Psychological Safety: Why It Matters to Your Product Team and What You Can Do to Help
As a Product Manager, how can you ensure that your team feels able to take risks, voice opinions and put forward ideas without fear of judgement?
It’s been 4 years since Google published the results of Project Aristotle, their quest to define the formula for the most effective teams. And you guessed it, they found that psychological safety was the most important factor.
Since then, much has been published about psychological safety in the workplace and I have spent plenty of time trying to ensure that the teams that I work with always feel able to express themselves in a safe space.
What do we mean by psychological safety?
Project Aristotle defined psychological safety as an environment where “team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other”. In practice what this really means is that your team members feel able to ask questions, voice opinions and put forward ideas without fear of judgement.
Why it matters on a product team
Imagine trying to build an awesome product where your team only comes up with “safe” ideas (you know, the kind that don’t move the dial), nobody speaks up if they realise…
