Tag: teamwork

Boost Psychological Safety for Healthier, More Creative Teams

Posted on September 20, 2024 by Rachel Burr

Psychological safety is a feeling shared among team members that it’s okay to admit mistakes, share concerns, and ask questions. Teams that achieve psychological safety are more productive, more creative, and better able to resolve conflict than those that don’t.

What is psychological safety?

Psychological safety refers to an environment where it’s okay to take risks, make mistakes, and where it’s accepted that people will voice differing opinions and ask difficult questions. It’s an important part of a healthy workplace, with benefits for organizations as well as employees.

The term psychological safety was coined by Amy Edmondson, a professor at the Harvard Business School and author of The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. She developed the concept while studying teams of medical professionals for her Ph.D.

At first, Edmondson thought that the highest performing teams would be the ones reporting the fewest mistakes during their shifts, but she found the opposite. The teams that achieved the best outcomes reported a higher number of mistakes per shift than their lower performing peers.

She later realized that the high performing teams were more willing to admit mistakes – and learn from them – than the other teams. From that insight came a concept she called “team psychological safety,” which can help anyone who works with a team.

This article will discuss the basics of psychological safety and how to improve that quality in any team.

Make it safe for people to speak up in the workplace

Psychological safety has been called “the belief that one can express themselves freely without fear of negative consequences” in a Penn State University article. Amy Edmondson calls it “felt permission for candor.” However described, the level of psychological safety in any team has major impacts on productivity, innovation, conflict resolution, and more.

For example, Google’s Project Aristotle, a large, multi-year study of team dynamics and team building, found psychological safety to be the single most important factor in creating high performing teams.

The Google researchers began with the idea that the best teams would emerge naturally by putting the brightest high achievers together and turning them loose. But that wasn’t the case. They concluded that who is on a team matters much less than how the team members interact. According to the authors:

Our researchers found that the best teams created a climate of openness where team members admit to their errors and discuss them more often. In other words, they exhibited high levels of psychological safety[.]

Psychologically safe teams accelerate learning and innovation by acknowledging mistakes and exploring new ideas. And not only are they more adaptable, they can also impact the bottom line.

The study found that teams with high levels of psychological safety exceeded their sales targets by 17%, while teams with low levels of psychological safety missed their sales targets by 19%. According to Google, psychological safety was a much better predictor of team success than the number of top performers or the general intelligence of team members.

Developing psychological safety

Psychological safety is a team characteristic. It emerges from interactions among team members over time. Edmondson states, “This is a group level phenomenon – it shapes the learning of the group and in turn affects team performance and therefore organizational performance.” Team members who collaborate closely feel similar levels of psychological safety, according to the Harvard Business Review.

Building psychological safety is “more magic than science,” according to Edmondson, but there are simple steps any organization can take to improve teamwork.

Ensure good management. The first step to increasing psychological safety is the most basic: Establish good management practices, which include setting clear expectations and norms of behavior, ensuring fairness and equal treatment, encouraging open communication, and making sure people feel valued and supported.

Admit mistakes. Psychological safety begins when people are willing to admit their mistakes and learn from them. Leaders must be in the forefront of the effort by admitting their own mistakes, struggles, and challenges. In short, leaders need to become willing to appear vulnerable and less than perfect in the eyes of the people they lead. If they are not, the foundation for psychological safety will be missing.

Actively solicit input. Leaders need to do more than encourage team members to speak out, they should set the expectation that everyone on the team will share their ideas, opinions, and concerns. Some will naturally be more vocal than others, but creating a safe space to share ideas without being judged or criticized is key to developing psychological safety. It may feel awkward at first, but it will become easier with practice. As a bonus, regularly asking team members to express their concerns can help defuse workplace tensions and promote healthy conflict resolution.

In the words of Stanford professor and psychologist Robert Sutton, “When people talk about their own mistakes, rather than pointing out others’ missteps, that suggests your workplace is psychologically safe.” Rather than wasting time and energy blaming and shaming, psychological safety lets teams focus on learning and problem solving in a healthy learning environment, which is the key to unlocking resilience, creativity, and innovation.

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Rachel Burr is an executive and leadership coach with over 20 years of experience working with CEOs and the C-suite across all industries, in organizations of from 200 to 10,000 employees. Rachel holds dual master’s degrees in Organization Development and Clinical Psychology, and numerous certifications in the field of executive coaching. Rachel is a “people expert” who works with clients to unleash their leadership potential. If you would like to learn more about psychological safety and how it can improve teamwork, please contact us.

How to Recognize and Avoid Groupthink Psychology

Posted on May 24, 2024 by Rachel Burr

Groupthink psychology happens when close-knit groups ignore or suppress opposing views and inconvenient facts. It can lead to catastrophic failures in organizations large and small. Know the signs and adopt solutions to avoid groupthink psychology.

“How could we have been so stupid?” That striking John F. Kennedy’s quotation opens Irving Janis’ Psychology Today article entitled “Groupthink” which coined the phrase in 1971. Kennedy was reflecting on the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, which Janis examined as an example of the newly named phenomenon. (A pdf version of Janis’ original article can be found at this link.)

Groupthink psychology happens when group members seek consensus while ignoring or suppressing opposing views and contrary facts. The results of groupthink can be found in the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, the collapse of Enron, and the 2008 financial crisis, among many other examples.

Groupthink psychology robs group members of their judgment and independence, whether in the White House or the conference room down the hall. This article will examine the causes of groupthink and consider solutions for organizations large and small.

Causes of groupthink psychology

Groupthink psychology grows from the desire of individuals to conform and show loyalty to their group. It is more likely to take hold when a group becomes cohesive and the members feel accepted. In that situation, group members are less willing to challenge each other, or “rock the boat.”

These are some of the contributors to groupthink psychology:

Sense of invulnerability: Groups with an inflated sense of importance (like Enron’s “smartest guys in the room”) are willing to take exceptional risks while ignoring obvious dangers.

Rationalizing: Group members rationalize away objections, including their own, to justify the group’s course of action. The group avoids examining assumptions or taking criticism seriously.

Belief in the group: Group members believe in the “rightness” of the group and its mission. Belief in the group causes members to lose sight of their own ethics and morality.

Stereotyping: Group members see competitors in simplistic ways. The group sees itself as the best, the smartest, the most moral, while seeing the competition as weak, immoral, or untrustworthy.

Pressure to conform: Group members put pressure on those who express doubts about the group’s decision. Pressure adds personal cost to dissent and reinforces the need to support the group.

Self-censorship: Group members defer to what they believe is the group consensus. They keep silent about, or minimize, their own doubts.

Illusion of consensus: Group members feel an illusion of consensus – that everyone supports the decision. The illusion is the result of pressure to conform and the failure to consider consequences and alternatives.

Gatekeepers: Group members appoint themselves gatekeepers to “protect” others from receiving information that could cast doubt on the group’s decision.

The results of groupthink psychology are often disastrous – and yet the same mistakes happen again and again: Groups limit discussion to a few options – often just two, according to Irving Janis. They fail to re-examine decisions in light of new facts, or to consider ways of improving rejected options. They fall into confirmation bias – only seeking out information that supports their decision.

Strategies to avoid groupthink psychology

The most important takeaway is that groupthink psychology can happen to anyone, even the best and brightest. The desire to fit in is a powerful force. The best way to overcome it is to ensure there are safeguards in place. Here are a few suggestions.

Play devil’s advocate: Assign one or more group members to play “devil’s advocate” and critique the solutions proposed. Requiring objections will make it safer for members to speak up.

Challenge the status quo: Give every idea a hearing, even if it seems wrong or is ultimately rejected. A good way to hear different points of view is to include people of different ages and backgrounds. Rewarding risk-taking is another way to encourage thinking differently or “outside of the box.”

Divide into teams: Have members of the group work separately to analyze the issues. Teams can either propose competing solutions or work independently on different pieces of the puzzle.

Keep leadership impartial: Members are more likely to “go with the flow” when leaders express a preference for one solution. To avoid bias, make the leader a facilitator who encourages discussion.

Adopt placeholder solutions: An approach reported in the Harvard Business Review saw the team adopt a “placeholder” to revisit and examine. Agreeing to explore the idea relieved pressure to find the “best” solution prematurely. It also allowed members to agree on broad principles while disagreeing about details.

Groupthink psychology can derail the decision-making process. To make sure your organization doesn’t fall into its trap, be aware of the causes and make a plan of action. If you would like to learn more about groupthink psychology, leadership, and team dynamics, please contact us.

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Three Tricks to Managing Virtual Teams

Posted on July 8, 2022 by Rachel Burr

Virtual teams’ management requires leadership to use people skills and communication technology to build trust, teamwork and relationships.

Leaders want to know the “tricks” to managing virtual teams. We want better tools, systems, and processes that will take groups of people spread around the country, or even the world, and transform them into well-oiled high-performing teams. Here’s the secret: There are no tricks or shortcuts to building a team (virtual or otherwise). Even with the best processes and technology, virtual teams are still made up of people who need to build relationships, create trust, and collaborate to be a successful team. I know the blog title was a little misleading (a clickbait and switch), but now that you’re here, let’s move beyond the illusion of “tricks” to real people-focused ways to address virtual challenges: build relationships, communicate as human beings, and optimize time together.

Build Relationships

We may respect titles or acquiesce to hierarchy, but we build a relationship with a person, the whole person. We’re often encouraged to separate our personal life from our work life, which is a lot like asking us to cut off our right arm to fit through the office door (and I don’t type well one-handed). When we bring our whole self and connect with someone else as a whole person, we find more in common, build better connections, and increase trust. As virtual teams, we don’t bump into each other in the halls, or at the coffeemaker, to help us build these connections more casually. Our interactions are more limited and more formal, occurring mostly during meetings and…well…more meetings.

In a virtual team, we have to create opportunities to make more informal connections. It sounds ridiculous to work that hard to create “natural” interactions, but when we don’t plan and protect this time, our attention will be hijacked by some fire-of-the-moment, and what’s “urgent” will consume what’s “important.” So, how do we purposefully create opportunities for connection?

Use Existing Meetings

Carve out time at the beginning of team meetings to connect as human beings: share what we did over the weekend, discuss a favorite hobby, or talk about anything other than work. We can also use virtual meeting tools to create smaller breakout groups for more intimate interactions, and then come back together to share important points or a new tidbit we learned about a teammate.

Create Virtual Cafes

Meet 1:1 or in small groups for an online coffee break or happy hour. –Even if we work in different time zones, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.

We need to build in those human moments to stay connected even when we’re thousands of miles apart.

Communicate as Human Beings

Continuous communication over technology does not mean communication is clear or effective. It just provides a digital trail to prove messages were sent. I won’t call out specific tools because I might get sued, but you know the ones. The tools that allow us to constantly ping each other with emails, instant messages (IM), texts, etc. What we often forget is that even when we use these tools, we still need to communicate with the brains of human beings. Ongoing distractions interrupt our concentration, limit our focus, and reduce productivity. We need to use the right tools in the right way:

Email

Email is best used to confirm information (that has already been discussed), and share information that is clear, concise, and not inflammatory. To make emails more effective try some of the following: Use the subject line as part of the message– “FYI,” “Response Requested,” “Action Required” or even “Action Required. Otherwise, will send X by Y date.” (That last one usually gets a response. Whether or not it’s a “good” response, depends on your audience). Call attention to due dates in emails by putting them in red. Keep emails short and summarize key points. Short emails take more time to write, but long emails take more time to read. So, if we want emails read, we should keep them short.

The above examples are focused more on US corporate cultures. We may need to adjust our approach to the team, company, or country cultures in which we operate. Regardless of the approach, our goal is to be effective.

IM

IM is good for a quick back and forth chat or to align schedules for a meeting. When either email or IM goes on too long, stop the thread. Summarize the text and identify next steps, or jump on a video conference to discuss.

Video

Video is better than both email and IM when we want to communicate more complex ideas. Only about 25% of communication is made up of the words we use. The rest is tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language. That means text-based tools leave out 75% of our communication. So, we shouldn’t be surprised when our meaning isn’t always clear.

Unplug

Technology tools are not just about sending information, but managing how and when we receive it. To improve our focus, we can block time on the calendar to turn off our email, IM, and phone. The book “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Cal Newport offers great insights and tips to help us improve our concentration and get work done. If you are really struggling to focus, then stop reading this post, and go read Cal Newport’s book instead.

We can’t let technology dictate how we communicate. We need to use the tools in ways that will improve our communication. When we assume communication has been read and understood just because we click “Send,” that’s when things fall through the cracks (and often fall apart).

Optimize Time Together

The goal is to meet in person as often as schedules, pandemics, and fuel prices allow. Once face-to-face, we don’t want to squander our time, squeezing too much content into back-to-back meetings or doing work we could have done remotely. We want to use this precious in-person time to connect with each other and build stronger relationships. Of course, work has to get done, but spending time on people is also essential. When we know and trust each other, communication is easier, collaboration is more effective, and our work will be more productive long after the in-person meeting is over.

No Shortcuts to Building Teams

There are no magic “tricks” to leading virtual teams. Virtual or not, we work with people, and that requires focus, communication, and intentionally building relationships. When we align our approach with how people “work” (inside and out), our communication and collaboration will be more successful. No tricks required.