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Why take the psychological safety survey ? Is it the new management fad or HR mumbo-jumbo, promising the elusive gold at the end of rainbow ? What are the critical factors that make teams successfully cross the high performance benchmarks consistently ?? In addition to elements constituting high performance teams (See, the essential elements for high performance teams) there are specific behavioral traits of high performance teams. So much so that it’s presence differentiates a high-performing team from an average team. The most important of these behaviors is Psychological Safety.
Through a 2 year Project Aristotle. Google worked hard studying more than 180 of their most successful teams, to dissect the making of these high performance teams. The results pointed out that the most successful teams had specific behavioral traits. The most essential of these was Psychological Safety, which is when team members feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable with each other. It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.
What follows post taking Psychological Safety Survey (click to expand)
For the pain points highlighted in psychological safety survey score
Deep dive into what managers can do to foster psychological safety along with drawing inspirations from Google’s re:Work content on teams. The essence of psychological safety is to note have anyone singled out, rather everyone being heard of what they authentically feel & have felt. Hence, when perceptions get mapped out, it needs to be deeply soul searched, dissected to fix unconscious biases that may have found its existence, systemically. Getting clarity on what needs a fix, building team’s focus on new ways of working together, with re-aligned processes, practices and norms, moves the needle on psychological safety.
For the positives highlighted in psychological safety survey score
For all the positives reflected in the results, the team deserves shout outs, kudos, & pats, while being cognizant of not taking the team ambience for granted. From our observations, we have seen complacency creeping in to teams on developed positives, the moment they stop focusing on these outcomes. The challenge for the team is to sustain the positives & keep working on the negatives, to get the overall psychological safety survey number up, well beyond the threshold, across all its elements. Not only does it build an aspirational culture, but also gets reflected in performance & all critical business metrics.
Take the psychological safety survey to ensure at a high level, that you have a healthy organizational culture where people feel able to contribute their ideas and be themselves. To dissect your teams microscopically under the psychological safety lens, & to build this trait ground-up, measure psychological safety at your workplace here.