Imagine a manager who goes an entire month without receiving a single objection about their behaviour.
A miracle? The Messiah of Management?
Possibly. But there’s another possibility: everyone wanted to object and nobody dared.
This is where I think psychologists’ and organisations’ obsession with psychological safety surveys becomes almost comical.
A 2024 systematic review examined 217 studies involving 504,136 people. In all 217 studies — 100% — psychological safety was measured using self-reports.
Think about that.
We want to know whether employees feel safe speaking up, so we ask them to speak up … in a survey!
Often with questionable questions about what they believe they could do.
It’s rather like asking people standing beside a swimming pool whether they’d feel safe if they went into the water, then announcing we’ve measured their swimming safety.
To me, presenting those answers as proof that people can safely challenge their manager’s behaviour is almost fraudulent. At minimum, it’s confusing belief with demonstrated behaviour.
And let’s not conflate disagreement with objection.
Saying to a manager, “I disagree with your proposal” challenges an idea. Fair enough.
However, giving their manager a, “Caution. I object to how you’re speaking to me” challenges their manager’s behaviour.
At SpatzAI, we’re proposing a simple monthly question:
Q1. “Did you caution your manager about their behaviour, or want to but decide not to?”
Then ask what happened.
If nobody wanted to object, perhaps the manager really is the Messiah of managers?
If people wanted to object but stayed silent, a glowing psychological safety score deserves scrutiny.
Q2. If you did caution your manager, then did he or she acknowledge the objection and it was resolved fairly, OR was it ignored or did you have to escalate? Were there any consequences and what were they?
SpatzAI’s Workplace Objection Management System gives everyone equal procedural rights to verbally caution their manager. Then, if unresolved SpatzAI offers team members the use of the 3-step chat app to, escalate their spat.
And finally SpatzAI offers a transparent review process, by their own team + AI, when needed.
We haven’t yet proven it works. That’s precisely why we need independent trials.
Perhaps it’s time to measure more than how safe people believe they are.
Let’s examine what actually happens when they object to their manager’s objectionable behavior.
SpatzAI — Helping Teams Object Well.
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