Psychological safety. Most modern business leaders now consider it a necessary element in the workplace, not just a “nice to have.” Yet as the Forbes Coaches Council noted, “Some C-suite leaders hold misconceptions about how to foster an environment where team members feel safe sharing ideas, voicing concerns, and taking risks.”

As a result, the road to good intentions can be paved with hell. For example, leaders who aren’t careful can create a culture of fear, silence voices, stifle creativity, and erect barriers for thinking clearly and solving problems.

The Forbes Coaches Council recently collected 18 common common myths about creating psychological safety from us members. Plus, if we had enough word count left, we could share our suggestions for effectively providing a more inclusive and innovative workplace environment for every team member.

In this article, Breaking 18 leadership myths about how to create psychological safety, published online on Dec. 13, 2024, my contribution is #8: “Safety requires cognitive and emotional bandwith.”

As I learned from the author and neuroeconomist Dr. Paul Zak, you need to have enough cognitive and emotional bandwidth in your brain to pay attention, concentrate, and feel safe. So if you’re “hangry,” sleep-deprived or fearful about speaking up, you don’t have psychological safety.

This means leaders who take a narrow view of psychological safety can accidentally hurt their team members’ ability to focus, concentrate, and collaborate. Therefore, it’s important that leaders encourage their team members to take care of themselves physically and mentally. Also, leaders need to consider the wear and tear on their team members, especially when scheduling meetings. For example, don’t expect clear thinking during lunch-time meetings when you’re not serving any food or end-of-day sessions without any snacks. And forget about holding team members’ concentration during meetings that last more than 90 minutes without any breaks or meetings that compete with other deadlines.

Paul describes psychological safety broader than other experts. He says psych safety is the “opposite of anxiety.” When you’re feeling psychologically safe, you have “available bandwidth in the brain” and can more easily absorb information. By contrast, when you’re anxious, you’re using significant metabolic energy, which hurts your ability to focus and remember. For more about this, check out my blog post, How your heart can tell you if you’re psychologically safe.

And glad to answer any questions you may have as well as help you provide more psychological safety.