Episode 239 - Does Your Team Think the Relationship is as Good as You Do?
Summary
Leaders can easily assume they have stronger relationships with employees than employees themselves experience. New research shows that this mismatch can reduce psychological safety and make people less likely to speak up. This episode looks at how leaders can test their assumptions and make it easier for people to raise concerns.
Transcript
Hello and welcome to episode 239 of the Leadership Today podcast, where each week we share practical tips to improve your leadership. This week we look at how leaders and their teams rate the quality of their relationships, and the impact on whether people feel confident to speak up.
Most leaders think they have a pretty clear view about the relationships they have with people in their team. The problem is that relationships involve two people, and the other person may not see things in quite the same way. A recent study looked at leader-member relationships from both sides. The researchers collected data from 496 employees and 139 leaders and examined how closely leaders and employees agreed about the quality of their relationship. They then looked at psychological safety and whether employees were willing to speak up with ideas, concerns and suggestions.
As you might expect, relationships were strongest when both the leader and employee saw them positively. But the more interesting finding was what happened when the leader rated the relationship more positively than the employee did. In those situations, psychological safety was particularly low. Leaders can easily overestimate how safe they are to talk to. We know our own intentions. We know that we want people to raise concerns and challenge our thinking. But employees are making a different judgement. They’re trying to work out what is likely to happen if they disagree, raise a problem or tell us something we don’t really want to hear.
A leader might think, “My door is always open”, while an employee is thinking, “Yes, but I’m not sure how they’ll respond if I tell them the project isn’t working”. Those two people are describing the same relationship very differently.
The challenge is that leaders who think the relationship is already strong may not do much to improve it. If someone rarely disagrees with us, we can interpret that as evidence that everything is going well, when it may simply mean they’re being cautious.
One useful thing to do is look for behavioural evidence rather than relying on your own sense of the relationship. Does the person ever disagree with you? Do they bring you bad news early? Do they raise concerns before they become problems? Do they offer a different view when you’ve already expressed a preference?
You can also make it easier for people to tell you how the relationship is working for them. Rather than asking, “Is everything okay?”, which will usually produce “yes”, try something more specific. You might ask, “What could I do that would make it easier for you to raise concerns with me?” or “Is there anything I do that makes it harder for you to disagree?”
Of course, asking the question is only useful if you respond well to the answer. If someone takes a risk and gives you feedback, becoming defensive teaches them something very quickly about how safe the relationship really is.
Leaders don’t get to decide on their own whether a relationship is strong. What matters is how both people experience it.
So this week, think about someone in your team you believe you have a very good relationship with. Then ask yourself a slightly uncomfortable question: what evidence do I have that they would describe it the same way?
Thanks for listening, and I look forward to speaking with you again next week.
Research:
Pahng, P. H., Fuller, R., Kwak, J. S., & Kang, S. M. (2026). Same Playbook, Safer Plays: Leader-Member Alignment and Employee Voice. International Journal of Business Communication. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/23294884261476053
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