If somebody was to ask me about the most valuable skill you can develop to thrive in the work world - being an excellent team player is at the top. A company is not about individuals, it is about a team, and knowing how to work with others effectively will add tremendous value to your life and the lives of others.
On one end of the spectrum, there are dysfunctional teams where personal agendas prevail and sabotage occurs. On the opposite edge, there are great teams where everybody is growing, rowing in the same direction, and eliciting each other’s best. The most important part of a great team is that it can satisfy a fundamental human need, which is to feel a sense of belonging through community.
So, what are the magical ingredients that go into a high performing team? In 2012, Google embarked on a quest to find out the answer to that question – how to build the perfect team? They launched a major study codenamed Project Aristotle, inspired by the philosopher’s quote, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." They spent two years studying 180 teams and concluded that excellent teams at Google have the following five components: psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaningful work, and impact.
#1 Quality Of A Great Team: Psychological Safety
Have you ever been in a room with your team where you wanted to contribute or speak against an idea, but you stopped yourself because you thought, this could be stupid, I could get laughed at, people will think I’m dumb, or aggressive, or something worse? So, you choose silence. You rob yourself of taking a risk and potentially innovating. This strategy works for you because you are protected from those doom and gloom scenarios that you conjured in your mind. Psychologist call this impression management, a conscious or subconscious process of regulating information in social settings.
Perhaps, a few seconds later, another part of you pushes through the discomfort and you speak up. Oops, your worst fear is realized as you are interrupted and even shunned. There is an absence of psychological safety, a climate where people feel comfortable being and expressing themselves. Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson says psychological safety is the “belief that it's absolutely okay, in fact, it's expected, to speak up with concerns, questions, ideas, and mistakes.” Not having this condition can spell disaster, making teams rife with inefficiencies.
Unfortunately, most teams are not as psychologically safe. Gallup data reveals that just three in ten U.S. workers strongly agree that at work, their opinions seem to count. With no psychological safety, teams are holding back from interacting and potentially making mistakes. It is when the co-pilot does not feel comfortable telling the pilot that something is wrong, or it is when the nurse does not want to speak up in the operating room for fear of reprisal from the doctor so the patient’s wrong organ is extracted. Essentially, teams do not get to be at their best when they feel restrained.
In a fascinating challenge, Peter Skillman, former VP of Design at Palm and Author Tom Wujec had a team-building competition where participants had to build a marshmallow tower made from spaghetti, tape, and string. The only requirement was that the marshmallow had to sit at the top. He ran this competition with different groups, such as kindergarteners, business school students, and lawyers. The winner…reaching a whopping 26 inches were kindergarteners, while the average score for business school students was 20 inches. This experiment showed that it is more about team interaction than the caliber of individual skill. Kindergartens’ felt comfortable to take chances, fall flat on their faces, and try again. There wasn’t even an incentive that they get to eat marshmallows if they won! Business students were censoring their actions, sizing up everybody’s power in the group, and holding back their experimental approaches. They were ensconced in too much drama and not enough risk-taking. The lawyers…well, they may have been more preoccupied with arguing in and out of their minds.
Edmondson has confirmed that psychological safety predicts quality improvements, learning behavior, and productivity. When there is an opportunity for you to speak and feel fully listened to, you are more likely to take risks without feeling insecure or embarrassed and know that even if you fail, your teammates and managers will have your back. Gallup data supports these benefits including, “a 27% reduction in turnover and a 12% increase in productivity.”
Ways To Build Psychological Safety:
In her TEDx talk, Edmondson offers the first three actions individuals can take to foster psychological safety and I’ve added a few more:
1. Frame the work as a learning, not an execution problem. It is not just about completing the work but creating space to talk about the work from the beginning. Thinking about what we can learn from one another through discussion and debate before we jump into task mode. It is about recognizing that we all have uncertainties and we cannot know everything individually, so we need to listen fully to each other and get all members involved to figure things out and collectively solve problems. To do that effectively, it is imperative to have all brains and voices in the game. To prompt your team’s involvement, you can let them know that you are missing perspectives and would find it valuable for them to identify a few.
2. Acknowledge your fallibility and vulnerability. There will be times when you make mistakes and that’s ok because they will likely yield powerful learnings in which all can benefit. Being vulnerable and openly sharing your missteps or bad news, will invite others to share, and that builds psychological safety and spreads learnings that prevent avoidable errors as opposed to concealing that information. As a leader, when you offer small vital disclosures, it allows others to do the same without fear of being penalized.
3. Model curiosity and ask questions. This practice creates an environment where people can always speak up when they have simple or complex questions. As a leader, you can ask, “what are 3 questions that would be good to gain a better understanding of this challenge? I do not want to move on to the next topic until we get some tough questions on the table.”
4. Have clear norms and agreements. Ask team members what they need from each other to make their fullest and best contributions. What behaviors would they like to exhibit and commitments they like to make in service of psychological safety. Talking about these interpersonal interactions before jumping into the business will allow for effective and transparent communication.
5. Have guidelines for productive disagreement. Disagreements will most certainly happen. What is the best way you would like to be respectful of others’ opinions when this happens? How about when somebody gets naturally defensive, how do you want to handle this occurrence as a team so the exchanges are productive?
6. Ask for help. Mistakes can be made when people do not seek support, and some people do not feel comfortable because of fear of being judged or feeling like they should know something when they don’t so ask the question will expose that potential incompetence. So, what are those intentional steps team members can take to raise their hand and get assistance? Are their designated helpers? Sharing stories of teammates asking for help can normalize the practice and encourage others to do it and not be judged.
7. Solicit feedback. As a leader, do not assume people will voluntarily contribute regular feedback, you want to take steps to promote and encourage this practice to make it safe for them to raise concerns. You can change the suggestion box to a problem box that encourages them to bring issues so the team can fix them. If they would like to offer remedies or preliminary solves to those problems, that’s great, but it is not a requirement. This is so people do not feel pressure to also find a solution to a problem they have discovered. Some problems are deeply complex and need the minds of the entire team so no need to carry that full burden.
Being a part of a good team is a special experience because you get to be exactly who you are and have opportunities to grow in the process. Surrounding yourself with supportive high achievers will level up your abilities. The best teams have psychological safety, the conditions where you feel comfortable to take interpersonal risks and know there will be no consequences because it is an environment without judgment; those freewheeling contributions are necessary for innovation.
Quote of the day: “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” -Helen Keller
Q: What does your manager do to build psychological safety in your team? Comment and share with us, we would love to hear from you?
*The next blog in the team series 2/10 explores the other characteristics that comprise excellence in teams.
As a Leadership Development & Executive Coach, I work with teams to build psychological safety for peak performance. Contact me to learn more.
Psychological safety is necessary for building excellent teams.