High Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety

“There’s no team without trust,”
~ Paul Santagata, Head of Industry at Google

A few weeks ago an old friend sent me a link to an article and asked in his email  “Don’t you do this kind of work?”

The article that he shared was one of the many spin-offs that reported on what Google determined after 2 years of intense study – the highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety.

In this context psychological safety includes the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake. This work further showed that psychological safety allows for moderate risk-taking, speaking your mind, creativity, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off — just the types of behavior that lead to market breakthroughs.

The notion of safety is rooted in principles already well understood for those who have any emotional intelligence training or that understand how one’s brain works.

Your brain essentially has one primary job; to keep you alive. The sentinel or the alarm if you will- is the Amygdala. Your amygdala determines (in many times less than a second) what a threat is and whether you need a fight or flight response.  Certainly, that sort of reaction was essential to our very survival in the days of saber-tooth tigers and other bodily threats.

Today our brain processes threats in the same way.  A provocation by a boss, competitive coworker, or dismissive subordinate is interpreted by your brain as much of a life-or-death threat as the aforementioned Saber Tooth.

“Act first, think later” brain structure shuts down perspective and analytical reasoning. Quite literally, just when we need it most, we ‘lose our minds’, often referred to as an Amygdala hijack.

While that fight-or-flight reaction may save us in life-or-death situations, it creates a handicap in today’s strategic thinking workplace.

Reinforcing positive emotions like trust, curiosity, confidence, and inspiration broaden the mind and help us build psychological, social, and physical resources. We become more open-minded, resilient, motivated, and persistent when we feel safe. Humor increases, as does solution-finding and divergent thinking — the cognitive process underlying creativity.

Leaders need to foster a workplace that encourages stretching one’s self in a challenging but not threatening way.

So how can you increase psychological safety on your own team?

It starts with self-awareness and awareness of each team members preferences for how they prefer to be interacted with, communicated with, lead and so on.

The rich data of the Birkman Method helps me help teams achieve psychological safety.

And yes Jim, I do this kind of work every day! Thank you for sending me the article.