Most leaders who have one are proud of it. It signals accessibility. It signals that you're not the kind of leader who hides behind a closed door. It tells your team: I am here. Come find me.
Here's the question worth sitting with: is anyone actually coming through that door?
And if they are — are they bringing you the things that matter?
The theory behind open door policies is sound. Organizations where people feel safe raising concerns catch problems earlier. Leaders who stay connected to what's happening on the ground make better decisions. Psychological safety is a real and measurable organizational asset.
The practice, though, is murkier.
An open door doesn't automatically create safety. Safety is created by what happens after someone walks through it. If a team member raised a concern six months ago and nothing changed — or worse, something shifted in how they were treated — the door being open is irrelevant. They've already learned that open doesn't mean safe.
There's also the question of who actually uses the open door. In most organizations, it's the people who already feel confident and well-positioned — the employees who know how to navigate leadership, who don't fear being perceived as complainers, who have enough organizational capital to absorb the risk of candor. The people with the most important things to say are often the least likely to say them.
And then there's the signal the open door sends to the managers between you and the front line.
If your team members are coming directly to you, what does that communicate about the leaders in between? Open door policies can unintentionally undermine the authority and relevance of middle management — creating a shadow reporting structure where the real conversations happen at the top, and the people in the middle are left managing without full information.
Or they don't. Maybe your open door is used appropriately, and it's creating exactly the connection it was designed to create.
The honest question isn't whether open door policies are good or bad. It's whether yours is working the way you think it is.
Are the people who most need to speak up actually speaking up? Are the concerns reaching you signal — or just the concerns from people already comfortable raising them? And what happens to the feedback once it arrives?
The door being open is the easy part. What you do with what walks through it is everything.
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