What sets high-performing teams apart?
It’s not just skills or hard workโit’s the climate of trust they operate in, where making mistakes is not a fireable offense but a growth opportunity.
Yesterday, I had the pleasure of attending an eye-opening workshop by Gabriele Galassi, organized by the inspiring the D2 collective.
The topic: psychological safety at work.
A standout insight?
Googleโs research shows that top teams succeed not because they are smarter, but because there is more psychological safety.
Psychological safety is ๐ข ๐ด๐ฉ๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ช๐ฆ๐ง ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฅ ๐ฃ๐บ ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฎ๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ด ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ข ๐ต๐ฆ๐ข๐ฎ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ต๐ฆ๐ข๐ฎ ๐ช๐ด ๐ด๐ข๐ง๐ฆ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ช๐ฏ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฑ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ด๐ฐ๐ฏ๐ข๐ญ ๐ณ๐ช๐ด๐ฌ-๐ต๐ข๐ฌ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ.
Safer to speak up, challenge norms, make mistakes, report errors and give each other tough feedback.
A few more learnings from yesterday I want to share with you:
๐ Having a great variation of nationalities on a team promotes psychological safety.
๐ Team cohesion is another strong predictor of performance. Teams where members are willing and able to establish strong relationships, to listen and feel empathy for each other and to give and take feedback, perform better than regular teams.
๐ In the workplace, we start overvaluing tasks over relationships. Starting the day with a relationship-building exercise over a task-oriented meeting, can have surprisingly beneficial results.
๐ A characteristic of high-performing teams is that members speak roughly in equal measure, keeping contributions short and sweet.
Improving psychological safety and team cohesion is one of the topics I work on with my ambitious leadership development clients.
Do you want to boost your teamโs performance too?
Letโs connect!