Psychological Safety and High Performing Teams: Reasons and Application

The simplest way to gauge whether your team culture has enough psychological safety is how each team member answers the question 'If I do X here, will I be hurt, embarrassed, or criticised?'[1]

By Charlotte Canales Chung, C.Mgr. | Chartered Managers Canada

A possible misunderstanding of what psychological safety prevents leaders from prioritising this vital attribute of the culture. Nembhard and Edmondson clarify, “psychological safety does not imply a cozy environment in which people are close friends, nor does it suggest an absence of pressure or problems. Rather, it describes a climate in which the focus can be on productive discussion that enables early prevention of problems and the accomplishment of shared goals, because people are less likely to focus on self-protection.”[2] Timothy Clark provides four stages of psychological safety: inclusion as a basic human right, safe to learn, safe to contribute and safe to challenge.[3] Psychological safety fosters an environment where staff of all levels positively contribute to the organisation. Our concern in this brief essay is on high-performing teams and Clark’s fourth stage where the culture is safe to challenge and facilitate peak performance.

Today, rapid changes occur, requiring organisations and teams to constantly adapt. For-profit organisation clients demand their service providers to be agile to their fast-changing needs. Therefore, teams must constantly evolve with the dynamic situation of customers. Summaries of various studies spanning multiple industries show that psychological safety has a direct impact to the staff’s ability to speak up about issues, collaborate with diverse team members and experiment.[4] They cited the 3M safe environment that allowed for multiple failures which birthed the “3M Post It Notes we use today.”[5] Psychological safety is a key attribute of the culture in order to foster organisational learning.

The peak performance of the team is when the sum of the team is greater than the sum of the team members; when they produce a product or service that only a high-performing team can create. Innovation can easily be a cliché, but when it truly occurs in practice, we see the output of a highly collaborative team delivering value to respond to the need(s) of the stakeholders. Clark succinctly describes why psychological safety must be deepest if leaders are to ask the highest request from staff – challenge the status quo. He explains, “If the organisation wants candor, [staff] needs cover. [Staff] need real and sustained air cover to be brave enough to take what is almost always a substantial personal risk.”[6] Not only are we asking the staff for their best work, but we are also asking the staff to collaborate with his team and create something new. Failure is part of this exploration/experimentation.[7]

As a practitioner, I have learnt that the key application to enhance team psychological safety is for the leader to provide social protection to staff by building professional-appropriate relationships. The staff needs to know that they have your back, both in the project being completed and in a broader context of the office culture. As an example, in our annual department training, I constantly encourage staff to co-present a 1-hour technical segment. Not only will the staff and I prepare the material together; depending on the competency of the staff, I would enquire if they would like to be the primary presenter of a part of the training. I always get positive feedback from this request, although the amount they are the primary presenter varies with their level. A staff member provided feedback on this process and mentioned that she was comfortable to try it because she knew that I can immediately step in if she has any problems. The staff found the courage to step out of their comfort zone and try something difficult, something new for them, because they knew I was behind them all the way. Every year, I get to provide opportunities for staff to expand their professional skills and they always say yes, and the whole department grow in the process.