises a concern, or takes some other interpersonal risk, and that will directly influence how likely they are to take similar risks. If we respond poorly, it has a chilling effect on interpersonal communication, and discourages future disclosure of “bad” (i.e. important) news to other people, especially leadership. 

And as Todd makes clear in his book, the “you” in this statement is the collective “you” – leadership appears at every level of the organisation. As I said in my first ever talk on psychological safety back in 2016: You don’t need to be told you’re a leader, to be a leader – and whether you’re in a formal leadership role or not, how you react and respond when others take interpersonal risks, has a huge impact on the likelihood of them taking interpersonal risks in the future.

As Todd says, “People will only tell you what you make it safe to tell you.”

Book on our HOP Fundamentals online workshop which dives into each of the 5 core principles and explores how they can be applied in your own unique contexts. 

Community member and awesome illustrator Roberto Ferraro was inspired by this piece to create this wonderful illustration. As Roberto says, “Every time someone admits a mistake around you, raises a concern or something difficult, your response shapes what they’ll do next time.“