What I learned from building 3 teams
The importance of psychological safety
In In the past 6 years, I built 3 teams from the ground up in UX and UX research. The role was always: Build a new team and ensure that UX and research work collaboratively in an agile setting together with design, engineering, product, marketing etc.
In these years, I worked in different types of companies, from corporate companies to start-ups. I had 7 different managers. I learned how to set up successful meetings, have useful 1:1s, hire the right people, onboard people quickly and define team values.
But the most important lesson I learned is: Creating a culture of psychological safety is crucial for team success.
When teams have psychological safety, it creates a climate of mutual trust in which the employees
- Feel comfortable asking for help
- Feel confident that no one will embarrass or punish anyone for admitting a mistake and are therefore more likely to learn from failure
- Are more likely to ask challenging questions without fear of negative consequences and are therefore more likely to test the status quo
- Are more open to sharing new ideas.
This leads to organizations that innovate more quickly and adapt well to change. This is not only my personal observation, but has also been confirmed in a study by McKinsey (2021) with n=1.223 participants.
In their famous Project Aristotle, Google wanted to answer the question “What makes a team effective at Google?” They identified 5 key dynamics for effective teams, with psychological safety standing out as the most significant one.
Individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave Google. They’re more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas from their teammates, they bring in more revenue, and they’re rated as effective twice as often by executives. (Quote from Google’s Project Aristotle)
How to create psychological safety
First of all, there is no hack to create psychological safety in 5 minutes. Empathy, a deep concern for the team, a passion for team building, and servant leadership qualities are necessary.
A powerful tool for creating psychological safety is creating team values. You can read more about how I do this in my article “How to build a high performing team”.
Furthermore, I put together a list of elements you as a manager can focus on to foster psychological safety.
10 elements to create psychological safety
- Practice active listening
- Show engagement, don’t be distracted by 2nd screen usage
- Share personal information by talking about your life outside of work
- Don’t interrupt team members
- Be approachable
- Share the reasoning behind your decision making
- Invite team members to challenge you
- Share your own vulnerabilities and failures
- Encourage calculated risk-taking
- Represent the team by sharing the team’s work with the C-level and giving shout-outs to team members.
Kilian Hughes is a manager and leadership coach in the field of User Experience (UX), building up and leading teams since 2016.
Sources:
- McKinsey & Company: Psychological safety and the critical role of leadership development
- Google: Understand team effectiveness
