Here's a question I received recently:
I've recently taken over management of a team. I'm trying to establish a culture of safety and inclusion. They had an authoritarian, even critical manager before, and I'm the opposite of that. I want to demonstrate a culture of servant leadership and create psychological safety in the team. I've been at it for the past few months, but I'm not getting much feedback or engagement beyond a small core of enthusiastic people. The rest are ignoring the social events, engagement surveys, and open meetings we're running.
You've identified a small core of enthusiasm and a large body of apathy. Your current strategy focuses on easing fear and uncertainty, a sort of "it's safe to speak up" message. That makes sense as a response to the previous critical manager, and the feedback that some people didn't feel safe to speak up.
Unfortunately that message of safety just won't get any traction with apathetic people. Apathy doesn't want to speak, it just wants to be left alone. Your positive structural changes aren't getting anywhere because the kind of apathy you're dealing with is passive too—it just wants to be told what to do, not to engage.
I see that you've inspired and motivated the core of engaged people, and they're responding positively to your messaging. I can see how that core group is making a concerted effort to boost engagement with social events and fun activities. But it's still not landing with that apathetic majority.
I think of the team as having a distribution of potential energy shaped by the previous status quo. The enthusiastic band stored up their energy under pressure. They are now releasing that energy under your safer leadership. But others adapted differently: they've learned not to generate energy at all, and what looks like apathy might also be learned compliance. This band doesn't have energy, so there's nothing to release. Instead you'll need to generate it—gently but deliberately—in a way that still aligns with your enthusiastic and positive servant-led approach.
A few things you could try:
Usually it's the same people speaking in every meeting. Try changing up roles so that different people lead some meetings (standups, retros, demos etc.) Then ask them:
Follow up with clear, kind feedback. Normalise contribution, not performance.
Nominate someone in each planning or review meeting to play devil's advocate: to critique plans, ask "what if" questions, or surface tensions. Let them know they're required to speak and find fault with things, but to do it playfully. If they can make people laugh while saying "good point!" you're winning here. This role disrupts silence and normalises speaking up and challenging as psychologically safe.
Nominate two or three people to organise a simple task like running a retro or a review. Having more than one person share it means they must step out of their comfort zones to collaborate, plan and lead.
