The most essential foundation of a healthy team is **psychological safety**. Without it, [having engagement](2024-06-22%20Rules%20of%20Engagement.md) is impossible and [it has been proven that teams are significantly less effective](https://www.leaderfactor.com/learn/project-aristotle-psychological-safety) (by Google, via Project Aristotele). In this post, I will describe symptoms that indicate a lack of psychological safety, review the three most basic ingredients to [psychological safety](Management/Teams/Psychological%20Safety.md), and give you a few [tips how to improve psychological safety](Psychological%20Safety%20Playbook.md) in your team. A classical symptom indicating a lack of psychological safety in your organization is if you or your reports do not perceive a felt permission for candor. That makes it hard to set goals, because without that permission, you will not get the necessary feedback to set optimal goals. In fact, with a lack of psychological safety, people will become unwilling to propose their own goals, to avoid any humiliation. That in turn means not everyone will be eager to achieve their goals because they will not feel like they own them. Therefore, you cannot expect to reliably set and get to the right goals without psychological safety. Some of the clearest symptoms are feeling like nobody is able to understand you, if goals get set at a much lower bar than what you believe should happen, if you never get the results you think should materialize, or if you only hear about concerns in retrospective. Those are all symptoms from _your_ failure to provide psychological safety. In the worst case, your org’s whole current leadership culture is not conducive for psychological safety. Poor or disappointing planning outcomes are the logical consequence of cultivating a team that has learned it is wiser to keep their mouths shut and always deliver what is asked, rather than being penalized or mocked for saying the “wrong thing” or “not delivering“. Even if the goals are met all of the time, something is wrong: Your goals should be challenges, and meeting even half of the target metrics should have substantial impact, while meeting 75% should lead to a celebration. If all goals are being met 100%, it means the team has learned to bet on the safe side, because of a fear of the reprimands for failing to do so. You can track psychological safety, both by asking for anonymous or immediate feedback. However, if you are honest and accountable to yourself, there should be no complication knowing if you are fostering or killing psychological safety in your team. ## Accountability A core property of a team with good psychological safety is **accountability**, where everyone can *depend* on each other. (To be clear, this is kind of accountability refers to holding *yourself* accountable, not about policing your team and killing engagement.) We can observe the following causal chain: To achieve your targets and get maximal [engagement](2024-06-22%20Rules%20of%20Engagement.md), everyone must be willing to be accountable for their own actions. You instill dependability in your team by holding ***yourself*** accountable and leading by ***consistent*** example, first: Deliver what you promise on time and define with your team what you deliver and when: Define upfront what you want to achieve by when, and then track and review if you met those goals, to learn how to improve. ## Productive conflict (“fear”) There are [lean capabilities](app://obsidian.md/5%20Lean%20Capabilities.md) that matter, too, such as swarming around any deviation from the happy path of the org’s workflows, and slowing down just enough to ensure whatever caused the deviation cannot affect the org in the future. If you do not practice blame-free swarming & learning around workflow issues, the org will either not achieve its goals or will set targets that are lower than what could be possible. That is a logical consequence of not learning new behaviors and because processes that improve the status quo never get scheduled. More generally, if problems and issues that arise (such as not meeting your delivery promises) are not resolved using blame-free techniques, psychological safety goes out the window. Therefore, if you approach problems and issues, treat them with genuine curiosity and conscientious compassion to understand them and remedy the root causes, instead of trying to identify “who” did what wrong. Ask “how” and “what” questions, avoid “why”, especially repeatedly asking why. Approach issues as a collaborator, not an adversary. If your really have an issue with a team member, use the [BEEF](BEEF%20up%20your%20feedback.md) technique to review the conflict together: Describe the unwanted **Behavior** with an **Example**, agree on the **Effect** that behavior has, and discuss how to avoid that effect in the **Future**. If you set consequences for your team member not adjusting their behavior, make sure you both understand what consequences will happen and be consistent in following through on them. This aspect of psychological safety is often described as **fear** in the literature, especially, as a fear of conflict. It stems from the fact that we end up unable to steer away from unproductive conflict due to a lack of [communication skills](Agile%20Conversations.md). ## Trust That gets us to the first rung of the causal ladder to an effective team: **Trust**. Without trust, nothing is achievable. It starts with being able to trust your teammates will contribute their parts of the goal, it requires that subordinates feel safe to speak up about any issues blocking those goals, and it depends on everyone knowing they will receive the support needed to reach challenging goals.  Therefore, [*building* trust](Communicate%20to%20establish%20trust.md) means having the courage to be vulnerable about yourself, especially as a manager. You need open, transparent, and clear communication where everyone feels heard and respected. You delegate work to your subordinates to demonstrate trust. And you need to lead by an example that lives and promotes trust throughout your team. ## Further reading These foundational needs and more has been explored by Patrick Lencioni, introduced in his famous book of ([Overcoming](https://www.tablegroup.com/product/overcoming-the-five-dysfunctions-a-field-guide/)) **[The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Dysfunctions_of_a_Team)** (and later takes). Besides trust, productive conflict, and accountability, building a shared vision where everybody understands the impact and derives meaning is as important as creating a sense of purpose in the team. Another important source claiming psychological safety, trust, and productive conflict are the foundation of effective teams is **[Project Aristotele](https://www.leaderfactor.com/learn/project-aristotle-psychological-safety)** by Google. Finally, in the book **[Agile Conversations](https://agileconversations.com/)** by Squirrel and Fredrick you will find plenty of material to overcome your own contributions to those disfunctions by learning how to communicate more effectively.