I made an offhand comment once about Porsches. Something about them not belonging anywhere near rough terrain. I wasn’t making a point. It was just a passing observation.
A junior person in the room got quiet in a specific way. Not checked out; the opposite. Like something had activated.
I don’t remember exactly what I said next. Something along the lines of tell me more about that, because you clearly know something I don’t. And she did. Her family built Porsches into rally cars. Modified them for exactly the kind of terrain I’d just said they couldn’t handle. She knew things about that topic that nobody else in the room knew, and for the next few minutes the room turned to her. Not to me.
I didn’t have the knowledge. I just created the space for it.
I didn’t have a name for what happened in that moment. I know now it was psychological safety being built in real time. One question asked in genuine curiosity instead of correction, and the whole room shifted.
That shift is available to every leader in every room. Most of them never see it because they’re too busy filling the space themselves.
What Silence Is Actually Telling You
Silence is not a default. It is a response.
When a room goes quiet after a question, when nobody pushes back in a meeting, when your direct reports consistently tell you everything is fine, that is not agreement. That is information. And the information is that somewhere along the way, the room made a decision about whether speaking up was safe.
They didn’t make that decision out of nowhere. You built that environment. Which means you can also rebuild it.
The cost of not rebuilding it is not just missed ideas. It’s deeper than that. At best, what you’re going to get is someone that follows what you say, with absolutely no creative or critical thinking associated with it. They show up. They execute. They go home. And every ounce of insight, creativity, and honest assessment they could have brought to the work stays locked behind a door they decided not to open.
That is the hidden cost. Not the ideas you never heard. The capability you never activated.
The Room That Went Quiet
I want to tell you about something I witnessed.
A leader, standing in front of a full room, responding to input from someone junior in rank. The response was not a rebuttal or a redirect. It was this:
“If I want the opinion of a captain, I’ll give it to them.”
The mood shifted immediately. You could feel it. Some people in that room made a permanent decision about that leader in that moment. They were not wrong to make it.
That leader may have believed they were maintaining order. Holding a standard. Keeping the hierarchy functioning the way it was designed to.
What they were actually doing was teaching everyone in the room exactly how much of themselves to bring next time. The answer was: less. Bring less. Think less visibly. Keep the real assessment to yourself because the risk of offering it is not worth the cost.
When ego is inside of the space, curiosity can’t also live and occupy.
That is not a metaphor. It is a room I watched go quiet.
What Safety Actually Looks Like
Here is a simple illustration worth sitting with.
If you ask someone to make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then be upset when it doesn’t have the crust cut off, the problem is not the person who made the sandwich. The problem is the specificity of the ask.
But flip it. Say you want a sandwich and see what arrives. What someone brings when given room to decide tells you something about how they think, what they value, and what they believe you can handle. That is information you cannot get any other way.
Psychological safety is not about being comfortable all the time. It is not about avoiding hard conversations or lowering standards. It is about building an environment where the people around you believe that honesty is safer than performance.
When that environment exists, something else becomes possible.
A leader who has built genuine safety can walk into a room with urgency. Can bark an order when the moment requires it. And the team does not personalize it. They execute. They trust the why is coming because the relationship has earned that trust. That is not softness. That is the payoff. Safety is what makes pressure functional.
The Long Game
Every four-star general was once the most junior person in a room.
Every senior executive was once the person whose opinion someone decided wasn’t worth hearing yet. The way they were treated in those early rooms traveled with them. It shaped what they believed about their own value, about what was possible, about whether organizations were places where people got to bring their whole thinking or just the portion that was asked for.
We’re all human before we’re employees.
Affording someone psychological safety early is not a soft leadership choice; it is an investment. The person you create space for today is developing a model for what leadership looks like. They are going to carry that model into every room they ever lead. That return compounds in ways you will never fully see.
The E1 who felt seen becomes the leader who knows how to see others.
What You Can Do With This
Start with one question asked from genuine curiosity rather than evaluation. Not to test someone. Not to see if they have the right answer. Because you actually want to know what they think.
Notice what the room does.
If you want to go further than that, I have tools built for exactly this work. The Values Investigation Exercise is free, no strings attached. It is a starting point for understanding what you actually value so your leadership starts coming from that center.
If you want some radical honesty, go ahead and click here.
I may not be the coach for you. I might be the perfect person for you. You won’t know until you try!
We are communal beings. Get help.
I am here when you are ready.
LaSchwann Killens is an ICF-trained life and executive coach and the founder of VALADD Coaching. He works with leaders who are ready to find out what their team has been waiting to tell them.