Chapter 2Open (Up)

Illustration of an action plan called SONIC that stands for  Serve, Open (Up), Nurture, Inspire, and Commit, with the "Open(Up)" option highlighted.

Creating more openness on your team starts with you opening up to your team.

Once you begin to serve those you lead thoughtfully, regularly, and compassionately, being able to get people to believe and follow you becomes a lot easier. The formula is now ready to start mixing; you just need the next ingredient—the willingness of you to be open and then creating a climate where people feel like they can safely open up and take risks.

Safety First

Charles Duhigg, a Pulitzer‐award‐winning journalist and author, wrote an extensive article in the New York Times Magazine about a massive investment and effort that Google undertook in 2012 titled “Project Aristotle.”1 The tech giant wanted to find out what was behind teams that were effective and others that were not. Google statisticians, researchers, sociologists, psychologists, engineers, and others gathered and deciphered data from hundreds of the company's teams trying to find out why some fell below expectations and others exceeded them.

What the Project Aristotle team discovered were five specific things that made the biggest difference on effective teams, with psychological safety being by far the most important of all of them. Amy Edmondson, a Harvard business professor, explained psychological safety as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, ...

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