Getting your Project Team to speak up (without going nuts)

Or how to invite Feedback without totally regretting it later

As a project manager with over a decade of experience (and a collection of stress-induced gray hairs), I’ve seen how silent teams lead to chaos.

Missed opportunities, unaddressed risks, and the kind of eerie quiet that makes you suspect they’ve formed a secret Slack channel just to vent about you.

In the IT industry, where innovation supposedly thrives (when the Wi-Fi works), ensuring your project team actually speaks up is crucial.

Encouraging open communication can improve project outcomes, team morale, and — most importantly — help you avoid the slow descent into madness.

Here’s how to get your team talking before you have to start decoding their passive-aggressive Jira tickets.

1. Build a Culture of Trust

Trust is the magic ingredient that keeps a team from communicating solely in vague emojis and sarcastic GIFs.

If people are afraid of getting mocked or punished for their ideas, they’ll keep their thoughts to themselves, no matter how genius (or hilariously bad) they are.

• Lead by example: Be transparent about challenges and encourage honest discussions — yes, even when the truth stings like a misconfigured firewall.
• Acknowledge contributions: Show appreciation for input, even if it’s unconventional or critical. No, especially if it’s critical. Who needs another echo chamber?
• Avoid blame: Focus on problem-solving rather than finger-pointing when mistakes happen — unless it’s the printer’s fault. Then, by all means, blame away.

2. Set Clear Expectations for Communication

Let’s be real: many IT professionals are more comfortable debugging a catastrophic failure at 3 AM than making small talk in a meeting.

Setting communication norms helps prevent awkward silences and makes it clear when people should actually say something.

• Define communication norms: Establish when and how updates should be shared — preferably before everything goes up in flames.
• Encourage regular status updates: Stand-up meetings, retrospectives, and progress reports create structured opportunities to speak up (and, let’s be honest, to vent about why the latest sprint is a disaster).
• Use collaboration tools: Platforms like Slack, Teams, and Jira let people contribute without the need for eye contact — because typing is always less stressful than talking.

3. Foster Psychological Safety

Psychological safety means your team can speak up without fear of public execution — figuratively, of course.

A Google study even found that psychological safety is the number one factor in high-performing teams.

Who knew people work better when they aren’t afraid?

• Normalize vulnerability: Share your own mistakes to show that imperfection is accepted. We all remember that one time someone deployed straight to production. Oops.
• Encourage curiosity: Ask open-ended questions that prompt deeper discussions (or existential crises about why we even started this project).
• Reward openness: Highlight positive examples of team members speaking up — like when someone catches a mistake before it causes an outage heard ‘round the world.

4. Make Meetings Inclusive and Engaging

Meetings can be an effective tool — or an unbearable slog that makes people wish they had chosen a different career path. The difference?
How they’re run.

• Rotate facilitators: Give different team members a turn leading discussions, mostly so they can appreciate how painful it is to keep a meeting on track.
• Use round-robin techniques: Make sure everyone shares at least something so they can’t just nod and hope no one notices.
• Allow anonymous input: Digital tools like Miro or anonymous surveys encourage honesty — because let’s face it, people are way more honest when their names aren’t attached.

5. Develop One-on-One Relationships

Some team members will never speak up in a meeting unless there’s a fire. For them, one-on-one conversations are key.

• Schedule regular check-ins: A private space allows for honest discussions — without the pressure of an audience.
• Adapt to individual preferences: Some people prefer messages or emails over verbal communication. (Let’s be real, some of us were practically born to type rather than talk.)
• Show empathy: Listen actively and acknowledge concerns, even when they’re hidden in passive-aggressive Jira comments.

6. Empower Team Members with Ownership

If people feel responsible for something, they’re more likely to speak up about it. Or at least complain loudly when it goes wrong.

• Delegate decision-making: Give team members authority in their areas of expertise — then watch them panic as they realize responsibility is a double-edged sword.
• Encourage initiative: Support team members who take the lead — yes, even when their brilliant plan is just “automate everything.”
• Provide growth opportunities: Confidence grows when people tackle new challenges (or at least fake it convincingly in front of their peers).

7. Address Barriers to Speaking Up

Sometimes silence isn’t just shyness — it’s the result of deeper issues, like bad past experiences, cultural factors, or a well-founded fear of being voluntold for extra work.

• Break down hierarchy: Encourage informal conversations and an open-door policy — or at least make people think your door is open while you hide behind emails.
• Be mindful of cultural factors: Some team members may come from backgrounds where challenging authority isn’t the norm. Luckily, we work in IT, where questioning everything is the norm.
• Resolve past issues: If previous managers discouraged communication, acknowledge it and create a fresh start. Or at least implement a “no eye-rolling” policy.

8. Continuously Solicit Feedback

Your approach to communication should evolve based on — shockingly — actual feedback from your team.

• Conduct retrospectives: Review what’s working and what’s not (and brace yourself for brutal honesty).
• Use pulse surveys: Because people are mysteriously more honest in anonymous surveys than in real life.
• Iterate on your approach: No one gets this right the first time, and if they say they do, they’re lying.

Final Thoughts

Getting your team to speak up takes effort, but let’s be honest — silent teams are like debugging code without error messages: maddening and bound to end in disaster. A vocal team leads to better problem-solving, innovation, and fewer catastrophic surprises.

By fostering trust, setting clear expectations, ensuring psychological safety, and empowering team members, you create an environment where speaking up becomes the norm. And if that doesn’t work? Well, there’s always interpretive dance — maybe they’ll communicate their issues through the power of movement. But seriously, start implementing these strategies today, and watch your team’s engagement and effectiveness soar. Or at the very least, prevent them from plotting your downfall in complete silence.

If you enjoyed this article, check out the previous one for more insights.

Written by

Simina F. | howtobecomeapm.com – Author