A friend recently shared this sports event with me because it's so relevant to the work we do at The Venned Group.
During the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso found himself wheel-to-wheel with 7x Champion, Michael Schumacher, at the infamous 130R, a corner taken at over 180 miles per hour with walls on either side. Rather than back off, Alonso stayed flat on the throttle, and it was Schumacher who hit the brakes.
When asked about it later, Alonso shrugged: "At times like that, I always remember that Michael has two kids."
It was ruthless, it was calculated, and it worked!
Alonso knew that Schumacher, the most decorated driver in the sport's history, would brake first. Not because he lacked skill or because his car was slower. It was because he recognized Michael had something to lose.
Your team members make the same calculation every single day.
When headlines turn anxious, they're not pushing back on unreasonable timelines. They're not raising the red flag when a project is heading sideways. They're not telling you what you need to hear because they have mortgages, daycare payments, and aging parents who need care. They have something to lose.
And so they brake.
This is why psychological safety, that concept everyone wants but few can create, remains so elusive. We keep trying to build it from the top down, encouraging transparency and inviting candour, while ignoring the three forms of security that must exist before anyone risks being the different opinion.
In our S.P.A.R.K. Training, the full program starts with Security because nothing else holds without it. We ask leaders to examine how they and their people manage and perceive their resources, many of which are intangible: energy, alignment with values, risk tolerance, etc.
What we've found is that transparency does not flow until three buckets are full enough that people feel they can afford the risk of honesty.
Bucket 1: Financial Security. This is the most obvious and the easiest to dismiss. Yes, you pay them. That doesn't mean they feel secure. Economic uncertainty, industry layoffs, and vague messaging about "organizational efficiency" all erode the sense that speaking up is worth the risk. When someone wonders whether their position is safe, they won't volunteer information that might mark them as difficult.
Bucket 2: Physical Security. This extends beyond literal safety to encompass workload sustainability, reasonable hours, and the physical toll of chronic stress. A team member running on fumes doesn't have the energy to engage in difficult conversations. They're in survival mode, conserving resources for what feels most urgent.
Bucket 3: Mental and Emotional Security. This is where most leaders underestimate their influence. How you respond to mistakes, bad news, and dissenting opinions determines whether people believe it is safe to be honest. A single dismissive reaction to a concern can undo months of stating that your door is always open. Beyond your reactions, people need to feel that their contributions are seen and respected. If someone doesn't believe their work matters or that their effort is acknowledged, you'll be met with immediate disengagement. They will not fight for outcomes they feel invisible in.
What You Can Do This Week
To strengthen financial security: Consider what visibility your team actually has into how the company is tracking. A busy quarter doesn't automatically signal financial health, and in the absence of information, people fill the gap with assumptions. You don't need to open the books entirely, but sharing context on where you are headed, how you measure success, and the role each team plays in building that success goes a long way. The goal is not to frighten people with transparency or to overpromise stability you cannot guarantee. It's to replace speculation with enough clarity that people can see themselves as contributors to the outcome rather than passengers waiting to learn their fate.
To assess physical security: What signals are you getting about capacity from your direct reports? Are your leaders protecting their teams' margins, or are they quietly absorbing unsustainable loads to avoid looking like they can't handle it? The people running on fumes are not going to volunteer that information. You need to look for it: cancelled vacations, weekend emails, the slow creep of response times that suggests someone is underwater. Burnout is a destination, and capacity is the gauge; you want to assess that gauge before they arrive at the destination because that doesn't come with an inexpensive return ticket.
To assess mental and emotional security: Think back to the last time someone brought you a problem. How did you respond? Don't think about what you said in response, but what your face communicated in the first two seconds. If you can't recall, ask a trusted colleague to observe your reactions this week and give you honest feedback. Then ask yourself a harder question: do your people feel acknowledged for what they contribute? Recognition does not require grand gestures. It requires consistency, specificity, and the willingness to notice effort before it becomes a problem.
Schumacher wasn't a worse driver because he had children. He was, by most accounts, the better driver that day. He simply had more to lose, which changed his calculus at 180 miles per hour.
Here is what is easy to miss in that story & this analysis of it: Schumacher's caution was not a flaw, but wisdom. The best drivers, the ones who sustain long careers and build lasting legacies, learn when to push and when to protect. They calculate risk in real time, weighing the value of a single corner against everything else they are racing toward.
Your team members are doing the same math. They're constantly calculating whether the risk of honesty is worth the potential cost. The question is not how to make them reckless, but how to lower the cost of truth-telling so that staying on the throttle becomes the rational choice.
When financial, physical, and emotional security are solid, your people can afford to take the corner flat out. They can push back, raise concerns, and tell you what you need to hear, because they trust that honesty will not cost them everything.
And so they stay on the throttle with you.
That is when you get the transparency you have been hoping for.
If this sounds like something your team could benefit from, reply to this email and let's chat!
Vroom vroom!
Kendra
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