Like most managers, I was promoted into the role because I had been a solid individual contributor, had a good reputation with my customers and colleagues, and probably most importantly, I put my hand up for the job. That company, a since-bankrupted private English school in Japan, operated more like a retail business, with a loose collection of connected schools with storefronts in prominent locations around Japan. My role as a regional HR manager wasn’t particularly well defined, and as each location was run by a school manager, there weren’t really any ties binding the staff at different schools. 

The school managers were heavily pressured to get new and renewal contracts from students, often months or even a full year before existing contracts concluded. This created an immense amount of conflict with the teachers, who were understandably less focused on revenue than delivering decent English lessons. This fueled distrust among the staff and ultimately made each school a microcosm of the entire company’s culture—one built around aggressive sales tactics, distrust of management at all levels, and a lack of transparency about the actual goals and vision of the organization.

As you have probably concluded, this was not sustainable and was both part-cause and part-effect of the company’s eventual downfall. As a manager, it was hard for me to create a positive environment when distrust was baked into the culture on an organizational level. 

The experience was humbling and formative. When interviewing for my next job, I paid careful attention to the interactions between people and how they spoke about their colleagues. When I again found myself in a management role, I made it a focus to bring people together for a common purpose. And while I still didn’t understand all the complexities of creating a culture of Psychological Safety (and it wasn’t really part of the business lexicon then), I had learned what didn’t work. 

It’s only been in the last few years that I’ve started to fully understand the importance of defining a business culture, and even more recently, the importance of Psychological Safety within that framework. I’ve also witnessed firsthand as businesses have become more aware of the cost of turnover. What was increasingly true before the pandemic has only intensified as a result—that the number of qualified people for any given job is incredibly finite, and the cost of keeping someone in a role for even an extra year or two versus hiring a brand new resource is measured financially, emotionally, and psychologically. 

With those things in mind, I want to share some of my hard-won lessons so that you can start thinking about how to improve the Psychological Safety of your team and organization.