Do you ever get the feeling your boss is wrong?

A few years ago, I sat in a meeting with the senior leadership team of a financial services organization. They were making a substantive creative decision about the firm’s new marketing campaign, which had the potential to drastically reshape public perception of the organization if done well.

The marketing team presented the executives with two options, one of which was clearly better than the other. Team members all reacted positively to option A during the pitch and glossed over during option B. But, when the presentation wrapped up and before team members could share their opinions, the CEO chimed in immediately and exclaimed, “option B it is!”

The room fell silent. Team members looked at one another, almost asking through clandestine eye gestures, “are you going to say something?” Nobody said a word. They went with option B.

What I witnessed that afternoon had resulted from low levels of psychological safety. Championed by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson in recent years, psychological safety is an interpersonal dynamic in which individuals feel encouraged and empowered to share ideas and insights proactively.

Psychologically safe environments are basically those in which you feel safe to raise your hand or offer your opinion without fear of judgment, mockery, or retribution. So critical is psychological safety to professional success, Google announced it was the key ingredient for high-performing teams following their internal Project Aristotle study.  

It makes sense. Teams in which all members feel comfortable sharing their ideas are more likely to come up with the best ideas. With psychological safety, the gears of innovation have been greased. It’s something we discuss at length in our upcoming book, as psychological safety is an important feature of the Think Talk Create process.

We’re humans – even bosses are too – and we’re all bound to make mistakes. Nobody has a crystal ball and it’s possible that option B was a better choice in the long run for the company compared with option A. But the point here isn’t whether the CEO chose option A or option B, because like all of us, they will be wrong from time to time. What matters is that the CEO has created an environment in which you feel comfortable raising your hand and respectfully disagreeing, or at the very least sharing your opinion. If they haven’t, not only may your boss be wrong about the decision at hand, but they are most certainly wrong about what dictates long-term organizational success. 

Warren Buffet recently warned that one of – if not the biggest – risks facing companies today is poor leadership. "Business failures can occur if personable managers put on an appearance of competence," he argued. Competence can refer to the nuts of bolts of the business operation, making the right choice between option A and option B. But putting on an appearance of competence also refers to leaders who appear as personable managers but are incompetent when it comes to leading teams.

So, the next time you get the feeling your boss is wrong, ask yourself the following question: can I raise my hand?