90 Days to Level Up Your Teamwork

Part IIWrap-Up

Performance goal: Team fearlessly with psychological safety.

Psychological safety is not immunity from consequences, nor is it a state of high self-regard. In psychologically safe workplaces, people know they might fail, they might receive performance feedback that says they’re not meeting expectations, and they might lose their jobs due to changes in the industry environment or even to a lack of competence in their role.

But in a psychologically safe workplace, people are not hindered by interpersonal fear. They feel willing and able to take the inherent interpersonal risks of candor.

Questions

1. Twenty-five years of research on psychological safety finds positive benefits for learning, engagement, and performance in a wide range of organizations. Have you worked in an environment where you felt psychologically safe? How did it compare to those where you did not?
2. Creating an environment that values employees yields benefits in engagement, problem-solving, and performance. Why do you think so many organizations create environments where employees don’t feel valued?

Activity

For this activity, get a paper and pen to write answers to these prompts.

A lack of psychological safety can create an illusion of success that eventually turns into a serious business failure. Can you think of an example (from your own career or from the news) of a time when an illusion of success was created by fear of speaking out about failure? Do you think things would have been ...