Episode 23: The Power of Psychological Safety: Creating High-Trust, High-Performance Teams with Nogol Madani
In this episode of the Leaderful Podcast, Jeff is joined by Nogol Madani—engineer turned workplace culture strategist and founder of Glee Factor—for a deep dive into psychological safety and why it matters more than ever.
Nogol shares her journey from engineering to exploring what makes teams thrive, and how a pivotal moment sparked her obsession with inclusion, team dynamics, and performance. Together, she and Jeff explore what psychological safety really is (and what it’s not), how it impacts learning and innovation, and how leaders can create conditions for candor, trust, and contribution.
You’ll hear practical tips for fostering psychological safety in meetings, rituals to open space for team voices, and the subtle habits that either build or erode trust on teams. Plus, Nogol shares why human skills are more important than ever in the age of AI—and how leaders can embrace intentional, human-centred transformation.
🔍 Also covered in this episode:
- Common myths about psychological safety
- What to look for in teams with low safety
- Simple meeting rituals that boost trust
- The connection between inclusion and innovation
- Why culture work is all about daily behaviors, not big pronouncements
Whether you're a CEO, a people manager, or just curious about creating better team environments, this episode offers real-world strategies to bring psychological safety from theory to practice.
All episodes
In this episode, Jeff is joined by culture strategist Nogol Madani for a powerful conversation about psychological safety. They unpack what it really means, how it drives team performance, and how leaders can foster environments of candor, trust, and inclusion. Plus, you’ll hear practical ways to bring safety into your team’s daily work.
In this episode of the Leaderful Podcast, Pablo and Jeff are joined by colleague Lindsay Sheldrake to discuss how fractional COO consulting support can help leaders get out of operational quicksand and into their strategic role(s), activate people around vision through focus and with trust, and operationalize power through more conscious ways of working.
In this episode of The Leaderful Podcast, Co.CEOs (Pablo Romero and Jeff Couillard) reflect on TACO's journey this past year. Part of their discussion focused on the latest positioning of our offerings in today's leadership and culture space, and what's become clearer in our work to create leaderful teams.
Co.CEOs Jessica Xiomara García and Emily Drake of Learning for Action - an organization helping create and support equitable learning cultures in the social sector - join Jeff and Pablo to discuss the nuances of harmonizing equity-grounded and data-informed approaches into organizational practices.
Consultant, designer and strategist in the field of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), Denyelle Fraser, joins our Co.CEO Jeff Couillard to discuss the opportunities and challenges of leading sustainable and systems-conscious change and transformation projects with an EDI focus.
Educator, innovator and advocate in the field of neurodiversity employment, Dave Thompson, joins our Co.CEO Jeff Couillard to discuss the opportunities and challenges of fostering psychologically safe workplaces for neurodiverse employees - and how that effort benefits everyone.
Connector, Culture Catalyst and Executive Coach, Rod Miller, joins our Co.CEO's Jeff Couillard and Pablo Romero to discuss the new world of work, leading with empathy, developing your people and navigating the rapidly changing landscape of work and life.
Founder, Coach and Advisor, Joe Cardillo, joins our Co.CEO Jeff Couillard to discuss how middle managers can use power to create meaningful change.
Our Co.CEO's Pablo Romero and Jeff Couillard discuss the 'intention vs. impact' gap, and share practical steps leaders can take to close it.
Our Co.CEO Jeff Couillard joins Mahir Nisar on The Workplace Justice podcast to discuss the very real impacts of power dynamics in the workplace.
Tune in as our Co.CEOs Pablo Romero and Jeff Couillard share The Ally Co.'s model for leading meaningful workplace culture initiatives with their clients.
Learning and development thought leader Grant Drmaj joins our own Co.CEO Jeff Couillard to discuss the current state of learning and leadership in today's organizations.
In this shorter episode, Co-CEO and Director of Learning and Development, Jeff Couillard, tackles three of the primary problems that exist in most mainstream leadership development programs and approaches.
Jennifer Velez and Jeff Couillard discuss psychological safety, unhealthy conflict, power dynamics and leadership in the DEI space
In this episode, Jeff Couillard and Pablo Romero discuss a few of the key components of The Ally Co.'s Transformational Impact model, including the Right Use of Power framework.
In this episode of The Leaderful Podcast, Pablo Romero and Jeff Couillard discuss some of the problems, challenges (and opportunities!) with traditional and mainstream employee engagement surveys.
In this episode of The Leaderful Podcast, Co-CEO's Pablo Romero and Jeff Couillard discuss the two key factors in getting from artificial harmony or unhealthy conflict to healthy conflict, or productive tension.
In this episode, Jeff Couillard chats with Woodrie Burich on how to set and hold effective and healthy boundaries - at work and in life. They discuss self-care (beyond the band-aids) and setting boundaries before burning out. Enjoy!
Is there a 'shadow side' to vulnerability? In this short episode, Jeff and Pablo discuss the nuances of vulnerability and leadership.
This episode explores some of the common barriers that exist to giving effective feedback.
In this episode of Leaderful, Jeff Couillard and Ty McKinney discuss neurodiversity in the workplace, hybrid work, addiction and mental health.
We discuss the core challenges leaders and teams face in building high-performing workplaces where everyone thrives.
We introduce the show and the challenges teams face as they build human-centred, systems-conscious organizations.