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Your wellbeing policy is on the books. The EAP is in the benefits package. The language is in the job postings. And somewhere on your team right now, someone is quietly calculating what it will cost them to actually use any of it.
Not the financial cost. The other kind. The look on their manager’s face. The shift in how they’re perceived. The promotion timeline that suddenly feels less certain. The word “accommodation” on a form that tells them, before the conversation even starts, that they are a problem to be managed.
That gap between what organizations say about wellbeing and what employees actually experience is where trust breaks down. Not dramatically. Quietly. One small moment at a time.
In this episode of Courage to Advance, Kim Bohr sits down with Sarah Harris, a licensed clinical social worker with more than two decades of experience, to talk about what’s actually happening in the brain and the body when an employee decides not to ask for help. Sarah’s clinical lens gives her a perspective most workplace culture advisors don’t have. She sees the nervous system response, the stigma, and the invisible costs that policies can’t measure. Every recommendation she makes costs nothing. And the results are measurable.
🎧 LISTEN: Hear Sarah Harris’s Full Conversation Want the full episode?
Listen to Sarah Harris on Courage to Advance, where she and host Kim Bohr break down what happens neurologically when employees don’t feel safe enough to ask for help, why the word “accommodation” pushes people away instead of drawing them in, and how the smallest, free changes often produce the biggest shifts in trust and productivity.
About Sarah Harris
Sarah Harris, LCSW, is the founder of Sarah Harris Speaks, a keynote presenter, leadership coach, and author of The Culture Garden: A Leader’s Guide to Growing a Thriving Workplace from the Ground Up. What sets Sarah apart from other voices in the workplace culture space is that she still maintains an active clinical practice. She sees therapy clients every week. Her insights don’t come from research papers or management frameworks. They come from sitting across from people who are learning new skills in the treatment room and then walking into workplaces that make those skills nearly impossible to use.
That frustration is what drove her into workplace culture work. She didn’t set out to become a consultant. She became one because she kept watching her clients hit a wall the moment they walked back into the office.
The Policy-to-Practice Gap No One Is Talking About
What it looks like
Sarah opens with an example that sounds mundane but lands hard. An employer advertises that they support health and wellbeing. The employee has a therapist. The therapist’s available hours are between 8:30 AM and 3:30 PM. Every window conflicts with the employer’s schedule. The policy says “we support you.” The operational reality says “figure it out on your own time.”
Another example: a client who couldn’t take Fridays off because she was the only person trained to run a weekly report. The wellbeing policy existed. The cross-training to make that policy usable did not.
Kim Bohr names it directly: “That’s the illusion of inclusion. It may be well intended, but the realities of how the world is working isn’t being considered.”
Why it matters for trust
SparkEffect’s Trust Study found that 71% of organizations faced significant disruption in the last 24 months. During disruption, the gap between stated values and lived experience widens, and employees read that gap clearly. When what you say and what your people experience don’t match, trust erodes invisibly, long before it shows up in an engagement survey.
This is the kind of misalignment that organizational development work is designed to surface: the structural disconnects between what an organization believes about its culture and what its people actually experience day to day.
The Word That Pushes People Away from Help
“Accommodation” vs. “Support”
Sarah makes the case that the word “accommodation,” while technically and legally correct, carries an unspoken message: you are a burden. A problem. A special case. The societal meaning attached to the word activates a sense of stigma before the conversation even begins. People don’t want to ask for accommodation because asking signals that something is wrong with them.
Her reframe is simple and costs nothing. Replace “What accommodations do you need?” with “What would feel most supportive to you?”
That single word swap changes whether someone’s nervous system reads the interaction as threatening or collaborative. It shifts the conversation from compliance to care.
Why it matters for trust
The Trust Study found that psychological safety scored as one of the strongest trust drivers measured, and also one of the most fragile, especially during disruption. Language is one of the most direct levers leaders have for building or eroding psychological safety. A word that technically means the right thing but feels wrong in the body is doing damage that no policy revision can fix.
Executive coaching helps leaders develop this kind of awareness: the ability to hear their own language through the ears of the person receiving it, and to make the small shifts that change whether a conversation builds trust or quietly dismantles it.
Why it matters for trust
SparkEffect’s Trust Study found that employees trust their direct managers significantly more than senior leadership. That gap widens when senior leaders fail to model the behaviors the organization claims to value. Every misalignment between stated values and visible behavior erodes the credibility of the culture initiative from the top.
This is exactly the kind of alignment work that executive coaching and CEO and board advisory are designed to address: helping the most senior people in the room see their own shadow and decide what they want it to look like.
What's Happening in the Nervous System and Why It Matters at Work
The neuroscience of perceived threat
Sarah explains what happens when someone is startled at their desk: a colleague walks up behind them, or enters their office without warning. The amygdala fires before the prefrontal cortex can assess the situation. The body goes into fight, flight, or freeze. Stress hormones flood the system. Muscles tense. The brain prepares for danger.
By the time the other person starts talking, the person who was startled is already four or five sentences behind. Their brain hasn’t come back online. They haven’t heard the beginning of the question. And the person asking has no idea any of this happened.
Small, free changes that rewire the environment
Sarah’s recommendations are specific and cost nothing:
- Rotate a desk so someone can see the door
- Clear your throat or knock lightly before entering an office
- Keep your hands visible (hands in pockets can trigger a threat read in someone with a trauma history)
- Start meetings by checking in on where people’s attention actually is
- Define what “timely” means for Slack and email responses so people can protect their focus
These aren’t wellness perks. They’re nervous system interventions that reduce the number of times per day your employees’ brains shift into threat mode.
The 20-minute rule
One of Sarah’s most vivid examples: an IT worker with clinical anxiety whose tickets always took too long. His manager assumed it was a performance issue. The real problem was that every Slack notification felt urgent, so he responded to everything immediately, fragmenting his attention across every ping.
Sarah suggested he check messages every 20 minutes instead of constantly. His ticket-clearing speed went up significantly. No new software. No performance improvement plan. No budget.
Why it matters for trust
The Trust Study found that micro-disruptions affect daily performance and accumulate over time. The constant Slack pings, the impossible scheduling windows, the sandwich generation pressures that employees carry silently are all micro-disruptions that erode capacity. When organizations address these at the environmental level rather than expecting individuals to “manage their stress better,” they build the kind of trust that shows up in retention, productivity, and willingness to speak up.
Leadership development programs that teach managers to recognize the environmental triggers their teams face, and to make practical adjustments within their authority, are among the highest-leverage investments an organization can make.
Approaching with Curiosity: The Management Skill That Does Two Things at Once
How it works in practice
When an employee’s patterns shift (late arrivals, missed deadlines, withdrawal from team interactions) most managers do one of two things: ignore it or confront it. Sarah offers a third path. Approach with curiosity.
The conversation sounds like this: “I’ve noticed something has shifted in the last few weeks. I want to make sure you’re okay, and I want to make sure we can keep meeting our team goals. What’s going on, and what would feel supportive?”
That framing does two things simultaneously. It holds the standard (we need to meet our goals) and it opens the door (something may be happening that I don’t know about). The employee can share as much or as little as they choose. The manager hasn’t pried. They’ve noticed, named what they see, and offered help.
The upstream question
Sarah asks managers a diagnostic question before they can have the downstream conversation with their team: “What is going on in the workplace culture that you don’t feel you can make this decision?”
If a manager doesn’t feel empowered to adjust a schedule, offer flexibility, or make a small accommodation without running it up the chain, the problem isn’t the manager. It’s the system.
Why it matters for trust
SparkEffect’s Trust Study found that employees trust their direct managers significantly more than they trust senior leadership. Managers are the primary trust conduit. When they’re equipped to approach with curiosity, to hold accountability and compassion at the same time, they strengthen the trust that holds teams together.
When they’re not equipped, or when the culture above them doesn’t give them permission to act, trust erodes from both directions: employees stop speaking up, and managers stop having the conversations that would make speaking up safe.
Executive coaching gives managers and senior leaders the space to develop this capability: the confidence to hold hard conversations that strengthen relationships rather than damage them, and the awareness to recognize when the system itself is the barrier.
Two-Way Transparency During Disruption
What most leaders get wrong
During organizational change, mergers, restructures, or layoffs, most leaders share what they can and stop there. Sarah’s framework adds a second layer that most skip: name the questions you can’t answer yet.
“We believe the new organization will make some structural changes. We have not been told yet at what levels those will be impacted.”
That sentence, spoken out loud, does something powerful. It acknowledges that uncertainty exists. It tells people that leadership is aware of the gap. And it cuts off the rumor cycle before speculation hardens into fear.
Why it matters for trust
The Trust Study found that organizations with strong post-crisis care were 6.5x more likely to have a clear future strategy. Transparent communication during disruption isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the mechanism that determines whether an organization comes out of a hard season with its trust intact or with a workforce that learned, during the worst of it, that leadership wasn’t going to level with them.
This is the kind of leadership capability that organizational development and executive coaching build together: the structural support for transparent communication and the individual skill to deliver it when the stakes are highest.
Where to Start
Sarah’s recommendations all share one quality: they’re free, they’re immediate, and they’re within any manager’s authority. If you lead people and want to apply something from this conversation today, here’s where to begin:
- Audit one policy for the gap between intent and experience. Pick your most-referenced wellbeing benefit. Ask: can my people actually use this within the constraints of their workday? If the answer is no, you’ve found the first thing to fix.
- Replace “accommodation” with “support.” In your next conversation with an employee who needs something, ask what would feel most supportive. Notice the difference in how they respond.
- Define “timely” for your team. What does a reasonable response time look like for Slack, email, and internal messaging? Get your team to agree on it. That agreement gives everyone permission to protect their focus.
- Start your next meeting by checking in. Not “how is everyone?” but “where is your attention right now?” Sarah’s point is that if someone’s brain is four sentences behind, nothing you say next is landing.
The most striking thing about this conversation is that none of it requires budget approval, a new initiative, or a committee. It requires paying attention to what your people are actually experiencing and making the small shifts that tell them, through action rather than policy, that you mean what you say.
“Trust isn’t built in the policies you write. It’s built in the moments your people decide whether to believe them.”
Related Resource
Download the Complete Research
Get the full SparkEffect Trust Study with detailed breakdowns by industry, organization size, and leadership level.
[Research link]
The Science of Trust in Coaching
Explore the neuroscience behind why trust is the foundation of every leadership breakthrough. Download the free ebook.
[Ebook link]
Leadership Development Programs
SparkEffect’s leadership development courses help organizations build the conditions where people actually stay, grow, and perform.
[Leadership Development link]
Organizational Development
SparkEffect helps organizations align culture, strategy, and leadership capability so that change efforts stick.
[Organizational Development Link]
Executive Coaching
One-on-one coaching for leaders developing the awareness and capability to lead through complexity, have hard conversations, and close the gap between organizational values and lived experience.
[Executive Coaching link]
The Culture Garden by Sarah Harris
Sarah’s book provides practical, script-ready tools that leaders can apply the same day. Written for anyone who wants to build a healthier workplace culture starting with the next conversation they have.
[Get The Culture Garden]
Leadership Culture Brief (Free Resource) Access Sarah’s short executive briefing, Fix the Soil First, along with a Culture Soil Audit to help you evaluate the conditions shaping your workplace culture.
[Download Free Resource Here]
Listen to Sarah Harris on Courage to Advance
Hear the full conversation, including the IT worker’s 20-minute rule, why your colleague’s nervous system fires before their brain catches up, and why every change Sarah recommends costs nothing.
[Listen to Sarah Harris’s full episode]
Work with SparkEffect
If your organization is facing the kind of crisis Tammy inherited, or you want to build trust infrastructure before crisis hits, we can help. Schedule a conversation to explore how:
[Contact link]
About SparkEffect
SparkEffect helps organizations build trust that bends without breaking. Our Trust Performance Index and consulting services give leadership teams the tools to diagnose trust gaps and build the infrastructure required for lasting transformation.
The Courage to Advance podcast features leaders building the organizations they wish existed, proving that business doesn’t have to be dehumanizing.
Looking for more on what effective leadership development actually looks like in practice? Explore these conversations on the Courage to Advance podcast.
