Many of us have read the research by Google on psychological safety as a signifier of high performing teams. And many organizations, team leaders and team members would love it, if we could simply turn a switch and voilà, our team has psychological safety. So why is it so hard to get psychological safety baked into your behaviors and those of your teams? I think the answer lies in the fact that this does not actually come easy and often feels quite uncomfortable along the way. It takes courage, vulnerability, a willingness to ask for help, a willingness to admit to mistakes, a generosity in assuming good intent, a willingness to engage with dissenting opinions, a willingness to speak up and feeling safe enough to speak truth to power, a willingness of those in powerful positions to listen and trust, to not respond with defensiveness, to admit to also not have the answers and to simply commit that each of us will show up with an aim to learn, to grow, to not blame, and ultimately to commit to a way of working together that is breaking with a number of our “normal” societal practices and norms.
Acting that way does not necessarily always feel good. In fact, a lot of the desired behaviors that are signposts of psychological safety, are square in that space of feeling uncomfortable, vulnerable or risky.
Here are a few examples:
We often learn from failure. Failing at something does not feel great, it’s much more fun to be successful with something. Yet, especially in roles where innovation is important, failing is simply part of the game. It often takes 8-9 unsuccessful experiments to find one that works. Framing things this way and speaking about this, can help. Praising a team for failing fast, can also help. And simply normalizing that “feeling of failing at something” as part of finding your path to success, is something leaders can talk about with their teams. Failing fast, learning fast, applying those learnings, trying again, then eventually succeeding is a normal way of working in innovative teams. Accompanying a team through the emotional experience of failing is part of what it takes to lead a high performing team in an innovative context. Children are true experts at this. Just watch a child learn how to walk. There is a lot of failing before those first successful steps are being taken. Finding that childlike desire to simply figure out a path forward is what teams need to overcome the learnt emotional reaction to what is considered “failure”. Encouragement and trusting the team are amazing enablers for this. And celebrating every single learning that comes from understanding those things that did not work.
But there is more, that can feel emotionally difficult in a team that has psychological safety.
This is a team, where it is ok to speak up, when you have a diverging viewpoint. It is expected to speak up when somebody makes an inappropriate joke targeting a peer. It is ok and encouraged to give constructive feedback to your peers and the people up and down your line of reporting. It is ok to challenge the ideas of a colleague who has more seniority. Yet nobody likes to be contradicted, and being challenged (or receiving feedback) in a clumsy fashion, can feel like a lack of respect or an attack. It usually does not feel good when somebody accurately points out the flaw in your thinking. We may feel ashamed when somebody holds us accountable for a biased remark, or a judgmental statement where curiosity would have been in order. To make this kind of open communication culture work, we need excellent communication skills, and a way to effectively regulate our emotions. Our first reaction to that other point of view might at times be defensiveness. We are often not in a great place to listen with curiosity or communicate without judgement when somebody has just triggered that feeling of defensiveness in us, or when we feel like somebody is not respectful in their communication with us. Modelling how to have hard conversations constructively, and normalizing the conversation about the emotional dynamics of receiving feedback is your job as a leader in the team. It’s not something that comes easy in stressful situations where team members may turn to their fight, flight, freeze or fawn coping patterns.
And there is still more. There is the need, that anyone can ask a question or ask for help when they are stuck. And that somebody else in the team generously takes the time to answer the question or helps unblock the colleague who is stuck. Asking a question can feel like a vulnerable act. Team members may feel like it makes them look stupid if they ask. Team members may have experienced being ridiculed for asking simple questions in another context of their lives. Or team members simply don’t even know about something they should ask about (happens a lot when somebody is new to a team, their industry, their product or their role). Asking for help means being ok to say “I can’t do this on my own, I won’t finish what you thought I can do” (and maybe what I promised to do yesterday, before I understood how hard of a problem this is to solve). It means being ok to say “I don’t know, and I can’t figure out my next step by myself either”. Those are behaviors you want in the team, and these are also behaviors that might be rubbing against role expectations – especially for men – in many cultures. Yet, these behaviors need to be nurtured, modeled and praised in the team.
Then there is that assumption of good intent. One of the most powerful statements to open a retrospective with is, that you truly believe that everyone did the best they could, with what they knew at the time. I sincerely believe, that nobody starts a new job or project, without a desire to contribute and being seen and appreciated for their contributions. (Maybe with the exception of jobs you have to do against your will – like being drafted into the military). Yet, especially in our hybrid and remote new work contexts, it is easy to be unaware of things that are going on in another team member’s life, or to not know the full context of the goals and priorities another team, that you try to collaborate with, is following. So what may seem like somebody “deliberately ignoring you”, “being rude” or “not showing up the way they are supposed to”, may have reasons you are simply unaware of. It takes a good dose of curiosity and again very good communication skills, to never assume an ill intent, but to figure out ways to collaborate despite these challenges.
What makes this even harder, is that we often operate in a complex context. Which according to the Cynefin framework is one, where we often don’t know what drives cause and effect. Nobody on your team – including you – can know exactly how to solve the problem you are tasked to solve simply relying on the expertise you have to date. Which means you often find yourself in situations where you simply can’t predict or know the best course of action. Which also means, if somebody asks you about your plan of action, you’ll have no complete response for them, other than you trust that your team will figure it out and here is the next experiment you chose to get your team closer to understanding the path forward. In a complex context, all you can do is experiment and in hindsight understand what works, or does not work, in getting you closer to your goal. It would feel so much nicer to be able to say with certainty, that you can do X by Y date, because you have started to do Z, which will undoubtedly result in X. Unfortunately when building software, when planning for the re-opening of your office during Covid, or when trying to reach certain user growth or revenue numbers, you have no guaranteed known pathways to your goal. You’ll have to be capable to set and agree on a goal, willing to try things, fail, learn, try again and eventually succeed. And while you’re failing and learning this certainly does not simply “feel good”. Teams need a lot of trust, skill, humility and encouragement to navigate that.
And yet, despite all these challenges, I would not want to work in any other way. Allowing for a diverse set of ideas, finding the beauty and strength in a diverse set of team members, trusting each other to be ok with vigorous – yet respectful – debate, sharing the experience of finding that path to success together, celebrating the learnings and milestones reached along the way, treating each other with respect, with an aim for equality, diversity and inclusion is the most rewarding way to work towards a shared goal. It’s ok to have passionate discussions about ideas in the team, it’s often smart to listen to the “outside the box” idea somebody brings, it’s also often smart to listen to the people on the team with deep knowledge in a certain domain. It’s leading while there is ambiguity, paradox, uncertainty and risk with a team of people who are aligned in their shared goals, and happy and capable to collaborate towards them. So no, that psychologically safe team and its ways of working may not always “feel good” along the way, but when you reach those goals you were striving for, you’ll look back and laugh about the ways you used to work and think when you first started out on your journey together. It’s worth it, because you’ll know exactly that these are the people you want to have on your team when the next hard challenge presents itself. Chances are you also genuinely came to like and respect the people you work with. You make each other feel seen, appreciated, respected and cared for. You created that sense of belonging, hopefully a sense of joy and that magical psychological safety for each other.
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