One of the most common areas I work with teams on is how well the team is functioning. Unfortunately, many of us have experienced a toxic or dysfunctional team environment. Awkward silences, little eye contact, one person (often the most senior) doing most of the talking… In these teams, it’s pretty clear that things aren’t great.
But often people will say their team gets on pretty well. I often hear things like: “We all get on and like each other – in fact, sometimes it feels like we’re a family…” (which can ring alarm bells for me, because who knows a family that isn’t in some way dysfunctional?).
But there’s a big difference between people getting on and a highly effective team. In his book ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’, Patrick Lencioni describes the features of dysfunctional teams and how they are connected. He also describes how to build a high performing team using the same model.
At the heart of building a high performing team is what Lencioni calls vulnerability-based trust. What he means by this is to feel safe asking for help, admitting to mistakes, saying we don’t know, expressing how we feel and what we want.
In many organisational contexts, this can be hard to do due to fears of seeming incompetent, being embarrassed or rejected. Psychological danger can feel as powerful as physical danger, so we often protect ourselves by masking our vulnerabilities in order to avoid judgement or worse. If we all wear such a mask, then no-one is willing to be vulnerable because no-one else is. And this can become even more pronounced the more senior we become as leaders. Ultimately, this creates an environment where individual success, ego and status dominate, and the team or collective goal gets pushed to one side in the fight for survival.
Which is a travesty, not only because it can be unpleasant working in an environment like this, but also because we know that when people work together, bringing their collective and diverse strengths, approaches and views, so much more is created than any group of individuals can do on their own.
So where do teams start if they would like to create a healthy, thriving, creative and successful environment? The first step is to develop vulnerability-based trust. And this means creating a psychologically safe team.
Dr Amy Edmonson coined the phrase ‘psychological safety’ through her research of teams. She describes it as:
‘… a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes’.
This comes from the very real fear described above of looking stupid or incompetent, not belonging, not having a purpose and/ or being blamed, embarassed or rejected. These fears go to the very heart of human needs – safety, belonging, self-esteem, fulfilment of potential – and in an attempt to protect those needs, we may feel it is too risky to speak up.
For individuals, this can result in low motivation, loss of confidence and self doubt, insecurity, misalignment with own values, high stress and anxiety and lower performance.
Ladder that up to a team or organisational level, and we see:
“Compared with people at low-trust companies, people at high-trust companies report: 74% less stress, 106% more energy at work, 50% higher productivity, 13% fewer sick days, 76% more engagement, 29% more satisfaction with their lives, 40% less burnout.”
(HBR Jan-Feb 2017)
However, psychological safety isn’t about being nice all the time. Nor is it an excuse for poor performance or lack of accountability or unearned autonomy. A psychologically safe environment means being able to hold each other to account in the right way, because everyone is committed to the team goal.
You can do a team survey to gather feedback (suggested resources are below) – although of course this relies on people feeling safe enough to be honest. Other indicators include:
There are 4 stages of safety and each can be worked on before moving on to the next one:
Amy Edmondson summarises developing psychological safety as moving away from blame and humiliation to curiosity and learning. This involves you, as an individual, being aware of the impact of your own behaviours, the team as a whole developing the skill set to nurture safety, and a team culture that holds together the fabric of the team and its evolution over time.
Nature can tell us a lot about teamwork. Dolphins are adept at sharing responsibility and opportunity. Bees are great at creating clear roles and strong interdependencies. Wolves support each other and use the strengths of each team member to delegate to.
What can you and your team learn from nature to be a safer, happier and more effective place?
Photo by steffen wienberg on Unsplash
Watch:
Building a psychologically safe workplace | Amy Edmondson | TEDxHGSE – youtube.com
Building Psychological Safety In The Workplace (Amy Edmondson's 3 Steps for Managers) – youtube.com
Read:
What Is Psychological Safety? – hbr.org
The Four Stages of Psychological Safety – mentorloop.com
4 Steps to Boost Psychological Safety at Your Workplace – hbr.org
Which animals can teach us about teamwork? – surfoffice.com
Do:
Test the psychological safety in your team – fearlessorganizationscan.com
The Five Dysfunctions – Online Team Assessment | The Table Group – tablegroup.com
