Two things every leader needs right now

Sticky Change recently had the opportunity to feature in Your Business magazine – the publication that sits alongside the BBC’s Dragon’s Den, with Deborah Meaden among its founding supporters. Directors Fiona Cameron and Mary Clarke each contributed a piece covering two of the most pressing challenges facing leaders today: how to keep people genuinely engaged during periods of change and how psychological safety shapes whether teams perform or just cope. Both questions matter enormously. And they’re more connected that they might first appear. 

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When change arrives, engagement doesn’t look after itself

Most organisations understand, at least in theory, that people need to be brought along during change. What’s harder to hold onto – especially when there’s pressure to move quickly – is what ‘bringing people along’ actually requires from leaders on the ground, day to day.

The reality is that change triggers something predictable in people. Anxiety, resistance, a quiet withdrawal from full participation. Morale dips. Even the strongest performers, the very people organisations most need to stay engaged, can start to wonder whether this is still the right place for them. None of this is unusual. Nor is it a character flaw. It’s simply what happens when people feel uncertain and under-informed. 

What makes a genuine difference, in our experience, is open and steady communication – even when there’s little, or nothing, to say. Leaders who are visible, who speak honestly about what they know and what they don’t, who make space for questions without needing to have all the answers: these are the leaders whose people stay invested. Not because everything is fine but because people feel seen and informed rather than managed. 

There’s something else worth naming here and it’s often underestimated. People don’t just need information during change – they need agency. When leaders create space for people to voice concerns, to contribute to problem-solving, to understand how their work connects to the organisation’s purpose, they give people something to hold onto. Purpose, it turns out, is one of the most powerful anchors there is when everything else feels uncertain. 

This isn’t about spin or managed optimism. It’s about realism delivered with genuine care – being honest about what will be hard, clear about what’s possible and consistent enough that people trust what they’re being told. Including them in the articulation of the problem and in the solution.  Hope and confidence in the future tend to grow when leaders communicate clearly about the path ahead, when they involved and engage their people in the change, even when that path is rocky.

Psychological safety: the difference between a team that performs and one that just copes

Psychological safety has become one of those phrases that risks being used so often it loses its meaning. That would be a shame because what it actually describes – when properly understood – is one of the most significant predictors of how well a team performs.

Google’s Project Aristotle, a substantial two-year study into what makes teams effective, found that psychological safety was the single strongest predictor of high performance – ahead of who was in the team, what they were working on or how they were structured. Teams where people felt safe to speak up, challenge constructively, admit mistakes without fear and take considered risks consistently outperformed those where they didn’t. The gains showed up not just in performance but in innovation, retention, productivity and how well teams managed risk and stress.

The wider data is equally striking. Research published by Harvard Business Review found that compared to people in low-trust organisations, those in high-trust workplaces report 74% less stress, 50% higher productivity, 76% more engagement, 40% less burnout and 13% fewer sick days. These aren’t marginal gains. They’re the difference between an organisation that functions and one that genuinely thrives.

It’s worth being precise about what psychological safety is – and what it isn’t. It’s not about being nice to each other or avoiding difficult conversations or lowering standards. It’s about trust and respect. An environment where people can contribute fully, where challenge is welcomed rather than punished, where mistakes are seen as part of the learning journey and where the discomfort of honest dialogue is considered worth it.

Leaders model this, whether they intend to or not. The way a leader responds when someone raises a concern, challenges a decision or admits they got something wrong – these moments set the tone for everyone watching. Leaders who are genuinely open, who actively encourage different perspectives, who keep their promises and acknowledge contributions without deflating challenge: they create the conditions in which psychological safety can grow. Those who don’t – often without realising it – create the conditions in which people learn to stay quiet. 

This is why measuring psychological safety matters. Not to create a score to put in a report but to give leaders specific, actionable insight into what’s generating or undermining safety in their teams – so they can make practical changes not just good intentions. 

It’s something we take very seriously in our own work. We use Safety Steps™ - a research-based measurement tool developed by Finnish organisational psychologists, Sitomo – to help teams and leaders understand exactly where psychological safety is strong, where it’s fragile and what specifically is driving that. Sticky Change is proud to be the first to bring Safety Steps™ to the UK, using it with our clients as a practical foundation for building the kind of trust and safety that makes real change possible.

Why these two things belong together

Engagement during change and psychological safety within teams aren’t separate conversations. They’re two expressions of the same underlying truth: that people perform at their best when they feel informed, valued and safe enough to bring their full selves to their work. 

Change that is communicated openly, with genuine care for how people are experiencing it, builds the kind of trust that makes psychological safety possible. And teams that are psychologically safe are far better equipped to navigate change – to adapt, challenge constructively and find their way through uncertainty without losing their footing. 

What sits at the heart of both is leadership behaviour. Not leadership as a title or a strategy but the specific, everyday things leaders do – how they communicate, how they respond, how they make people feel when they walk into a room or join a call. That’s where change either sticks or doesn’t. And that’s where the work is.

How well does your leadership team currently do both – keeping people engaged through change and creating the conditions where people genuinely feel safe to speak up?

At Sticky Change, we work with leaders and organisations to make change human, purposeful and here to stay. If either of these themes resonates, we’d love to hear from you.

References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350–383.

Google re:Work. The five keys to a successful Google team. Available at: rework.withgoogle.com

Zak, P. (2017). The Neuroscience of Trust. Harvard Business Review, January–February 2017. Available at: hbr.org