Quick Summary
- My team began building trust when everyone helped choose its name, values, and ways of working.
- I make room for people to speak without forcing them to do it in public or on demand.
- Explaining a decision matters as much as announcing it, especially when the decision came from someone above me.
- I lost a team member’s trust by setting their goal for them. Giving ownership back changed how I handle growth conversations.
- Sharing how my ADHD affects my work gives other people permission to tell me what they need.
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What makes someone feel safe enough to disagree with their lead?
I can tell a team that I want an open culture. They decide whether to believe me after they watch what I do with bad news, mistakes, and opinions I did not ask for.
I learned this as a Happiness Lead at WordPress.com. For me, people-first leadership meant explaining decisions in human terms and treating trust as part of the work. My team did not build that trust through one workshop or document. We built it through small choices we repeated for years, including how we handled two restructures.
Giving a New Team Something to Shape
I joined WordPress.com in September 2022 and became the lead of a team called R2D2, named after the Star Wars character. Soon after, an internal restructure brought people from another support team into ours.
I was new to leading. They were joining a group with its own history and habits. None of us knew what the new team would feel like.
I proposed a new name, logo, and creed. I wanted the people joining us to help decide who we would become instead of asking them to fit an identity they had inherited.
Everyone submitted names and voted. After a few rounds, we chose Horizon. We drew logo ideas and commissioned a friend of mine to turn our sketches into the final version.
Horizon team logo. © All Rights Reserved
The logo itself mattered less than the process. Each person had changed the result. New and existing members began from the same place because nobody owned the old version of the team.
Writing the Horizon Handbook Together
A few months later, we met in Seoul, South Korea. Between workshops and skill-building games, we wrote the Horizon Handbook.
We commit to unity, respect, and integrity, for a collaborative and diverse environment where every team member grows and excels, together.
Team Horizon
The handbook included our locations, communication preferences, values, and agreements about how we would work. We wrote it together rather than copying a set of company values into another document.
Writing the handbook together mattered when someone spoke up. We had already agreed on how we would treat disagreement, so the person did not have to guess whether the group could handle it.
Timothy R. Clark describes four stages of psychological safety in The 4 Stages of Psychological Safety: inclusion, learning, contribution, and challenge. I can see that order in Horizon’s first years. People found a place in the team, learned together, took ownership, and became comfortable challenging an idea.
The Habits That Built Psychological Safety
The handbook gave us a starting point. Our daily behaviour decided whether any of it was true.
I Leave Room to Speak
During team hangouts, I make space for each person to contribute. I do not force anyone to fill the silence.
Silence can mean reflection, discomfort, distraction, or nothing at all. I cannot tell which by looking at a quiet square on a video call. I can make the invitation clear and follow up in a setting that suits the person better.
After enough meetings, people learn that I will listen when they speak and leave them alone when they need time.
I Explain Decisions
I ask for opinions before I decide, including when I have a preference. I take the same approach when I give someone feedback: explain what I saw, listen to their view, then decide what comes next.
If someone above me has made the decision, I share the reason and say which parts we can still influence.
People can work with an answer they dislike. Unexplained decisions leave them guessing about the goal, the constraints, and whether their work mattered.
I Say When I Was Wrong
I tell my team how I plan to evaluate performance and use the information they share. If I change that plan, I explain the change.
I also say when I made a mistake. I do not need a long confession. I need to name what I did, acknowledge the effect, and explain what I will change. I want my team to see that accountability applies to me too.
I Let People Own Their Goals
Early in my time as a lead, I set a growth goal for a team member. I believed it was the right goal for them, so I pushed ahead without giving them enough ownership.
Their motivation and performance dropped. After several weeks, they told me they felt micromanaged and disconnected from their progress.
I stopped setting the pace for them. They chose what success would look like and how they wanted to reach it, while I helped with obstacles. They regained confidence and stayed with the company for years.
I still ask people to define their goals in one-on-one meetings. I can challenge, coach, and provide context, but the goal has to belong to the person doing the work.
I Keep Dignity in Hard Conversations
Leadership includes disappointment and termination. In those conversations, I explain what happened without turning the person into the problem. We discuss what they can do next and what support I can offer.
My team sees how I treat someone when things go wrong. If respect disappears with good performance, everyone learns that it had conditions.
Informal Trust Still Counts
Horizon also had a WhatsApp group for music, memes, and personal updates. We kept work out of it.
Those conversations helped us know one another outside tickets, goals, and performance. New members had an easy way to join the group without needing a formal team exercise.
In Seoul, we used the CliftonStrengths assessment to discuss our talents and communication styles. The results gave us a shared vocabulary for differences we had felt but struggled to describe.
The WhatsApp group and CliftonStrengths gave us more chances to understand one another, which made later conversations easier.
Sharing How I Work
I have combined-type ADHD. My focus and response times vary. I can answer at once on one day and need a reminder on another. I can also sound more direct than someone expects.
I tell my team this because it affects them. They should not have to interpret a delayed reply as anger or a short message as disapproval.
Sharing it also makes it easier for someone else to tell me how they work. I cannot support a need I do not know about, and they may not risk telling me until I have shown that differences are safe to discuss.
Revising the Culture We Wrote
Horizon changed again in 2024. Another restructure reduced the team’s size, and we returned to the handbook during a meetup in Malaysia.
We shortened it. Some lines no longer described us, and others had become habits we did not need to spell out. Keeping the original wording for sentimental reasons would have made the document less honest.
We rewrote the handbook without losing the respect behind it. We disagreed, rewrote old agreements, and kept treating one another with respect.
What I Learned About Psychological Safety
Google’s Project Aristotle research identified psychological safety as the most important dynamic in its effective teams. Amy Edmondson, who developed the concept, defines it as “a belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking”.
I saw that belief form through ordinary moments. A person challenged my decision. Someone admitted confusion before a mistake grew. I apologised and changed a goal I had imposed. The team saw how I responded and knew what to expect next time.
My team never needed me to promise that speaking up was safe. They needed me to listen, explain my decisions, and keep their dignity intact when the conversation became hard.