Listening for the Bluebird: What a Morning Walk Taught Me About Psychological Safety
The other morning, after teaching a session on psychological safety, I took my dog Ruby for a walk and found myself still thinking about the topic. Psychological safety, on the surface may seem simple—creating an environment where people feel safe to speak up—but the deeper you go, the more layers you discover.
As Ruby trotted ahead of me, I started listening to the birds. And that’s when a small realization turned into a much bigger reflection about how we listen to each other at work–a key skill for creating psychological safety.
Listening for the Bluebird
I noticed that I was listening very intently for my favorite bird, the bluebird.
But there were so many other birds singing that morning—cardinals, blue jays, crows, robins, chickadees, pine warblers, yellow warblers. I’m fairly sure I even heard cedar waxwings. (This was one morning I wasn’t checking my Merlin app!)
Yet despite all that life and sound, my attention kept narrowing. I was listening for the bluebird.
It made me wonder: Is that how we listen to people’s perspectives?
Sometimes we’re not really listening for all of what’s there—we’re listening for what we want to hear. In psychology we call that confirmation bias: tuning our attention to the voices that reinforce what we already believe.
Of course, there are times when listening carefully for a specific voice is helpful. The bluebird’s song is softer and gentler than many others. Sometimes the voices we most need to hear are the quieter ones—the people who don’t naturally speak the loudest in a room. Or the bird (perspective) that is less common than the others.
But that walk reminded me how easily our listening narrows without us realizing it.
Zooming In and Zooming Out
As I continued walking, I tried something different.
Instead of searching for the bluebird, I zoomed out and listened to all the birds at once. What a beautiful cacophony!
Then I zoomed in again—first the robin, then the blue jay, then the crow. Each time I focused on one bird and then expanded back out to hear the whole soundscape.
What surprised me was how my emotional reactions shifted depending on which bird I focused on.
The blue jay, for example, grates on me a little. I like how they look, but their call? Not my favorite.
And that made me think: how often do we bring similar filters to the way we listen to people?
There are voices we naturally enjoy hearing. Others we subconsciously tune out. Sometimes we don’t even realize we’re doing it.
When Expectations Shape What We Hear
Another moment on that walk caught my attention.
When I hear a new or unusual bird call, I often assume it must be some exotic species. Something I haven’t heard before. But that morning I remembered something interesting: cardinals actually have at least eight different calls. In other words, sometimes what sounds like a “different bird” is actually the same one speaking in a different way. So, again, we might not hear something because it isn’t what we expect.
That got me thinking about teams and organizations.
How often do we listen to someone from a particular team, function, or department expecting to hear a certain perspective? And when their voice sounds different than we expect, we struggle to recognize it as coming from them at all. Or that they mean it, or we question it.
Our assumptions can make us miss what’s actually being said.
Listening to What’s Between the Birds
A little later, I shifted my attention again.
Instead of focusing only on the sounds of birds, I started listening to everything around them.
The wind in the trees. The subtle background sounds. They rustle of a rabbit. The rhythm of the morning commute a few miles away.
And it struck me that listening to people could be the same.
If we only listen to the words people say, we miss a lot. Psychological safety often reveals itself in the spaces between the words:
The tone of the room
The energy of a meeting
Who speaks easily—and who doesn’t
The ideas that appear quickly—and the ones that never surface
Just like in nature, the context matters. Is the atmosphere calm? Tense? Curious? Guarded?
The Chickens I Almost Ignored
Then, suddenly, my neighbor’s chickens erupted into loud squawking. It sounded like they were having quite the argument. I reminded myself to listen for the birds.
And then I caught myself. Those ARE birds!
But I had mentally categorized them as irrelevant to the soundscape I was listening for.
And that raised another question: What do we ignore because we’ve already decided it doesn’t matter?
In organizations, innovation and insight often come from unexpected places—from people or groups we’re not actively listening to.
If we only tune our ears to the voices we usually hear, we may miss the most important signals.
Notice How You Listen–the first step to listening better.
That morning walk reminded me that psychological safety doesn’t start with a technique. It starts with self-awareness.
Before we can improve how we listen, we need to notice:
What voices we instinctively listen for
Which ones we tune out
What expectations shape what we hear
What context and signals we overlook
In other words: What birds are you listening for?
And perhaps just as important: Which birds or sounds are you missing entirely?
Tune in for more perspectives on Psychological Safety.
#psychologicalsafety #listening #selfawareness