Before We Ask People to Be Brave

In What Do Institutions Do When No One Is Watching?, I argued that leadership isn't confined to people with titles. We all uphold workplace values, including challenging behaviour that contradicts them.

Several people I respect pushed back, their concern was not with the importance of every individual being a leader, it was with what acting on them could cost. What if the person you need to question controls your career? What if speaking up puts your family’s place in a community at risk?

I acknowledged the importance of courage but gave too little weight to the unequal consequences of exercising it. That doesn't lead me to abandon shared leadership; it urges me to tread more carefully, act more mindfully, and demand more from those with authority, including myself.

When silence makes sense

Imagine a team that promises respect but tolerates poor behaviour from a valued performer. A colleague sees the contradiction and the organisation's dependence on that person. Asking them to speak up is easy. Living with the consequences may not be.

A formal reporting process can't guarantee protection from quiet exclusion. Opportunities can disappear without anyone explicitly linking the decision to a concern raised. In that setting, silence may be a reasonable act of self-protection. The strongest objection to my original position isn't that personal leadership is difficult. It's that expecting it can transfer responsibility to those least able to carry it. That objection changes the argument.

Everyone retains responsibility for their conduct. But expecting people to challenge authority must reflect their actual power and support. Contributing to a culture doesn't require confronting powerful people alone.

We shouldn't wait for a perfectly safe environment before acting. Leadership can emerge in difficult conditions. An institution can't make unsupported personal sacrifice its principal means of discovering what's wrong.

Shared leadership doesn't mean equal responsibility for overcoming unequal risks.

Good intentions can't settle hard decisions

Can people in authority be trusted to recognise the right response because they believe in the institution’s values?

Michael Jensen's article, shared with me recently, offers a useful challenge through his reflection on moral education. Human sinfulness and the need for redemption apply to us, not just those whose behaviour concerns us. Jensen, The Limits of Moral Education

For leadership, this implies an uncomfortable truth: my judgment may serve my interests while I believe I'm protecting the institution.  That is why humility must mean more than admitting we do not have every answer. It must include allowing others to question our preferred answer.

Returning to the valued team member raises a practical decision:

• Should the organisation support them to change, or end their membership?
• Does forgiveness require another chance?

Forgiveness and reinstatement aren't the same decision. We can recognise someone's dignity and capacity to change without restoring their position of trust. Equally, automatic exclusion for every failure would make our commitment to development difficult to believe.

A charter can establish boundaries and a fair process, but it can't exercise judgment for us. Those harmed shouldn't be pressured to reconcile, and removing an individual shouldn't excuse leaders from examining what they tolerated.

These are features of wicked problems: responsibilities pull in different directions, and improving one part can create difficulties elsewhere. Though there may be no tidy answer, it doesn't make harmful conduct acceptable.

Adaptive leadership, rather than technical answers, is precisely what's needed here. It asks people to confront what must change, including arrangements that benefit them. In our example, the difficult work may be accepting that strong results don't earn someone permission to behave badly.

Follow the concern through the organisation.

Rather than starting with another policy, I'd begin with a practical question: what happens when someone raises something we'd rather not hear?

The answer won't be found in the policy alone.

In a study of 23 neonatal intensive care units, Ingrid Nembhard and Amy Edmondson found that inclusive leadership was associated with greater psychological safety and smaller differences between professional status groups. Nembhard and Edmondson, Making It Safe

This finding supports examining how authority is exercised, rather than treating participation solely as a question of individual confidence.

It also explains why psychological safety needs to be understood at the team level, people working under identical roles but within different teams may experience very different consequences for questioning a decision, and their sense of psychological safety can differ sharply.

This shapes our approach at 55M: examine the gap between stated aspirations and everyday experience, including what organisational systems encourage. Bring team findings into an organisational picture without allowing an average to conceal the experience of people with less influence.  Often, an overall positive result can hide the fact that some people, or groups of people, feel unable to speak up.

Then look at the conversation itself. Do people challenge assumptions? If they do, from our experience what is even more important is exploring how well people ‘challenge each other’?  A team may be comfortable challenging others, but their approach can leave others feeling dismissed or personally attacked. Others may challenge skilfully but still fear retaliation.

Psychological safety and conversational skill are connected, but distinct.

• Does the person with authority explore the concern or defend their position?
• Can an imperfectly expressed concern receive fair consideration?
• Can the person being challenged offer other perspectives without being treated as obstructive?

Enabling leadership makes this work possible, it connects people's contributions with the support and influence needed to act, it provides clarity about what's open to change, alongside genuine curiosity about what others know. With leaders being flexible, sometimes it means creating a confidential route to contribute, at other times helping someone prepare for a difficult exchange.

I volunteered with my son at a Time & Space event at The Hutchins School. The event offered a powerful example of deliberately creating room for dialogue. Fathers and sons had an opportunity to hear perspectives from Fathers or Sons, listening without judgment and focusing on better understanding.

Such opportunities are powerful, and building them into institutional life regularly would better support the communities we're part of.

What are we prepared to change?

An invitation to speak creates an expectation that speaking can make a difference.

Anita Tucker and Sara Singer tested an 18-month hospital program where senior managers visited frontline staff to discuss improvement opportunities. On average, it worsened nurses’ perceptions of improvement. Their analysis pointed to active problem-solving and senior responsibility for resolving issues as key to better results. Harvard Business School’s account of Tucker and Singer's study shows that managerial attention is not the same as effective follow-through. Meaningful dialogue must have visible actions and follow-up.

Shared leadership becomes meaningful when people’s knowledge influences decisions. Formal authority remains responsible for ensuring the response is implemented and its effects examined.

Reflecting personally, I need to apply this scrutiny to myself; it's easier to encourage openness than to remain open when someone questions my judgment, and it's easier to recommend courage than to accept the disruption that someone else’s courage may bring.

I still believe leadership can emerge anywhere. Before asking people to be brave, we all need to ask what am I doing to make their contribution possible and what I'll do when it challenges me.

If I expect others to risk their standing for our values, I must be prepared to change what I control, even when it challenges my own interests.