90 Days to Level Up Your Teamwork

Week 6Creating Psychological Safety

Benchmark goal: Make it safe to team.

On January 16, 2003, the space shuttle Columbia was successfully launched from the Kennedy Space Center on a 16-day research mission. The next day, shuttle engineer Rodney Rocha reviewed a video of the launch and became deeply concerned about the size and position of a chunk of insulating foam that appeared to have fallen off the shuttle’s external tank and struck its left wing. The video images were grainy, and it was impossible to be sure what had happened. To determine whether damage had occurred, Rocha hoped to obtain photographic images of the shuttle’s wing from spy satellites. Although the photos would have to be authorized by the Air Force, the request would require neither a technical nor financial miracle. It did mean that NASA would have to ask for help from the Department of Defense.

Rocha initially expressed the need for the satellite images in an email to his immediate superior, emphasizing the urgency by using boldfaced type. When he learned that his request was unlikely to be honored, Rocha wrote a scathing email: “Remember the NASA safety poster everywhere around, stating, ‘If it’s not safe, say so?’ Yes, it’s that serious.” He didn’t send the email to the mission manager, however; he only shared it with fellow engineers. Later, he explained that “engineers were often told not to send messages much higher than their own rung in the ladder.”

Discouraged by his early efforts to call attention ...