Hi! Welcome to another issue of Force Multipliers, your weekly briefing from Regina Gerbeaux, where Silicon Valley's behind-the-scenes operators get battle-tested frameworks for their toughest challenges, from putting out chaotic fires to managing strong personalities.

The $2M Mistake That Could Have Been Avoided

I once coached a leadership team where everyone was on the brink of burnout. The entire team knew they were producing mediocre work and worried about mass attrition. But here's the sad but probably unsurprising truth - no one felt safe enough to tell the CEO.

They were afraid he'd fire them, or decide they "couldn't keep up with the culture." So they stayed silent while the company burned through cash on multiple low-quality launches instead of fewer high-quality ones.

This came out during a leadership offsite I was running. We did an exercise where I had everyone write down their real thoughts anonymously.

The CEO was blown away. "I had no idea," he said. "Obviously I'd rather have fewer excellent launches than multiple mediocre ones."

This team lacked psychological safety. But here's what most leaders don't realize: there's a huge difference between psychological safety and emotional safety. And confusing the two can kill your company.

Psychological safety means everyone feels totally OK expressing how they feel and what they think, without fear of being blacklisted, pushed out, or having their leadership opportunities disappear.

Emotional safety implies everyone should feel emotionally comfortable at all times. This is dangerous and unrealistic.

The best decisions get made when people are willing to go to emotionally uncomfortable places. Everyone should walk into discussions with their opinions and be totally open to the idea they could be wrong in light of new information.

I’ve seen companies where leaders think psychological safety mean emotional safety, so they adopt an attitude of, “F*** your feelings, you just want to be coddled. We don’t have time for feelings.”

This is wrong! Your team will just lie to you, and your company will fall apart, almost guaranteed.

But I've seen leaders mistake emotional safety for psychological safety. The thought process goes: "If I feel uncomfortable emotionally, something must be wrong. The only way I feel emotionally safe is if everyone agrees with me or I get my way."

This is childish thinking that destroys companies.

When Emotional Safety Kills Companies

I once saw a company that hired extremist social activists - I think we all have. This was, of course, at the height of the pandemic, when cancel culture and hysteria was at its peak.

The employees at this company wanted the leadership team to make declarations about virtually every social issue imaginable. The CEO was afraid of offending them or being accused of being racist or sexist, and canceled by his team.

Unsurprisingly, these few activist employees became dictators.

Slack threads were filled with news irrelevant to the company's work. If people disagreed on social issues, it turned into name-calling and blind labeling. It started affecting business decisions - people were afraid to hire the best candidates because they worried about being accused of bias.

The CEO, who was also an activist himself but apparently not extreme enough for some employees, never recovered. His fear of being labeled kept him from ever firing any of these teammates.

The company shut down about a year later.

This is what happens when you prioritize emotional comfort over psychological safety. The CEO couldn't create an environment where people felt safe to focus on work or disagree with the activists because he was terrified of emotional discomfort.

So if we know emotional safety isn’t good, but psychological safety is, how do we create it?

Here’s what I’ve observed over the years on how to do this:

Here’s a short Big Think video by Jefferson Fisher about how to have more productive arguments:

If you find yourself reading this and feeling embarrassed or defensive about seeking emotional safety, please know you’re not alone. Early in my tech career, I wanted to work somewhere that shared all my values, too. I came from a homogeneous bubble where everyone I knew had the same ideas.

Eventually, I realized that most people in tech wanted the same things I did: prosperity for everyone, belonging in tech, advancing toward a brighter future. Most people want to be good leaders and treat people with respect.

After recognizing our "same goals, different implementations" approach applied to 99% of people I met, I saw how coming together was the most pragmatic way to advance our commonly shared goals.

Work became a lot more enjoyable this way. I got more done by emphasizing what we had in common versus what we didn't.

Conclusion

Emotional safety usually shows up when psychological safety isn't present and it's the only alternative someone can think of. The opposite of both is CEO dictatorship, where no one feels safe to talk about anything.

If you create real psychological safety, people are far less likely to seek emotional safety.

Your team needs to feel safe to disagree with you. But they don't need to feel comfortable while doing it.

Until next time,

Resources Mentioned 📌 

• Templates + Tools for Operators | Coaching Founder

• Written Resources & Playbooks | Coaching Founder

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