Session Title:
The Elephant in the Boardroom: When Leaders are Barriers to Psychological Safety

September 17
9:30 AM - 10:30 AM

DENISE MCCLENNON

DeniseMcClennen

Session Description:

It often seems that the last people to notice cultural challenges are those with the greatest influence on them. When key leaders are unaware of how low psychological safety impacts engagement, performance, and even profitability, it falls to HR to bring these issues to light in a way that fosters understanding and accountability. This session equips HR directors with strategies to address this common yet complex challenge: guiding leaders to recognize how their actions influence psychological safety and, ultimately, organizational success.

Through practical frameworks and real-world examples, attendees will learn how to communicate the importance of psychological safety, measure it meaningfully, and provide actionable strategies to help leaders increase self-awareness and drive positive culture change. This session empowers HR professionals to foster environments where leaders are both informed about and invested in cultivating psychological safety across all levels of the organization.

Why does it seem that the last people to know about cultural problems are the people that most need to know? Helping leaders truly understand the real dynamics at play in the organization, the impacts on performance and profitability, and the contributions they themselves are making can be challenging at best.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Engage Leaders in Understanding Psychological Safety: Learn approaches for making psychological safety a relatable and actionable concept, ensuring leaders connect with its importance to the organization’s success.
  2. Provide Strategies for Self-Awareness and Accountability: Identify specific, actionable tools to encourage leaders to reflect on and improve their impact on the organizational culture.
  3. Empower Leaders to Drive Sustainable Culture Change: Gain strategies to support leaders in their journey to create an inclusive, safe culture where employees feel valued, fostering a high-performance workplace.
Denise McClennon helps leaders and teams build cultures where candor is normal, ownership is shared, and people can perform under pressure without burning out. Her work focuses on the human patterns that quietly derail collaboration — defensiveness, avoidance, drama cycles, and unspoken agreements — and equips leaders with practical tools to shift those patterns in real time. Denise integrates Safety Intelligence (SQ), psychological safety, and adult development into leadership programs that strengthen teams’ ability to navigate complexity, conflict, and change. Known for her candid, engaging style, Denise blends insight with highly usable practices leaders can apply immediately. She is a partner with Fearless Organization Scan and a nationally sought-after speaker on psychological safety and adult development, working with leaders across industries to build more mature, resilient, and learning-oriented workplaces.