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Psychological Safety in the Workplace

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What Makes a Great Team?

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Project Aristotle

2012

Psychological Safety
Dependability
Structure & Clarity
Meaning of Work
Impact of Work

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Project Aristotle, started in 2012, was headed up by a manger in Google’s People Analytics division.

Google Project Aristotle Background and Findings

* Data was gathered and assessed from 180 Google teams.

* Two-year long effort started in 2012.

* No patterns detected to correlate why some succeeded and others didn’t.

* Teams with similar makeup or even some of the same members demonstrated varying results.

* Metrics like personal friendships, strong management, team structure, personal interests, gender, longevity provided no clear insight.

* Group norms were found to be key to teams’ success. Group norms are unwritten and often unspoken rules guiding the behavior of the teams.

* Final determination was that a group of superior individuals was less important than the collective ability of the team.

Five Keys to Success

Psychological safety: Team members must be comfortable in taking risks and speaking their minds. They need to know that their team members will support their actions and not ridicule them. Everyone on the team has to feel as though they won’t be made examples of if something doesn’t go right which they suggested or promoted.

Dependability: Everyone needs to contribute to the best of their ability and�deliver high quality work. They must do this within the time parameters allotted and agreed upon. Dependability means that they can count on each other to do their job.

Structure and clarity: Clear direction and goals is vital. Everyone needs to understand what part they play on the team. Everyone on the team also needs to understand how they should go about getting their job done so as to help the team succeed.

Meaning of work: Google’s researchers seemed to find that individual personal satisfaction in the job they were performing was also a key element in the success of the team. I find that this falls in line with a lot of the material in Daniel Pink’s Drive which speaks to what motivates us as humans.

Impact of work: How does the work that people are doing actually benefit the company? Team members want to feel that they are not simply wasting their time when doing things. This again supports many ideas in Daniel Pinks’ book.

If I picked one word to collectively describe the five components from Project Aristotle, it would have to be value. Teams and organizations must show that they value everyone’s contribution.

Out of Project Aristotle Google created two tools to help analyze your team characteristics. The first helps determine what your team needs and the second helps foster psychological safety.

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Amy Edmondson, Harvard Business School

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AM I SAFE?

Survive

Belong

Become

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How Many Marbles are in Your Jar?

“No vulnerability, no creativity. No tolerance for failure, no innovation. It is that simple. If you’re not willing to fail you can’t innovate. If you’re not willing to build a vulnerable culture you can’t create.”

— Brené Brown

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What Makes You Feel Safe to Speak Up?

Think about people with whom you feel comfortable bringing up difficult issues with or giving feedback to:

What characteristics does that person have?
What do they do to put you at ease?

Think about a situation in which you felt comfortable raising issues or giving feedback:

Where were you?
Who were you with?
What happened?

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Psychological Safety & Accountability

Apathy Zone - Members tend to be vying for pole position. They aim to get ahead by charming their way to the top. This is common in large top-heavy companies.

Comfort Zone - Members do not fear speaking up, but they fail to take action. This is common in small businesses.

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Psychological Safety & Accountability

Anxiety Zone - Members fear speaking up, even though they know it’s needed to move the organization forward. This is common in larger financial organizations and high-powered consultancies.

Learning Zone - Members are not afraid to speak up and follow through on the actions needed to move the organization forward. The focus is on collaborating.

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27%

Turnover

40%

Accidents

12%

Productivity

Only 3 out of 10 employees feel that their opinions count in their organizations

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Strongly Disagree 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7 Strongly Agree

If I make a mistake on my team, it is rarely held against me.
Members of my team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.
People on this team rarely reject others for being different.
It is safe to take a risk on this team.
It is easy to ask other members of this team for help.
No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.
Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.

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Score of 0-15:

Your Team is Psychologically UNSAFE!

Score of 16-30:

Your Team has some Psychological Safety,

but could increase it.

Score of 31+:

Your team has a good amount of Psychological Safety.

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Ray Dalio, Founder, Bridgewater Investments

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Ray Dalio, Founder, Bridgewater Investments

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Ruinous Empathy

Ignorance

No Change

Manipulative Insincerity

Mistrust

No Change

Radical Candor

Growth

Profound Change

Obnoxious Aggression

Defensiveness

Little Change

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Encourage open discussion
Suggest a bad ideas brainstorm
Ask clarifying questions & questions that dig deeper
Create team rules
Ask how you can help
Balance activities with communication
Engage in ACTIVE listening
Focus on positive aspects of ideas
Allow mistakes

How Do I Improve Psychological Safety?

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Dealing with Team Conflict

Forgive mistakes, use them as a teaching opportunity
Address feedback towards the topic, not the team member
Try to understand the underlying issues behind the conflict
Have team members list out their worries at the start
Debrief after a project to understand the root cause of conflict
Understand your own biases
Invite structured criticism
Observe how others act and model good behaviors

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“I worried what others would think:

What would people say about my idea?”

“I kept it to myself. I hid it away and didn’t talk about it. I tried to act like everything was the same as it was before my idea showed up.”

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Psychological Safety & Innovation

I started off by telling you that we were going to talk about how to create a culture that rewards killing ideas. Psychological safety is about creating a sense of security within your organization where ideas are welcomed, discussed openly and respectfully, and accepted or rejected as a result of that open, respectful communication.

When we talk about psychological safety and killing ideas, we’re talking about letting go of the ideas that won’t lead to innovation, that won’t push the company forward.

Companies that don’t promote psychological safety just kill ideas. They fail to innovate and keep up with the times and sometimes that leads to their downfall. Take Kodak for example. They filed for bankruptcy in 2012 because they couldn’t keep up with the digital market. Film was becoming a thing of the past and they refused to let go of it. They had numerous opportunities to jump into the digital era, even spent billions to design digital technology, but ultimately they killed the idea because they were afraid of film becoming obsolete. Imagine what that did to the psychological safety of the team that worked on that project. To spend so much time and effort on an idea only to have it killed in the end because the company didn’t want to innovate.

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Lorrie Coffey�lac@horizonpointconsulting.com��

@ohmyHR

horizonpointconsulting.com

The Point Blog �