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There is a disconnect between what senior leaders say they want from their teams and what they feel safe enough to ask for without possibly compromising their reputations.
According to results of a Harris Poll/Turas Leadership survey, 63% of senior leaders say they would seek input more often from their teams to help make big decisions if they didn’t think doing so would make them look weak. Male leaders (71%) are significantly more likely than female leaders (46%) to fear the cost of asking for their team’s input on big decisions.
The vast majority (90%) of senior leaders say they wish their teams would more often share constructive feedback that challenges them and/or the status quo of the organization. Yet broader workforce data suggests many employees do not feel confident doing so.
According to a data in Mental Health America’s 2024 Mind the Workplace Report, 63% of Gen Z employees and 52% of Millennials do not feel confident expressing their opinions at work, highlighting a significant gap between leadership intent and employee experience. A survey of 21,000 employees by Leadership IQ for its 2020 State of Leadership Development Report, found that only 27% say their leader always encourages and recognizes suggestions for improvement.
These findings point to a deeper issue: leaders strongly believe in collaboration and challenge — but many don’t feel safe enough to initiate them. And adding to the double-bind, many employees don’t feel safe enough to speak up.
“We’ve spent years focusing on psychological safety as something leaders create for their teams,” said Emily Scherberth, founder and CEO of Turas Leadership Consulting. “This data suggests that psychological safety may be breaking down at the leadership level first. And when leaders don’t feel safe enough to model vulnerability, openness, curiosity, and shared decision-making, those behaviors may not take root anywhere else.”
Turas officials pointed out that most organizations build psychological safety downward (for teams), but not upward or inward (for leaders). When leaders don’t feel safe to model vulnerability, openness, and shared decision-making, those behaviors don’t take root anywhere else.
For complete Harris Poll/Turas survey methodology, including weighting variables and subgroup sample sizes, please contact Emily Scherberth at Turas Leadership Consulting (info@turasleadership.com).
