Although many of the approaches to building psychological safety within teams can be translated to stakeholders, it can be more difficult to foster this environment with external stakeholders.Â
Not only do you have less control over how you spend time with your stakeholders, but also, you probably won’t get to choose your stakeholders, unlike your team.
This leads to a risk of artificial harmony, which is certainly not the fast track to good outcomes!Â
To cut through this, it’s critical to be very intentional in building psychological safety, as well as authenticity and, ultimately, humanness.
Whether we’re talking about building psychological safety with stakeholders, within a team or being a great leader in general, it really comes down to humanness. Being human is the absolute essence of all of these topics.
If you can cut through all the noise and talk human to human, you’re most likely to get the best outcome.
