One of the most important things to keep in mind, wherever you work, is that the failure of an employee to speak up in a crucial moment cannot be seen. This is true whether that employee is on the front lines of customer service or sitting next to you in the executive board room. And because not offering an idea is an invisible act, it's hard to engage in real-time course correction. This means that psychologically safe workplaces have a powerful advantage in competitive industries.

I don't mean to imply that working in a fearless organization takes more effort or a tremendously difficult undertaking. It doesn't. But initially, when we've been entrenched in fear and its attendant mental frameworks, it's not always obvious.

She introduced new terminology (“words to work by”) that altered the meaning of events and actions in important ways; for instance, instead of an “investigation” into an adverse event, the hospital would use the term “study;” instead of “error” she suggested people use “accident” or “failure.” In subtle but important ways, Morath was trying to help people think differently about the work – and especially about what it means when things go wrong. These leadership actions comprise what I refer to as framing the work.

Your greatest challenge as a leader, then, is to honor each person’s legitimate fear of the unknown and, at the same time, to turn that fear into spiritedness. We, your followers, like the comfort of where we stand, yet know that the flow of events is pulling us inexorably into the unknown. So when we find something, anything, however slight, that lessens our uncertainty, we cling on for dear life.

He’s also wise enough to call attention to the context variability that lies ahead in any air

journey. To do that in the commercial flights he led, Captain Berman would routinely tell the cockpit crew members with whom he was newly paired, “I’ve never done a perfect flight.” What this tells us is that Berman understands that even the best and most experienced pilot may face unexpected challenges and cannot be counted on to respond perfectly. In my research, I’ve called this a framing statement. Framing is something experienced leaders do naturally because they recognize that people need help to diagnose and recode the context to be most effective. Berman recalled, when I spoke with him in early May 2022, how he thought about those early moments with each new team: