There are always good reasons for choosing behaviors that undermine psychological safety. It is often more efficient to cut off debate, to make a quick decision, to listen to whoever knows the most and ask others to hold their tongues. But a team will become an amplification of its internal culture, for better or worse. Study after study shows that while psychological safety might be less efficient in the short run, it’s more productive over time. If motivation comes from giving individuals a greater sense of control, then psychological safety is the caveat we must remember when individuals come together in a group. Establishing control requires more than just seizing self-determination. Being a subversive works, unless you’re leading a team. When people come together in a group, sometimes we need to give control to others. That’s ultimately what team norms are: individuals willingly giving a measure of control to their teammates. But that works only when people feel like they can trust one another. It only succeeds when we feel psychologically safe.
Long-term productivity over short-term gains. We all might have experienced times where we wanted to cut a team member off, end discussion early or felt irritated at having to explain yourself repeatedly. Yet, while we could have been more efficient with time by cutting your team member off, it is unproductive in the long run as team members will no longer feel safe to report issues and share new suggestions.
In this book, Duhigg talks about how Google learned to identify that it is not about the individuals that make a team “strong” and high-performing, but the team dynamics. Teams that were able to consistently achieve psychological safety for team members were the most high-performing ones.
We spend so much time thinking about putting the best individuals together. But achieving the best results comes from the dynamics of teams.
