To Lead an Innovative, High Value-Add Team, Lead Psychological Safety
Posted on June 28, 2023 by Pam McBride, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.
"Psychological Safety" isn't about "snowflakes" - it's creating conditions that allow your team's game-changing insights to surface and evolve
If you want an innovative, high value-add team, make sure it’s a psychologically safe team.
A psychologically safe team is one where team members feel confident they belong in the room, and that they will not be punished for trying to add value to the team. In particular, that means that surfacing mistakes, areas of risk, areas for growth, alternate perspectives in pursuit of better team impact is not treated as negativism or disloyalty but instead is treated as a courageous gift to the team and its stakeholders.
It also means that your team will back you in making experiments and taking risks that are calculated to advance the team’s mission or resources. Including when the experiment “fails” and “all” you get is the data.
You may assume it already feels safe for everybody on your team to show up, to learn, to contribute, to challenge or raise hard questions — and it may be, in which case I congratulate you!
But consider whether everybody has the same reasons to feel safe that you do: tenure, authority, relationships, in-group membership.
What indicators of welcomeness and safety, or lack thereof, are there in the way you run your meetings, for instance? In the way you engage with dotted-line contributors?
What great ideas could you get into the room if everybody felt part of the in-crowd, rather than that they were interrupting an ongoing conversation?
