Another day, another layoff announcement somewhere. Your people are reading every one of them, and it’s changing how they show up at work.
Outside uncertainty has a way of becoming inside uncertainty fast—and if you’ve had layoffs of your own, you can multiply that by ten. This week’s issue is about what you can do about it. You’ll find ideas on building a culture where people feel safe enough to speak up, getting specific about the norms that make that culture real, and teaching people to disagree well once they do. Plus a brief detour into ancient Rome that you absolutely did not see coming.
Cheers,
Kevin
FEATURED MUSING
Fear Is the Default. Safety Has to Be Built.
Picture a leadership meeting that seems to be going well. You’re engaged, laying out the plan, asking questions. The team is nodding. Nobody pushes back. Everyone leaves aligned.
That much agreement is worth examining.
When a room full of capable people stops challenging ideas, stops flagging risks, stops asking hard questions, something is suppressing their instinct to do so. Usually it’s self-protection, not apathy.
Leaders rarely build fear cultures on purpose. (Although, I worked for one—briefly—who did. Not fun.) But the conditions in today’s macro environment make it easy to build one accidentally. Layoffs are happening across industries, and even if your company hasn’t had one, your people are watching. They’re talking to peers who just lost jobs, and they’re worried they’re next.
Fear is the default human response to uncertainty. And when people feel threatened, they protect themselves.
In a workplace, that means staying quiet when they should speak, agreeing when they should push back, and making decisions that serve their own safety over the team’s outcome.
Self-protective behavior is an execution killer. Coordination breaks down when people aren’t being straight with each other. Bad news gets squashed. Problems surface in week eight when they could have been caught in week two. Strategies fail because the team executed the safe version instead of the right one.
Changing a culture gripped by fear requires deliberate behavior.
Leaders who admit their own mistakes openly—without spin—signal that honesty is safe.
Leaders who explicitly reward the person who brought uncomfortable news train the room to keep bringing it.
Leaders who ask questions designed to surface disagreement get better information.
Consistency matters, too. Unpredictable reactions are their own form of threat.
And investing in people’s development sends a signal that compounds over time. People who feel disposable act disposable. They optimize more for survival than business outcomes. Active investment in someone’s growth is one of the most reliable ways to shift that calculus. Plus, obviously, you’re also improving your team’s skills!
Human nature biases toward fear. Safety has to be constructed against it, one visible behavior at a time.
If you’re the one doing most of the talking in your leadership meetings, it’s worth asking why everyone else got so quiet.
CULTURE
The Hidden Rules Killing Your Execution
The right culture takes intentional effort. I always love getting my friend Brian Elliott’s newsletter because he always has interesting insights backed by data, and this issue is packed with some powerful ones. Three-quarters of teams have never established formal norms for how they work together. People just figure it out as they go, and the dysfunction hardens into the walls. Brian makes the case that getting your team aligned requires working on two levels: the structural stuff like KPIs and decision rights, and the behavioral norms that govern how people actually operate together. One team did both and cut escalations by 75%, slashed meetings in half, and watched meeting effectiveness jump from 22% to 72%. That’s what intentional culture work delivers.
LEADERSHIP
Harvard has a Five-Step Plan for Not Being a Jerk About It
Once you’ve built a culture where people feel safe speaking up, the next challenge is teaching them to do it well. Julia Minson is a Harvard Kennedy School professor who has spent her career studying the psychology of disagreement, and this excellent article covers her five-step framework for having productive conversations with people you disagree with. Her core insight is that most people go in trying to win, which almost guarantees they lose. Minson’s research shows that shifting your goal from victory to continued dialogue changes everything. Receptive leaders—the ones who genuinely engage with opposing views—are consistently rated as stronger leaders, not weaker ones. Building psychological safety gets people to the table. Teaching them how to disagree well keeps the conversation worth having.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“A constructive disagreement is a disagreement that leads the two parties to want to talk to each other again.”
— Julia Minson
INTERESTING
English is Bizarre and This Video Proves It
This fascinating TikTok takes a look at the surprisingly strange origins of phrases we use every day without a second thought. Language is a living thing, and sometimes it takes twists and turns where the meaning sticks around long after anyone remembers how it got there. Where did “raining cats and dogs” actually come from? And let’s just say the origins of a certain courtroom term trace back to ancient Rome in a way that will make you think twice before you raise your right hand and swear to tell the whole truth. Watch the video. You’ll see.
😀 AND NOW…YOUR MOMENT OF HAPPINESS 😀
My Amazon #1 bestselling book, The Strategy Trap: Why Companies Fail at Execution and How to Get It Right, is now available!
If you’ve ever struggled to turn team agreement into consistent action, the book goes deep on how to fix that — with practical tools, real-world stories, and a framework for turning strategy into results.
If you know someone who wrestles with the gap between plan and execution, please forward this along.