Hey, it's Dr. Bailey

Have you been in a meeting lately where the room went quiet and you couldn't tell whether people agreed with you or had just stopped saying what they really think? This edition is for you. That silence is rarely about the agenda. It is usually about whether people feel safe enough to be honest.

This week I am looking at what the newest research tells us about why teams go quiet, and what Canada's AI strategy asks of us as the people shaping how our organizations work. Both come back to the same place: the conditions humans need to thrive in the world of work.

Where are you noticing silence on your team right now? Hit reply and tell me what you are seeing. I read every response, and they shape what we cover next.

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I sat down with Deana Sumanac-Johnson on CBC recently to talk through Canada's newly announced AI strategy. She asked me whether I remain hopeful for Canadians, and my answer was an easy yes. Here is why that matters for us as people leaders, because the same instinct shows up in how we build our teams.

What gives me hope is what I keep seeing in Canadians up close: a genuine desire to connect with people around the world, an appreciation for difference, a willingness to look honestly at our past, and a connectedness to the land. A social media scroll might tell you your neighbour is the worst version of themselves, but the truth is that most people are good.

That gap between the scroll and the reality is the same gap we manage inside our organizations. So what does an AI strategy have to do with people leadership? Everything, because the technology will reflect and amplify whatever we bring to it.

Lead with the qualities you want amplified.
AI refracts what we feed it. If we want tools that help our people connect and care, we have to model connection and care first, and I promise you I'm less worried about how you use AI. The culture comes before the technology.

Treat difference as an asset, not a wrinkle to smooth out.
The appreciation for difference I see in Canadians is exactly what keeps teams sharp as AI standardizes so much else. Protect the range of perspectives in your rooms.

Stay honest about the past to design a better future.
Interrogating what came before is how we avoid hard-coding old problems into new systems. That same honesty makes us better at redesigning how our teams actually work.

Watch the full CBC interview

A reader writes: “My team used to push back on my ideas and bring me problems early. Over the last few months they have gone quiet. Meetings are smooth, everyone nods, and then things fall apart later that nobody flagged. I do not think I have changed how I lead, but something is clearly off. How do I get the honesty back?”

First, I want to name how much it matters that you noticed. A quiet team is easy to mistake for a happy team, but artificial harmony also has its limitations. The fact that you're interrogating the reason for quiet meetings is important.

'Quiet' is almost always information. When people stop bringing you problems, it usually means the cost of speaking up has started to feel higher than the cost of staying silent. That shift can happen without you doing anything dramatic. A rushed reaction, a visibly stressful quarter, a moment where someone felt dismissed. People recalibrate fast.

Go first with your own fallibility.
Say out loud where you were wrong recently or what you are unsure about. When the most senior person in the room admits they do not have it all figured out, you lower the cost of everyone else doing the same.

Ask smaller, more specific questions.
“Any concerns?” invites silence. “What is the weakest part of this plan?” invites a real answer. Give people a concrete door to walk through and they will walk through it.

Honesty have gone underground because something made it feel unsafe to surface. Your job now is to make it safe again, one small signal at a time. You clearly care enough to do it. Love you!

Here is a number worth sitting with. Only about 20% of US employees say they are engaged at work, the lowest reading Gallup has recorded in more than a decade. Most of our people have quietly checked out, and the question is why.

A new study gives us an honest answer. The 2026 Psychological Safety Study from the Center for Organizational Effectiveness, covered in Fortune this week, did not rely on surveys where people say what sounds acceptable. It drew on anonymized clinical conversations with workers across companies employing 88 million people, based on what employees told licensed counselors in confidence.

Three concerns rose to the top as the things most quietly eroding psychological safety:

1. Work-life imbalance.
The leading global concern is job demands that consistently outpace the time and energy people have to meet them. Chronic exhaustion has become the baseline rather than the exception.

2. Job-performance anxiety.
The stress of trying to satisfy vague or shifting expectations leaves people guarding themselves rather than contributing freely.

3. Unclear objectives.
Many people simply do not know what they are aiming for. This lines up with Gallup's finding that only 46% of American workers clearly understand what their employer expects of them, down from 56% in 2020.

Notice that none of these are personality problems. They are culture design problems, which means they are ours to fix, as leaders. Clearer expectations, realistic workloads, and a stated direction are not soft niceties. They are the conditions that let people speak, contribute, and stay.

Read the full article

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