Encouraging our tech teams to perform at their best is the ultimate aim of any manager. High performing teams set the bar for others, can be championed to our clients and competitors and help lift the entire spirit of any organisation they are a part of. There are many different facets to enabling a team to reach its full potential, but at the base of all of these efforts is the need for psychological safety.
A Brief History of Psychological Safety
The term ‘team psychological safety’ was first coined by Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson in 1999, while conducting research for her PhD into the relationship between error making and teamwork in hospitals. Expecting to find that high functioning teams made fewer mistakes, she instead found that those who reported better teamwork also experienced more errors. Her hypothesis then became that teams that felt comfortable were therefore more likely to record their mistakes.
In 2012, Google set out to find what makes a team high performing. After evaluating 250 attributes in 180 teams, and referencing the previous work done by Professor Edmondson, they found that psychological safety is the first step in supporting teams to reach their potential, and an environment of value and respect was just as important as the individual make up of the team.
Psychologically safe teams tend to be more engaged and motivated, feeling that their contributions matter and they can be honest without fear of retribution. This state of being then leads to a wider range of opinions and more diverse thought processes, which can result in better decision making. Conversely any mistakes made are discussed openly and honestly, which can protect future teams and individuals from falling into the same traps, and help those who made the mistakes progress and learn much more quickly.
The methods used to create a psychologically safe environment are wide and varied, and as with all human focussed frameworks should be evaluated in relation to the situation it is being applied to, but a few themes are present across them all.
Fear of Failure Prevents Innovation
Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and sometime Richest Man in The World, has often repeated his conviction that failure is a necessary part of meaningful, impactful change. During a letter to Amazon’s shareholders a few years ago, he wrote “If the size of your failures isn’t growing, you’re not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle.” He isn’t alone: billionaires such as Elon Musk (“If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough”) and Richard Branson (“[Failure is] one of our greatest learning tools”) believe failure is not something to be feared but embraced as you attempt to do anything innovative, and therefore should not be discouraged in high performing teams. That’s not to suggest that teams should do nothing but fail, but that failure is a key part of creation and discovery, and by not only allowing for it but welcoming the idea that high performing teams will fail, leaders can create a culture where mistakes are discussed openly, fully and learned from productively. Ultimately it is understanding that a team that fails is not a failure, but creates an opportunity for the organisation as a whole to improve.
Honest Communication
I’m sure we’ve all been in situations at work where it’s felt that communication within the organisation is lacking. It’s a commonly felt problem, and especially difficult in remote or hybrid environments. It’s also very likely you’ve experienced a dissonance between the perception at managerial level about how the company is functioning, compared with the feeling of those on the ‘shop floor’. When those lower down in the company structure don’t feel they are a) being listened to and b) comfortable discussing issues on the coalface with the top levels of management, then we have an psychologically unsafe environment. Listening to and addressing these concerns should be a priority for all modern organisations, along with harbouring an openness to being approached by any level in the organisation to discuss problems before they escalate. We should be actively rewarding those who speak up, to encourage others, and being diligent in ensuring that those who do take the time to speak up feel they have been heard.
Addressing Problematic Behaviour
Where there are behavioural issues that need addressing they should be handled as quickly and effectively as possible, whilst also being respectful of the individual and their own experiences. Kim Scott’s management principle of Radical Candour can be a good guide here, by “caring personally while challenging directly”. Avoiding conversations or not acting decisively enough can exacerbate the environment further and lead to a feeling of inequality in the team. Tolerating a person’s negative impact on the team, even if their output and effectiveness are individually good, will bring every other member of the team down and reduce the team’s overall capacity.
Accepting Human Error as Inevitable
We all make mistakes. All the time. Being intolerant of mistakes does not stop them from happening, it just creates an environment where they are not discussed or highlighted, and that will inexorably lead to further problems. Exposed errors allow for solutions to be found, and lessons to be learned. When a team member feels confident enough to admit they’ve made an error it’s effect can be lessened and therefore productivity can go up. Like failure, we can embrace mistakes as an opportunity to learn and improve, both individually and as a whole organisation.
We can also leverage good tech practices to keep everyone that mistakes will be surfaced and dealt with quicker: a good CI/CD pipeline will allow for rolling back of broken iterations; comprehensive testing will highlight the blast radius of broken code much faster; and great observability will decrease the fall out of broken environments.
Remote Teams
When thinking about remote first or hybrid teams, there can be a few layers of extra complexity to consider in terms of psychological safety. Collaboration and team cohesion can be very difficult to sustain when the group is dispersed widely, and the absence of the opportunity to have more unprepared conversation – so called ‘water cooler moments’ – can quickly increase the feeling of segregation and isolation. In addition, while working at home can increase flexibility, there’s always a chance it can creep into a state of perpetual work – a Schroedinger’s cat of being in work and out of it at the same time, all the time.
Here’s a small list of techniques to try and help keep your remote teams feeling psychologically safe.
- Being clear and consistent with your own schedule can be key – that’s not to say you shouldn’t be afforded the same flexibility as others, but making sure any changes are signposted along with when and how you can be contacted, and just as importantly when you will not be available. This gives the rest of the team a blueprint to do the same.
- Make sure you have time set in advance to meet with the team as a whole and individually, so they can build their other commitments and work rhythms around it. These can be daily stand-ups, or weekly check-ins, but make sure they are in place as the cadence of the team is established so they aren’t trying to be worked around other commitments later.
- A remote office system like the excellent Gather can be a good way to simulate the office environment, but it needs buy-in from the team as a whole to be effective. Any way to allow more organic conversations to begin, that don’t necessarily have anything to do with work, can have a markedly positive effect on the teams overall cohesion.
- Celebrate achievements, both team and individual, out loud on forums so that everyone can see. This can be as simple as a group message thanking someone for their help with a task, or highlighting their input during a company brief. Use your personal judgement as to what is appropriate, but set the standard to allow the rest of the team to do the same.
- Keep an eye out for changes in behaviour – missed meetings or deadlines, an unwillingness to engage in team conversations, or working long hours without much productivity. These can all be pointers towards a team member feeling isolated and will affect the whole team’s output. If something does seem to be wrong, try to engage as soon as possible in whatever way possible, but preferably in person so you can gauge their mood more effectively.
- And finally – openly discuss psychological safety itself and see what individuals think it means for them. Their views may differ to your own, and each others’, but it can be a great way to measure if the systems are working, what can be done to improve them, ultimately also improving the productivity of the team as a whole while maintaining an enjoyable and engaging workplace.
There are many more steps in creating a high performing, engaged team which works efficiently, but this crucial first step should remain a constant focus for any manager working towards that goal. There are many more resources out there to help you on this journey – so if this article has been of use to you, or if you have other preferred resources we can share to raise awareness of psychological safety in the workplace, please get in touch.
