Creating Safety on Teams

An influential study on management and leadership was conducted by Amy Edmondson, who researched hospital charge nurses. Edmondson found that high performance teams and well-respected nurse leaders reported more errors because the team felt psychologically safe to do so. On the teams led by less respected leaders, nurses hid their error rates out of fear. David Burkus, associate professor of leadership and innovation at Oral Roberts University and author of Under New Management, offers these strategies for ensuring that team members experience psychological safety.

• Celebrate Failure: Take time after a failure to reflect and discover its lessons. People are less likely to admit mistakes if failures are treated as losses. People are emboldened to explore new solutions if they know it’s okay to fail.
  
  
• Encourage Dissent: When someone on your team disagrees with you, it doesn’t make you less of a leader. On the contrary, it demonstrates your commitment to the open exchange of ideas. It also gives you an opportunity to see another perspective, or an opening to explain yours and instruct your team.
  
  
• Build Civility: Incivility permeates a team when the leader isn’t modelling civility. Incivility destroys psychological safety, yet many leaders don’t recognize the impact of their own actions. Consider asking a trusted teammate to watch your behavior during meetings and share any insights about how you might encourage greater psychological safety. 

 
Do you believe the people on your team feel safe? What have you done to help to contribute to psychological safety on your team?  To join the conversation, click "comments" above.

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