The Critical Aspect of Team Culture That Sets Apart High-Performing Groups in High-Pressure Environments
Psychological Safety
Imagine it’s Wednesday morning. Despite waking up a bit late and rushing through your routine, you manage to reach the office just in time for your first meeting. You enter Conference Room 6 and find a spot between Michaela from finance and Dave from marketing. Your project manager opens the meeting with a slideshow, discussing a problem your team has grappled with for weeks. You have a promising, albeit unconventional idea. However, you’re hesitant to share due to potential judgment from your colleagues, especially Dave. You must decide whether to risk rejection or remain silent to preserve your dignity and image of competence.
The internal conflict you’re experiencing isn’t unique to you or your office environment. Mountaineers scaling Mt. Everest, healthcare providers caring for patients, and astronauts training for the first manned mission to Mars all face similar dilemmas. This shared discomfort, stemming from a lack of psychological safety, can inhibit open dialogue and progress.
The term “psychological safety” was introduced in 1965 by Edgar H. Schein and Warren G. Bennis. Modern research, led by Dr. Amy Edmondson, defines it as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.”
Promoting psychological safety within a team is crucial, particularly in high-pressure situations. The disastrous 1996 Everest expedition led by seasoned climbers Rob Hall and Scott Fischer serves as a stark example. They reached the summit but lost five members, including both leaders, during the descent. Harvard Business School’s Professor Michael A. Roberto attributes part of the failure to a lack of psychological safety[1]. Hall and Fischer exuded confidence, yet they didn’t create an environment where their team felt secure expressing their doubts. With no dissenting voices to challenge leaders’ assumptions, the Hall / Fischer expedition fell prey to unsound decisions and the resulting team failure.
Professor Roberto’s research emphasizes the role of leadership in developing psychologically safe teams. These teams create structural opportunities for members to come forth with their ideas or challenges. Ideally, this information disconfirms or pressure-tests their leader’s ideas. Team leaders must remain open-minded when their ideas are questioned and thoughtfully consider each idea on merit before committing the team to the final decision. Such behavior is the hallmark of a leader on a psychologically safe team. Actively welcoming dissent creates a culture where future decisions can be similarly debated, which protects teams from the perils of unilateral decision-making.
Modern teams that understand the importance of psychological safety may work towards cultivating a culture that encourages voicing opinions, challenging the status quo, and admitting mistakes. NASA scientist Dr. Lauren Blackwell Landon is implementing these principles while preparing for the first manned mission to Mars where team cohesion is mission critical[2]. Dr. Landon believes a culture of open communication and proactive followership will help crew members admit to their areas of weakness and ask critical questions that are necessary to challenge their leaders’ assumptions. She is approaching this issue by codifying team rituals such as regular debriefs that give crew members a dedicated forum to share their opinions, mistakes, and questions. Psychological safety and the associated benefits (including learning behavior, innovation, and error reduction) are pivotal to her crew as they undertake a mission that hinges upon their ability to make effective decisions in high-pressure scenarios.
Establishing psychological safety is essential for high-performing teams. This attribute has been linked to increased innovation and learning behavior[3], as well as technical performance and quality improvement in healthcare teams[4]. Recent research even suggests that it may be the key to unlocking potential in diverse teams, as evidenced by a positive correlation between team performance and diversity scores in a study of pharmaceutical drug development teams[5].
In a team lacking psychological safety, team members might choose to withhold questions and ideas to maintain their perceived competence, a behavior known as “impression management.” We know the potential harm of not speaking up. So next time a colleague shares an unconventional idea, take a step toward cultivating psychological safety. Look for merit in their idea, ensure they feel heard, and appreciate their contribution. By modeling positive behavior, you encourage open dialogue, and in the future, you might feel less hesitant to share your own thoughts.
The Three Takeaways
- Psychological Safety is linked to innovation, improved technical performance, error reduction, and team learning behavior.
- Cultivating Psychological Safety requires leaders to create structural opportunities for their team to speak up, and then maintain an open mind when their ideas are challenged.
- Teams that lack Psychological Safety are held back when team members censor their ideas and refrain from questioning faulty assumptions.
[1] Roberto, M. A. (2002). Lessons from Everest: The Interaction of Cognitive Bias, Psychological Safety, and System Complexity. California Management Review, 45(1), 136–158.
[2] re:Work — Teams in space! (2016, August 11). https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/teams-in-space/
[3] Edmondson, Amy & Lei, Zhike. (2014). Psychological Safety: The History, Renaissance, and Future of an Interpersonal Construct. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior. 1. 23–43. 10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-031413–091305.
[4] Grailey KE, Murray E, Reader T, Brett SJ. The presence and potential impact of psychological safety in the healthcare setting: an evidence synthesis. BMC Health Serv Res. 2021 Aug 5;21(1):773. doi: 10.1186/s12913–021–06740–6. PMID: 34353319; PMCID: PMC8344175.
[5] Bresman, Henrik, and Amy C. Edmondson. “Exploring the Relationship between Team Diversity, Psychological Safety and Team Performance: Evidence from Pharmaceutical Drug Development.” Harvard Business School Working Paper, №22–055, February 2022.
About me: I’m a Senior Product Manager on the Fusion team at UnitedHealth Group. We strive to accelerate key leaders and their teams by injecting a design thinking mindset and unleashing teams’ creative potential. My background is in biomedical engineering and medical device marketing, which helps me understand the challenges we face in today’s healthcare environment. Want to know more? You can find me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-jacobs-healthcare/
A Fusion publication. We are employees of UHG and these views are our own and not those of the company nor its affiliates.
