The Importance of Psychological Safety in Team Development

Abstract

The concept of psychological safety was introduced over twenty years ago by Edmonson . It entails the creation of a safe space where the individual members of a team can express their ideas and concerns in the workplace, knowing that they will be listened to and not judged. When Team Psychological Safety (TPS) is achieved, a sense of interpersonal trust is developed among the teammates, which leads to positive outcomes. The benefits that TPS brings to the overall team performance are such as reducing the fear of taking risks, increases the innovation potential of a team . Therefore, it is important for a PMO to promote psychological safety as a way to seek the best performance of the team. Now, two main issues for the PMO arise i) how is TPS achieved and; ii) when does it emerge?

The first issue is explored by conducting a literature review with a view to understanding the nature of TPS, as well as the qualitative and quantitative assessments of the same. The latter is addressed by exploring Tuckman’s Model of Team Development. This model is widely recognized and referenced, where five stages are identified are: forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning. The present work analyzes the aforementioned stages of team development as function of the development of psychological safety . The case, in which a newly created engineering team is formed, will address where and how TPS is sparked, as well as its role and evolution through the stages of team development. Lastly, new strategies will be proposed for leaders to promote the development of TPS in the early stages, creating a supportive work environment.

Introduction

The quality of a team is defined by its direct performance and the working relationships both within the team and externally in the organization. Therefore, achieving goals and meeting expectations in an effective way is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a perfect team. Understanding the relationship between the individual members and their shared culture is important to understand how to strive for success.

In 2012, Google engaged in Project Aristotle to determine what makes a team succeed. The devoted researchers analyzed hundreds of teams within the company and found that, for analogous team structures and expertise, success levels were significantly different. There was no clear pattern to identify the characteristics of the perfect team. When the lead researchers stumbled on the term “psychological safety”, there was a change of paradigm. It had been seen that group dynamics had a direct impact on the productivity levels of the teams. When people had the space to express themselves and shared a mutual understanding of the tasks, work was handled better. It became clear how important team leaders (project/program/ portfolio managers) were to achieve this safe space. For example, a member of a high-performing team states that the leader was ‘‘direct and straightforward, which creates a safe space for you to take risks’’. Conversely, poor leadership and lack of emotional control led to lower performance.

The aforementioned concept of psychological safety refers to the "shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking". In Team Psychological Safety, members share a common understanding of the norms that define them as a whole rather than as individuals. Team members respect each other and will not embarrass or sanction another peer for being themselves or taking risks.

The term of TPS is not usually made explicit. However, team development models are more commonly spread and look into by PMs. This work provides an image on how can TPS positively influence team development.

Psychological safety in teams

Benefits

Hereunder, several benefits of team psychological safety are presented in terms of the value they bring to project managers .

• Open communication: in a psychologically safe team, members feel confident in expressing themselves without fearing any punishment. This lack of punishment also makes team members admit their mistakes faster, giving the leader advantage to act sooner. Moreover, information and knowledge across the team are easily transmitted, which increases the situational awareness of the project manager and the rest of the team.

• Learning behaviour: at an individual level, TPS increases learning behaviour. Being able to fail, allows members and the team to learn from their mistakes. Learning behaviours play a role in the team's growth and strength.

• Increased innovation: being able to take risks lead to higher innovation rates. Moreover, it was proved that psychological safety led to critical thinking in teams.

• Employee attitude: in a psychologically safe team, members have a positive attitude towards the team and the workplace. As far as managers are concern, a positive employee attitude means a higher commitment and performance.

• Improved performance: one of the main goals for project managers is improving performance. When teams feel free to voice their ideas and collaborate, important discussions arise. It has been proved that the aforementioned learning behaviour has an indirect effect towards improving performance.

• Talk about the lack of psychological safety

Important idea "It sparks the kind of behaviour that leads to market breakthroughs"

How to create psychological safety

• "Approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary"
• "Speak human to human"
• "Anticipate reactions and plan countermoves"
• "Replace blame with curiosity"
• "Ask for feedback on delivery"
• "Measure psychological safety"

Psychological safety is measured in a qualitative way. Periodic reviews.

Improving psychological safety

• Make the point of talking explicitly about psychological safety, making all employees aware.
• Propose specific measures to promote it

Tuckman's Model of Team Development and Psychological Safety

Overview of Tuckman's Model

In his team development model, professor Bruce Tuckman distinguishes between interpersonal relations among group members (group structure) and task activity in the different stages of team development. The core identified stages are forming, storming, norming and performing. After a revisit to the model, a fifth stage was added: adjourning. The following aspects were identified in natural group settings, where tasks were rather impersonal. This is usually the case with technical engineering tasks. The characteristics of each stage will be described taking an engineering team as an example.

Five Stages of Team Development

• Forming: In this phase, the main roles are defined. The leadership role is given by the position, in this case, the project manager holds it. At this time, both the project manager and other team members have space for testing and understanding the team's boundaries. There is also room for exploring and scoping the task to determine how the team can approach it.

• Storming: This stage is characterized by the emotional response of the team members to conflict. Leadership problems arise, thus animosity among the engineers emerges and hierarchies are re-established. The storming phase has a lower relevance on intellectual and impersonal tasks, as it tends not to affect at a personal level.

• Norming: The team accepts each other and understands the differences between them, a common language between the team is found and interpersonal relationships grow. In the task activity domain, the team members openly express their opinion and evaluation of the developed work.

• Performing: In this phase, the team is characterized by its solid establishment. They have the ability to adopt their roles and perform the expected tasks as a competent team. Engineers are confident in performing their tasks while still relying on each other.

• Adjourning: missing info - still reviewing literature

The following figure relates team effectiveness vs time. It can be seen that the storming phase takes place at a rather early time and represents the lowest effectiveness of the team performance.

Analysis of the five stages of team development from a TPS point of view

A thorough analysis of psychological safety --> finding common points with team development stages

Discussion and limitations

The role of psychological safety in each stage of team development

• Talk about how implementing measures to ensure psychological safety can "dampen" the negative effects of the storming phase and impact team effectiveness.
• Ideally, hypothesize how the new graph of team development would look like

• Determine which stage of the team development it affects the most/ should be fostered. First guess: actions in the forming phase.

Limitations

• Try to find out how it works in the long term
• Define "time"
• What happens if the staff changes, does the whole process start again or old members are fixed with the previous tacit norms??

Conclusion

Comments for peergrade

• I am not sure if it would be more appropriate to change the title to "The Role of Psychological Safety in Team Development" or "The Influence of Psychological Safety in Team Development"
• I do not know if the structure that the article has now makes sense

Disclaimer The references are not correctly added because I did not manage to include them correctly

Annotated bibliography

• Occupational health and safety management - Psychological health and safety at work - Guides for managing psychological risks