Psychological safety - a crucial ingredient for great teams
Emily Rust
When it comes to team success, the evidence for psychological safety couldn't be more compelling.
In a four-year study by Google ("Project Aristotle"), data from teams across their entire workforce revealed that high-performing teams were differentiated from average ones primarily due to how they worked together, not who was in them.
Google found that psychological safety laid the foundation for high performance before the next four most important variables were factored in - dependability, structure and clarity, meaning, and impact.
Psychologically safe teams are better positioned for high performance and problem-solving due to increased opportunities for creativity and innovation, improved communication and collaboration, better engagement, and reduced absenteeism and turnover.
From an emotional perspective: “Project Aristotle is a reminder that when companies try to optimize everything, it’s sometimes easy to forget that success is often built on experiences — like emotional interactions and complicated conversations and discussions.” Charles Duhigg, NY Times
Though the concept has been around since the 1970s, Amy Edmondson's seminal research paper in the late '90s was pivotal in introducing the concept of psychological safety to the field of organisational behaviour, leadership and culture.
Watch her 11-minute Ted Talk on 'Building a psychologically safe workplace' (jump to 7:40 for her recommendations for how), or her 13-minute Ted Talk on How 'teaming' saved 33 miners in the Chilean mine disaster in 2010.
We can all benefit from lessons in combining differences in expertise and perspective within complex, shifting environments to solve important problems.