S3 Ep5: You Can’t Call It Safe Without Accountability

Calling a retreat a safe space is only the beginning.

If leaders have not decided what accountability looks like inside that space, people are being asked to trust a promise that may not hold once someone gets uncomfortable. That matters, because hard conversations do not just create honesty. They can also create defensiveness, raised voices, table-slapping, cursing, dismissal, and emotional reactions that make other people decide they are done speaking.

In this episode, Jen talks about psychological safety through the lens of accountability. Before leaders ask people to name what is hard, they need to prepare for the what-if moments. What if a supervisor gets defensive? What if a high performer shuts someone down? What if someone crosses a line in front of the whole group? Who steps in? What happens next? How quickly does it happen?

A retreat cannot create real movement if safety depends on everyone behaving perfectly on their own. People need to know the standard before the conversation starts, and they need to see that standard held when it matters. That is how accountability and psychological safety sit together, and that is what makes a retreat more than a temporary reset.

Transcript

Season Focus: Retreats & Teams

Dr. Jen Fry 0:00

Hi, welcome back to Five with Fry. I'm Dr. Jen Fry. This season is all about retreats and team dynamics. Because most retreats don't fail during the retreat. They fail long before anyone walks into the room. Organizations spend thousands hoping for alignment, better communication, stronger culture. But too often teams leave and return to the same problems on Monday. This season is about changing that. We'll talk about what actually makes a retreat worth the investment, how conflict and communication shape team dynamics, and how retreats can become real turning points instead of temporary resets. If you're planning a retreat, leading a team, or wondering why your culture feels stuck, this season is for you. Let's get into it. Hey friends, Dr. Jen Fry here. And so with this episode, we are going to talk about the idea of psychological safety through the lens of accountability. And so right now we tend to see that there's a lot of conversation around psychological safety and what that means, and also in some respects, who gets to be psychologically safe and who doesn't. And so I am looking at this through the lens of creating a retreat that allows people to be psychologically safe through accountability. And so what I mean by that is that many times people do not feel psychologically safe because folks are not held accountable for their words, their actions, or their emotions. And so whenever we have a retreat and we have kind of the conversations of let's have the hard conversations, let's talk about the hard thing, there has to be guardrails around accountability happening. Because I cannot feel safe if I know that people can say whatever they want and react emotionally the way that whatever they want with no repercussions or com or consequences at all. That just is unacceptable and no one feels safe in there. Because if I know that I, when I tell my supervisor that I don't know how they treat me was problematic, and they get to get up and yell and scream, I know that I'm not gonna say anything anymore. I know I'm not gonna feel safe to say anything more. I know if I tell someone about a mistake they made and they want to slap the table and get mad and cuss at me, and everyone's silent, staring at each other, and nothing's happening, I'm not gonna feel safe to say anything anymore. And so what I tend to see is that many times leadership has not prepared for the what if moments. If we're gonna rip the band-aid off or we're gonna talk about these topics, what if someone says this thing or does this thing or reaction this way, how are we gonna handle it? And be very thoughtful into what occurs with how it's handled. Because if you aren't being proactive and saying, this is the problem we have to solve, these are the ways that we're gonna look at solving it, and this might be the reaction from people. If you're not thinking about that, you're absolutely not preparing for this retreat well. There should you you should know your employees decently well, and you should be able to know what kind of reactions potentially might happen. And so, because of that, you have to be prepared for those reactions that can occur that can be really problematic. If they don't occur, that's cool. But so many times you will have a leader be like, it's safe to be here. And then when someone says something, trusting that's safe, and then someone else has this crazy reaction, everyone is now silent. Everyone is like, well, hell, I don't want that happening to me, so I'm not gonna say anything. You have to be prepared for things going off the rails, for problematic emotions, problematic reactions, problematic words. When honesty is starting to occur, you're going to see those things happen. And if you have not been proactively thinking about it and preparing yourself and leadership and other people for that, you are not creating a level of safety at this retreat that it needs for band-aids to be ripped off and healing to start happening. That takes a level of willingness to engage in hard conflict. That means that you have to engage in what will be some of the consequences. And what if it's our best person? How are we gonna handle that? Who's gonna handle that? And having these things prepared so that you can react in the way that everyone's needed versus stuff happens, stuff is said, and then you take four to seven business days to respond or to give consequences. By then, no one's gonna be able to trust leadership. It has to be handled in a way that people know accountability is center, just with psych psychological safety being right next to it. Both of those right there are sitting at the same place at the same time, and that's how you start pushing people forward to change growth, innovation, and scale. And friends, I want to help you out with that. So if you're planning a retreat or a team session between July and September and want to actually change your culture, email me at bookings at genfry talks.com or go to my website at genfry talks.com and fill out the form. We want to help you get better with your culture. So a treat is a true reset. If this episode resonated with you, take a second to follow, rate, and share it wherever you listen. And if this conversation hits closer to home in your work, I also do keynotes, workshops, and facilitation. My goal is to help one million people have a better relationship with conflict. And it starts with you. Well, that's this episode of Five with Fry. Y'all take what you heard, sit with it.