20. Psychological Safety Starts With Your Leadership Team
Sep 30, 2024
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Psychological safety isn’t just about being nice; it’s a complex ecosystem that deeply affects team dynamics. Leadership teams often suffer from a lack of trust, making it hard for members to speak up or admit mistakes. The discussion reveals the massive impact of shutting someone down and emphasizes the importance of accountability. Humor and relatable anecdotes highlight how clear communication and genuine interactions can foster a safe environment. Open dialogues around growth are crucial for building collaboration and trust among leaders.
True psychological safety transcends politeness, allowing individuals to share divergent viewpoints without fear of retribution, crucial for team effectiveness.
Leadership teams face unique challenges in fostering psychological safety due to power dynamics, necessitating transparency and accountability to build trust.
Deep dives
Understanding Psychological Safety
Psychological safety is characterized by the feeling of safety among team members to take risks without fear of punishment or negative consequences. It is often misconstrued as a need for teams to simply be nice to one another, but true psychological safety allows individuals to express divergent viewpoints and question groupthink. Research, such as Google's Project Aristotle, indicates that this environment is a key predictor of a team's effectiveness. Thus, fostering an atmosphere where team members feel empowered to voice concerns and contribute ideas is crucial for organizational success.
The Impact of Leadership Dynamics
Leadership teams often struggle with establishing psychological safety due to underlying power dynamics and the high stakes associated with their roles. The presence of perceived soft and hard power can create turbulent relationships, leading to competition and distrust among team members. Leaders have to actively clarify their roles and decision-making authority to avoid confusion that could undermine safety. When leaders model transparency and accountability, it sets a standard that encourages risk-taking and trust-building within the team.
Moving Past Performative Harmony
Teams that exhibit low psychological safety may appear to function well due to their lack of overt conflict, but this often masks deeper issues of unspoken truths and unresolved tensions. Such environments stifle open communication as individuals hold back their opinions to avoid backlash. Developing a culture that openly acknowledges growth edges and imperfections can counteract this facade. By fostering honest conversations about growth areas, leaders can normalize vulnerability and break down barriers to genuine collaboration.
The Role of Shared Aims
Establishing clear and collective goals can significantly enhance psychological safety within teams. When team members understand and align on shared objectives, it shifts the focus from individual roles to collaborative efforts. This alignment promotes a deeper level of connection, allowing for candid discussions about risks and challenges. As teams work toward common aims, they cultivate a sense of collective responsibility, enabling them to navigate discomfort and complexities more effectively.
Psychological safety is a buzzy topic every company claims to want—but only a handful actually achieve. Sometimes, it’s misunderstood as being about “niceness” or “politeness”, but real psychological safety is deeper and more complex than that. It’s an ecosystem of behaviors that add up over time to impact how your team shows up day after day.
Unfortunately, this misconception has a stranglehold on most leadership teams as well, who spend more time talking the talk than walking the walk. We’ve seen and worked with many executive teams over the years where people didn’t feel comfortable speaking up, challenging ideas, admitting mistakes, or sharing concerns without fearing retribution or embarrassment. When that’s happening inside the team responsible for some of a business’s biggest decisions, there are big consequences.
In today’s episode, Rodney and Sam break down why leadership teams often feel the most psychologically unsafe, how to move the needle on developing trust, and why a ropes course can’t solve a team or organization’s culture problems.
(Producer’s note: Ok, so we're zero for two this week with Sam's mic going rogue after Rodney's mishap last episode. Taylor's been working some major magic lately. Hopefully third time's the charm with episode 21 🤞)
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