If you want people in your organization and leaders on your team to routinely raise difficult issues, regardless of who does or doesn’t benefit, you have to do more than let them know it’s safe to do so. You have to make it an expectation, and back it up with processes and behavior that reinforce it. Here are a few examples of what I’ve seen great organizations do.

Encourage diverse strengths and styles. A lot of organizations state that they want people with diverse backgrounds on their teams — but then coach people to behave uniformly. A truly diverse organization that reaps the benefits of diversity, better serving customers or clients in different situations, needs to value a range of communication and working styles. Feedback needs to build on the differentiating strengths of the individual, rather than their weaknesses.

From the start, Southwest cofounder Herb Kelleher saw his competition not as other airlines but as alternative forms of transportation, whether cars, buses, or trains. He wanted to enable people to fly who wouldn’t otherwise have been able to. Therefore his mental model was not how to gain market share from other airlines, but how to create a completely new market for air travel.