Build High performing teams

High-performing teams have one thing in common. Their members share a feeling that one can speak their mind without fear. They know they can:

• Ask questions.
• Raise concerns.
• Offer crazy ideas.

While knowing that they will not suffer any repercussion if they made a mistake or said something that is not popular, this was the conclusion of Project Aristotle, a multiyear study that Google ran.

but this is not a new idea, a lot of organizations had, at one time or another, made it a priority to promote an environment where people can take on risks safely, as a gateway to building high-performing teams.

These organizations concluded, after years of research, that inviting their employee to speak, listen to what they have to say, and adjust the plan accordingly when it is needed is the number one factor in contributing to team performance.

And it makes complete sense. In a workplace full of uncertainty, you need as much input as you can from the people closest to the work being done, to see the full picture. Yes, not all that you will get is something worth pursuing, but it is better to hear it and not act on it, than not hear at all.

If an employee knows of an innovative technology that can save you time and money in building your products, is it better for the company that they talk about it, even if said technology is not integrated into your production line or they don't? Or if another employee noticed a defect that may cause a delay in production in the future, is it better if they mention this to their superiors or not?

Examples like these may seem too broad and simplistic to reflect any real-life situation, but the truth is, all the serious issues that harm performance can be boiled down to some variation of, someone with the resource and the authority to act was not aware of the problem, while people who were aware didn't have what it take to do something.

So, a real solution to these problems is to remove any burden that is stopping people from speaking up. Basically, to create a culture of psychological safety.

Psychological safety, refer to an environment at work where employee feel they can speak their minds. In essence, psychological safety is permission for candor as Amy Edmondson, the Harvard Business School Professor who quoted the term would say.

When Professor Edmondson was doing some research about what makes some teams perform better and how this correlated to the number of mistakes they make. She found that high-performing teams made more, not fewer errors.

This might sound counterintuitive, after all, we all know that a whole mark of high-performing people and organizations is that they do an excellent job, that any excellence is free of mistakes. But after some more digging, the researchers found that the reality is not that those teams made more mistakes, but they were more willing to speak about it.

This simple habit of not being afraid of talking about what went wrong created an environment where learning can happen, where employees don’t have to make the same mistake as their colleagues, since they know what said colleagues tried and did not work.

Imagine if you work in a big company, and you manage to get all your colleagues to openly talk about what they did wrong, and what they think they should do better next time. All the resources that will be saved by not trying something that another person has already tried and did not work.

This reality might sound too good to be true, but it is achievable. By working to make speaking up something so easy that it is hard to not talk, we can help each other and the organizations we work for.

So, fostering a workplace permeated by a feeling of psychological safety is a quintessential step throughout reaching a high level of performance. And it is the responsibility of all leaders to help put in place tools and practice that make this possible.

Learn more about what can Fiill do to help you promote a culture of psychological safety.