Psychological Safety = High Performing Teams

Psychological safety is the foundation of high-performing teams because it invites vulnerability-based trust that is necessary to take risks, have healthy conflict, innovate, make good decisions and deliver collective results. With it teams thrive!

A recent Harvard Business Review article shares some research on how to engender psychological safety from a study on high-performing teams at Google:

1. Make friends with conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary. Ask yourself, what is trying to happen here vs. what is wrong.

2. Speak human to human. Meet each other as equals in your humanity regardless of title, class, gender, culture. Instead of thinking you are higher (better) or lower (worse) ask how is this person just like me?

3. Anticipate different perspectives. Focus on content not identity.

4. Replace judgment with curiosity. Go for understanding vs. being right.

5. Invite and give feedback. Illuminate blindspots productively. Capture lessons learned. Correct vs. punish.

6. Create team agreements on how you will handle conflict and mistakes.

Click here for the entire article "High Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety" by Laura Delizonna

Staying Clean Amidst Change

Change can bring out our best or our worst. When we are leaving a position, struggling with a new leader, managing a conflict or wrestling with a decision beyond our influence, how do we do the right thing when we don't feel like it? When our emotions are triggered and all over the board, how can we stay integral, get our needs met and not "burn any bridges?" 

Staying clean means managing our own emotional reactions without burdening or slandering others. It is the height of emotional intelligence. 

To stay clean amidst change, experiment with these ideas:

• Whether you are right or not, interact with compassion
• Bring love versus malice 
• Name/claim what is going on for you without projecting it on others
• Seek to resolve creatively rather than reactively
• Define reality (including constraints) and make choices that benefit all 
• Manage your own emotional reactions productively and don’t collude with others about the situation 
• Focus on what you can influence
• Share what is going on with you so others don't take it personally
• Do your job well
• Avoid the tendency to gossip, complain, or defend
• Meet challenge from a neutral or centered place
• Name what you are feeling and seek to resolve without blame
• Focus on lessons learned instead of mistakes
• Don’t take sides or expect others to do so either
• Breathe deeply, pause

If you can look your adversary (or those involved) in the eye AND face yourself in the mirror, you are clear, clean and will sleep better too!

Mastering Constructive Interaction

If you want to advance your career or grow in your leadership, master constructive interaction. Our differences can become sources of conflict without understanding and appreciation. Work styles, values, culture, talents, goals, experiences, awareness levels, interests, purpose and viewpoints make us unique (and crazy at times).

How can we value diversity and collaborate (instead of protecting, fighting or accommodating) in the presence of discord? Experiment with the ideas below to transform the energy of conflict into stronger relationships and win-win outcomes: 

• Acknowledge conflict: Name it without making anyone wrong
• Reframe conflict: It is not "bad" but the old making way for the new
• Recognize conflict styles: Value cooperation and assertiveness with the Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument 
• Articulate benefits: What is gained by working with others?
• Figure out what can you say yes to: Check out William Ury's The Power of a Positive No
• Be transparent with decisions: State if you are making a decision, making it with input from others, voting or going for consensus
• Be agile: Proactively assess what's working, what's not and what needs to change
• Practice direct communication: Say it straight without sugar coating or sandwiching (good, bad, good)
• Speak thought bubbles out loud: Articulate what you are making up before it turns into an elephant
• Stay centered: Check out Thomas Crum's The Magic of Conflict 
• Be curious: Choose fascination over judgment
• Build your EQ, SQ and TQ: Learn emotional, social and team system awareness and management skills: Check out Travis Bradley's Emotional Intelligence 2.0 
• Elevate the conversation: Discuss common vision and goals
• Check yourself: Is some part of you looking for a fight? Is your identity attached to something?
• Don't hide: Break out with the Question Behind the Question 
• Learn needs-based communication: Enable everyone to win with Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communication 

Barriers to High Performance on Teams

While it's important to understand and apply the factors of team success it's just as important to anticipate and illuminate obstacles. The very diversity that engenders innovation, problem solving and synergy can interfere in optimal team work if it's not valued or respected.

Patrick Lencioni in his book "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" identifies absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results as the things that impede team performance.

Here are a few other ideas to explore if you are struggling to flow through interpersonal challenges that are a natural part of team work. How are you:

• Giving voice to varying perceptions, assumptions and mindsets without making anyone wrong? 
• Recognizing and minimizing team toxins (blame, defensiveness, stonewalling and contempt)?
• Understanding and honoring different work, leadership and communication styles?
• Distinguishing between barriers (which can be overcome) and limitations (which are constraints that can't)?
• Establishing meaningful and relevant direction?
• Aligning individual and team needs?
• Leveraging talents and fueling passions?

High performing teams expect obstacles because they inform and can change the course of any valuable endeavor for the better!