“My door is always open.” I have heard this in many organisations. It was usually sincerely meant. Yet few people felt comfortable turning up at the CEO’s office unannounced.
When CEOs make themselves available, show interest and ask for honest feedback, they sometimes struggle to understand why people hold back. Those who have risen through the organisation they now lead may find this particularly puzzling. Why should conversations that once felt so natural no longer be possible? After all, their personality has not fundamentally changed.
What has changed, however, is their role. Someone who used to be a colleague now makes decisions about resources, priorities, careers and possibly whether you will still have a job tomorrow. A long shared history does not remove this power imbalance. For employees, a candid conversation can carry very different consequences than it does for the CEO.
Not knowing what employees really think is a serious problem for senior leadership. Anyone leading an organisation needs to understand what is happening within it: where decisions are causing difficulties, which assumptions are wrong and why implementation is stalling.
An open door may make contact easier. It does not tell people whether it is safe to walk through it and say something uncomfortable. That is why it does little good for a CEO to walk around the organisation seeking conversations instead of waiting for employees to come to their office. Depending on how much trust already exists, this can signal interest—or feel like an inspection and erode trust further.
This is where CEO communication connects with psychological safety: Can people ask questions, raise concerns or acknowledge mistakes without being humiliated or punished? An invitation to speak openly needs to be backed by experience that shows it is genuinely safe to do so.
What matters, then, is what happens after someone voices criticism.
Does the leader ask questions to understand the problem? Acknowledge a mistake? Or do employees later have to justify themselves to their line manager because their feedback did not go down well with senior leadership? Are there repercussions if you actually walk through that door and explain why, based on your professional expertise, you believe a decision was wrong? Does the CEO still greet you warmly after you have delivered unwelcome news?
These experiences never affect just the person involved. Others also observe what happens when someone speaks openly and use that to decide whether they will speak up themselves. CEOs can build trust by explicitly inviting critical feedback, addressing it on its merits and ensuring that people are not penalised for raising concerns. That also means paying attention to how other leaders respond.
But this is only part of the picture. People also ask themselves whether speaking up will make any difference. If they repeatedly raise problems without seeing any sign that those problems are being addressed, they may eventually stop—even when there is no risk of repercussions.
Not every suggestion needs to be implemented, and not every criticism needs to lead to a different decision. But people who raise an issue should hear what came of it and why. Is it being looked into? Will something change? Or are there good reasons to continue with the current approach? Taking feedback seriously also means answering these questions and following through on commitments.
Whether employees speak openly also depends on their wider experience of senior leadership: Do I trust this person’s ability to lead the organisation? Do they live by the principles they profess? And do they consider the interests of the people affected by their decisions?
How leaders communicate matters here, too. Do they explain their decisions? Do they speak openly about difficulties and about what they do not yet know?
Many leaders recognise the importance of transparency and strive to put it into practice. How much they can share depends on the situation. Some information must remain confidential. It may also be so closely connected to other matters that sharing individual details is difficult without explaining the full context.
In my experience, employees generally understand this. But they are also quick to notice when that explanation is used simply to avoid answering uncomfortable questions. Honesty is therefore essential to creating a culture of transparency. Full disclosure will not always be possible in a business context. Still, being clear about what remains unresolved, what cannot yet be answered and when more information is likely to be available helps people know what to expect.
The same applies to decisions and plans. In a fast-moving world like ours, the basis for a decision can change quickly. Rather than asking everyone to commit to a fixed end result, it makes more sense to explain the reasoning behind decisions—the WHY. This also helps people understand why a plan that originally made sense may later need to change.
Often, a series of developments gradually makes it sensible to move away from the original plan. Communicating obstacles and setbacks as they arise helps people follow that progression. Explaining what has changed and why the organisation needs to adjust course can strengthen confidence in a leader’s ability to run it.
This requires leaders to speak openly about difficulties—something that is still too easily mistaken for weakness. It also means being willing to question their own assumptions, learn from experience and talk about their own mistakes. Leaders who cannot do this place tight limits on their own transparency.
Anyone who expects openness from employees must therefore be willing to speak openly themselves and respond reliably to what they hear. Trust grows when people experience both—even when the conversation becomes uncomfortable.
The open door is an invitation. Whether people accept it depends on what they expect to find on the other side.