Is your board or executive team a safe environment for effective decision-making?

This is the second article in our wider series of articles focusing on the book I co-authored with Fleur Bothwick OBE, ‘Inclusive Leadership’ over a decade ago. In the first article, we urged leaders to not lose sight of the inextricable link between culture and performance against a backdrop of restructures and reorganisations.

In this article, we examine organisational culture – specifically psychological safety– in the context of boards and leadership teams. At the time when the book was published, psychological safety was not a term that was used in wider discussions and debates.  Leadership teams talked about trust and team cohesion.  There seemed to be an unspoken expectation that if you had a seat at the leadership table, then you would say exactly what you thought and knew exactly what was needed.  After decades of working at the executive / board level as well as coaching and advising them, I know that this is rarely the case.

In the last ten years, organisations have continued to invest in greater diversity on their boards and leadership teams. Over the years, extensive research has been conducted that cites the reasons why leadership diversity can be a business enabler. Multiple sources of research have found a strong correlation between diversity in leadership and higher levels of financial performance and innovation. Increasing diversity also expands the ability of boards and leadership teams to make better decisions as they are less likely to experience ‘groupthink’ and benefit from a broader scope of experiences and reference points to draw from. Doing this also creates a better opportunity to spot risks as well as explore both the mitigation and management of those potential risks.

However, a diverse board or leadership team does not of itself equate to value creation and effectiveness. The assumption that diverse teams are less likely to experience ‘groupthink’ and more likely to benefit from unique viewpoints is predicated on all members feeling comfortable with voicing their opinions, contributing to analyses, challenging a decision or the status quo.

Diversity is a prerequisite, and once achieved, the key enabler for effectiveness is psychological safety.

‘Psychological Safety’ was defined by Amy Edmondson as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking” (Edmonson, 1999). It is the sense of safety and “confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up. This confidence stems from mutual respect and trust among team members.”

Feeling psychologically safe enables team members to engage in contribution, information exchange, critical discourse and debate – all of which is crucial for board and leadership team effectiveness (Shekshnia, 2025).

It is often assumed that psychological safety exists in the boardroom or within executive teams – these spaces involve senior leaders operating on a level playing field, each entrusted to bring their individual expertise to further the organisation’s purpose, values and goals.

However, a survey conducted by the IMD management school amongst 1,000 directors found that less than 50% of directors believed they were part of boards that were psychologically safe (Heal, 2024). Heal’s view is that self-protection (which arises as a result of high levels of accountability) may contribute to this.

For more than a decade, organisations have used our Leaders FIRST© diagnostic to gain data insights on how their leadership teams are performing individually and collectively on influencing and delivering inclusive, safe and high-performing cultures.

Data insights gained across organisations and sectors using our Leaders FIRST© diagnostic demonstrate that in practice, even in diverse teams, leadership behaviours can misalign with the intent to achieve efficacy and inclusion.

Below are some examples of discrepancies/misalignments we see:

Diversity of thought – leaders may agree that they actively seek out people who think differently to them to aid their decision-making, but will also admit that the people who they go to for views have similar opinions to them.

• So how truly diverse is your network when seeking views and perspectives to aid decision-making? How safe is it really for people to challenge your viewpoint and share a very different perspective?

 

Role-modelling inclusion and safety - leaders may confidently say that they regularly ask for and provide feedback on behaviours and impact, however many will admit that there are times when they don’t get involved in conversations for fear of saying the wrong thing.

• How does inaction impact the feeling and perception of inclusion and safety in your teams? What is your role as a leader to proactively engage in these conversations?

 

Psychological Safety within Executive Leadership teams – leaders often share that they are comfortable being themselves in the direct team that they manage but answer more negatively on their ability to be themselves within the wider executive leadership team.

• What are the current factors that are hindering psychological safety within the executive team? What do we need to change, or adapt, to enable ‘interpersonal risk taking’ and critical discourse in decision-making to be an everyday action and experience?

 

Leadership perception versus reality – responses shared in leaders’ self-diagnostics may reveal discrepancies with 180 diagnostic feedback from their direct employees on how individual leaders are creating safety and inclusion.

• What is the gap between your perception of what you’re saying and doing to create an inclusive culture and the reality experienced by those around you?

 

From my extensive experience of observing and working with boards and executive leadership teams, good intentions and alignment of values alone are not enough to create psychologically safe and high-performing teams.

What it takes is dedicated commitment as individuals and as a team to build habits and consistent touchpoints within existing orders of business that enables us to create culture change that sticks.

Murphy rightly points out in a Forbes article that “It’s a comforting idea, but in practice, too many leaders have learned the hard way that declaring “this is a safe space” doesn’t make it so.” (Murphy, 2025) This article points to a study from INSEAD and Wharton which found that “teams who spent just ten minutes thinking independently before group discussion generated nearly three times more ideas than those who brainstormed collectively from the start”. Murphy challenges us to create psychological safety as a “system for thinking” rather than simply a “feeling”.

A simple example I have used with boards and leadership teams is for them to create crucial steps in their decision-making that enable diversity of thought and psychological safety to be embedded into their ‘business as usual’. This might involve pausing to consider, “Who have we not heard from?” or “What are the diverse perspectives we need to gain in order to make this decision?” or “How have we incorporated challenge and critical discourse in this discussion?”

For psychological safety to become a “system of thinking”, dedicated attention and accountability is required from each member of the team to ‘call out’ when agreed ways of working are not observed. And as with the case for any habit to form, practice, consistency and feedback on impact is key.

To speak to one of our experts in culture, inclusion and leadership or to find out more about our Leaders FIRST© diagnostic and how this could support your teams, please get in touch via the link below.

This article is a part of our 'Inclusive Leadership 10 Years On' series. See more about the series here.

Co-authored by Charlotte Sweeney, OBE & Liz Pawson-Poon

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Sources:

Edmondson, A. (1999) ‘Psychological Safety and Learning Behaviour in Work Teams’. Available at: https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Performance/Edmondson%20Psychological%20safety.pdf

Shekshnia, S. (2025) ‘When Psychological Safety Has a Seat on the Board’, Insead Knowledge. Available at: https://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-organisations/when-psychological-safety-has-seat-board#:~:text=Feeling%20psychologically%20safe%20is%20a,collaboration%20and%20insufficient%20critical%20thinking.

Heal, A. (2024) ‘Psychological Safety in Boardrooms’, Governance Publishing. Available at: https://www.governancepublishing.com/psychological-safety-in-boardrooms

Murphy, M. (2025) ‘There’s A Hidden Step To Psychological Safety No One’s Talking About”, Forbes. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2025/10/28/theres-a-hidden-step-to-psychological-safety-no-ones-talking-about/