How to Make a Great Team Using Psychological Safety

Psychological safety - it’s the secret sauce du jour for making great teams. This term is all over the internet but the question not really being answered is how a leader actually accomplishes this.

When I was steeped in training for The Collaborative operating system, we were giving leaders the recipe for creating psychological safety on their teams without being cool enough to call it that at the time.

We would say things like “this paradigm and toolset will help you create the conditions that will allow anyone to say what needs to be said.”

this paradigm and toolset will help you create the conditions that allow anyone to say what needs to be said.

Without a robust skill set and paradigm, leaders attempting to create psychological safety might just create a mess.

Because of its popular allure, the term psychological safety has taken on a mysterious, elusive feel. All we are really talking about is whether people are able to work, especially in a team setting, without fear.

SCARF is one model for psychological safety, and a robust one at that. But it doesn’t address HOW to create this on a team.

Here are three simple starting points for how to build the level of psychological safety on your team.

share the context every step of the way

This is an inclusive behavior because it helps stragglers and newbies understand. (Read more on why context is king.)

An example might look like: “Last week we talked about ______…today builds on that.” You must take a beginner's mind to know what to say.

Execute processes in meetings that make it safe to disagree.

The way to welcome variation is to invite it explicitly. Link to “who sees it differently?”

Even 1-1, ask and assume a different perspective by saying “those are my thoughts but tell me what YOU think.”

Council is a great, simple way to hear the full spectrum of thoughts. You need to facilitate it well to maintain safety.

Also, try to separate the idea from the person who brought it forth. This is a subtle language idea. For example, when you refer back, don't label the idea with someone's name. Use phrases like, “What do team members think about the idea to open a second office location?” rather than “What do people think of Jaelyn’s idea?”

fold in reflection time

It's rare for a team to self reflect. They're usually too busy doing the work and chasing the next thing. Adding in time for a team to learn together is exemplary of a growth mindset (let's not just give this concept lip service, let's live it). Articulating together what we would do differently next time shows that mistakes actually have value. It lowers the fear factor on the risk of future mistakes. Be careful this isn’t a finger pointing session, though, by designing good meeting processes and priming anyone you expect to be sensitive about things.

Adding a checkout to the end of your meetings is an integrative way to fold in reflection time.

Psychological safety gets created by how you lead. It won't happen overnight, but you can make small changes that will have a big impact down the road. Three places to start are sharing context so everyone is up to speed and oriented to the current conversation, creating safety in meetings with structured process, and taking time as a team to reflect on performance and progress.