A leader notices a usually talkative team member goes quiet in meetings, pulls them aside privately, and learns they're dealing with personal problems. Watch for subtle signs like unexpected rework or side conversations that signal low psychological safety, and respond with empathy and support.
Notice people that have gone quiet, and this is again real life experience that I have spending time to get my to know my team. I suddenly noticed that one person was not speaking up in a meeting, and here I don't mean speaking up as in raising. I don't agree with this, you know, in the psychological just not being as chatty, not coming in and saying what they had done on the weekend, and really sitting very quietly. Obviously, I did not call that out in that meeting, but I took the moment afterwards to give him a call and find out what was going on. And then I found out that he had very. difficult personal issue which had occurred over that weekend, and he was just not feeling like he wanted to be in the room at all. And from that, obviously, we were able to put a plan in place for him that, you know, take some time off, how can we cover the work for you, and, and really be there for him as a human. And so looking really to see those, those, those quiet signals, particularly around people that, you know, are not normally like that. Yeah. Like I said, watch for rework as well. So if you see that work is coming back and it's not quite as it was expected, it probably means that there was a misalignment there. If you see side conversations, if you notice that people are not speaking up in a meeting, but then they're going to go and take it outside, or you hear from somebody else that somebody said this, you know, making a coffee, they're not feeling safe enough to raise that up. Yeah, that would be some of my kind of— Okay.
