90 Days to Level Up Your Teamwork

Week 8Working Without Fear

Benchmark goal: Create a fearless organization.

Whenever you are trying to get people on the same page, with common goals and a shared appreciation for what they’re up against, you’re setting the stage for psychological safety. The most important skill to master is that of framing the work. If near perfection is what is needed to satisfy demanding car customers, leaders must know to frame the work by alerting workers to catch and correct tiny deviations before the car proceeds down the assembly line. If zero worker fatalities in a dangerous platinum mine is the goal, leaders must frame physical safety as a worthy and challenging but attainable goal. If discovering new cures is the goal, leaders know to motivate researchers to generate smart hypotheses for experiments and to feel okay about being wrong far more often than right.

Setting the Stage for Psychological Safety

Leaders have a special responsibility for creating psychological safety for their teams, but they also have special tools for doing so. In this week, we look at the tools leaders have for creating an environment where team members feel psychologically safe, productive mistakes are allowed, people can speak their minds, and every employee understands they make a contribution. Table 8.1 is a summary of the leader’s tool kit.

Table 8.1 The Leader’s Tool Kit for Building Psychological Safety

Category	Setting the Stage	Inviting Participation	Responding Productively
Leadership ...