Leadership Frameworks for Entrepreneurs #1: Psychological safety

Googles project Aristotle has researched for multiple years what makes teams high performing. They looked in-depth at all kinds of factors on individual and group level. And indeed they found that the most important factor impacting high performance in a team is psychological safety. Other important but less impactful factors were dependability, structure&clarity, meaning, and impact. I will dive into psychological safety a bit more here and list 5 practical tips you can apply right away with your team.

The term psychological safety in teams and companies has been around a while. It is defined as: "Being able to show and employ one's self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career" (Kahn 1990, p.?708). This means that team members feel safe to speak up, try new things, voice ideas and fail without fearing consequences in the context of the team or company.

Neuroscience and evolutionary theory has shown that safety, connection and stability are the 3 most important factors our nervous systems and brains are wired for. If one of them is lacking, this shows as stress and diminishes our ability to be creative, innovative and even cooperate with one another. This shows how important psychological safety is.

But how do you get to this situation where people feel safe?

Here are some concrete tools and takeaways that you can apply right away in your team to increase the sense of psychological safety:

1. Leader User Manual. Fill this table for yourself and share it with your (leadership) team and encourage others to do the same. Takes not more than 1h for a team of 8-12 people and can change communication, understanding, and trust forever. Have clarity for yourself first and then you can ask others to support you on your style and vice versa.

2. Frame problems as learning problems: We have never been here before, never done this. We need all brains on deck to find solutions for this together.

3. Show you are fallible, speak about your own screw-ups, ask for pointers and feedback from your team, investors, and mentors.

4. Talk about how you and the team want to handle failure and setbacks. What norms and values are you holding in these moments? Write them down as a manifesto, make it fun and practical and keep each other accountable when needed.

5. Curiosity: ask a lot of questions and solicit input and opinions from the group, individuals. Don't be afraid to look weak, you will have plenty of options to show strengths when tough decisions need to be made and setbacks need to be digested.

I have seen in my role as a leader as well as founder and leadership coach that these seemingly simple tools can start development of trusting each other more and creating a felt sense of safety with each other.

It's not an all or nothing of the above steps. Take one step where you feel you can make a difference, maybe not even the biggest point, and start. Then evaluate, learn, adjust, go again. And then go with something bigger and bolder. Never stop spending time on how your team feels and works together, never shy away from the hard or uncomfortable conversations. It will make your life so much easier in the long run!

PS: Below I have added the other 4 important factors from Googles Project Aristotle on high performing teams, summarized super short with actionable tips you can apply as well right away:

Dependability:

• Clarify roles and responsibilities of each team member, even if they are changing a lot
• Develop concrete project plans to provide transparency into every individual’s work and make it easy to update, share and access for everybody

Structure & Clarity:

• Regularly communicate team goals and ensure team members understand the plan for achieving them and foster a continuous dialogue around them
• Ensure your team meetings have a clear agenda and designated leader (does not have to be you all the time)
• Consider adopting Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) to organize the team’s work. I will be talking about these in a later blog post

Meaning:

• Create and communicate a compelling vision that engages people and motivates them intrinsically. When vision changes, it might be that team structures and employees do not fit anymore, adjust accordingly.
• Give team members positive feedback on something outstanding they are doing and offer to help them with something they struggle with.
• Publicly express your gratitude for someone who helped you out.

Impact:

• Co-create a clear vision that reinforces how each team member’s work directly contributes to the team’s and broader organization's goals.
• Reflect on the work you're doing and how it impacts users or clients and the organization.