As I am writing this, the US elections have just happened and the vote count is going down to a final few states. If Trump is not re-elected it is a good time to reflect on his time in office, and especially his track record with his team. Did you know that 91% of his core team changed over his term? Whether removed, ‘resigned under pressure’ or simply resigned, that is quite a score. It includes six Communications Directors (including Anthony ‘the mooch’ Scaramucci, who famously spent just 10 days in his role) and nine Chiefs and Deputy Chiefs of Staff.
Can you imagine working for a boss like ‘the Donald’? Or perhaps you do? What would it do to your behaviour? Would it make you say what you think? Go out on a limb? Or would you play it safe, only doing what you are told, and saying what you believe the boss wants to hear?
I have been discussing – and working on - team safety for years now, especially in the context of self-managing teams. If the onus is on you, as a team, to discuss and manage performance, make decisions on what you could do better, on whether to hire new colleagues, and on many other less and more important matters, being able to speak your mind and discuss matters openly are pretty essential. You would need to feel safe to be able to raise – sometimes difficult – topics without fear of it affecting you personally or the dynamics within the group.
It turns out this feeling of safety affects not only self-managing teams. As it happens it is regarded a crucial factor when it comes to team performance in general. When Google researched extensively what made the difference between teams’ performance under Project Aristotle (https://nyti.ms/3eAaORa), it came down to how team mates treated one another. It didn’t matter how bright the team members were, or whether they would hang out in their spare time, how strong their leader was, or how well-structured their meetings. It transpired that two key factors made the difference.
Firstly, in good teams, members spoke generally in equal proportions of time. Whether in series of monologues depending on the topic, or in lively discussions on each didn’t seem to matter. But at the end of the day, everyone would have spoken for roughly the same amount. If one person or a few people dominated, the collective intelligence of the team appeared to decline.
Secondly, the good teams appeared to score higher on emotional intelligence. They were able to sense how other team members were doing based on subtle clues, such as the tone of their voice, their facial expressions and other non-verbal signs. And acted upon it. Less effective teams scored substantially lower on this dimension.
It is interesting to note these two traits, especially for an organisation like Google, composed largely of software engineers who you would perhaps not automatically associate with scoring high on emotional skills.
Another thought that springs to mind is how our Covid-induced working from home practice, using Zoom and other remote working technology, affects these two aspects. We all know how more difficult it is to have a free-flowing conversation on conference calls, and to make sure that everyone is involved. And it is even harder to gauge how everyone is doing emotionally, as subtle clues are largely lost on the small screen and natural water-cooler conversations are no longer available.
These two aspects (of shared talking time and emotional attentiveness) are actually two important building blocks of what has become known as ‘psychological safety’. A concept identified and described by professor Amy Edmondson of Harvard Business School, psychological safety is broadly defined as a climate in which people are comfortable expressing and being themselves. It is the belief that the work environment is safe for interpersonal risk taking. It refers therefore to the experience of feeling able to speak up with relevant ideas, questions or concerns.
Now your initial response to this might be: surely this is not a big deal, I am a grown-up and not afraid to speak my mind?! However, when you think about it, there are countless examples where the short-term gain of not speaking up (“I may embarrass myself to my colleagues if I’m wrong”, or “I know the boss won’t like this and I don’t want to end up on the black list”) is very tempting versus the longer term potential of avoiding an issue or creating an innovative solution … that may not even materialise. That these human instincts are very strong can be illustrated by examples of professionals not even speaking up in cases where matters of life and death were at stake, such as the KLM-Pan Am disaster at Tenerife in 1977 or the Columbia space shuttle catastrophe in 2003.
In her book ‘The fearless organization’ Edmondson describes how truly high-performing teams display high psychological safety AND set high standards. They manage to deal with the challenges of a complex and volatile world by collaborating openly and learning and innovating as they go along. In her twenty years or research and practice, Edmondson has identified how norms of workplace silence affect psychological safety; those unspoken rules of what not to say and when not to say it. She also shows how psychological safety supports learning in the workplace, for instance through error sharing and risk-taking. She discusses how performance relates to psychological safety, as in the Google experience, and makes the case for it as the key to employee engagement. Finally she found that psychological safety relates positively to remote working, the impact of conflicts and how diversity in the workplace results in a more positive climate.
So how do you do it then, creating that safe space in which ideas, concerns and questions can be raised and performance can be challenged without it affecting interpersonal relationships?
At Netflix, it is a matter of absolute openness in the organisation, so that feedback is immediate, frank and constructive in all directions and between all layers. Decisions are taken there where the information is, at the frontline, within in a context of innovation and risk-taking which accepts that things may not always work out as hoped, but will at least result in relevant learning.
Within Buurtzorg, psychological safety is supported through a solution-driven, consensus style approach in decision-making and a team view on performance. Rather than getting bogged down in discussions and analyses of who did what when, this encourages looking forward and buy-in from the whole team.
Edmondson echoes some of these approaches. She speaks of:
• Setting the stage for psychological safety. This is about defining clearly ‘what good looks like’ in the work you deliver and how you deliver it. Whether it is zero deaths in mining, or learning from placing big innovative bets in creative productions. This includes re-framing each others’ roles. For the boss from know-it-all to condition-setter, and for others from obedient subordinates to valuable contributors.
• Inviting participation. This starts with the leadership switching into listening mode and being inquisitive and curious. This can be combined with active mechanisms that allow all parts of the organisation to contribute to the collective knowledge and direction of the organisation.
• Responding productively. This consists of making sure that input is visibly appreciated no matter what its nature might be, how failure is seen and treated in the organisation (a moment of learning or of embarrassment?) and how you deal with violations of agreed boundaries.
Of course, I don’t really know how team Trump performs. My impression is that Trump values personal loyalty over anything else and enjoys being the ultimate decision-maker. If the latest vote counts are anything to go by, I fear that for many of his team members this is likely to be the end of the road. In that case, I foresee a large number of memoires being published soon, with titles such as ‘My Trump years - What I really thought’.
If you are interested in these and related topics, check out our new Trust Works website on www.trust-works.co.uk