Why focusing on psychological safety as a solution doesn’t create psychological safety in your team
Listen, I’m not trying to be all super meta with “damned if you do, damned if you don’t”, but psychological safety has been a hot topic lately, and with that, there’s been misunderstanding of what it actually is about.
Generally, I see it as two major misconceptions of what psychological safety is all about:
#1: “Everyone needs to be friends with everyone”
The most popular one is that it needs to be a good time — ALL 👏🏼 THE 👏🏼 TIME 👏🏼. Small comments or arguments may happen from time to time, but you as a leader try to quickly calm it down so no one feels somehow infringed from the unforeseen feedback someone else gave.
When there is some comments, it’s usually directed at someones individual work. Most likely the comment comes from dev to designer, designer to dev, tester to dev or something else. Essentially “us vs them” happens. Because of that, it’s super hard for a person not to go on the defence, because it can feel as an attack on the work, even though the comment in it self wasn’t major.
The main solution will probably be to do something social together — after work hours. It takes time to plan these things, so you’re at a maximum capaticity to have it 1–2 times a quarter. The people at your team also have a life outside of work, maybe with kids, so not the whole team can join after work shenanigans, but the core always joins and it’s always a good time.
Doing social things together is really smart, and you should do it. But don’t rely on that to be the sole solution.
#2: “Everyone should be able to deal with honest feedback”
On the contrast from number 1, sometimes people think everyone should be able to hear “the hard truth”. It “toughens us up” because “we don’t have time beat around the bush”. The problem is that it’s all just personal opinions and we as two individuals aren’t there yet in our relationship.
When someone holds their subjective, personal opinion on another persons work, without having real context of why decisions have been made, they’re basically either an asshole, have a diagnosis or both.
What psychological safety is about
Psychological safety means creating a safe space where people can be honest and speak their minds without fear. This allows for healthy debates and the sharing of ideas, all while building trust among the group. It’s not about always agreeing with one another, but having ambitious goals as a team and working towards them together.
Tony Fadell said it really good in his book Build:
“The most wonderful part of building something together with a team is that you’re walking side by side with other people”
Psychological safety isn’t a solution. It’s a result. A result of many major and minor factors that builds a great team. Just as a relationship shouldn’t be based on chasing the weekend or a break from the kids, nor should building a team be based on social events happening 1–2 times a quarter.
To have a truly successful team over time, there needs be a trust that is built on real collected effort to achieve something that can’t be done by an individual, but as a group. It’s a result of having worked in volume together, laughed and argued together, failed and won together, learned and experimented based on why we are as a team and what we are trying to achieve.
Being in a team that truly flows is a beautiful thing. Work is fun. You look forward to getting up because you’re excited on checking out how that experiment is going. Every individual on the team become more clear on who they are within the team while the team itself grows an identity of it’s own. That should never be taken for granted. But, it’s also something that takes time and a lot of effort.
Build your team as a sportsteam
I can only share the experience of what I’ve seen over the years. Having been on multiple teams over my career, my current team that focuses on onboarding is what I call a “core memory” team.
It’s the pinnacle where we as a group have gained our own identity and everyone on the team is safe with one another. That not only creates a great work place, but also amazing results.
We have countless results where we have boosted sales by 200%, 150% and 100% on multiple products and key attributes, all while raising a danish flag, doing a ceremonial clap, talk about croissants, shouting “one team, one dream” and making bets if Jerry Maguire will reach the roof (all of this is very internal, I know)
When we tried to sum up what made our team great, it became pretty clear that we are way more inspired by sport teams and how they are built, compared to traditional agile teams.
With a high performing sports team, it’s extremely important to have:
- A clear purpose of what you’re trying to achieve. If you don’t have that, then what is the purpose of doing what you do?
- A structure. It creates a rhythm, or even a heartbeat, in the team over time that helps create both culture and identity.
- Consistent collaboration over time. Just as practice, only when you have worked together in large volumes can you train the habit of working together.
- Internal roles and lingo within the team. It’s easier to cooperate when you understand each others role within the team, and you should never underestimate the power of internal lingo or jokes. It creates culture.
- Psychological safety. Yes, the thing I’ve mentioned too many times now. You can say that point 1–4 is the result of this point.
How you can structure a team like a sports team however deserves an article of its own, which you can read here:
Nice, you made it to the end! 🎉
P.S. On a related note, read how we work on problems within the team.
P.S.S. You can of course follow me on Medium, and Linkedin or Goodreads.
If you would like more stories like these, check out Failing Forward.
