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Abstract
ased on their tone of voice, their expressions, and other nonverbal cues. People on those teams have high sensitivity toward their colleagues.</p><p id="2ec5">So, if you are given a choice between a serious-minded team A — filled with smart people, all optimized for peak individual efficiency, and few exchanges of personal information that lets teammates pick up on what people are feeling or leaving unsaid — and a free-flowing team B, you should probably opt for the second one. In team B, people may speak over one another and socialize instead of remaining focused on the agenda. This may seem inefficient but all the team members are sensitive to one another’s moods and share personal stories and emotions. As result, the team might not contain as many individual stars, but the sum will be greater than its parts.</p><p id="e1f6">Within psychology, researchers refer to traits like ‘‘conversational turn-taking’’ and ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ as aspects of what’s known as <i>psychological safety</i> — a group culture or a team climate that the Harvard Business School professor <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3boKz0Exros">Amy Edmondson</a> defines as:</p><p id="1640" type="7">“Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.”</p><blockquote id="76f4"><p><i>“No one wakes up in the morning to go to the work to look ignorant (don’t ask questions), incompetent (don’t admit weakness or mistakes), intrusive (don’t offer details), negative (don’t critique the status quo). This strategy works for self-protection.” </i>Edmondson said.</p></blockquote><h1 id="34bb">5 key characteristics of perfect teams</h1><p id="a163">To achieve successful teamwork, Google’s data has indicated that different parameters are important, but psychological safety was critical.</p><ol><li><b>Psychological safety:</b> to feel safe in taking risks and be vulnerable in front of other team members.</li><li><b>Dependability:</b> to get things done on time with quality.</li><li><b>Structure and clarity:</b> to have clear roles, plans, and goals.</li><li><b>Meaning: </b>to have a sense of purpose and feel that your work is personally important (financial security, supporting family, helping the team succeed, etc).</li><li><b>Impact:</b> to see that your work matters and creates change.</li></ol><figure id="bc01"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*e3m9fCz5MelPQcYomDJMdA.png"><figcaption>Identify the dynamics of effective teams (<a href="https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness/steps/identify-dynamics-of-effective-teams/">source</a>)</figcaption></figure><h1 id="4248">Establishing psychological safety</h1><p id="954d">Establishing psychological safety is somewhat messy and difficult to implement. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUo1QwVcCv0">recipe of Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson</a> to build a psychologically safe workplace includes three points:</p><ol><li>Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem. And recognize that there’s enormous uncertainty ahead and enormous interdependence. That creates the rationale for speaking up.</li><li>Acknowledge your own fallibility. That creates more safety for speaking up.</li><li>Model curiosity and ask a lot of questions. That creates a necessity for voice.</li></ol><p id="7b1e">Edmondson insists that to succeed, team members must be <i>humble</i> in the face of the challenge ahead, <i>curious </i>about what others bring, and <i>willing </i>to take risks to learn quickly.</p><p id="3a49">In his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html">post</a> in the New York Times, Charles Duhigg<b> </b>has shown a real case of implementing psychological safety and changing the stereotype of tech people often known for being more comfortable working with computers than with people.</p><p id
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="6009">After seeing the published result of Project Aristotle and the output of a survey indicating that his team is not as strong as he thought, Matt Sakaguchi — a manager at Google — gathered his tech guys and began asking everyone to share something personal about themselves. He went first and told the group that he has Stage 4 cancer which was surprising and shocking for them. Then, teammates stood one by one and shared their own struggles about health issues, difficult breakup, and other small frictions, and everyday annoyances. They found it easier to speak honestly about the things that had been bothering them and agreed to adopt some new norms and try harder to notice when someone on the team was feeling excluded or down.</p><p id="5643">To Sakaguchi, it made sense that psychological safety and emotional conversations were related. They belong to the same unwritten rules we often use as individuals to bond with each other:</p><p id="fb19" type="7">“… to be fully present at work, to feel ‘psychologically safe,’ we must know that we can be free enough, sometimes, to share the things that scare us without fear of recriminations. We must be able to talk about what is messy or sad, to have hard conversations with colleagues who are driving us crazy. We can’t be focused just on efficiency… We want to know that work is more than just labor …</p><p id="e726" type="7">… it’s not only Google that loves numbers, or Silicon Valley that shies away from emotional conversations. Most work-places do. ‘By putting things like empathy and sensitivity into charts and data reports, it makes them easier to talk about,’ Sakaguchi told me.” — Charles Duhigg</p><h1 id="0b28">Final thoughts</h1><p id="cc0e">In our try to optimize everything, we forget sometimes that success is often built on human experiences. Experiences that could make people bring their full selves for the challenging job ahead if we understand the usefulness of imperfection and figure out how to create psychological safety in a more productive way.</p><p id="f1bc" type="7">“In our silos, we can get things done. But when we step back and reach out and reach across, miracles can happen.” — Amy Edmondson</p><p id="4a4b">🧠💡 I write about engineering, technology, and leadership for a community of smart, curious people. <a href="https://rakiabensassi.substack.com/"><b>Join my free email newsletter for exclusive access</b></a><b> </b>or sign up for Medium <a href="https://rakiabensassi.medium.com/membership">here</a>.</p><p id="3443"><i>You can check my <b>video course</b> on Udemy: <a href="https://www.udemy.com/course/identify-and-fix-javascript-memory-leaks/">How to Identify, Diagnose, and Fix Memory Leaks in Web Apps</a>.</i></p><div id="653a" class="link-block">
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