Team — Together everyone achieves more! …?
What it takes for an atmosphere that is fostering collaboration, creativity and innovation.
Probably anyone who has already worked in a team has experienced that „together everyone achieves more“ is not self-evident. So what makes people enjoy working together, generating great ideas, learning continuously and achieving their goals ?
At the end of my last blog post it became obvious that for developing a collective team intelligence more is needed than the best structural conditions and a group of high-performers[1]:
- Empathy skills,
- equal distribution of conversation within the team,
- and gender diversity matter, too!
The first two bullet points are indicators for what makes teams really successful — a phenomenon called “psychological safety.” It was first described in the 1960s. Since the late 1990s it has been investigated extensively by Amy Edmondson, organizational psychologist at Harvard University. In 2012, Google launched its Project Aristotle, a multi-year study of 180 teams analysing the relationship between team composition, team dynamics and team effectiveness. This research confirmed that the psychological safety perceived by team members has the greatest impact on team success. Since the publication of this result, a veritable hype has developed around the topic of “Psychological Safety” to which the COVID-19 pandemic has added.
Enabler for Team Performance and more: Psychological Safety
Psychological safety in a team is defined as
- absence of interpersonal fear[2] (or social threat) within a group
- a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking
- a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respecting in which people are comfortable being themselves.[3]
It enables people to speak-up with work-relevant content, admitting failure, asking for help, or sharing ideas that are not fully developed yet. People do not feel they have to hold back with a concern or question for fear of recrimination, humiliation, or ridiculization. Showing vulnerability is not used by others for personal attacks.
However, psychological safety alone does not lead to good team performance. It is an enabler. Professional competence and striving for good results are still a “must”.
For avoiding misunderstandings: Psychological safety does not equal
- a safe and trigger free space in which
- everyone in the team is always nice to each other
- no one is confronted or challenged with different viewpoints or opposing opinions
- a team that does not leave their comfort zone
- the total absence of fear (“the only thing to fear is unproductive fear”[4]).
Even a constructive confrontation with different points of view can be quite uncomfortable. Allowing diversity of thoughts might lead a team to discover approaches never thought of before and thereby learning.
“Speaking up” describes a “communication that is constructive, intended to bring up about improvement or change”[5]. It is about goal-oriented non-conformity and has nothing to do with troublemaking or misunderstood authenticity.
A Team Phenomenon related with Company Culture
Psychological safety develops in a team with trustful interactions between team members. It seems plausible that the general working atmosphere in a company, its culture and management behaviour have an impact on teams. However, it does not correlate necessarily. Nevertheless, it can be assumed the other way round: The better people in teams work together, the higher their skills are for productive exchange, learning, and innovation within the team, the more likely is it that the same applies to the entire company.
Being able to speak up candidly is not enough; voice needs to be heard, too. Positive resonance in the team as well as in the larger corporate context leads to greater commitment, more buy-in, reduced team turnover, more liveliness and overall more creativity.[6]
Companies need a Speaking-up Culture
In general, it can be said that a culture of continuous improvement or a “learning organization” is hardly to imagine without a high degree of psychological safety. It is the basis for agile, adaptable, and thus sustainable companies. This is how Amy Edmondson explains it: “[..] most work today is knowledge work, and most workers face considerable uncertainty and interdependence that must be navigated collaboratively to succeed. When people are afraid to speak up with questions, observations, concerns and mistakes, problems go unsolved, innovation is limited, and performance suffers.”[7]
Psychological safety leads to people feeling comfortable speaking up with candor. Energy otherwise used for self-protection and self-censorship is available for more valuable work. Imagine what it means for the long-term perspective of a company if employees avoid any interpersonal risk because their environment requires strict measures for self-protection[8]:
Unfortunately, it cannot be assumed that if someone has something to say, they will say it. Silence can also backfire on employees. “Worried about what the boss might think, we hold back on sharing some out-of-the-box new idea, thereby failing to contribute to the project, thereby limiting innovation, and so forth. Meanwhile, a failure to speak up may even make the boss think less of us, because of our lack of contribution to the discussion. The widely held belief that ‘no one ever got fired for silence’ is obsolete in any organization that depends on continuous improvement, effective risk management, and innovation for its success. “[9]
When it comes to fostering Psychological Safety, everyone matters
The descriptions of psychological safety sound like what most team members and good leaders know anyway: Respectful interaction, being able to empathize with others, and good communication and listening skills are basics for good team results. Unfortunately, this cannot be taken for granted, as many of us may know from their own experience or observation.
Therefore, the big question is how to promote psychological safety in teams and beyond. As a cultural phenomenon, psychological safety is shaped by the behavior and habits of each individual person in relationships with others. There are multiple interdependencies between these habits, basic personal beliefs and attitudes, and single structural elements.
Psychological Safety is simple and complex
„Treat others as you want to be treated“ says the golden rule. If everyone behaves accordingly, the result should be psychological safety. So far, so simple.
What makes it impossible to provide simple recipes for successful collaboration: it is all about people, and every person is different. This applies to both team members and managers. It gets complex because not all people perceive threats and risks in the same way. For example, person A is pleased about a question about her statement. She takes it as interest on the part of the person asking. Person B may perceive the same question as a provocation or even a threat. Person B will react accordingly, and the risk taken by the questioner differs from person A to person B.
In addition, depending on the “severity” of the statement the sender’s potential interpersonal risk or the recipient’s potential threat increases (see figure “The Speaking-up Continuum” [10]).
Psychological Safety is a Leadership Thing
Leadership and management roles have a significant influence on Psychological Safety. They act as role models through their own behaviour, they set the tone, and they set standards for what behaviour is accepted or not. This is always true. It gets especially important in change projects, such as agile transformations involving new organizational structures, processes, and ways of collaboration.
If traditional habits are replaced employees will observe the managers’ actions and reactions closely. An example are new discursive and participative decision-making processes. What happens if employees follow the new decision protocol for the first time? Especially if their decision challenges the opinion of the manager taking this kind of decision alone previously. Other examples are dealing with dissent or handling of escalated conflicts.
Many other less remarkable everyday habits build the basis for an atmosphere perceived as safe by team members. Attentiveness, active listening, and genuine interest in unusual points of view regardless of hierarchical position are a few of them. Every encounter and every interaction is a step towards or away from psychological safety.
Conclusion
In agile teams all members, especially Scrum Masters, need to keep an eye on psychological safety. Nurturing and influencing this atmosphere remains a constant task.
Considering the points explored in this and the last blogpost, there is a wide range of factors influencing team effectiveness. Both structural conditions and interpersonal factors open up a large field of action. The next blogpost will explore how some of this knowledge can be leveraged for the benefit of teams. To be continued…
[1] These three factors influence collective intelligence (defined as “ability of a group to perform a wide variety of tasks”. Woolley, Anita et al. 2010: Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups. In: Science, Vol. 330. See also Anita Wooley’s talk for Google re:work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy6-qJmqz3w, accessed on September 23rd, 2020.
[2] McKinsey & Company 2020: Psychological safety, emotional intelligence and leadership in a time of flux. Interview with Amy Edmondson and Richard Boyatzis — https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/leadership/psychological-safety-emotional-intelligence-and-leadership-in-a-time-of-flux (accessed on July 31st, 2020)
[3] Edmondson, Amy 1999: Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams, in Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 44, №2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 350–383 (https://web.mit.edu/curhan/www/docs/Articles/15341_Readings/Group_Performance/Edmondson%20Psychological%20safety.pdf , accessed on June 1st, 2020)
[4] Edmondson, Amy C. 2021: The only thing to fear is unproductive fear. In: Dialogue Q1/2021 (https://dialoguereview.com/the-only-thing-to-fear-is-unproductive-fear/, accessed on February 15th, 2021)
[5] NeuroLeadership Institute 2020: Create A Culture Of Speaking Up. Webinar on July 30th, 2020; https://hub.neuroleadership.com/webinar-voice-demo-7-30-2020?utm_campaign=SLS%20%7C%20VOICE&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=92347404&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8APx4xVe7o54VYkDgM8eufnSsD7nEPp_iFHdSFYdeoD6eoD_ieA-75RHjM9oyIkIVcm4XeVpICLKnWna5mzq4MhD0roTCkI0jAX5tNdS5lDSlkdOg&utm_content=92347404&utm_source=hs_email (accessed on July 31st, 2020)
[6] For the correlation employees voice being heard and employee engagement see also Gallup 2017: State of the Global Workplace. E.g., “Employees who strongly agree that their opinions count at work are more likely to feel personally invested in their job.” (p. 7)
[7] Edmondson 2021
[8] Edmondson, Amy C. 2003: Managing the risk of learning: Psychological safety in work teams. In International Handbook of Organizational Teamwork and Cooperative Working, M. West (Ed.). London: Blackwell, pp. 255–276, cited in Edmondson, Amy C. 2013: Teaming to innovate. Presentation April 13th, 2013, p. 17
[9] Edmondson 2021
[10] NeuroLeadership Institute 2020
