Reframing Global Team Development: A Boundary-First Approach

What if we start with boundaries rather than trust?

For years, team development models like Patrick Lencioni’s Five Dysfunctions of a Team have emphasized trust and relationships as the foundation for high-performing teams. The idea is that when people feel included and safe, they can build trust and work better together.?

But what if we flipped the script?

What if the key to team success, especially in virtual, culturally diverse, or high-stakes environments, starts not with trust but with boundaries?

This shift toward a boundary-first approach is about providing the structure teams need to reduce anxiety, guide behavior, and allow different types of trust to emerge naturally.

Clear boundaries create a framework where competence and shared success can grow—and from there, meaningful relationships and trust can develop. This is crucial for teams working across virtual spaces, across cultures, or in high-reliability organizations like healthcare or aviation, where precision and clarity matter.

Combine Psychological Safety with Boundary-Spanning Leadership

In my work with global teams, I’ve found that the key to creating high-performing teams isn’t always about jumping straight into building trust and relationships.

Instead, it’s about setting the right boundaries first, and letting trust develop naturally from there.

That’s why I’ve been drawn to Amy Edmondson’s work on psychological safety and the boundary-spanning leadership practices from the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). Together, they offer a practical framework for creating safe and effective teams, especially in virtual or culturally diverse settings.?

Edmondson’s concept of psychological safety focuses on creating an environment where people feel safe to take risks—whether it’s speaking up, sharing ideas, or admitting mistakes—without fear of judgment. This is crucial in teams where open communication and trust are the foundation for collaboration and innovation.

Now, combine that with CCL’s boundary-spanning leadership practices, which emphasize the importance of defining and managing boundaries. For example, CCL’s practices like Buffering and Reflecting are all about creating safe spaces and ensuring that boundaries are clear and respected.

When you start with clear roles and responsibilities, people know what’s expected of them, which naturally reduces anxiety. Once that foundation is in place, it becomes much easier to build the kind of psychological safety Edmondson talks about.

These ideas also come into play when teams need to collaborate across boundaries—whether that’s across departments, geographies, or cultures. Edmondson’s focus on open dialogue is key here. It aligns perfectly with CCL’s practice of Connecting—suspending boundaries to build trust and foster collaboration across teams. This is where teams can really start to stretch beyond their comfort zones and push for higher performance.

In short, Edmondson’s insights on psychological safety give us the tools to create an open, trusting team environment, while CCL’s boundary-spanning leadership helps ensure that we manage boundaries in a way that sets the stage for that trust to flourish.

Clarity First, Vulnerability Later

In many models, trust is often tied to vulnerability—the idea that team members need to be open and admit their mistakes to build trust. While vulnerability is important, it’s only one piece of the puzzle, and it may not be the best starting point in many settings.

In virtual teams or culturally diverse groups, vulnerability can feel unnatural or even forced. People may be unsure of how to share openly when they don’t yet have a solid foundation of competence or consistency to rely on.?

This is where competence-based trust comes in. By establishing clear boundaries—roles, responsibilities, and expectations—you create an environment where everyone knows what’s expected.

Team members trust that their colleagues can do the job because they’ve shown their ability to deliver results. For introverts, or team members who are more reserved, this approach allows them to build trust through action rather than feeling pressured to engage in emotional openness from the start.

Criticism of the Boundary-First Approach: Balancing Internal Certainty with External Uncertainty

One potential criticism of the boundary-first approach is that it may seem too rigid, especially when leading in uncertain environments.

Advocates of uncertainty-driven leadership might argue that a team's ability to thrive depends on embracing external uncertainty rather than creating too much internal structure.

However, external uncertainty doesn't have to overwhelm a team if there's a solid scaffolding of internal certainty in place.

When boundaries provide clarity around roles, responsibilities, and processes, team members have the stability they need to navigate ambiguity and unpredictability in the external environment. This internal certainty serves as an anchor, enabling teams to stay focused and resilient even when facing the unknown.

Psychological Safety: The Key to Correcting Mistakes in High-Pressure Teams

A powerful example of how boundaries lay the groundwork for psychological safety comes from Amy Edmondson’s research on flight crews.

Edmondson’s studies revealed that crews who had worked together longer, and built psychological safety through their shared experiences, were far better at correcting each other’s mistakes, even when tired or under stress.

In contrast, newer crews, without that established trust, were more hesitant to speak up or challenge one another, even when it was necessary.

This finding demonstrates that psychological safety—the ability to openly communicate and correct mistakes—comes from trust in competence and consistency first. When boundaries are clearly set and team members know their roles, it reduces uncertainty, allowing people to perform confidently.

As they grow more comfortable in these roles, team members can then develop the vulnerability-based trust needed to correct and challenge one another in real-time, without fear of judgment.

In high-reliability organizations like aviation or healthcare, this dynamic is critical. Teams operating under high pressure and with little margin for error need to be able to give and receive feedback quickly.

The structure provided by clear boundaries makes it easier for team members to trust each other’s skills, and the psychological safety that follows allows them to openly correct errors, reducing the risk of small mistakes escalating into major issues.?

- Example: In a flight crew, pilots and crew members working under intense pressure rely not only on competence but also on their ability to speak up when something goes wrong. As Edmondson’s research shows, when psychological safety is present, even fatigue won’t prevent team members from correcting one another, ensuring safe outcomes.

Boundaries Before Vulnerability: A New Approach to Trust

The boundary-first approach doesn’t just create psychological safety—it enables the team to handle mistakes and correct course, even under challenging conditions.

Teams that are overly focused on early vulnerability, without clear boundaries, may fall into conflict avoidance or hesitation, which can be dangerous in high-stakes environments like aviation or high-reliability corporate teams.

But when boundaries are in place, and roles are well defined, teams can focus on performance and accountability first. Over time, as competence and consistency become the foundation of trust, vulnerability naturally follows. Teams can engage in more open conversations, give feedback, and correct each other in a way that feels safe and productive.

When Boundaries Become Safety Nets for Growth?

Once boundaries have helped reduce anxiety and created psychological safety based on competence and reliability, leaders can start loosening those boundaries. This gradual process gives team members the confidence to take autonomous risks, knowing that the safety net of clarity and structure is still there.

This is particularly important for virtual teams and culturally diverse teams, where members may not share the same norms or work habits. By keeping the boundaries flexible, teams can grow more dynamically, and vulnerability-based trust can flourish naturally.

In fact, the boundaries themselves become a form of psychological safety net—allowing for risk-taking and creativity while ensuring that the team has a stable framework to return to.

The Focus Shift: From Safety Net to High Wire Performance

As we’ve discussed, starting with boundaries helps teams reduce uncertainty, clarify roles, and build the competence-based trust needed for psychological safety to emerge.

But this safety isn’t meant to keep people comfortable or within their limits—it’s meant to enable growth, much like a safety net beneath a trapeze artist. The real goal is not to focus on the net, but on how high the team can go once they trust the safety net is in place.

There’s a common misconception that psychological safety is about creating a comfort zone.

However, as Amy Edmondson’s research on flight crews shows, psychological safety isn’t about making teams feel perpetually safe from challenges—it's about creating an environment where team members feel secure enough to take risks, make mistakes, and correct one another without fear of judgment.

When boundaries provide a structure, teams can then move beyond the safety net and begin focusing on the daring acts—on pushing themselves to perform at higher levels.

?Avoiding the Trap of False Security

As highlighted in the concept of the high wire vs. the safety net, there’s a risk of becoming overly focused on maintaining a sense of safety, which can lead to stagnation.

Psychological safety can sometimes be misinterpreted as the need to protect people from risk or discomfort, leading to a false sense of security where teams remain in a protective, comfort-oriented mindset.

This mindset is harmful in several ways:

1. Complying-Complacent Mode: Teams avoid risk or conflict, mistaking harmony for safety. This results in stagnation and lack of accountability.

2. Controlling-Competitive Mode: People exert control to avoid vulnerability. It feels "safe" because they’re not risking failure, but it stifles collaboration and innovation.

3. Cynical-Skeptical Mode: A comfort zone based on detachment and hypercriticism, where individuals shield themselves from emotional risk but cut off engagement and learning.

These protective mindsets create a false safety net, where teams mistake avoidance for true safety. In reality, true psychological safety exists when people feel confident enough to leave their comfort zones and step onto the high wire—knowing that if they fall, they’ll be caught by the net. The focus is not on staying safe, but on how far they can stretch themselves in pursuit of growth and excellence.

High Performance Through Risk-Taking and Learning

In today’s complex, high-stakes work environments—from virtual teams to culturally diverse groups to high-reliability organizations—the true purpose of psychological safety is to allow teams to take risks, innovate, and perform at their best.

The safety net provided by boundaries isn’t meant to keep people close to the ground but to enable them to take bolder actions. In this way, boundaries become a platform for high-wire performance.?

In flight crews, for example, the boundaries set by clearly defined roles allow for efficient and safe operations. But the true psychological safety comes when crew members, under stress or fatigue, trust each other enough to speak up and correct mistakes, even at critical moments. It’s this combination of boundaries and trust that allows them to perform at their best, far above the safety net.

From Protective Mindsets to Growth-Oriented Teams?

To move from a protective mindset to a growth-oriented one, leaders and teams need to understand that psychological safety isn’t about avoiding risk—it’s about embracing it. Teams must be encouraged to take risks, experiment, and push their limits.

Boundaries create the initial security to do this, but the real performance happens when teams start working on the high wire, using the safety net of competence and trust to support them if they fall.

- Complying-Complacent Mode evolves into a space of candid feedback, accountability, and experimentation.

- Controlling-Competitive Mode shifts toward shared risk-taking, collaboration, and openness to new ideas.

- Cynical-Skeptical Mode transforms into engagement and curiosity, where individuals feel safe enough to challenge assumptions and take risks.

When teams make this shift, they no longer see boundaries as restrictions—they see them as a safety net that allows them to push themselves beyond their comfort zones, take on greater challenges, and achieve remarkable results.

Final thoughts

Starting with?boundaries?might seem counterintuitive to those who believe that vulnerability and openness are the cornerstones of psychological safety.?

However,?boundaries create safety?by providing?clarity, competence, and consistency. When team members understand their roles and feel secure in their framework, trust begins to develop—not because it’s forced through vulnerability, but because it?naturally follows?from a foundation of?competence-based?and?consistency-based trust.

The goal of?psychological safety?isn’t to keep teams within their comfort zones, avoiding discomfort or risk.

Instead, it’s to give them the confidence to?reach new heights, taking risks, learning from mistakes, and pushing their limits. Just as a trapeze artist relies on the safety net but focuses on the daring act on the high wire, teams use boundaries to support, not limit, their growth.

The real measure of a high-performing team is not how well they stay within boundaries, but how far they go beyond them—knowing the safety net is there?if they fall.

For?virtual teams,?culturally diverse teams, and?high-reliability organizations, the?boundary-first approach?makes psychological safety more attainable. It shifts the focus from emotional risk-taking early on to a structured environment where people can thrive, feel confident, and ultimately grow into?boundaryless teams?that collaborate cross-functionally.

By building on the foundation of boundaries, leaders create the conditions for?trust, creativity, and high performance?to truly take root.

In the end, psychological safety isn’t about staying safe—it’s about?pushing boundaries, knowing that the team is secure enough to take risks and learn together.

References

Edmondson, A. C. (2023). The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well. Atria Books.

Center for Creative Leadership (CCL). (2015). Boundaryless Leadership: Creating Value Across Siloes. Center for Creative Leadership Press.

Bowman, S. (2023). Safe to Great: A New Leadership Framework for Building Psychological Safety and High Performance. Figure 1 Publishing

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