Safety over truth creates a courage gap

An analysis of a decade of data I’ve collected coaching executive teams, reveals that when teams choose safety over truth, they flounder. The ‘courage gap’ widens.

When teams feel the cost of speaking up is higher than the cost of remaining silent, it’s the lack of courage that causes them to flounder. The real risk isn’t speaking up, it’s staying safe.

Floundering teams misunderstand ‘psychological safety’ as comfort and harmony. Flourishing teams understand ‘psychological safety’ as courage and candour.

Floundering teams can feel safe and be unsafe at the same time. Team members may feel safe to belong but feel unsafe to speak their truth. Comfort is not safety, harmony is not trust and silence is not alignment.

When teams lack the courage to share their truth:

• Misunderstanding increases

• Assumptions go untested

• Feedback is diluted and learning diminished

• Decisions are deferred and misalignment prevails.

Teams that flounder create the ‘courage gap’ not because they lack talent, but because they learn what not to say.

Brene Brown, in her book, Dare to Lead, shared, “to be safer, be braver.” Leaders who choose to be braver, not only make it safer for themselves but for others to speak more of their truth. Their bravery signals permission and invites inquiry and challenge.

INVITATION

As the leader, so you make it safer by being braver and close the ‘courage gap’, reflect on:

• Where am I choosing silence over truth?

• What do others stop raising after I speak?

• What have I decided “isn’t worth saying and at what cost?

After a decade of data, the clearest difference between flourishing and floundering teams is not capability, it’s courage. Courage is a choice.

May you flourish.