# Overcoming Walls and Voids: Responsive Practices That Enable Frontline Workers to Feel Heard

*Kerrissey · Voice & Silence, Power & Equity · Health Care Management Review · 2024*

Kerrissey, Satterstrom, Pae and Albert interviewed nurses across four hospitals and arrived at a distinction we make very often: speaking up and feeling heard are not the same thing, and what separates them is usually structural rather than conversational. Ideas that get voiced either hit walls (dismissal, empty promises, or 'maybe one day') or fall into voids — the more original half of the paper — where ideas may be warmly received and then lost in bureaucracy, or set adrift because there's no owner. The authors taxonomise walls (preemptive dismissal, empty solicitation, script reading) and voids (structural mazes, authority vacuums), then offer five responsive practices against them: boundary framing, unscripting and priority enhancing for walls; procedural transparency and identifying a navigator for voids. Having located the problem in organisational structure and bureaucracy, though, the paper then prescribes largely interpersonal technique. This is the failing of a great deal of popular psychological safety programmes and training: either a failure to correctly diagnose the issue, or a failure to apply the appropriate interventions, or both.

- **This page:** https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/kerrissey-satterstrom-pae-albert-2024/
- **View the source paper:** https://journals.lww.com/hcmrjournal/fulltext/2024/04000/overcoming_walls_and_voids__responsive_practices.5.aspx
- **Interactive map:** https://explore.psychsafety.com/?mode=papers&node=kerrissey-satterstrom-pae-albert-2024

## Connected concepts (10)

- [Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/edmondson-1999.md) (paper)
- [How We Respond](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/how-we-respond-matters.md)
- [Leadership Behavior and Employee Voice: Is the Door Really Open?](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/detert-burris-2007.md) (paper)
- [Organizational Silence: A Barrier to Change and Development in a Pluralistic World](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/morrison-milliken-2000.md) (paper)
- [Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-for-Granted Rules of Self-Censorship at Work](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/detert-edmondson-2011.md) (paper)
- [Joint Problem-Solving Orientation in Fluid Cross-Boundary Teams](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/kerrissey-mayo-edmondson-2021.md) (paper)
- [Making it Safe: The Effects of Leader Inclusiveness and Professional Status on Psychological Safety and Improvement Efforts in Health Care Teams](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/nembhard-edmondson-2006.md) (paper)
- [Paradise Lost (and Restored?): A Study of Psychological Safety over Time](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/bransby-kerrissey-edmondson-2024.md) (paper)
- [Into the Fray: Adaptive Approaches to Studying Novel Teamwork Forms](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/kerrissey-satterstrom-edmondson-2020.md) (paper)
- [Speaking Up at Work](https://explore.psychsafety.com/n/speaking-up-at-work.md)