With: Lacy Dicharry, Senior Director & Executive Coach, and Natasha Simoneaux, Business & Operations Manager, LSU Leadership Development Institute
Format: A co-teaching conversation between two members of the LDI team
Published: July 7, 2026
Run time: 23:05
Lacy Dicharry and Natasha Simoneaux walk through what psychological safety is, what it is not, and the four stages of it, from inclusion safety through challenger safety. Natasha maps safety against accountability into four quadrants and names what lives in each one, then tells the story of becoming a manager and landing in the wrong quadrant herself.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Natasha Simoneaux: You're not giving up authority or power by inviting ideas.
Lacy Dicharry: It can make you a more effective leader, when we have more information and we actually listen to our team, [who] feel safe enough to give us that feedback.
Natasha: Absolutely.
Lacy: [introduction] Welcome to Teams That Win, a podcast of the LSU Leadership Development Institute, where we get to talk about team science and how leaders can make an impact for complex problems across the state of Louisiana. I'm Lacy Dicharry, your host and Senior Director and Executive Coach of the Leadership Development Institute.
Today I have Natasha Simoneaux. She is our Business & Operations Manager extraordinaire here from the LDI team. We are going to talk about a topic that is near and dear to our team. It's called emergent states. What does that mean?
Natasha Simoneaux: This is what's really interesting about team science. You would think, if I was to build the perfect team, let me go ahead and get five of the smartest people I know, and I'm just going to throw them together and say, hey, let's go ahead and solve a problem.
The science and the research shows that the individual personalities and resumes that are on that team are less important than how those teams actually interact with each other. And that's what creates those emergent states that actually lead to high performing teams.
Lacy Dicharry: Absolutely, yes. How do we know that?
Natasha Simoneaux: There's been some large scale studies. Google did a study on over 180 teams called Project [Aristotle]. And they looked at all the different kinds of factors. They were looking at [environmental] factors, they were looking at leaders on the teams, they were looking at resumes. They were looking at food. I mean, ping pong, all kinds of stuff.
Like, what made great teams? Because the assumption was, we hire all these amazing people, so we should be having amazing teams and amazing results. But there were actually five things that came out of that study, the top five things that made highly effective teams. Can you guess what the number one thing was?
Lacy Dicharry: I know the answer.
Natasha Simoneaux: You know the answer. What's the answer?
Lacy Dicharry: Psychological safety.
Natasha Simoneaux: Yes. Absolutely.
Lacy Dicharry: What is cool about [emergent states] is, in team science there are a few different models. But the most straightforward model that I think leaders can really grasp on to is that IMO, or that IPO. There's the inputs, there's the mediators, and there's the outputs.
What does that mean? Inputs are things like leadership styles, people skills, resources, goals, clear information, technology. Those are all the inputs that we look at. And outputs are the goals that we set. The M, or the P, in the middle, those are process, or mediators. And so one of those most significant ones is emergent states.
Psychological safety has emerged in the literature since Amy Edmondson's seminal article in 1999. And she was the one who was in that kind of background with Google, understanding what is the thing that made the biggest difference in those [teams]. And so that's how we know psychological safety is number one. It makes teams most effective.
Trust is another example of an emergent state that is hugely important. Everybody's heard that quote, everything moves at the speed of trust. And we know that to be true. If trust is broken down, it is very hard to get any of the outcomes that you want.
Natasha Simoneaux: What that means is, role clarity. Who's doing what, and do we trust those people to be able to do their role? You have high accountability. You have role clarity. You have process clarity. All of that kind of rolls into the structure and clarity process. And that allows teams to function without confusion, without ambiguity.
When you have ambiguity in a team, it erodes trust, because it erodes my ability to trust that you're going to follow through on what you say you're going to follow through on. And it creates risk because of that. Because now I want to hold on to more and give you less.
Lacy Dicharry: Yeah, it's like that human condition. And humans do this all the time, and it's not on purpose, but we all do it. And we've all been participating in it, and we've all been leaders who have seen our team members do it. In the absence of clear information, we make up stories. Our brain does it automatically, and it is always doing it in the background. And so part of that, what I'm hearing you say, is that clarity is so important as a baseline for trust.
Natasha Simoneaux: Early in my career, one of the things that I learned from a mentor of mine was to assume good intent in the absence of clarity, while you're building trust, and while you're asserting accountability as a leader on a team. Because from there, then trust can build, and accountability can build. And those steppingstones, those Lego blocks that you put together to create psychological safety on a team.
Lacy Dicharry: Absolutely. And so that's the thing. People working in plants, people running car sales teams, working, especially construction, health care, K-12 education, and a lot of people aren't aware of psychological safety, because it's not something that you can name. One of the inputs is information sharing, or how decisions are made. Those are things that you can clearly delineate. But psychological safety and trust, all of these emergent states that we talk about, it's not really something that's super tangible. It's more felt.
Natasha Simoneaux: It is. Yeah, you either have it or you don't. It's one of those things where you can identify the absence of it or the presence of it without necessarily giving it a name.
Lacy Dicharry: One of the things I like talking to leaders that I coach about is, what is psychological safety and what are the myths about psychological safety. I think a lot of people assume psychological safety is that everybody feels safe all the time. It's this happy, kumbaya place where there's no conflict. And that's not at all what psychological safety is.
When we talk about psychological safety, there's several indicators. It means that people feel that they're included on the team. There's not these cool kids and not cool kids groups. That people feel like they could speak up without fear of retaliation. Being able to ask for help.
Natasha Simoneaux: Yes. The vulnerability piece.
Lacy: Vulnerability. Willing to ask for help. And in Brené Brown's research, she's found that that was one of the number one indicator as a way to build trust, when leaders [and] employees ask for help.
Natasha Simoneaux: There was a hospital study that was done around the same time as Amy's work that was talking about, the best performing team was the one that reported the most mistakes. That was really interesting.
Lacy Dicharry: Which is another one of the indicators of psych safety, the ability to name mistakes. Say, I made a mistake. Because when we cover up mistakes, that's when some of the biggest mishaps for an organization can happen. The biggest risk happens when we don't name mistakes.
The last one is being able to [share] new ideas. It is crucial for innovation, but we have to be able to speak up and do that. Challenger safety. I'll go over the four stages of psych safety here in a minute, but we have to be able to challenge the status quo if we want to innovate. How many companies have innovation as a core value?
Natasha Simoneaux: I think a lot of companies think they have innovation as a core value but being able to create the environment in which innovation truly thrives is a conscious effort. And it's leader driven.
Lacy Dicharry: What I find is the biggest barrier is, people have to have a mindset of being willing to fail. They have to be willing to try new things. They have to be willing to spend time and resources on trying those new ideas, and they have to be willing to fail in order to learn and iterate. I think that's a big piece that companies are missing, especially when we're so focused on these outcomes that we're trying to achieve.
Natasha Simoneaux: Yeah. Innovation is not a suggestion box in the employee break room.
Lacy Dicharry: When we talk about psychological safety, there's really kind of four phases, if you will. And it doesn't mean that they happen necessarily in linear order, but I want to break these down a little bit.
That first one is inclusion safety. And for our leaders listening out there on the podcast, inclusion, it's not the big widespread efforts that we've seen around [DEI]. It really is just, does everybody feel valued on my team? Can I recognize the strengths of people that are here? Do I ask everybody about their day? It really is just that basic. I do feel like we do so well here in Louisiana, just making sure, checking in on people. How are you? Are you [seen]? Are you included? That is such a big piece of psych safety.
Natasha Simoneaux: I simply think about it as the fact that a third of my life is at work. So I'm going to have interaction and involvement with the people that I work with. I want to be involved in their lives, and I want them to be involved in my life to a certain extent. We want to be able to build that relationship, rapport, and trust, because I do want to be able to show up authentically at work, and that includes some level of vulnerability.
But that also allows them to know that, by me sharing a little bit of that, and I do this with any teams that I've ever led, I let them know it's a hard week for me. I don't need to go into the gory details, but it allows that opening. So I'm not stoic. It allows that opening, that when they're having a hard week and they need a little bit more grace, that they can come to me too. And it builds that trust.
Lacy Dicharry: Yeah, absolutely. What we talk about in the vulnerability work is, when leaders are vulnerable, it gives their teammates permission to do the same. And the leaders really set the tone for all of that.
The second type of psych safety is really around that learner safety. When we talk about learning in organizations, that is the organization's ability to adapt, to grow, to continue to evolve and innovate. There's very few industries that operate the exact same now as they did 50 years ago, and you have to be able to remain agile and stay up to date. And so that learner safety is super important.
Some of the indicators of, is it safe as a learner: can I ask questions? Can I say I don't know? Can I bring new ideas without fear of being belittled, or feeling like it's not my place? Are we allowed to make those mistakes? Are we allowed to try new things? Are we supported by our leaders to come up with new ideas and try new things?
And you have an extensive background. You have decades in managing teams. Say a little bit about the service industries that you've worked in and the different environments you've been in. What are the things that you really saw that contributed to learner safety, that made a difference in your teams?
Natasha Simoneaux: I've been in situations where I've had to take over stores or locations that were low performing. Being given a goal by somebody higher than me, say, turn the store around. We want it to be a performing store. We want it to be profitable, things like that.
There's two schools of thought there, because I've worked with many other managers and industries, and most of them, if we were to have a lunch or whatever, and there's a low performing store, lower performing team: turn it over, get rid of everybody, start fresh. That's really harsh. And it's not the way that I would want to operate.
I wouldn't want my new boss to come in, and then day one I'm packing my bags. That doesn't feel good for anybody. This person doesn't know me, but they have the authority to control a very significant portion of my life.
Whenever I've been in those situations, and we're talking high turnover stores, I ran a store that was $3.1 million and had over a 20% shrink, which is just ridiculous. They were just pouring out money. The first thing we did is you go in and you listen. What are the problems? What are the actual issues? It's not like the team doesn't know that there's a problem. They're very aware of it.
Build that psychological safety first. Listen, build trust, build [dependability], then bring in accountability. Because I think psychological safety runs along a continuum, and there's an interaction between psychological safety and accountability.
Natasha Simoneaux: Think low psychological safety, low accountability. What's that? That's apathy. So the team doesn't care and nobody's holding them accountable. They just exist.
If you have low psychological safety and you have high accountability and demanding goals, we need to get this done, that's anxiety.
Having psychological safety, we talked about it, it's one of the cornerstones. You have to have it to have a high performing team. But what happens if you don't have accountability?
Lacy Dicharry: High safety, low accountability.
Natasha Simoneaux: Comfort. Not apathy, but comfort. And innovation actually dies, because nobody's worried about changing the status quo. Nobody's trying to change anything.
So the learner state that you talked about comes from high psychological safety, high accountability. That's what creates that learner state. And that's what creates that space for innovation to grow, for teams to become more effective, for the processes, that structure, and then also for meaning and impact. If we have that, does it matter? Do we have impact? Do we have growth? We do, when we have those two things together.
Lacy Dicharry: Yeah, absolutely. I love how you laid that out, that chart of the four quadrants. And we can direct people in the show notes to find that information so that they can take and apply it for their teams.
But that is absolutely one of the things that I find in my fractional Chief Leadership Officer role, when I'm working with a company, is to understand where are we on that continuum. Because that is going to impact every decision that we make along the way.
What we see across industries, and every industry thinks that they're alone in this, and I promise you all, you are not alone, it shows up in every industry: there's a huge gap between having high performers at that entry level and then that first bump up to supervisor, that first level of manager. Huge gap in people skills. They get promoted because they're awesome at their job, and then they drive people away. They don't know how to lead them.
Natasha Simoneaux: Sure. It happened to me.
Lacy Dicharry: I think everybody. But that's where that learner piece comes in. That high accountability, high safety. It takes a lot of intentional work on behalf of the leader to make sure that we are driving that state, not just for the team members on our teams, but overall as a company.
Natasha Simoneaux: When I first became a manager, I was so nervous about taking, in my mind, managing other people, taking care of other people. I became a mother.
Lacy Dicharry: To your team member.
Natasha Simoneaux: To my team member I became a mother. So I became that high psychological safety, low accountability.
Lacy Dicharry: So then you had a bunch of people that felt.
Natasha Simoneaux: Very comfortable. My team was very comfortable with me. We were not making goals.
Lacy Dicharry: Yes. And not holding them accountable.
Natasha Simoneaux: No. My goal wasn't to get them to perform. My goal was to get them to like me. What is that, right?
Lacy Dicharry: When you get promoted from your peers. So it's a tough transition to make.
Natasha Simoneaux: It is. And you think you're doing a good job because your team loves you. And then when your boss comes to you and they're like, [why is] your department [not] performing?
But then how do you go back to that team if you haven't started with incorporating that dependability in the roles, incorporating that structure, incorporating some of those other things that we talked about, the clarity and accountability that gets you there? How can you then go back to your team and say, hey guys, I'm sorry, I know we were friends, but now we really need to do our work? How much more difficult are you making that for yourself?
Lacy Dicharry: Right. And that accountability is one of the top requested [topics] that we get, either through coaching or training for teams. But that's totally another episode.
The third stage is contributor safety. And this is where I'm really owning ideas. I'm speaking up, I'm bringing new thoughts. I am really participating, actively participating. How many meetings do we sit in where people may not speak up, they're on their phone, they're distracted? When you have a highly engaged and motivated team and they feel safe with each other, they're going to be bringing those ideas. They're going to be able to share all of that.
And then the fourth stage is challenger safety. This one can be extremely difficult to achieve. Challenger safety is when I can speak up against, I can challenge ideas, I can challenge the leader's ideas. And it's not that you're creating a riot on your team or in your company. That's not what we're talking about.
But it really is, can I understand what exists now? Can I speak up and bring these new ideas, or say, hey, that process may not be the best way to do it, here's why, here's what I'm offering instead? And being able to have that conflict around those tasks or process ideas. To really achieve this challenger safety, you have to be able to navigate conflict.
And what we find, and that's totally another podcast too, but there's different types of conflict. And what we find is that when you can have task conflict and process conflict, so what are we doing and how are we doing it, teams are actually more effective, [resulting in better] decisions.
Natasha Simoneaux: Because it's never personal. It's constructive conflict.
Lacy Dicharry: Exactly. And so that goes hand in hand with that challenger safety. When you can have challenger safety and you can really engage in that dialog around what do we need to challenge in order to change what we're doing, that's where innovation happens. That's where you get ahead of your competitors.
Think about AI. Having those conversations, and we're not challenging people who say, oh, that's not for us, we're not going to think about that. Well, it's infiltrating every industry. And so if we're not challenging that, and there's no safety to do so, we're going to get stuck as a company. We don't want to get left behind.
Natasha Simoneaux: And even on teams too, the other thing to think about is when teams are forming and you do have psychological safety, and you do have people that start creating shared mental models, you also have to think about, where is the [intersection] between that and groupthink? Because we know that innovation also dies in groupthink.
Lacy Dicharry: Say what groupthink is.
Natasha Simoneaux: Okay. Groupthink is when you have a group that is not willing, able, or feeling safe enough to be able to challenge status quo. And so when status quo happens, it's the yes man in the room, the yes men in the room. The leader says something and everybody else kind of follows along with whatever the leader says, or whatever the group consensus is.
Natasha Simoneaux: And they have done countless studies on this. They'll have people in the room and there'll be a number on the board. And let's say the number on the board is four, and you go down the line. And the first guy says it's two. The next guy says it's two. The next says it's two. The guy at the end, number six, seven, eight, or whatever, he can read. He knows it's four, but because everybody else said it's two, he's going to say it's two. And it's just that human nature to conform within our society, that you have to have an active interruption in that process in order to have something change.
Lacy Dicharry: What is the role of the leader? Because we're talking about all of this really great content in a short amount of time. What is the role of the leader in ensuring that safety has happened? How does the leader even know whether their team has psych safety or not?
Natasha Simoneaux: I think what we just talked about: is the leader willing to examine themselves and what their team is telling them? If your team is doing nothing but agreeing with you, and nobody's challenging you, then maybe the question you should be challenging yourself: why is that? Is it because they like me? Is it because they're afraid of me?
So those two things. Low psych safety. Are they apathetic? Do they have anxiety? Or do we have too much comfort on the team? How do we get to that learner state? As the leader, what are my behaviors that I could speak up and change, or have vulnerability about, or whatever the case may be, that would then draw my people to say, okay, maybe I don't need to agree with you all the time to get by, or to win favor?
Lacy Dicharry: Yeah. Well, as a leader myself, seeing all of our LDI team, our amazing team, one of the things I appreciate the most is when I am given feedback that challenges my ideas. And I invite that as much as I can. At the end of the day, I'm still responsible for the final decision. I still have to make that decision. But I so appreciate when people do challenge me on what I'm thinking, or the way that we're doing it, or maybe there's a better way.
Natasha Simoneaux: You're not giving up authority or power by inviting ideas.
Lacy Dicharry: Oh, yes. That's beautiful.
Natasha Simoneaux: So you keep that. Like you said, you keep the final decision at the end of the day. But more information is always good. Just because I have one way of looking at something, if I get new information.
Lacy Dicharry: Could we just repeat that for our leaders out there?
Natasha Simoneaux: Yeah.
Lacy: You're not giving up power and authority by creating a safe space for people. You still get to keep all of your responsibility at the end of the day.
Natasha Simoneaux: Yes.
Lacy: But it can make you a more effective leader, when we have more information and we actually listen to our team, [who] feel safe enough to give us that feedback.
Natasha Simoneaux: Absolutely.
Lacy Dicharry: What's the biggest thing that you want leaders listening to this to take away today?
Natasha Simoneaux: Team effectiveness is not about individual capability. It is about how teams interact, and about their interaction with the leader. So what the team has, what the team does, what the team becomes, determines your outcomes and determines what your team achieves.
Lacy Dicharry: And that's one thing that I love about what we do, and the unique aspect of LDI, is that we have access to all of this research that we infuse into our leadership development practices. So there are ways that we can help you measure psych safety. We can help you, in a validated way, see where is your team, and design interventions to help increase that for your team. Which in effect makes you an effective leader.
Natasha Simoneaux: It does. Absolutely does.
Lacy Dicharry: Well, thank you for having this conversation with me.
Natasha Simoneaux: I'm so happy to be here. My favorite [topic].
Lacy Dicharry: [close] It is absolutely something that makes a difference for teams. And I coach leaders through it all the time. We all do at LDI. Really big impact.
And so thank you all for listening to another episode of Teams That Win. If you want to partner with LSU, send us an email at ldi@lsu.edu. Now, geaux lead.