Your Door Is Open. But Is It Safe to Walk Through?
Most leaders say they want honest feedback. They invite questions, encourage ideas, and remind their teams that their door is always open.
But employees make their own assessment: What happens when I disagree? When I admit I don’t know something? When I point out that a leadership decision is creating problems for customers? What happens if I deliver bad news? Will I get punished?
The answer comes from watching how leaders respond.
Amy Edmondson’s research describes psychological safety as a shared belief that a team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. Her studies found that psychological safety was associated with learning behaviors, such as discussing mistakes and seeking help.
For customer-driven leadership, the implication is practical: employees need to be able to question how work gets done - particularly with respect to how it impacts the customer. This includes decisions made by the person who evaluates their performance.
Consider a team member who says, “I know we introduced this process to improve efficiency, but customers are getting frustrated, and we’re spending more time fixing problems.”
That moment tests the relationship. The leader can defend the decision, ask why the employee hasn’t solved the problem, or become curious about what the team is seeing. Everyone listening learns something about whether speaking up is worth the risk.
I think about this through three everyday leadership behaviors:
1. Invite a different perspective. Ask, “What am I missing?” or “Where might this decision make it harder to serve customers?” Make room for answers before explaining your own position.
2. Respond with curiosity. Thank the person for raising the concern, then explore what happened. An immediate rebuttal can close down the conversation before you understand the issue.
3. Make the follow-through visible. Explain what will change, what needs more investigation, or why a suggestion cannot be adopted. People need to know their contribution received serious consideration.
Research by Ingrid Nembhard and Amy Edmondson reinforces the importance of this behavior. Leaders who invited and appreciated others’ contributions helped create conditions associated with psychological safety and participation in improvement efforts.
Accountability still matters in psychological safety. Leaders can set clear expectations, challenge assumptions, and address poor performance while treating people respectfully. Team members, in turn, have a responsibility to raise concerns constructively, listen to other perspectives, and help improve the work.
The relationship is reciprocal, but the leader carries particular responsibility because of the power attached to the role.
From a customer-driven leadership perspective, this connects the employee experience (EX) directly to the customer experience (CX). When employees hesitate to question a process, customers may continue experiencing a problem the organization already knows how to solve.
An open door is an invitation. What happens after someone walks through it determines whether they will return.
What have you seen a leader do that made it easier for people to speak honestly, and how did that change the team’s ability to serve customers?