The Most Trusted Leaders Aren't the Smartest — They're the Safest

Who do you want to be as a leader? What are the blind spots you're missing? If you had a magic wand and you could change anything about your workplace, what would you do with it? These are the kinds of questions we explore on Inspirational Leadership. I'm your host, Kristen Harcourt. I'm a keynote speaker, emotional intelligence coach, and leadership trainer who partners with executives and emerging leaders who want to achieve extraordinary results for themselves and their organizations. You're in the right place if you're ready to cultivate the self awareness to be the leader you were born to be. Let's go on this journey together. Welcome to Inspirational Leadership. I'm your host, Kristen Harcourt. And today is going to be a solo episode of the podcast. And today's topic is the most trusted leaders aren't the smartest, they're the safest. And I think this is a really important topic because I think it's deeply misunderstood. In leadership, we often assume the most effective leaders are the smartest person in the room, the most strategic, most experienced, they're very confident, they tend to have very polished communications. And really my experience with leaders and organizations for almost two decades, for almost two decades, the leaders people trust most are really not necessarily the smartest leaders. However, what they are is they are the safest leaders. And it's so interesting because when I start to say safe, a lot of times people think, oh well, safe means weak. But that is not the case at all. These leaders are not passive. They're not avoiding accountability, they're not avoiding difficult conversations, but they are emotionally safe. And this kind of leader is where people can speak honestly around them. They don't create anxiety every time they walk into a room. You know who these leaders are where there is that immediate physical, physiological reaction when the leader walks in the room. These, these leaders don't, don't cause this for people. They know how to regulate themselves under pressure. And this is also a leader who knows how to create trust, not fear. And the truth is, whether leaders realize it or not, every single workplace has an emotional climate. We are absolutely aware of that emotional climate. And people are constantly scanning and in their day to day, they're scanning and asking themselves these questions. Is it safe to speak up here? Is it safe to make a mistake? Am I allowed to disagree? Is that safe here? Can I ask for help? Is it safe to be a human here? And leaders set the tone more than they realize. So today I want to explore what psychological and emotional safety really means when it comes to leadership. Why it really, really, truly matters so much what unsafe leadership actually looks like and how leaders can be, how they can really begin building deeper trust and strong cultures. So first, let's just address the fact that leadership is an emotional experience. Because I think there's a huge misconception that business is a belief that leadership is primarily intellectual. But that is not the case. This is why I'm so deeply passionate about the work I do around emotional intelligence. Because leadership is deeply emotional. Even in highly strategic, high performing organizations, people always experience leadership emotionally first. So like, what do people remember? They remember how you make them feel. Whether they feel respected, whether they feel seen, whether they felt dismissed, whether they felt afraid, whether they felt valued. And this is important because leadership often underestimate the emotional impact they have on others. Right? So a lot of times leaders, they don't really realize. So I don't think this is something that's constantly happening intentionally. Sometimes it is, sometimes they just think, I don't care. I know that I'm not showing up well, but I don't care to show up well. But a lot of leaders, they just don't realize the impact that they're having. And they might just be thinking, well, I'm just busy or I'm just being direct and I'm just really stressed right now. And you know, I didn't mean anything by it. Okay, sure, I didn't show up so well in that situation, but I didn't mean anything by it. And they're just going to move on, they'll get over it. But teams experience leadership through their nervous systems, through emotions, tone, energy and behavior patterns. And so over time, those experiences, they either build trust or they erode it. So I've worked with leaders who have been incredibly intelligent. They're visionary, highly, highly successful on paper. But their teams were exhausted. Exhausted because what are people doing? They're constantly second guessing themselves. They're walking on eggshells, they're avoiding difficult conversations, they're hiding mistakes and they're withholding ideas. Not because the leader lacked intelligence, because they lacked emotional safety. And this really matters because fear changes behavior. We know this, right? When people don't feel safe, think about yourself either yourself as a leader, when you haven't felt safe, or put yourself in the other people's shoes. When people don't feel safe, innovation drops, creativity shrinks, communication becomes filtered, accountability weekends and engagement declines. People stop bringing their full selves to work. They start to realize, I need to contort, I have to act a certain way, I need to make sure that I'm not doing anything to upset this leader. And so what starts to happen, unsafe leadership leads to a lot of these subtle things. Because a lot of times we think, well, when it's an unsafe environment, we think about those really toxic bosses where it's very dramatic, right? We go to the extreme. But a lot of times this isn't happening in as extreme a way, and yet it is still having a really, really, really, really negative impact. And so what are the subtle ways this may show up? Inconsistent moods. You're showing up defensive, there's defensiveness, shutting people down, reacting instead of responding. Anyone who has listened to the podcast regularly, you know, I bring up this one a lot, right? Instead of being very thoughtful and intentional and mindful around how you're responding in a situation, there's a lot of reactionary behavior happening. Public criticism, lack of follow through, micromanaging, some of that passive aggressive communication. Sometimes you have the opposite of the micromanaging. There's that avoidance and then there's just that emotional unpredictability. You're not sure what you're going to get minute to minute, day to day, how is that person going to show up? And a lot of times leaders don't really realize how they're creating this environment. What I often say is people really don't need perfect leaders, but they do need predictable leaders. Because if employees never know which version of the leader they're going to get, that creates stress. Because unpredictability creates emotional tension. A team should never have to spend energy managing the emotional state of the leader. And yet this happens all the time. People learn up. I'm not going to bring bad news today. I'm not going to challenge that idea. I'm going to just wait until they're in a better mood. So instead of giving you the direct feedback, the direct challenge that they're having, they're just going to wait until you're in a better mood. I'm just going to tell them what they want to hear. That's not trust, that's survival. And over time, it slowly damages culture. And I really, really want to be clear here. Safety does not mean lowering standards. This is really important because sometimes people hear the phrase psychological safety and they assume it means that they're lowering accountability. It does not. In fact, the safest leaders are often the clearest leaders. I remember Brene Brown said this in one of her amazing books, clear is kind, right? So they're clear. They communicate expectations clearly. They dress issues directly. They have difficult conversations. They're not avoiding the difficult conversations. They're being Thoughtful around how they show up to the difficult conversations. They are giving feedback in real time, consistently, and they're holding boundaries. Right? This doesn't mean that somehow if there's psychological safety, that means everything is fine. I don't want to do anything to get people upset. That is not safety at all. Because we want to create an environment where everybody understands what those expectations, everyone understands those norms, those behaviors that are acceptable and not acceptable. So they do all of this in a way that really preserves dignity. That's the biggest difference. Safe leaders create environments where people can take ownership, they can admit their mistakes. They're constantly looking for opportunities to learn, to grow. And they challenge ideas without fear of humiliation, without fear of retaliation, without fear of they're going to get in trouble if they don't toe the line. And if they challenge ideas, that they're somehow going to get into trouble. And this is where real performance comes from. Because sustainable high performance cannot exist in chronic fear. It just cannot. Fear might create short term compliance, right? We've seen this. Okay, so leading with the fear, maybe in that moment it can feel like you're getting the short term compliance, but it never creates long term trust, innovation, loyalty, or a healthy culture. And when it comes to the nervous system of leadership, I think one of the most underlooked leadership skills is the emotional regulation. Can you stay grounded under pressure? Can you pause before reacting so that as I was talking about earlier, you are responding to the situation, not going into fight, flight, freeze or fawn? Can you tolerate discomfort? Can you hear feedback without collapsing or becoming defensive? Can you respond intentionally instead of emotionally escalating? Because leadership energy spreads, A dysregulated leader creates dysregulated teams. And people are incredibly perceptive. Leaders often think employees are only noticing the obvious things. No, but people notice everything. All of those cues, they're paying attention, they're looking at the tension, the tone. Is that person withdrawing? Is there that feeling of impatience? Is there emotional inconsistency? And sometimes is there some of those unspoken frustrations? And when leaders don't regulate themselves, teams start adapting around the leader emotionally. So you can imagine what that starts to look like in terms of the emotional and psychological baggage the team starts to take on and that starts to become the culture. And this is why self awareness is not optional in leadership. And it's not just about tactics and strategy, but it's really about the inner work. You hear me talking about this all the time. It is an inner work game, right? Like again, there's, there's lots of things and, and tools and ways that you can have strategies as well tactically. But it always starts with the inner work first. Because leadership isn't just about managing others. It's about managing your own reactions, patterns, triggers, ego and emotional habit. So of course, everyone who's listening right now is like, okay, I want to be one of this, one of these leaders. I want to create a safe environment. Well, what do the safest leaders do differently? So what do emotionally safe leaders actually do? Here's what that looks like. They listen without immediately defending themselves. You stay curious instead of reactive. You heard me say this a lot on the show, right? To really tap into that curiosity. You admit that you make mistakes because you're human like everybody else on that team. You create space for differing perspectives. You regulate before responding so that you can show up as your best self in that moment. You do not weaponize vulnerability and shared incompetence. Okay, so you're making sure when someone else is vulnerable that you're not now sharing that information with others. You address conflict directly instead of avoiding it. You are consistent. Okay, going back to what I said around the predictability, people feel safe when they see consistent behavior. You follow through on what you say you're going to do. And if for some reason you can't do what you say what you're going to do, because a lot of times things are changing at such a rapid pace, that's okay. You address the fact that you won't be able to do what you had originally intended and communicate how that has changed. So you're always following through, even if that means what you had originally intended has to change. They make people feel respected even during difficult conversations. Right? So this is making sure that you're showing up with empathy and compassion so that person can still feel the care when you might have to be giving some constructive feedback. And perhaps most importantly, they make it safe for people to be honest. This is where that emotional maturity comes in. Because if we don't have honesty, then people aren't going to be able to tell the truth about their problems, concerns, mistakes, burnout, culture issues, organizations becoming incredibly vulnerable. The healthiest cultures are not the cultures which without problems, but they're the cultures where people feel safe enough to talk about them. This is not about having, okay, well, if we have a great culture, that means there are no problems, there are no challenges. We all know that that is not how our workplaces work. They're not. It's not how our life works either. I spend so many times coaching people around Sometimes it's around to stop resisting reality. Reality means there are going to be challenging moments, but you build that emotional resilience by the way you respond to those challenging situations. So if you're a leader who's listening today, here are some of the questions you can reflect on. So when you're starting to think about, you know, do I have that psychological safety with my team? Am I really creating an environment where people are feeling comfortable showing up and sharing and have that strong level of trust? Here's some of the questions you can ask. How do people feel after interacting with me? Do people feel calmer, clearer and more confident or do you notice that they seem to be more anxious and guarded? How do you respond under pressure? Do people feel safe disagreeing with you? Can my team bring bad news to me? Do I create space for honesty or do people carefully manage my reactions? This is not about shame. Every leader has blind spots, every leader has growth areas. And a leadership is really about a continuation of that evolution. But awareness matters because as we know, culture is shaped in the small moments in those everyday interactions and the emotional tones leaders bring into rooms. When it comes to meetings, conversations, decisions, they're happening all day long. And when you spend the time to ask yourself whether you are in fact creating that emotional safety, I promise you, you will create way more trust, way more engagement. High performing teams that want to do their best work together. So I want to say again, people may admire intelligence, but they trust emotional safety. And I also don't want to make this to feel this is an either or. You could also be very intelligent and I'm not saying you're not allowed to be intelligent as a leader, I'm just saying, saying we don't want to over index on the intelligence. It's a combination of both to make sure it's integrated. If you don't have the intelligence to be able to understand the, you know, your role and your responsibilities and your deliverables and your business outcomes and understand the environment you're working within. That all requires intelligence, right? So you've heard me talk a lot about on the show around mind, body, connection and how we really want to get your mind, your body, your heart, heart all into this and it's not one at the expense of the other. You know, tuning into your heart, tuning into your body, paying attention to that intuition, paying attention to what's going on for you emotionally and what's going on for you psychologically and understanding what's going on in your inner landscape, but also understanding what's going on with your mind when it comes to your mindset, we want to be also paying attention to the intellectual. We just don't want to be over indexing on that. And the leaders who have the greatest impact are not necessarily the leaders with all the answers. I want to remind you of that as well. But it's about creating environments where people can think clearly, contribute honestly, grow confidently, and feel respected as human beings. That is truly the kind of leadership people remember. And honestly, I have asked these questions so often in when I'm doing leadership training, when I'm doing my keynotes and I'm having people talk about the leaders who made the biggest impact on them. The people who really saw their potential, who helped them grow and develop and hit their hit their edges, recognize their blind spots, recognize those ways that they might have been over indexing on certain behaviors. It's always these same kind of leaders, right? The emotionally intelligent leaders who are really conscious leaders who are thinking about ways that they can create a space where everyone can show up and do their best work. So it's about being more human, more self aware, more emotionally intelligent, more grounded. Leadership not rooted in fear or performance, but leadership rooted in trust. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Inspirational Leadership. If this conversation resonated with you, I'd love for you to share this episode with a leader, colleague or team member who may benefit from it. And if you're an organization, is if your organization is looking for executive coaching, leadership development, or keynote speaking about emotional intelligence and culture, you can learn more about the different ways that I can work with you@kristin harcourt.com and wherever you are listening in the world. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. I am sending tons of love. Bye.