When Psychological Safety Is Missing at Work: A Conversation with Lamarr Lewis

Hello everyone, welcome back to the channel. I'm so glad you're here today because I have a conversation coming that I've been looking forward to for a while.

A little while back, I was listening to another podcast and I heard today's guest, Lamarr, talking about psychological safety, and honestly, I could not stop thinking about it. The way he talked about it was not the buzzword version we hear thrown around in every leadership training. It was personal. It was real. It made me want to sit down with him and dig deeper, because I think this is one of those topics that sounds simple on the surface but actually changes everything about how a team functions.

Today I'm talking to Lamarr Lewis. He's a therapist, author, speaker, and the founder of Lewis Family Consulting, where he works with nonprofits, public health organizations, and mental health agencies to help their leaders build cultures of wellness, resilience, and trust. He has over 20 years in the field and has served as a subject matter expert for the CDC, with a holistic approach to leadership that I think you're going to connect with immediately.

We talk about why psychological safety matters so much for teams, what it actually looks like day to day, and how leaders can start building it even if they're not starting from scratch.

Lamarr, thank you so much for being here.

Lamarr: For sure, thank you for having me.

Fernanda: Let's start simple. When you say psychological safety, what does that actually mean to you?

Lamarr: That's a great question. I wasn't expecting you to go with the heavy hitting stuff right off the rip. But to answer as succinctly as I can, and I tell people this all the time, give me some grace. I'm a late-diagnosed ADHDer, so I verbally process. I might beat around the bush, but I promise I'm getting to the point.

For me, psychological safety is what I'm doing right now. That openness, that vulnerability, that creating environments and spaces where people can mess up, not be perfect, ask questions, have hard conversations, and not fear what those things will bring down the road in the workplace or in a team setting.

There's obviously a difference between emotional safety and psychological safety, and those two things often get conflated. They're very distinct, and I think because of my unique experience as a therapist, making that distinction is helpful. When I say psychological safety, people assume I'm speaking from a clinical or practitioner perspective. But really, I've worked in some pretty crappy places and pretty crappy environments, and that's how I know what psychological safety is. I know empathy because I've needed empathy. I know compassion because I've needed compassion. When I get it, I feel it.

If we can't ground this stuff in real world experience, then what's the point? I believe Maya Angelou said it best: people may not always remember what you say, but they remember how you made them feel. That's kind of what this is. Sometimes people think psychological safety means letting people do or say whatever they want, and that's not what I'm advocating for. What I mean is: can I show up as myself, as whole as I can, in the workplace, and feel safe enough to be me in whatever space that is, without retribution afterward.

I'm a person who speaks up. I'm a talker. I'm very sensitive to injustice. I've never liked bullies, and all of my conflicts in life have been against bullies. People picking on somebody else has always rubbed me the wrong way. So in workplaces where people feel bullied, minimized, ostracized, not heard, not validated, how can I come in and help create environments that fix that? That's kind of what it is for me.

Fernanda: I love that. You have this line I love, that as a leader, you are responsible for making sure your team feels valued and respected in order to achieve any kind of success. Can you unpack that for us? Why does respect have to come before performance?

Lamarr: These are good questions, and as someone who asks a lot of questions myself, I appreciate that.

I'll answer this two ways: from what I understand about psychological safety generally, and from my own perspective. Dr. Timothy Clark, another expert in this field, has stated that trust and respect are the foundational components everything else is built on. You can't get to inclusion safety, learner safety, challenger safety, or contributor safety without that baseline of trust and respect first.

I think the reason that's so important is something I say a lot in my leadership workshops: as a leader, you are leading a whole person, not just a staff member or a direct report. And you, as a leader, are also a whole person, not just a title.

For me personally, I operate on a baseline level of respect that's at the core of any human I come in contact with, whether it's a Fortune 500 CEO or someone unhoused on the street. Everybody gets respect from me. I'm not going to raise my voice, I'm not going to call you out of your name. And conversely, I want that same level of respect back.

The easiest way I explain what respect actually looks like is the golden rule. Would you want this done to you the way you're doing it to someone else? Would you want someone to belittle your value, dismiss your contribution, or ignore what you offer to the team? No, nobody wants that. So for me, that's what respect looks like in practice: I want to be of value, and I want my contributions to be valued, not just monetarily.

A lot of the organizations I partner with are mission-driven. I didn't get into therapy to get rich. I got into it to help people, to help my community, to help the people who help the people. Money isn't going to be the only thing that matters in spaces like that, even though we obviously need it. And so respecting why someone got into the work they do, respecting their motivations, taking the time to understand what actually drives someone and keeps them showing up every day, that's another form of respect. You're not just a widget on a conveyor belt. You're part of this. That respect shows up in valuing someone's opinion and perspective, even when it's different from your own, and being open to saying, "You know what, that's a good idea," instead of dismissing it outright.

Fernanda: Something you said at the beginning of your answer really stuck with me, the golden rule. It's something so basic that I think a lot of leaders forget when they're in the weeds of day to day work. Would you want this done to you? If the answer is no, you probably shouldn't be doing it to somebody else.

Lamarr: You would think that's obvious, but as my grandma always said, common sense ain't common. I've worked with places really intimately where I can tell, you know how you're talking to this person isn't cool. You know this isn't how you'd want somebody to talk to someone you care about.

My daughter is in school, and I'll use a real world example. If a teacher is talking to her in a way I don't think is appropriate for a learning environment, I'm going to have a conversation with that teacher. Not aggressive, but I need the teacher to know that I don't know their training or background, but I know my daughter. She's a lot like me. Yelling, cussing, screaming, none of that moves her. If anything, it shuts her down. And most people, in my experience, don't get motivated that way, especially in the workplace. I'm not saying you can't motivate people or cheer them on, but negative reinforcement doesn't always work, and it doesn't give you the best quality of work.

That's a big part of psychological safety. When people feel psychologically safe, you see innovation grow, morale increase, and workplace culture get healthier. You see it, but you can also feel it. You're not caught off guard by situations you didn't see coming, because people are actually talking to you.

We often forget that we were once in the roles we're now leading people in, before we moved up the ladder. A lot of my work is centered on things I learned the hard way, thinking I was doing something right and then being made aware that it actually wasn't. Sometimes people genuinely don't know until somebody feels safe enough to say, "Hey, this ain't cool, you've got to do something a little different." That's the other part of the work.

Fernanda: Feedback in a safe environment can go both directions too, not just the boss giving the employee feedback, but the employee giving the boss feedback.

Lamarr: Absolutely, that's a telltale sign of a safe environment.

Fernanda: So as a segue, what are some behaviors you've seen, even from well-intentioned leaders, that actually break down psychological safety on a team?

Lamarr: Great question. There's a segment I do where I talk about eight critical issues in leadership. I won't give you all eight, but a couple that answer your question directly.

One is what I call the "A type personality," someone overly involved, which I equate to micromanagement. A lot of times, people doing this genuinely think they're being helpful and don't realize how it undermines a person's expertise and professionalism. Part of that comes from what I call the middle management pressure cooker. Picture a box: pressure from above, from your own leadership, and pressure from below, from the people you lead, which is even more intense if you used to work alongside them and got promoted above them. Then there's outside pressure from stakeholders and the people you serve. All of that lands on middle managers, and a lot of people never name that pressure out loud.

In that pressure cooker, you end up doing things people don't receive with the intention behind them. You think, "I'll CC myself on this email so I stay in the loop," and the other person hears, "Why don't you trust me to do what I said I'd do?"

The other issue I'll highlight is being overly numbers-driven. If you're under pressure to hit compliance numbers or grant objectives, that can become the focus, and people don't always understand why it matters, or they're made so aware of why it matters that all they hear is that they're only valued for the numbers. You might be well-intentioned, saying something like, "If we don't generate enough billing, we can't pay people on time." But if you say that enough, people start wondering what's really going on with the money, even if those questions aren't accurate or relevant. The brain likes to close loops, so if people don't understand the why, and all they hear is the numbers, their behavior shifts, and that impacts the safety of the organization.

I ask people in my workshops, out of these eight, what have you experienced as someone who's been led by somebody else, and then I flip it: what have you done as a leader that could be perceived the same way? Because we've all worked in some crappy places, and we've probably all done something unknowingly that hurt someone else. Being able to identify and stay aware of that is a big deal.

Fernanda: Can I add an example from my own experience?

Lamarr: Absolutely.

Fernanda: There was a department I worked in where the leaders would use instant messaging during meetings, and they had their own private chat going, critiquing whatever people were saying in the meeting, without ever giving anyone direct feedback in the moment. As a contributor, you'd find out later, secondhand, that someone wasn't happy with what you said, because there had been a whole group chat about it.

Lamarr: That's such a good example, and it's actually better than the scenario I was going to use in a session I'm facilitating next week on why meetings go quiet. In their minds, the leaders probably thought, "This is convenient, we can share our thoughts while the meeting is happening." But they likely didn't realize what that says to the people on the receiving end: you don't trust us, and you don't even trust us enough to tell us directly that you don't like what we're saying.

That's part of why I prefer face to face over virtual when I can, because you catch that kind of thing in real time. When you're face to face with people, it forces more presence. What you're describing takes side talk to another level. I learned about the concept of "no side talking" from twelve-step programs. Side talking makes whatever the other person is saying seem less important than what you're saying to your neighbor. In group settings like that, the whole point is to learn from each other, so if you're saying something to one person on the side, you're implicitly saying it's more important than what's happening in the room.

That's exactly why people stop saying anything in meetings. If I know that whatever I say is going to spark a side conversation about me, why would I keep speaking up? Instead, I'll just have my own side conversation. Now you're forming tribes, which leads to silos, people not communicating, people existing in their own worlds. It creates an "us versus them" dynamic instead of everyone versus the actual problem. And it diminishes feedback too, because I'm not going to open up to someone who's only listening in order to critique, not to offer anything constructive back.

Fernanda: That reminds me of something similar. At a previous job, I got promoted, and leadership did these rounds where upper management would come down and talk directly with the frontline staff, kind of like that old show Undercover Boss.

Lamarr: Yeah, and they do that because if leadership acts more like a regular team member, they hear more honest feedback. So they came to our staff meeting, and there were things I'd been told to convey to staff, things we'd already had conversations about. But when the bosses came down, my staff started saying all kinds of things, and I remember thinking, what is going on right now?

I'll admit I wasn't as mature then as I am now, and some of what they said felt personal, so I spoke up too. I didn't say anything inappropriate, I just spoke up for myself and for the program. The next day, I got called into my supervisor's office, along with people above her, and was told I wasn't supposed to have spoken in that meeting, that it was the staff's opportunity to connect with upper management, since technically I was closer to leadership than they were.

My response was, I don't know them either. They don't talk to me unless there's a problem. It's not like we're in the same spaces regularly. So why wouldn't I say something?

But instead of having that conversation directly, they created narratives around who should or shouldn't have spoken, and I ended up blindsided by feedback when I was right there in the room the whole time. We could have just talked about it. If we'd had a safe enough environment, someone could have simply said, "Hey Lamarr, let's talk about that for a second," instead of it becoming this whole thing after the fact.

One of the hardest realities I've had to accept is that in spaces where you'd expect people to be more skilled at listening, giving feedback, and finding collaborative solutions, it can actually be worse.

Fernanda: I bet a lot of people listening are recognizing this in their own organizations right now. For someone who sees this happening, whether they're a leader or a team member, what's a first step they can take? And if you want people to remember one thing from today, what is it?

Lamarr: That's another great question. The thing that comes to mind is what I call pockets of safety.

When you work in a big organization, or one with a lot of silos and disconnect between leadership and the people doing the work every day, it's easy to become disenchanted, to think, "This isn't going to work, what's the point, nothing ever changes." But you don't need the whole organization on board to create psychological safety. You just need enough of the people around you.

At a place I worked at before I even knew the term "psychological safety," I intentionally tried to create that environment for my own team. Within the greater dysfunction, if my program could run functionally, if I could create spaces of safety, people wanted to come talk to me, share feedback, give me ideas. I advocated for those ideas, and I modeled owning my mistakes and trying to do something different.

It doesn't have to be a grand, sweeping gesture. It can be as simple as, "I'm going to support you, I'm going to be here for you." Ideally that comes from leadership and management, but even if it doesn't, a pocket of safety is different from a clique. A clique is about creating division. A pocket of safety is about people saying, "We've got to keep each other grounded, we've got to support each other," even while the actual work still gets done, no matter what sector or setting you're in.

If I could leave people with one more takeaway, it goes back to honoring the human experience. Something one of my mentors told me took me a while to really understand. I was going through a rough patch at a job, frustrated with a particular coworker, and not really owning my part in it. We had been close colleagues, but then I got approached to apply for our manager's position after he was let go, and I got the job. I was trying to do whatever it took to keep that job, and some of my behavior at the time was probably off-putting. I also work at a really high capacity, and expecting that same pace from other people was where I went wrong.

I got so frustrated with this one staff member that I started showing up early just to track what time they came in. One of my strengths, though, is seeking counsel when I don't feel like myself, so I reached out to someone at that job I admired, someone whose presence and way of carrying himself really impressed me. I asked to take him to lunch and pick his brain. While I was venting about the situation, he told me two things I still carry with me.

First, he said he doesn't worry about what time people show up to work. He worries about whether they're doing their job. If someone shows up ten minutes late but is still doing great work, does it actually bother him? You don't know what someone is dealing with before they walk through the door, and fixating on ten minutes might mean missing a much bigger picture.

Second, he said nobody shows up to work intending to do a bad job. People show up thinking they're doing good work, even when they're not, and even when it's not landing the way they think it is. Those two lessons reminded me that sometimes people genuinely don't know, and that's why I always start with self-awareness. You can take every personality test, sit through every leadership training, read every book, but without a baseline of self-awareness about how your behavior impacts other people, none of that really lands.

I have to remember that my version of a hundred and ten percent effort might look completely different from someone else's hundred percent, or eighty percent, and that's okay as long as we're getting what we need and the people we serve are getting what they need. A lot of times we take someone's behavior as a personal affront when it's not that at all. Sometimes a person really does think they're doing good work, they just don't realize their version of good work isn't landing the way it needs to in this particular environment. So am I being clear about expectations? Am I honoring their experience? Am I actually modeling the behavior I want to see? Those conversations matter, because without them, we don't fully understand each other.

Fernanda: I love that. I once had a boss who used to say, "Assume positive intent." For the most part, the majority of people are trying to do a good job. They're not trying to burn the place down or sabotage anything. They're trying to earn a living honestly, with integrity and good intentions.

Lamarr: Exactly. For the most part, nobody's trying to offend or tear anyone down. That's been my experience, anyway.

Fernanda: Lamarr, we're getting to the end of our conversation. Thank you so much for this. Where can people find you if they want to keep learning from you, or if they want to bring you into their organization?

Lamarr: I'm really only active on social media through LinkedIn, so you can find me there, Lamarr with two Rs, Lewis. I'm the only one who has "mental health therapist" listed right after my name. Or you can visit my website, lewisfamilyconsulting.net, which has a contact page where you can reach out directly.

Fernanda: Thank you so much, I really appreciate you being here. This was such a good conversation. I feel like we could have kept going for another hour, honestly.

To everyone watching, if this conversation landed for you the way it landed for me, share it with someone on your team, maybe even your own leader, if that feels right. Psychological safety isn't something that just happens. It's something we build on purpose, one conversation at a time, and I think today gave us a real road map for that.

Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss the next conversation; drop a comment and let me know what stood out to you the most, and I'll see you on the next one.

Fernanda Brasileiro

People Development Consultant & Strategist

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