Welcome to the Leader’s Lens

This issue offers a fresh perspective and actionable tips to enhance your leadership this week.

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13 week journal with reflection prompts and micro-actions geared toward increasing belonging.

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For 20 years, my perspective on how to lead was centered on either maintaining control, being motivational, or even driving performance.

That is true, but if I were think about it holistically, how a leader designs the environment helps reinforce my previous perspective better.

Think about it, reframing our role as designers instead of motivators lets us think about architecting the space better for the people involved.

Architects of leadership and community puts us in a position of:

To do that, we have to consider two concepts that help hold this design together: psychological safety and behavioral integration.

Psychological safety exists when people believe they can speak honestly, ask questions, name concerns, and disagree without retaliation. It is the foundation that makes adaptation possible without burnout.

Not because the team is “nice,” but because the environment is designed for truth.

When safety is missing, people disengage quietly. They hedge. They wait. “Quiet Quitting” becomes the cultural norm for protect themselves.

I learned this lesson early in my leadership journey. When I first became a supervisor, I was leading a team where several people had more technical expertise and more years on the job than I did. I felt the pressure to prove myself quickly. So I over-prepared, spoke first in meetings, and tried to have the “right” answer before anyone else could weigh in.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that my posture was quietly shutting the room down.

The team wasn’t disengaged. They were waiting. Watching. Protecting themselves.

It wasn’t until I named what I didn’t know out loud that the dynamic shifted. When I asked for their thinking instead of trying to impress them with mine, the dynamic of the team changed. I noticed more ideas began to surface. There was less tension between leadership and staff. My favorite was seeing ownership over the work increase.

People don’t need leaders to be impressive. They need leaders to be accessible.

Most leaders would see this disengagement as an individualistic problem, and it requires the person on the team to be resilient and figure it out. But I want to push back on this narrative.

I was the one that was allowing the disengagement to occur because my leadership didn’t create a system for them to be engaged.

My original style created exhaustion for them and frustration for all.

So what once was seen as a team resilience issue, it was a leadership flaw in the team structural design. Which made the team have to figure out how to survive and endure.

And that furthers the principle that true resilience requires supportive structure, not just personal grit.

Psychological safety can do great things toward team effectiveness, but just having that alone doesn’t always translate to team success.

That is where behavioral integration comes in.

Behavioral integration describes how well a team:

Highly integrated teams attend meetings together, think together, surface perspectives early, debate productively, and leave decisions with shared clarity not quiet confusion.

If we were to put the two concepts together:

Without integration, safety stays theoretical and without safety, integration never happens.

If you are a middle manager, you are often asked to:

All while operating inside constraints you did not design.

You are close enough to feel the human impact—and far enough from authority to feel the friction.

That is exactly why your role matters! Because culture lives in:

Notice how these actions are not executive statements or values alone. Our leadership in the middle shape these moments for the team every day.

If you are like me, you are tired of adding more initiatives to your preexisting full plate. So why not adjust how we do our work and where it happens?

A few places to start that have worked for me:

As we’ve discussed silence can be a form of self-protection.

Watch for those moments. Those patterns tell you more about where your team is than surveys ever will.

Whether you know it or not, you are modeling the way. Our actions should be a demonstration for what safety looks and feels like for the team to follow.

Name uncertainty and acknowledge mistakes. Admit when the system, not the person, is the problem.

That posture gives others permission to be real with you.

Ambiguity creates anxiety.

Re-anchor your team on:

Clarity reduces unnecessary tension and frees cognitive energy.

If meetings are only about status, integration will never form.

Create space for:

Design the space so contribution is expected, not optional.

Behavioral integration is built through repetition.

I love a good retrospective. Reflection offers opportunity to review decisions and share knowledge across teams. Doing this regularly makes it a part of the culture; that repetition highlights the type of behavior you would want to see within the team.

Let’s debunk the myth that effective leadership is not about pushing people harder.

Let’s reframe it as designing environments where people can contribute fully without fear, without confusion, without unnecessary friction.

Let’s understand that psychological safety creates the conditions and behavioral integration creates the capability.

Together, they create teams that do not just survive pressure, but learn, adapt, and grow through it.

That is what makes you and your team durable.

If this resonated, I would love to hear how you are thinking about culture on your team!

Let’s keep building teams and communities that people can belong to and do their best work within.

This newsletter reflection stems from a Substack article I produced a while back titled Building Team Collaboration through Leadership. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Ray

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P.S. - Thank you to those who have filled out the survey letting me know more about your leadership journey! I am excited to dive into the results over the next couple of weeks to provide you with resources and content that will support your leadership! If you haven’t filled it out yet, do so by clicking the link here!