Psychological safety: the key to building successful teams

After a 2-year study, Google discovered that there are five dimensions that make teams successful, and the main one is psychological safety.

Teams are now the fundamental unit of self-organization. Though many studies have shown that even a team of kindergartners can beat a team of MBA students if they are better at interactions.  You can take a team of average performers, and if you teach them to interact the right way, they’ll do things no superstar could ever accomplish. What is this all about?

Paul Santagata, Google head of Industry confirms that “There’s no team without trust” after analyzing Google’s study on team performance. This study shows that Teams need to know that: they can count on one another, have clear goals and defined roles, believe that their work is personally important for each of the members, and believe that the work they are doing matters. But, most important, teams need psychological safety. That is, they need to feel that they are safe to take risks or speak up their minds without feeling embarrassed.  

Read more: Agile leadership
    

Risk-taking

People tend to avoid doing things that can negatively influence how others perceive their competence at work. While it is a form of self-protection, it can impact negatively how people interact in a team setting. People who do not feel psychologically safe avoid proposing ideas or speaking up if they noticed a problem in the process. On the other hand, psychological safety promotes risk-taking, the development of ideas, creativity and, consequently, increases employee commitment. All these behaviors help the company to achieve great discoveries and promote continuous improvement in the long term, impacting the bottom line. Innovation increases while turn-over rates and absences decrease significantly.

The science behind team performance

For psychological security to emerge between a group, teammates do not necessarily have to be friends. However, they must be socially sensitive and ensure that everyone feels heard. Challenges don’t need to be avoided either to make them feel safe. Instead, they will be well received as long as they don’t mean a threat. In fact, Google’s environment is highly demanding and innovative. It is precisely in this type of environment where the ability of people to feel comfortable taking risks, deciding fast and participating, is most needed. Biology shows that a challenging environment without being threatening helps increase oxytocin in the body. This hormone is a neurotransmitter that is involved in behaviors related to trust, altruism, generosity, bonding, caring behaviors, empathy or compassion, and in the regulation of fear, eliminating paralysis responses.

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Threatening practices to avoid

Some habits or practices that are usually threatening for employees are:

Annual performance reviews

If individual reviews are more often, based on the specific need and closer to the particular event that needs to be highlighted, they are far more useful than annual or semi-annual reviews.   Feedback needs to be part of their day to day, not an unusual event.

Being stigmatized when Speaking up if managers are present

It is not surprising to see how employees react when a manager is speaking, they usually nod and avoid challenging them. This is the opposite in companies where psychological safety is key. Everybody feels safe to challenge anyone in the company, you never know who can think of the best ideas. In the Edmondson hospital studies, teams with the highest levels of psychological safety were the leaders most likely to model listening and social sensitivity.

Using Monthly reports to blame or reward

Most companies have weekly or Monthly meetings to share reports, audits and results. The problem is when these meetings are used to punish unexpected results. If employees feel threaten to show a negative result, he or she may be tempted to hide it, sugar coat it or manipulate it instead of asking for help. Meetings should be seen as a moment to analyze results, share experiences and look for solutions as a team. When more issues are safely exposed, more solutions arise. Blaming: guilt ignites the fly or fight response. Instead of blaming someone in particular, we can open the conversation with that person or with the entire team so that together we discover what happened and how we can solve it, we reduce the barriers to participation. I recommend using questions like, I’ve seen this trend, what do you think? What do you think happened? How can I help you solve it?

The “Me” culture

Companies that promote competition among individual team members, use rankings to evaluate and compare employees and define clear hierarchies among employees tend to develop a “me culture”, where employees make decisions based on what is better to them, sometimes in detriment of the company benefit (such as hiding mistakes or not getting anything done when “working from home”). These companies usually complain that employees don’t go the extra mile. And the reason why is because they are trying to keep themselves safe. A We culture instead eliminates competition among individual employees, while fostering instead self-actualization, team rewards and peer-to-peer reviews. Hierarchies should only be used to organize work, not to define who is better or worse, or who is allowed to talk to whom.

Read more: The we culture: how to shift to an agile company

The leader’s role

Teams are successful when everyone feels like they can speak up and when members show they are sensitive to how one another feels. Individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave the company, embrace innovation and diversity and bring in more revenue. The best tactic to establish psychological security is for the leader to be an example of the desired behaviors.

What are you going to do today to increase the psychological safety of your team? Start by measuring the level of psychological safety in your team.

Lu Paulise

luciana@biztorming.com

@lupaulise

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