210. How to Ensure Psychological Safety While Leading Teams

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In this episode, Julia speaks with Amanda about burnout — and how psychological safety within teams can play a crucial role in preventing it.

Amanda reflects on how burnout is often misunderstood as a problem of workload alone. In reality, it frequently emerges in environments where people feel a lack of control, unclear expectations, exclusion, or a sense that their voice does not matter.

The conversation explores what it takes to create psychological safety while leading a team. Amanda describes four conditions that help people feel safe: knowing they belong, having space to learn and make mistakes, feeling their contribution matters, and being able to challenge ideas without fear.

She also explains how this begins in the earliest moments of bringing a team together. Spending time understanding people as individuals, inviting different perspectives, and modelling openness helps establish the tone for how the group will work together.

Julia and Amanda discuss how psychological safety is not something that can be set once and assumed to last. It requires constant attention — noticing who is speaking and who is silent, recognising different communication styles, and creating space for people to share concerns or uncertainty.

This episode is a reminder that preventing burnout is not only about reducing pressure. It is also about creating conditions where people feel safe enough to speak, learn, contribute, and grow together.

About the Guest:

Amanda

Until June 2025, Amanda was the Global Talent Leader for the Consulting practice of a large professional services firm where she drove a holistic and integrated talent strategy designed to enable the level of transformation and performance required to effect change and to ensure continued success. Whilst there, she was the co-founder and executive sponsor of an award-winning global program focussed on enabling the development of women in technology. Having retired from the partnership where she operated at the most senior levels, Amanda is now working as an Executive Coach to global leaders and leadership teams, focussed on enabling them to maximise their potential. She is a speaker on leadership topics including leadership agility and psychological safety. Outside of work she is a Trustee of a charity called Become, which is focused on enabling care experienced young people achieve the success that they deserve.

About the Host

Julia Middleton

Julia Middleton is the host of the Women Emerging podcast and a best-selling author of “If that’s leading, I’m in” as well as two previous books: “Leading beyond Authority” and “Cultural Intelligence”. She is deeply committed to helping people from all backgrounds to find their own approach to leading. In 2020, Julia launched Women Emerging and in 2022 she lead an expedition of 24 women to find ‘an approach to leading that resonates with women’. She now leads expeditions with women all over the world based on 4Es methodology, discovered in the first expedition.

Prior to that, Julia was founder and, for over thirty years, Chief Executive of Common Purpose, which grew to become one of the biggest leadership development organisations in the world.
Julia is also an Ambassador for the Aurora Prize based in Armenia, on the boards of Alfanar Venture Philanthropy in the Arab World and Equality Now, which operates globally, and on the Advisory Councils of Fundacao Dom Cabral in Brazil and Synapse in Pakistan. Born in London and brought up in New York, Julia was educated at French Lycées and graduated from the London School of Economics. She is married, with five children and lots of grandchildren.