A while back, I was on a small group call, going around the table for updates. One answer came back a little too smooth. Too clean for what I knew was happening underneath.
I probed. Asked a follow-up. Then another.
She got visibly uncomfortable before she finally said what was actually going on.
I’ve done this more than once over the years, and it always lands the same way in the room. Whatever I actually said, the group hears something closer to: he’s targeting her. So I’ve learned to do the second thing every time, right after the first: pause, and tell everyone, plainly, that this wasn’t personal — that an open forum only means something if people are occasionally asked to say something real, not something safe.
Here’s what most advice about psychological safety leaves out. It tells you to build a culture where people feel safe speaking up. It rarely tells you what happens in the ninety seconds immediately after you actually do the thing that builds it. Probing someone live, in front of their peers, doesn’t feel safe while it’s happening. It feels like exposure. That’s true even when it’s exactly the right call.
I don’t think the answer is to stop probing, and I don’t think the answer is to feel bad about the discomfort either. Expect it every time. Do the harder thing. Then do the repair work right after, out loud, in the room, not privately later where it looks like damage control instead of intention.
There’s a smaller, less confrontational version of the same instinct worth building into any meeting, whether or not you’re willing to probe someone directly. Most leaders close with “any questions?” It’s a question that asks someone to admit they didn’t understand something — which is a much harder thing to raise your hand for than it sounds. A sharper version: “What concerns you about this approach?” That doesn’t ask anyone to confess ignorance. It hands them explicit permission to disagree, before anyone’s even decided whether they do.
Neither move guarantees comfort. Neither one is supposed to. An open forum that never risks a real answer isn’t actually open. It’s an email with a calendar invite attached.