Why some teams perform better than others
What leaders need to know - and do
Why do some teams perform better than others?
Back in 2016, researchers were looking at team performance in healthcare. They were interested in why some hospital wards had better patient outcomes than others. Why were these teams providing better care? If they could find out and then replicate it that would be a great thing.
One of the factors they looked at was the reporting of mistakes on the ward. Intuitively, they expected the poorer performing teams to report more mistakes. But this wasn’t the case.
The wards where MORE mistakes were reported were the wards where more patients recovered, more quickly.
What was going on?
Well, as the researchers unpicked it they found that the answer lay in the culture. In the teams that reported more mistakes, everyone on the ward was encouraged to speak up and ask questions if they felt something wasn’t right.
Yes, more mistakes were identified - but then they were addressed and solved.
In other teams, more junior members of staff kept quiet if they had doubts about a patient’s care. They know there was no point speaking up as they wouldn’t be listened to. So mistakes were made but not identified, and patients suffered as a result.
Researchers dubbed this “psychological safety”, a concept that has become huge in leadership circles in recent years.1
When a team or organisation has psychological safety, individuals feel able to:
ask questions when they’re not sure
point out potential problems
openly suggest and discuss different ideas
admit to mistakes
give (and take) constructive feedback
ask for help.
All of these things mean that the team is continuously learning, innovating and improving. The result is better performance.
It also creates a sense of belonging that is crucial for morale.
Two things to remember about psychological safety:
1: It’s a group thing
You can’t build psychological safety through relationships, it’s all about culture. It needs to be built in a group.
One on one, you can build trust and respect to ensure honesty. For a team, you need to build a culture that ensures everyone feels able to contribute and to voice their opinions or concerns openly. This is trickier, obviously, as group dynamics come into play. But leadership can make a real difference. How the leader behaves is absolutely crucial in setting the tone.
2: It’s not about being nice
Psychological safety is not about creating a culture in which everyone agrees with each other all the time. It’s about removing the perceived risk of disagreeing.
Healthy discussion and conflict (not combat) is key to surface new ideas and ensure diversity of thought. Keeping quiet because you don’t want to upset anyone is the opposite of psychological safety.
Of course, this doesn’t mean psychological safety is an excuse for anyone to be nasty, either. The ‘safety’ is created by the fact that all feedback is focused on how to solve a shared problem, or to make a project better. It should never be, or feel, personal.
Here are some ways you can start building psychological safety in your team:
Make sure you are encouraging every member of the team to speak up and offer ideas.
Encourage your team to give you feedback, and then be willing to take it on board.
When things go wrong, don’t look to ascribe blame. Instead, encourage people to think about what can be learnt and how it can be avoided next time.
This is a culture shift that makes a real, tangible difference.
There’s more on how to build an effective team in my online course How to Lead and Develop Your Team.
Broken into bite-size lessons to complete at your own pace, the course covers:
How to be authentic.
How to motivate your team.
How to make sure the work gets done.
How to build a team, not just a collection of individuals.
How to give effective feedback.
How to support people who are struggling.
How to look after yourself.
Like all of my online courses, it’s available for just £50 until the end of March, if you enter launch50 at the checkout.
See Amy Edmonson’s The Fearless Organsiation for the full story