How smart boards build psychological safety without “drowning” in it.
In a conference room at its leafy campus in Seattle, Microsoft’s board members engage in what might appear to onlookers as intellectual combat. Directors challenge assumptions, disagree openly with the CEO and occasionally upend conventional wisdom. Beneath this seeming friction lies something revolutionary: carefully cultivated psychological safety that transformed Microsoft from a tech giant losing its edge into a trillion-dollar innovator.
At boards such as Microsoft’s, directors are confident of speaking up without fear of negative consequences. After all, research indicates that board effectiveness hinges on socio-psychological processes related to participation, information exchange and critical discourse. Feeling psychologically safe is a big part of such engagement: Boards with high psychological safety demonstrate inclusivity, creativity, learning, resilience and greater engagement.
Psychological safety is like water
In recent years, I’ve spoken with hundreds of directors who enthusiastically recommend psychological safety for their boards. The more experienced among them, however, were more cautious. One of them compared psychological safety to water: “One cannot live without it, yet too much of it may drown you.”
In practice, “too much” psychological safety manifests itself at boards where directors say what they want without considering the context, or without trying to advance collective decision-making.
The result: Reduced accountability, ineffective collaboration and insufficient critical thinking.
The solution? Balance psychological safety with a focus on results, intellectual rigour, collaboration and accountability. Below, I outline how board chairs can accomplish this.
Leading the board towards psychological safety
Effective chairs recognise that psychological safety emerges from collective effort rather than a top-down mandate. While every director contributes to this environment, the chair’s leadership role remains pivotal.
The most successful chairs act as “leaders on the side” rather than commanding bosses. They practise what I call “3E’s leadership” – engaging directors in the process, enabling them to practice psychological safety and encouraging them to sustain it.
Engaging
Psychological safety requires everyone’s commitment. Here’s how skilled chairs get people on board: “At my first meeting as chair, I spent 10 minutes discussing psychological safety – how I discovered it, why it’s crucial for boards and how we could create it together,” said an experienced board leader. “This sparked an hour-long conversation. Now, we end every meeting by discussing how safe each of us feels.”
A more in-depth approach could include onboarding sessions, training programmes or workshops with external experts. Chairs should also conduct one-on-one meetings with directors, facilitate boardroom discussions with targeted questions about psychological safety, or form temporary committees to explore the issue.
Modelling the desired behaviour couldn’t hurt either. As a chair explained: “People believe what they see, not what they hear. I never criticise directors’ opinions or allow them to criticise each other.” Successful chairs give full attention to speakers, maintain consistency, avoid snap judgments, speak last and limit their airtime to 10–15 percent of discussions.
One experienced chair said she admits her mistakes or her ignorance to the board to demonstrate that it is okay to be wrong or not know something. At the same time, she makes sure she never repeats the error or asks for the same information twice.
Enabling
Chairs can preside over meetings that either build or destroy directors’ sense of safety. As one director noted: “The chair who is also a founder can easily dismiss your opinion or reject your question as ‘irrelevant’. I think twice before I open my mouth at that board.”
Simple ground rules can help. Here’s a sample from a Swiss industrial company:
• We provide equal airtime for every board member
• We welcome, respect and discuss all opinions
• We challenge opinions and support each other
• We consider failures opportunities to learn
Effective chairs also vary discussion formats between free-flowing conversations, round-table discussions and breakout groups to balance depth with agility.
Avoiding voting is critical – split decisions create unhappy directors and reduce long-term effectiveness. One chair said: “The time we ‘lose’ to achieve consensus will be compensated by the quality of the decision and willingness to collaborate.”
In-camera or private sessions at the beginning and end of meetings create safe spaces for directors to voice concerns, while brief evaluations after each meeting reinforce safety and identify improvements. Acknowledging all input, especially when suggestions aren’t adopted, demonstrates that speaking freely is valued.
Encouraging
Make it a point to show appreciation when directors contribute to a psychologically safe environment, whether through thoughtful questioning or respectful engagement with opposing viewpoints. By incorporating psychological safety as a key component of formal board evaluations, chairs signal its importance and strengthen it.
When problematic behaviours arise, skilled chairs involve the entire board in addressing them. The message is clear: psychological safety is everyone’s responsibility.
Complement this collective approach with scheduling feedback sessions with every director to make clear how specific actions impact the board’s climate and offer constructive suggestions for improvement.
The boards that thrive
It must be said that psychological safety could compromise individual accountability for the board’s performance. It could also stifle constructive debate rather than encourage it. Experienced chairs manage those risks by constantly reminding directors that psychological safety is an important enabler of the board’s effectiveness, emphasising the need for critical thinking and constructive debate, and raising performance expectations.
Psychological safety isn’t just about feeling good – it’s also about performing better. As boards contend with increasingly complex challenges, from technological disruption to stakeholder capitalism, the balanced approach to psychological safety may well separate the boards that merely survive from those that thrive.
