This week I spent time with the The Female Product Lead community exploring how to build psychological safety and make trust your strategy.

A few truths we talked about that I think leaders need to hear:

• Safety is built one brave micro-moment at a time.
• We can’t create perfect safety, but we can create safe-enough spaces where learning, repairing, and honesty is part of the day to day.
• Leaders model what is tolerated. If you’re on your phone, answering Slack, checking email during meetings…There is automatically low psychological safety. No one is going to say to the boss, “Hey, that makes me feel like you don’t care about me or what I think.”

Trust + belonging + accountability = the anatomy of psychological safety.

When those three are present, everything rises: Engagement. Innovation. Ownership. Honest communication. This is not “nice to have.” This is business-critical. The truth is we are all leaders. With or without the title. Every micro-interaction is a moment of leadership. Every moment is a chance to build or break trust.

So what can you do to build 1% more psychological safety into your day to day with your teams? Here’s to building safer, kinder, braver workplaces, one interaction at a time.

You can watch the recording here: https://femaleproductlead.com/events