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Book: Interpersonal Competence and Organizational Effectiveness 

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Book: Interpersonal Competence and Organizational Effectiveness 

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Interpersonal competence and organizational effectiveness. With a chapter by Roger Harrison.

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Interpersonal competence and organizational effectiveness. With a chapter by Roger Harrison.

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Podcast: Dysfunctional Teams & Psychological Safety with  

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Podcast: Dysfunctional Teams & Psychological Safety with  

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with Amy Edmondson

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Is your teamwork not working? In this episode of HBR's advice podcast, , cohosts Alison Beard and Dan McGinn answer your questions with the help of Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. They talk through what to do when your team isn't communicating, doesn't respect its leader, or has one employee who's causing problems.
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Listen to more episodes and find out how to subscribe on the Dear HBR: page. Email your questions about your workplace dilemmas to Dan and Alison at dearhbr@hbr.org
From Alison and Dan's reading list for this episode:
HBR: The Three Pillars of a Teaming Culture by Amy Edmondson - "When you join an unfamiliar team or start a challenging new project, self-protection is a natural ins tinct. It's not possible to look good or be right all the time when collaborating on an endeavor with uncertain outcomes. But when you're concerned about yourself, you tend to be less interested in others, less passionate about your shared cause, and unable to understand different points of view. So it takes conscious work to shift the culture."

HBR: Too Much Team Harmony Can Kill Creativity by Darko Lovric and Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic - "Consistent with these famous case studies, scientific research shows that creativity and innovation can be enhanced by reducing team harmony. For instance, a recent study of 100 product development teams found that two common disruptors of team harmony, namely diversity and task uncertainty, were positively associated with creative performance."

HBR: Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson - "Our study showed that a number of skills were crucial: appreciating others, being able to engage in purposeful conversations, productively and creatively resolving conflicts, and program management. By training employees in those areas, a company's human resources or corporate learning department can make an important difference in team performance."

HBR: The Secrets of Great Teamwork by Martine Haas and Mark Mortensen - "Team assignments should be designed with equal care. Not every task has to be highly creative or inspiring; many require a certain amount of drudgery. But leaders can make any task more motivating by ensuring that the team is responsible for a significant piece of work from beginning to end, that the team members have a lot of autonomy in managing that work, and that the team receives performance feedback on it."
TRANSCRIPT
DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR:, from Harvard Business Review. I'm Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I'm Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn't have to be. We don't need to let the conflicts get us down.

DAN MCGINN: That's where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts and help you move forward. Today we're answering your questions about dysfunctional teams with the help of Amy Edmondson. She's a professor at Harvard Business School and her new book is The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Amy, thanks for coming on the show.

AMY EDMONDSON: I am delighted to be here.

DAN MCGINN: Amy, this concept of psychological safety, how did you get interested in it?

AMY EDMONDSON: By accident. I was studying medical errors. It looked at first like the better teams according to the survey were making more mistakes, not fewer. And I just couldn't believe that that was the case. And it suddenly occurred to me that maybe the better teams were more able and willing to talk about the mistakes that occurred so that they could catch and prevent them from causing harm.

ALISON BEARD: And is that one of the main reasons that so many teams are dysfunctional?

AMY EDMONDSON: I think that is one of the main reasons because people have to feel safe to bring their brains to work. And that's not normal. Fear is really quite widespread.

ALISON BEARD: OK. First question. Dear HBR: I've been at my current company for a little over four years and a change in our teamwork has me frustrated. I work in a small strategy office. There's a Vice President, one corporate Director, two Senior Managers and one Data Manager. I'm one of three Senior Planning Associates. People on our team proudly tout that we have a flat office culture, but lately, this has changed drastically. About a year ago our VP, Corporate Director, and two Senior Managers started having meetings about projects without the rest of us. Ever since there's been a change in our team culture. Communication is less frequent and less transparent. I've been taken off projects, or added to them with little or no discussion, leaving me completely in the dark. The expectation is that a project lead with a Senior Manager title will work together as equals with the Senior Planning Associate, but this is rarely if ever the case. Often as the Senior Planning Associate I end up doing most of the work on projects, but I receive hardly any of the credit. The Senior Managers aren't giving my boss an accurate picture of my performance. I've tried to bring these frustrations to her, but she seems to have little interest in listening to my concerns. I've begun looking for other jobs. What else can I do? Amy, what do you think?

AMY EDMONDSON: This is one of those situations where first we have to back up and say teamwork is hard and office dynamics are hard. That's the nature of the beast. I think I would start with this issue of communication now seems to be less transparent. I'm not in the loop anymore. I think one of the best ways to put yourself back in the loop is asking good questions.

DAN MCGINN: Can you give us an example of a question this letter writer might ask?

AMY EDMONDSON: The question would address the project. The desire to know more and offer to help with important aspects of the work.

ALISON BEARD: But how do you do that as the junior person without seeming annoying?

AMY EDMONDSON: It really starts with intent. If your intent is to learn, your intent is to offer value, you will not be seen as annoying. I promise.

DAN MCGINN: The big question I had here is what happened a year ago that made them change their meetings and their decision-making process? Whether there was an incident, whether there was a perception that maybe some of the junior people were making decision making more difficult. I don't know that they just would have woken up one morning and say, hey, let's exclude all the junior people and make the decisions in a closed room and not tell them anything about it. Figuring out what this sort of in sighting incident that led to the change might be useful information here.

AMY EDMONDSON: I think that's a great point. It is probably important for the letter writer to better understand what changed and why from others perspectives, not just from her own perspective. It's probably not the case that we're going to get the old system back. What we want to have is to make the new system feel engaging and functional for her, so that she can make the contribution she believes she can make.

ALISON BEARD: I think that's the real problem here is that the higher-ups haven't done any job of communicating why this change has been made and it was an organization that touted its lack of hierarchy. How can she as this very junior person, who now is operating in a much more hierarchal environment, flag that poor communication to her bosses and make them communicate?

AMY EDMONDSON: I would have to encourage her to not frame it as poor communication, even though it may be poor communication. But to frame it as an unintended gap. So, I saw a change and I don't fully understand the rationale. I would love to understand it better so that I can work most effectively in this new system.

ALISON BEARD: Right. She does mention that she's talked to her boss and it worries me that she's come to her boss with complaints and not solutions.

AMY EDMONDSON: And complaints by definition are not curiosity.

DAN MCGINN: Do bosses sometimes unintentionally share the wrong kind of information?

AMY EDMONDSON: Absolutely. So, here's the right kind of information. The right kind of information is first and foremost, why it matters that we do what we do. And then very quickly, I've got to give you information that helps you connect what you do, in your role to that ultimate purpose. And quite often that's not done.

ALISON BEARD: So, I think one aspect of engagement that bosses overlook is recognition and our letter writer really seems to want recognition for the work that she's doing. So, how does she do a better job of letting her bosses know that that is important to her and that's what's going to keep her engaged even if the flat hierarchy is gone for good?

AMY EDMONDSON: Now the tragic part about that is that it's free. Recognition doesn't cost anything. And I think when it's not being given it's usually blindness. It's usually the people are forgetting to realize that very deep human need.

DAN MCGINN: Amy, do you think there's a link between the fact the culture seems to be getting more autocratic and maybe a little bit more political in the fact that there's a grab for credit and people are suddenly conscious of who's getting credit for what?

AMY EDMONDSON: I think there's absolutely a link. And when we're in a hierarchy we suddenly have the mindset of scarce resources and credit, I think erroneously in a way, but feels like a scarce resource. People feel it is scarce because they want to have the approval of the higher-ups and they want to be in good positions to move up. This is very human and there are risks to the quality of the work that can be created by that mindset.

ALISON BEARD: It seems to me that part of the problem is that she's never working directly with her boss. She's working with people who are her boss for that project. So, how should she approach that just sort of structural issue she has at this organization?

AMY EDMONDSON: Frankly, you're going to find this in lots of organizations today. If you leave this one, you may find some very similar dynamics in another one because there's more and more need for teaming, for different relationships, different sort of collaborations over time rather than nice little stable flat teams. And so, doing this well, kind of working closely, collaborating with someone on a piece of the work takes skill and it takes the kind of skill to be constantly saying, here's what I'm trying to do, what am I missing?

DAN MCGINN: One of the things that I think this letter writer should think about is that she's not ever going to be happy with a black box decision because I said so, and as she tries to find a new boss in a new organization, if that's the route she goes, maybe being aware of that need that she has would be useful.

AMY EDMONDSON: But realize that when you opt for a more open, more transparent culture, you're also opting for a workplace where credit is more difficult to pin on an individual. I mean they have to be the kind of organization where at the end of the day we say, we did it. And it's not clear which one of us contributed how much.

DAN MCGINN: Maybe this wouldn't be such a problem if this company hadn't advertised itself as flat, non-hierarchical, democratic. It results in a mismatch and a hypocrisy.

ALISON BEARD: Which is what's frustrating our letter writer.

AMY EDMONDSON: I think you're absolutely right and it's something I've written about, this sort of when people perceive hypocrisy they are extremely demotivated by it.

DAN MCGINN: So, Alison what are we telling her?

ALISON BEARD: So, we feel for her and we understand that she's been put in a frustrating position. But we'd encourage her to try to understand more about the situation, approaching it not with complaints, but curiosity. What changed and how can I work within this new system. She should recognize that this company might never go back to the premise of flat, open, transparent, but we think that she can find ways to insert herself into the decision making and position herself for getting more credit from her bosses, just by asking smart questions. If she does explore opportunities outside, she needs to look at the cultures where she's interviewing and make sure that if it's a flat hierarchy that's what she wants because that requires intense interpersonal skills, or if she actually prefers a more hierarchal structure because then her tasks and deliverables will be perfectly clear. So, Dan, should we go to the next question?

DAN MCGINN: We should in fact. Dear HBR: I'm writing for advice on how to fix a problem I may have created. I'm a Senior Director for a consulting company in the healthcare industry. When I started with the company, one of my direct reports was a newly promoted director. She had been in this role for around six months before I joined the company, but she was having performance issues. Clients were complaining, so were the teams she managed. As a newbie to the company, I had to figure out what to do. She oversees a handful of operations consulting teams of two to five employees each, working with different clients. These clients were complaining that work was not getting done on time. Also, there was a lack of transparency. The teams complained about her management and her communication style. I put her on a performance improvement plan and coached her. I was more or less micromanaging her. I also assigned her some of our company management training modules. She took the feedback constructively. She worked hard to address her performance issues. The work is now being completed on time, at a high level. The clients are happy. The majority of her teams are happy with the noticeable change as well. But there's one lingering problem I didn't anticipate. One of her consulting teams continues to second guess her. They try to go above her to me for minor issues that should be handled by her. I want this team to respect her position and her decisions. The last time this came up I responded that their director briefed me and I support her decision. But am I only perpetuating the issue by admitting I'm checking off on her decisions? How can I get this team to respect the chain of command and give this new and improved team leader the benefit of the doubt regarding her decisions?

AMY EDMONDSON: First of all, I love how he says at the beginning I'm writing for advice on a problem I may have helped create. That is such a strong sign of leadership. And rare. When someone comes to us with the recognition that what they've done may have contributed to the challenge they face, I'm just, I think we're half way there.

ALISON BEARD: Even after he scored this huge victory by turning this underperforming employee into a high performing one. I mean that's pretty impressive.

AMY EDMONDSON: Exactly. This concern that he expresses that other people may not be fully seeing the change, or may not yet be giving her the benefit of the doubt, this is one of those challenges that I think is pretty easy to address.

ALISON BEARD: Wow, because I totally didn't think it was easy, so go ahead.

AMY EDMONDSON: See, I just think when people come to him with the minor issues, be very frank with them. I see this is a minor issue. I completely trust the senior director to handle it. Let me know if I'm missing something. But essentially he can be quite direct about the worry he has in this case.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I agree with Amy that two or three well-crafted emails could turn this around. If Amy were the subordinate, this is Amy's call, but thanks for reaching out and copying Amy on it, or copy the whole team on it. A few demonstrations of the fact that she has authority and respect and is not going to be second-guessed, and I think this element of the problem could go away.

ALISON BEARD: My concern about this boss is that he's done too much for the senior director and he's still trying to solve even these minor problems for her. She needs to solve this problem herself.

AMY EDMONDSON: It may be that both need to happen. I agree with the idea that he probably needs to be stepping back. Stepping back which is why I like what Dan said which is answer the question but answer it in such a way that you convey and demonstrate that this really is the manager's call.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

DAN MCGINN: I wonder if he could have in some ways shown more discretion, or been more private so that the team wasn't hyper-aware of the fact that she was under the microscope and that she was being counseled and coached.

AMY EDMONDSON: I think that's a really good point. I'm not sure how much other people knew she was on this program. So -

ALISON BEARD: They did know she was an underperformer. The clients were complaining.

AMY EDMONDSON: They knew she was an underperformer.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

AMY EDMONDSON: For sure. Certainly, these kinds of developmental opportunities should be done privately and with a great concern for people's sort of reputation and privacy. But this is an issue between one of her consulting teams and the letter writer. It's only one frankly, not one of a handful. But that consulting team I think, also needs feedback.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I mean I do wonder what went wrong with this particular team.

AMY EDMONDSON: I think that's the critical issue, is first to be curious. Because we don't know why this team isn't yet happy, or why this team is not giving her the benefit of the doubt. So, the first thing we have to do is find out. Is to learn. And we may discover that there are some dysfunctions in, they've banded together against her and that that needs to be really looked at and really addressed. We just don't know.

ALISON BEARD: Or, she's not leading this particular team as well as she is the others.

AMY EDMONDSON: Right and it could be a different kind of client. It could be, there could be lots of contributing factors and job one is to learn what they might be.

ALISON BEARD: I definitely agree with that. Frankly, I was surprised that she did such a good job of earning back the trust of all the other teams. So, I think that's where I'm coming from. But I do wonder how they get to a place of trust without it just taking time.

AMY EDMONDSON: I mean maybe we can do a better job advertising within of how well the other teams are doing that the clients are happy, the teams are happy. Maybe there isn't a clear enough line of sight on that.

ALISON BEARD: That's a terrific point. The idea of learning from what happened with the other teams. Why do you now respect this boss? What's she been doing for you differently? I think that's a fabulous idea.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I think the fact that this is a two to five-person team is a big advantage here in the sense that it would not take 20 minutes for the letter writer to sit down with each of them and be very candid and say, look, I know we had a little bit of a rocky start for this new boss, but my sense is she's turned the corner. I trust her. Let's make this work.

ALISON BEARD: I feel like you both come at persuasion from sort of a fact-based, let's show the team the evidence of how well she's doing. And for me, I want her to emotionally win these people over. Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn said the best way to sort of get a team working together is three words. We are allies. So, how can either the boss or the manager just get that connection and trust happening on this team?

AMY EDMONDSON: For me, the best way to improve a relationship is to show interest in them. Act like a leader. Act like a manager that is there to make them do the best possible job for the clients. And that is the way you build the relationship. And the Senior Director who wrote the letter can coach her in doing that.

ALISON BEARD: That's great advice. So Dan, what are we telling our letter writer?

DAN MCGINN: First we're giving him a lot of credit. He recognizes that this is a problem he created. He owns it. He's taking responsibility. He's also turned this performance around. For a new boss, there's often a temptation to just start moving people out of the organization. He didn't do that. He stepped in and he coached. He got this new manager who was struggling up to par and beyond par. So, first a lot of credit to him. In terms of solving this problem, we hope that it could be done fairly easily with a few gestures and candid communication to the team that the manager has his trust, but he expects the manager to be able to handle minor decisions without much input from him. The idea that he may have been micromanaging for a little bit of time, but now he's going to be hands-off and that she has his trust. We also think it's worth looking at whether there was anything that was done during the coaching and performance improvement with this manager that could have been done a little bit more discretely to try to keep the problem a little bit less transparent to the teams. We also think the manager has some work to do here as well. She's succeeded in getting the other teams on her side. She needs to find a way to win over this one team that's a little slow to get there.

ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: I'm a senior level professional working with two other senior women and I feel trapped in the middle. My boss is a pleaser and afraid of conflict, though she does complain a lot. My colleague is disrespectful and focuses only on doing whatever helps her career. For example, she speaks disparagingly about the company to clients. But each time I've communicated that I find the behavior unacceptable, it's accomplished nothing. No one wants to address it. So, she's been allowed to continue with bad behavior. It's getting worse as she becomes more embedded with clients. There's no teamwork, no trust. I'm now tolerating it because my complaints haven't gone anywhere. But I feel I'm enabling my boss, letting her off the hook from having to make tough decisions and reign in this bad employee. The situation is causing me stress. It's a daily distraction. It's getting in the way of work. I've been with the company for 12 months. Should I just accept that my teammates won't change and move on?

AMY EDMONDSON: I have enormous empathy for the challenge that she faces. It's going to be a difficult one to unlock without stopping to do some soul-searching of her own.

ALISON BEARD: What kind of soul searching?

AMY EDMONDSON: So, I think the frame of bad behavior is a problematic frame. What she needs to do is recognize first and foremost that she is very able to see the impact that the behavior is having and she is blinded to, we all are blind to the intentions. Because as long as it's framed as bad behavior, it's so threatening and difficult because all you can do is tell the person, well that's really bad and not working, or stay silent. Those are your only two options. And neither one of them works very well. So, what she needs to do instead is try to understand what the, what her colleague is intending to do.

DAN MCGINN: That's an interesting perspective and I didn't think of that one at all. The idea that there may be a motive or an intention to speaking badly about the company. Should maybe our letter writer ask her colleague, hey, help me understand. How is it good for us when you badmouth the company?

ALISON BEARD: That sounds a little passive-aggressive! [LAUGHTER]

AMY EDMONDSON: No, it's a little to pointed. It's a little too pointed.

ALISON BEARD: But I would feel the same way.

AMY EDMONDSON: Let's remember that wonderful phrase, benefit of the doubt. We've got to start. We may be wrong, but we've got to start by giving the colleague the benefit of the doubt.

DAN MCGINN: All right so if I were a little heavy-handed in asking the question that way, how would the two of you ask it?

ALISON BEARD: I wouldn't not ask it because I actually do think its bad behavior, so I would really struggle to come from a place of curiosity, but Amy, you answer.

AMY EDMONDSON: Here's the deal. The phrase speaking disparagingly about the company to clients is ever so slightly abstract. We don't actually know what that means. It could mean something as innocuous as we are unable to get things turned around within a week's time. It's just not something we can do. Which is fairly factual, but could sound disparaging because it has a negative tone to it. Or, it could be oh, we're bad, we're hopeless. I mean we just don't know exactly what that means.

ALISON BEARD: Or, it could be the cafeteria isn't great.

AMY EDMONDSON: Right.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah.

AMY EDMONDSON: Right, exactly. Right, so it's too abstract for us to know and so what we want is for her to get a little bit interested in what the colleague sees herself as doing.

DAN MCGINN: You've already changed my view of this letter a lot.

ALISON BEARD: But let's not forget that our letter writer also says she's disrespectful and focuses only on doing whatever helps her career. Sounds like interpersonal communication. It sounds like a credit stealing, or not sharing situation, too. I would like to give our letter writer the benefit of the doubt in that this woman isn't a great peer.

AMY EDMONDSON: I agree. I mean it sounds very much like this woman is not a great peer. I just don't, I don't hear that as other evidence. I hear it as other attributions. And most of us don't see ourselves as putting me first or making my career the most important thing over, so these are the kinds of things that all of us are guilty of saying about others, and rarely believe that we engage in. And yet, we are at risk for others believing that we're doing that and we wouldn't know, because they don't tell us. So, all I'm saying is let's start by walking down what Chris Argyris used to call the ladder of inference. Let's get from more abstract attributions to more concrete data. When you said or did X, in that client meeting, I worried. And it conveys the, it describes the behavior and the impact it had on me. It doesn't say when you said you, that was really bad and you really messed up, and you better stop that because it's unacceptable. Because most of us never saw ourselves as behaving in ways that are unacceptable, or we wouldn't do it. So, the art of giving good feedback is challenging, but I think quite important.

ALISON BEARD: Did she make a mistake by going to the boss so early?

AMY EDMONDSON: It's hard to say. I do think it's important to first give feedback to the colleague and then if timely, skillful feedback doesn't get you anywhere, then I do think you have a responsibility on behalf of the company to ask for help from the boss.

DAN MCGINN: I think about you and I Alison.

ALISON BEARD: Oh-oh. [LAUGHER] Whom am I in this scenario?

DAN MCGINN: I was about to say something very nice about you really. You and I actually give each other feedback. Like after a meeting you won't hesitate to pull me aside and say hey, I would have said this differently and I do the same to you. But that comes out of a pretty close relationship and it's really hard to give peer to peer feedback unless, or until you have that kind of really tight relationship with the person, which she doesn't have in this situation.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah.

AMY EDMONDSON: I agree with you Dan, and I'd love to change that. But I think that there is at least the possibility for organizations to create that kind of expectation for everybody. In fact, that's what I might think of as a fearless organization. You two have a long standing work relationship and so, you trust each other. You respect each other. You know you can do this, but I would like it to be possible for people who have just met and who work for the same organization to do that. And I understand that's a tall order, and I think that today's leaders have a responsibility to create the conditions and the expectations where people feel they can do that.

ALISON BEARD: That brings us to our letter writer's second problem. She has a conflict, avoidant boss. So, how does she influence her boss to open up those sorts of conversations?

AMY EDMONDSON: This is a great opportunity for telling your boss the impact it's having on you. We're all tempted to say, boss, you're doing X, Y, Z wrong and it's bad. It's problematic. I think we can readily recognize that won't get you very far. Because no, but you know, for obvious reasons. So, instead what you can say is here is the impact this is having on me. And -

ALISON BEARD: Present evidence.

AMY EDMONDSON: Present, yes. So, you're coming at it from the I position.

DAN MCGINN: Or, even focusing on the performance of the company. I'm not a boss, but I think I would be more receptive to the argument that this is causing our client billings to go down, to be more compelling than this is making me feel kind of argument.

AMY EDMONDSON: Sorry, I should be clear. When I say impact, I don't mean feelings necessarily, although feelings matter too. But all I'm saying is you got to come at the problem with the recognition that yours is simply an account of reality, not reality itself. So, here's what I see. I see her do X. I see and worry about impact Y.

ALISON BEARD: I was worried that this team is so small, it's so hard to take the personalities out of it. It can't be oh, I'd like to change the way our team works and open us up to having more candid conversations without the colleague feeling as if it's all designed for her specifically. Especially since the issues have already been raised.

AMY EDMONDSON: I think she should offer her help. So, she should come to the boss and say here's my concern. Here's why it's my concern. Here's what I've seen and I do worry. Is there any way I can help you in addressing this situation? It doesn't, don't even leave open the possibility that the situation shouldn't be addressed. But offer that help with an understanding that I know this is challenging.

ALISON BEARD: Both of you are suggesting very direct ways of approaching this. Are there any subtle nudges that you can use to encourage either this disrespectful colleague or this conflict avoidant boss to improve their behavior without making it confrontational on this very small team?

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I would think whether there's anything she can do in subtle ways to try to limit or undo the damage to clients that these remarks are having. Almost kind of like a good cop, bad cop kind of scenario. Maybe there's a way in a follow-up conversation to explain away these negative remarks. Because it seems like at the end of the day that's the biggest problem here, is that the clients are being left with negative impressions, and this is somewhat of an impression management kind of thing, and can she nudge that in the other direction?

ALISON BEARD: So, at the end of the letter she does ask, is it time to move on? Do we think that she should even consider that possibility?

AMY EDMONDSON: I think it's possible. The question would be, has she given up? Because if she has given up, she's not going to be effective anymore and she might as well go and look for the next organization. The one worry I would have is: be wary of expecting the perfect organization to show up. It won't. There will always be conflict resistant bosses. There'll always be colleagues whose behavior you think is ineffective. All of us have to learn how to manage these as well as we can.

DAN MCGINN: So, Alison, what's our advice?

ALISON BEARD: So, we think that first, she needs to try to take a step back, understand whether her perceptions of her colleague and her boss are totally accurate. One way she can investigate this is by engaging with the colleague first. Ask questions about her intent, why she's behaving with the clients the way she is, and then give specific feedback about why she's worried, what she thinks the potential impact to the team and the performance will be. If she's considering other organizations after she's tried engagement, she just really needs to understand that she'll have these problems in most organizations and so she needs to think carefully about making a quick switch.

DAN MCGINN: Amy, thanks for coming on the show.

AMY EDMONDSON: It was a pleasure to be here.

DAN MCGINN: That's Amy Edmondson. She's a professor at Harvard Business School. Her new book is titled The Fearless Organization. Thanks to the listeners who wrote us with their questions. Now we want to know your questions. Send us an email with your workplace challenge and how we can help. The email address is DearHBR@HBR.org.

ALISON BEARD: On our next episode we're going to be talking to Dorie Clark about rebranding yourself.

DORIE CLARK: It's a human condition that we want something that's a little bit out of grasp, right. We want to advance. We want to do more.

DAN MCGINN: To get that episode automatically please subscribe. I'm Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I'm Alison Beard. Thanks for listening to Dear HBR:.

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Is your teamwork not working? Dan and Alison answer your questions with the help of Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School. They talk through what to do when your team isn't communicating, doesn't respect its leader, or has one employee who's causing problems.

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The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

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The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

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Amy Edmondson

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Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams 

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Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams 

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Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams.

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Annotated Resource List: Psychological Safety & Trust 

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Annotated Resource List: Psychological Safety & Trust 

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click below for pdf of resources

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Resources List - Psychological Safety + Trust 

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The Idea in Brief

Half of all managers don't trust their leaders. And in organizations mired in mistrust, stress, divisiveness, and lackluster productivity prevail-prompting valued employees to flee to more motivating environments.

How to win your employees' trust? Understand that trust doesn't happen magically: According to Robert Hurley, your employees decide whether to trust you-by conducting mental calculations based on factors you can assess and influence. These factors include shared values (such as a strong work ethic) and employees' perceptions that you're competent.

To win employees' trust, identify which factors may cause them to mistrust you-then behave in ways that secure their confidence in you. For example, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey forfeited $46,000 of a larger bonus when he realized that his total compensation violated the company's policy that a CEO cannot make more than 14 times the average employee's salary. Mackey's action reinforced employees' belief that he served the best interests of the company, not just his own.

Your reward for winning employee's trust? You retain the talented workforce your firm needs to trounce rivals.

The Idea in Practice

Hurley offers these guidelines for enhancing ten factors that inspire trust:

Example:

Sue, a new VP, managed Joe, a veteran employee, at a company undergoing a turnaround. Joe knew he was performing badly in a new assignment. Fearing termination and wary of Sue's short tenure, Joe wasn't inclined to trust her.

To win his trust, Sue increased communication by talking frequently and openly with Joe about his situation. She demonstrated benevolent concern by expressing empathy for the stresses associated with career uncertainty. She increased her benevolent concern by giving Joe time to obtain career coaching. Then, when Joe expressed interest in changing positions in the firm, she enhanced her capability in his eyes by offering him alternative roles.

Joe eventually moved to a new position-and shared his positive feelings about the process with his former colleagues, who still reported to Sue. Result? Trust increased in the department, even as it endured major change.

Roughly half of all managers don't trust their leaders. That's what I found when I recently surveyed 450 executives of 30 companies from around the world. Results from a GolinHarris survey of Americans back in 2002 were similarly bleak: 69% of respondents agreed with the statement "I just don't know who to trust anymore." In that same year the University of Chicago surveyed 800 Americans and discovered that more than four out of five had "only some" or "hardly any" confidence in the people running major corporations. Granted, trusting corporate leaders in the abstract is different from trusting your own CEO, and some companies and executives are almost universally considered trustworthy; but the general trend is troubling.

It's troubling because a distrustful environment leads to expensive and sometimes terminal problems. We hardly need reminding of the recent wave of scandals that shattered the public's faith in corporate leaders. And although you'll never see a financial statement with a line item labeled "distrust," the WorldCom fiasco underscores just how expensive broken trust can be. When I teach executive seminars on trust, I ask participants to describe how a working environment feels when it is characterized by low levels of trust. The most frequent responses include "stressful," "threatening," "divisive," "unproductive," and "tense." When asked how a high-trust work environment feels, the participants most frequently say "fun," "supportive," "motivating," "productive," and "comfortable." Clearly, companies that foster a trusting culture will have a competitive advantage in the war for talent: Who would choose to stay in a stressful, divisive atmosphere if offered a productive, supportive one?

It is crucial, then, for managers to develop a better understanding of trust and of how to manage it. I define trust as confident reliance on someone when you are in a position of vulnerability. Given the pace of change in organizations today-mergers, downsizing, new business models, globalization-it is not surprising that trust is an issue. Fortunately, 50 years of research in social psychology has shown that trust isn't magically created. In fact, it's not even that mysterious. When people choose to trust, they have gone through a decision-making process-one involving factors that can be identified, analyzed, and influenced.

This article presents a model that sheds light on how the decision to trust is made. (We will ignore the extremes of complete trust based on blind faith and total distrust based on paranoia, and focus instead on the familiar situation in which uncertainty, possible damage, and multiple other reasons to trust or distrust are combined.) By understanding the mental calculations behind the decision whether or not to trust, managers can create an environment in which trust flourishes.

A Model for Trust

Building on the social psychologist Morton Deutsch's research on trust, suspicion, and the resolution of conflict, and on my own experience over the past 15 years consulting with organizations and executives on trust, I developed a model that can be used to predict whether an individual will choose to trust or distrust another in a given situation. (See the exhibit "To Trust or Not to Trust?") I have tested this model, which identifies ten factors at play in the decision-making process, with hundreds of top executives. Using it, they were able to identify relationships that would benefit from greater trust and to diagnose the root causes of distrust. Armed with that knowledge, they took concrete steps that made it easier for others to place confidence in them.

When deciding whether to trust someone, people weigh ten basic factors. Three relate to the decision maker alone-the "truster"-and seven reflect the specific situation involving him or her and the person asking for trust-the "trustee." The more factors that score on the high end of the scale, the more likely the decision maker is to choose trust.

Decision-maker factors.

The first three factors concern the decision maker himself: the "truster." These factors often have little to do with the person asking for trust: the "trustee." They are the result of a complex mix of personality, culture, and experience.

Risk tolerance.

Some people are natural risk takers; others are innately cautious. How tolerant people are of risk has a big impact on their willingness to trust-regardless of who the trustee is. Risk seekers don't spend much time calculating what might go wrong in a given situation; in the absence of any glaring problems, they tend to have faith that things will work out. Risk avoiders, however, often need to feel in control before they place their trust in someone, and are reluctant to act without approval. Not only do they not trust others, they don't even trust themselves. Research by the organizational anthropologist Geert Hofstede suggests that at some level, culture influences risk tolerance. The Japanese, for instance, tend to have a lower tolerance for risk than Americans.

Level of adjustment.

Psychologists have shown that individuals vary widely in how well adjusted they are. Like risk tolerance, this aspect of personality affects the amount of time people need to build trust. Well-adjusted people are comfortable with themselves and see the world as a generally benign place. Their high levels of confidence often make them quick to trust, because they believe that nothing bad will happen to them. People who are poorly adjusted, by contrast, tend to see many threats in the world, and so they carry more anxiety into every situation. These people take longer to get to a position of comfort and trust, regardless of the trustee.

For example, Bill, a senior vice president at a major financial services firm, was a poorly adjusted person who always operated in "high alert" mode. He micromanaged his direct reports, even his most talented ones, because he couldn't feel secure unless he was personally involved in the details. His inability to delegate had little to do with the trustees and everything to do with his own nature; he regularly chose suspicion over trust because he saw even the slightest mistake as a potential threat to his reputation.

Relative power.

Relative power is another important factor in the decision to trust. If the truster is in a position of authority, he is more likely to trust, because he can sanction a person who violates his trust. But if the truster has little authority, and thus no recourse, he is more vulnerable and so will be less comfortable trusting. For instance, a CEO who delegates a task to one of her vice presidents is primarily concerned with that person's competence. She can be reasonably confident that the VP will try to serve her interests, because if he doesn't, he may face unpleasant repercussions. The vice president, however, has little power to reward or sanction the CEO. Therefore, his choice to trust the CEO is less automatic; he must consider such things as her intentions and her integrity.

Situational factors.

The remaining seven factors concern aspects of a particular situation and of the relationship between the parties. These are the factors that a trustee can most effectively address in order to gain the confidence of trusters.

Security.

Earlier we dealt with risk tolerance as a personality factor in the truster. Here we look at the opposite of risk-security-as it relates to a given situation. Clearly, not all risks are equal. An employee who in good times trusts that his supervisor will approve the funding for his attendance at an expensive training program might be very suspicious of that same supervisor when the company is making layoffs. A general rule to remember: The higher the stakes, the less likely people are to trust. If the answer to the question "What's the worst that could happen?" isn't that scary, it's easier to be trustful. We have a crisis of trust today in part because virtually nobody's job is truly secure, whereas just a generation ago, most people could count on staying with one company throughout their careers.

Number of similarities.

At heart we are still quite tribal, which is why people tend to more easily trust those who appear similar to themselves. Similarities may include common values (such as a strong work ethic), membership in a defined group (such as the manufacturing department, or a local church, or even a gender), and shared personality traits (extroversion, for instance, or ambition). In deciding how much to trust someone, people often begin by tallying up their similarities and differences.

Imagine that you are looking to hire a consultant for a strategy assignment. The first candidate walks into your office wearing a robe; he speaks with an accent and has a degree from a university you've never heard of. When you meet the second candidate, she is dressed very much like you and speaks as you do. You learn that she also attended your alma mater. Most people would feel more comfortable hiring the second candidate, rationalizing that she could be counted on to act as they would in a given situation.

That's partly why companies with a strong unifying culture enjoy higher levels of trust-particularly if their cultural values include candor, integrity, and fair process-than companies without one. A good example of this is QuikTrip, a convenience store chain with more than 7,000 employees, which has been named to Fortune 's 100 Best Companies to Work For in each of the past four years. One of the company's bedrock values is do the right thing-for the employee and for the customer. This meaningful and relevant shared value serves as a foundation for an exceptionally strong culture of trust. On the flip side, a lack of similarities and shared values explains why, in many organizations, the workaholic manager is suspicious of his family-oriented employee, or the entrepreneurial field sales group and the control-oriented headquarters never get along: It's more difficult to trust people who seem different.

Alignment of interests.

Before a person places her trust in someone else, she carefully weighs the question "How likely is this person to serve my interests?" When people's interests are completely aligned, trust is a reasonable response. (Because both the patient and the surgeon, for instance, benefit from a successful operation, the patient doesn't need to question the surgeon's motives.) A fairly unsophisticated leader will assume that everyone in the organization has the same interests. But in reality people have both common and unique interests. A good leader will turn critical success factors for the company into common interests that are clear and superordinate.

Consider compensation policies. We've all heard of companies that have massive layoffs, drive their stock prices up, and reward their CEOs with handsome bonuses-in the same year. It's no wonder that so many employees distrust management. Whole Foods Market, by contrast, has a policy stating that the CEO cannot make more than 14 times the average employee's salary; in 2005 CEO John Mackey forfeited a bonus of $46,000. That policy helps demonstrate to workers that the CEO is serving the best interests of the company, not only his own. Aligned interests lead to trust; misaligned interests lead to suspicion.

This factor also operates on a more macro-organizational level. In "Fair Process: Managing in the Knowledge Economy" (HBR July-August 1997), W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne described how a transparent, rigorous process for decision making leads to higher levels of organizational trust. Opaque decision-making processes, which may appear to serve special interests whether they do or not, breed distrust.

Benevolent concern.

Trust is an issue not because people are evil but because they are often self-centered. We've all known a manager whom employees don't trust because they don't believe he will fight for them. In other words, he has never demonstrated a greater concern for others' interests than for his own. The manager who demonstrates benevolent concern-who shows his employees that he will put himself at risk for them-engenders not only trust but also loyalty and commitment.

Aaron Feuerstein, the former CEO of Malden Mills, represents an extreme example of benevolent concern. In 1995 a fire destroyed his textile mill in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which had employed some 3,200 people. He could have taken the insurance money and moved his manufacturing overseas. Then 70, he could have retired. Instead Feuerstein promised his workers that he would rebuild the mill and save their jobs, and he kept them on the payroll. Feuerstein's benevolent concern for his employees, despite the cost to himself, gained their trust. Unfortunately, it lost the trust of his banks, which probably would have preferred that more benevolent concern be directed toward them. The resulting debt eventually forced the company to file for bankruptcy protection. This points to a real challenge in managing trust: how to balance multiple and sometimes competing interests.

Capability.

Similarities, aligned interests, and benevolent concern have little meaning if the trustee is incompetent. (If you're going to have surgery, you're probably more concerned about your surgeon's technical skills than about how much the two of you have in common.) Managers routinely assess capability when deciding to trust or delegate authority to those who work for them.

Capability is also relevant at the group and organizational levels. Shareholders will be suspicious of a board of directors that can't establish reliable processes for compensating CEOs fairly and uncovering unethical behavior. A customer will not trust a firm that has not demonstrated a consistent ability to meet his or her needs.

Predictability and integrity.

At some point in the trust decision the truster asks, "How certain am I of how the trustee will act?" A trustee whose behavior can be reliably predicted will be seen as more trustworthy. One whose behavior is erratic will be met with suspicion. Here the issue of integrity comes into play-that is, doing what you say you will do. Trustees who say one thing but do another lack integrity. The audio does not match the video, and we are confused as to which message to believe. The result is distrust.

In my executive-coaching work, I have seen some managers consistently overpromise but underdeliver. These people are well-intentioned, and they care passionately about their work, but their enthusiasm leads them to promise things they simply cannot produce. Despite their hard work and good intentions, colleagues don't trust them because of their poor track records.

Take the case of Bob, the managing partner of a global consulting firm. Bob was a creative and strategic thinker who was well liked by everyone. He had good intentions and had demonstrated benevolent concern for employees. But the other partners in the firm did not trust Bob, because he often failed to deliver what he had promised when he had promised it. Despite his good intentions, people in the firm said that any project that relied on Bob was in a "danger zone." With time and coaching, Bob learned to delegate more and to live up to his commitments. But the point here is that when a person fails to deliver, he's not just missing a deadline; he's undermining his own trustworthiness.

Level of communication.

Because trust is a relational concept, good communication is critical. Not surprisingly, open and honest communication tends to support the decision to trust, whereas poor (or no) communication creates suspicion. Many organizations fall into a downward spiral: Miscommunication causes employees to feel betrayed, which leads to a greater breakdown in communication and, eventually, outright distrust.

Consider how the Catholic Church handled allegations of sexual abuse by priests in the Boston area. Cardinal Bernard Law failed to openly communicate the nature and scope of the allegations. When the details emerged during legal proceedings, parishioners felt betrayed, and trust was destroyed. The word "cover-up" was frequently used in the media to describe Law's response to the crisis. His lack of candor caused people to feel that the truth was being obscured at the expense of the victims.

Around that time I witnessed an example of excellent communication within the same Catholic Church. I sat with my family one Sunday while, in an agonizingly uncomfortable homily, a priest confessed from the altar that he had had an inappropriate encounter 20 years earlier with a woman employed by the parish. He acknowledged his mistake, talked about how he had dealt with the issue, and asked for forgiveness. Over time his parishioners came once again to regard him as a trusted spiritual leader. His offense was less serious than Law's, but his story shows that honest communication can go a long way toward building or repairing relationships and engendering trust. To some degree, one person's openness induces openness in others, and the decision to put faith in others makes it more likely that they will reciprocate.

Managing with the Trust Model

Once these ten factors are understood, executives can begin managing trust in their own relationships and within their organizations.

Consider the example of Sue and Joe, a manager and her direct report in a Fortune 500 consumer goods company that was in the midst of a major turnaround. Sue, a relatively new VP of sales, wanted to make some aggressive personnel moves in response to pressure from her boss to improve performance. Joe, one of Sue's employees, was three years shy of his retirement date. He had been a loyal employee for 17 years and had been successful in previous staff roles. Recently, however, he had taken on a new job as a line manager in sales and was not performing well. In fact, Sue's boss had suggested that it was time to move Joe out.

Joe was a confident person (high level of adjustment), but he knew that he was in the wrong job and wanted to find a different way to contribute (high alignment of interests with Sue). He was concerned about how candid to be with Sue, because he was afraid of being terminated (low risk tolerance and low security). And because Sue was a new VP, Joe was uncertain whether she was the decision maker and had any real control (low predictability and low capability).

As the situation originally stood, Joe wasn't inclined to trust his manager; there were too many risks and uncertainties. The trust model helped Sue identify what she could do to change the situation and create a climate of trust afterward. (See the exhibit "Trust Intervention: Sue and Joe.") Sue and I realized, for instance, that we could do little to raise Joe's tolerance for risk. Cautious by nature, he was genuinely-and quite rightly-fearful of losing his job. So I encouraged Sue to demonstrate greater benevolent concern: to have a candid but supportive conversation with Joe and give him time to go through a self-discovery process using an outside consultant. After that process, Joe requested a transfer. I also coached Sue to work with her boss to gain approval for some alternate options for Joe, thus increasing her capability and predictability in Joe's eyes. In addition, Sue began communicating more frequently and openly to Joe about his options in the organization and was sincerely empathetic about how this career uncertainty would affect him and his wife-showing still more benevolent concern. Eventually Joe was moved into a more suitable position. He wasn't shy in sharing his positive feelings about the whole process with his former colleagues, who still reported to Sue. As a result, those people were more apt to place their faith in her, and trust increased in the department even though it was experiencing major change.

Sue, a VP of sales, needed to make some personnel changes in her department. Joe, her direct report, wasn't inclined to trust Sue, because the company was going through a turnaround and he feared for his job. Moreover, since she was relatively new to the company, he couldn't predict what she would do or gauge how capable she was. Sue used the trust model to identify what she could do to change Joe's feelings. By getting approval from her own boss for alternate positions for Joe, for instance, she demonstrated capability in finding solutions. And by empathizing with Joe's feeling of insecurity and openly discussing his options with him, she demonstrated both benevolent concern and increased communication. The result was that Joe found it easier to place his faith in Sue.

The trust model can also be applied on a broader, organizational scale. Consider the situation at Texaco in the 1990s. In 1994 a group of minority employees filed a racial-discrimination suit against the oil giant, charging that black employees were being paid less than white employees for equal work. Two years later tensions reached a crisis level when senior Texaco executives were secretly recorded denigrating black workers. It's safe to say that among black workers, trust in their company's executives bottomed out. Then-chairman and CEO Peter Bijur recognized the graveness of the situation and knew he needed to act quickly to repair the broken trust.

Bijur started by hiring outside counsel to investigate the matter; bringing in a neutral third party alleviated any suspicions that conflict of interest would taint the investigation. He also created a special board of directors committee, which was charged with evaluating the company's diversity training. That step demonstrated that Texaco placed a high value on diversity. New diversity and sensitivity training led to a corporate culture built on shared values. Those who didn't belong-specifically, the senior executives heard speaking offensively on the tape-were terminated, suspended, or had their retirement benefits cut off. To make the company's actions more predictable for employees, Bijur hired a respected judge to evaluate Texaco's HR policies, and the company changed those that were deemed unfair or not transparent. Moreover, senior executives were sent to all company locations to apologize for the humiliation to which black workers had been subjected. These meetings not only demonstrated benevolent concern but also opened up lines of communication between skeptical employees and top management.

Collectively, these actions made it easier for disillusioned workers to place their faith in the company again. Trust wasn't restored overnight-there's no quick fix for broken faith-but concerted efforts to correct the sources of distrust eventually paid off. In 1999 Bijur received an award from a national African-American group for commitment to diversity, and in 2000 Texaco received praise from SocialFunds.com for being a "model for challenging corporate racism."

Broken trust can be mended over time if leaders consistently engage in the right behaviors. The exhibit "Practical Ways of Managing Trust" identifies some behaviors that are particularly effective.

Practical Ways of Managing Trust

Trust is a measure of the quality of a relationship-between two people, between groups of people, or between a person and an organization. In totally predictable situations the question of trust doesn't arise: When you know exactly what to expect, there's no need to make a judgment call. The turbulence of outsourcing, mergers, downsizing, and changing business models creates a breeding ground for distrust.

Leading in such an environment requires acting in ways that provide clear reasons to decide to trust. There is no returning to the days when organizations expected-and received-unconditional loyalty from employees. But by using this model, you may be able to create a more dynamic and sustainable foundation for productive relationships.

A version of this article appeared in the September 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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The Idea in Brief Half of all managers don't trust their leaders. And in organizations mired in mistrust, stress, divisiveness, and lackluster productivity prevail-prompting valued employees to flee to more motivating environments. How to win your employees' trust?

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by Brene' Brown

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An overview of the seven elements of trust: Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Nonjudgment, and Generosity. The acronym BRAVING serves as a helpful checklist when rumbling with trust issues with the people in our lives.

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SuperSoul Sessions: The Anatomy of Trust

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An overview of the seven elements of trust: Boundaries, Reliability, Accountability, Vault, Integrity, Nonjudgment, and Generosity. The acronym BRAVING serves as a helpful checklist when rumbling with trust issues with the people in our lives.

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an interactive guide to the game theory of why & how we trust each other

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What Google Learned in its Quest to Build the Perfect Team

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What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (Published 2016)

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New research reveals surprising truths about why some work groups thrive and others falter.

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High Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety- Here's How to Create it! 

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High Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety- Here's How to Create it! 

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The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety - the belief that you won't be punished when you make a mistake. Studies show that psychological safety allows for taking moderate risks, speaking your mind, being creative, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off - just the types of behavior that lead to market breakthroughs. So how can you increase psychological safety on your own team? First, approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary. When conflicts come up, avoid triggering a fight-or-flight reaction by asking, "How could we achieve a mutually desirable outcome?" Speak human-to-human, but anticipate reactions, plan countermoves, and adopt a learning mindset, where you're truly curious to hear the other person's point of view. Ask for feedback to illuminate your own blind spots. If you create this sense of psychological safety on your own team starting now, you can expect to see higher levels of engagement, increased motivation to tackle difficult problems, more learning and development opportunities, and better performance.

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High-Performing Teams Need Psychological Safety: Here's How to Create It

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The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety - the belief that you won't be punished when you make a mistake. Studies show that psychological safety allows for taking moderate risks, speaking your mind, being creative, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off - just the types of behavior that lead to market breakthroughs.

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Ted Talk: Building a Psychologically Safe Workplace (Amy Edmondson)

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Ted Talk: Building a Psychologically Safe Workplace (Amy Edmondson)

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Amy Edmondson- Building a Psychologically Safe Workplace ‐ Made with Clipchamp

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Team Learning and Psychological Safety Survey

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Team Learning and Psychological Safety Survey

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Team Learning and Psychological Safety Survey | Measurement Instrument Database for the Social Sciences

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The Team Learning and Psychological Safety Survey is a 24 item measure. Team psychological safety, defined as the extent to which the team views the social climate as conducive to interpersonal risk, is assessed.

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Building the right culture in an era of fast-paced teaming, when people work on a shifting mix of projects with a shifting mix of partners, might sound challenging - if not impossible. But, in my experience, in the most innovative companies, teaming is the culture.

Teaming is about identifying essential collaborators and quickly getting up to speed on what they know so you can work together to get things done. This more flexible teamwork (in contrast to stable teams) is on the rise in many industries because the work - be it patient care, product development, customized software, or strategic decision-making - increasingly presents complicated interdependencies that have to be managed on the fly. The time between an issue arising and when it must be resolved is shrinking fast. Stepping back to select, build, and prepare the ideal team to handle fast-moving issues is not always practical. So teaming is here to stay.

Today's leaders must therefore build a culture where teaming is expected and begins to feel natural, and this starts with helping everyone to become curious, passionate,and empathic.

Curiosity drives people to find out what others know, what they bring to the table, what they can add. Passion fuels enthusiasm and effort. It makes people care enough to stretch, to go all out. Empathy is the ability to see another's perspective, which is absolutely critical to effective collaboration under pressure.

The leader's task is to model these behaviors. When leaders ask genuine questions and listen intently to the responses, display deep enthusiasm for achieving team goals, and show they're attuned to everyone's diverse perspectives no matter their position in the hierarchy, curiosity, passion and empathy start to take root in a culture. When you join an unfamiliar team or start a challenging new project, self-protection is a natural instinct. It's not possible to look good or be right all the time when collaborating on an endeavor with uncertain outcomes.But when you're concerned about yourself, you tend to be less interested in others, less passionate about your shared cause, and unable to understand different points of view. So it takes conscious work to shift the culture.

Consider the case of Julie Morath, a pioneer in launching an ambitious patient safety initiative at Children's Hospital and Clinics in Minnesota, long before such efforts became widespread in the industry. To get employee attention, she gave speeches about patient safety and met one-on-one with opinion leaders throughout the organization. But still, staff resisted the change effort, confident that the hospital didn't really have a problem. Instead of using her position to argue her position more forcefully, Morath responded to the pushback with questions. "What was your own experience this week, in the units, with your patients?" she asked thoughtfully. "Was everything as safe as you would like it to have been?"

This simple inquiry transformed engagement, and started to shift the organization's culture to one in which people started teaming up to improve safety. Morath's simple questions made the staff realize that most of them had been at the center of a health care situation where something did not go well and the hospital could indeed be doing better. She went on to lead as many as 18 focus groups to allow people to air concerns and ideas. As everyone began to discuss the incidents they'd experienced, it became clear that their experiences weren't unique or idiosyncratic; many of them had similar stories.

In short, Morath's display of curiosity helped others deepen their own understanding of the organization's processes and results. She was passionate about patient safety, and her passion was infectious. Finally, her empathy was unmistakable, extending not just to the patients whose lives would be saved by higher quality care but also to the employees who needed to team up under pressure day in and day out.

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Building the right culture in an era of fast-paced teaming, when people work on a shifting mix of projects with a shifting mix of partners, might sound challenging - if not impossible. But, in my experience, in the most innovative companies, teaming is the culture.

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Of the five key dynamics of effective teams that the researchers identified, psychological safety was by far the most important. The Google researchers found that individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave Google, they're more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas from their teammates, they bring in more revenue, and they're rated as effective twice as often by executives.

Organizational behavioral scientist Amy Edmondson of Harvard first introduced the construct of "team psychological safety" and defined it as "a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking." Taking a risk around your team members may sound simple. But asking a basic question like "what's the goal of this project?" may make you sound like you're out of the loop. It might feel easier to continue without getting clarification in order to avoid being perceived as ignorant.

To measure a team's level of psychological safety, Edmondson asked team members how strongly they agreed or disagreed with these statements:

1. If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you.

2. Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.

3. People on this team sometimes reject others for being different.

4. It is safe to take a risk on this team.

5. It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help.

6. No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.

7. Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.

In her TEDx talk, Edmondson offers three simple things individuals can do to foster team psychological safety:

1. Frame the work as a learning problem, not an execution problem.

2. Acknowledge your own fallibility.

3. Model curiosity and ask lots of questions.

In promoting the results of Google's research internally, the research team has been running workshops with teams. In the workshops, anonymized scenarios have been used to illustrate behaviors that can support and harm psychological safety. The scenarios are role-played and then the group debriefs. Here's an example scenario:

Psychological Safety Scenario | Ideas & Innovation

Uli is a long time manager known for his technical expertise. For the past two years he's worked as manager of team XYZ, which is responsible for running a large scale project. He upholds very high standards, but in the past few months Uli has become increasingly intolerant of mistakes, ideas he considers to be "underpar," and challenges to his way of thinking.

Recently, Uli publically "trounced" an idea offered by an experienced team member and spoke very negatively about that person to the wider team behind their back. Everyone else thought the idea was strong, well-researched, and worth exploring. Ideas have since dried up.

Uli's ideas drove the recent project proposal, but it was ultimately rejected by the executives because it lacked creativity and innovation.

Debriefing questions:

What behaviors do you see that reflect psychological safety?

What behaviors may signal that psychological safety is lacking in the scenario?

Why is psychological safety so important? What difference does it make in a team? What have you seen on your teams?

If you're a manager, consider these recommendations when coaching team members and teammates.

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re:Work - Guide: Understand team effectiveness

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Of the five key dynamics of effective teams that the researchers identified, psychological safety was by far the most important. The Google researchers found that individuals on teams with higher psychological safety are less likely to leave Google, they're more likely to harness the power of diverse ideas from their teammates, they bring in more revenue, and they're rated as effective twice as often by executives.

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Patrick Lencioni on the importance of trust

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Low-Trust Teams Prefer Individualized Pay

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Low-Trust Teams Prefer Individualized Pay

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Executive Summary

Short-term, virtual, and cross-cultural teams have become the new norm, but building trust among team members is particularly challenging. That has implications for how managers should motivate and reward them.

It's always a tough call-should managers base team members' pay on individual or collective performance? Recent research suggests that a fundamental factor is often overlooked in this decision: the degree of trust within the team.

Evidence suggests that members of low-trust teams should be paid according to individual effort. That's an important nugget for companies, because low-trust teams are proliferating in today's global business environment. Short-term, virtual, and cross-cultural teams have become the norm in many companies, but they don't easily allow members to go through the gradual process of gaining confidence in one another's competence, honesty, and dependability.

Many companies accept the conventional wisdom that team-based pay is the best way to encourage cooperation. According to the University of Southern California's Center for Effective Organizations, 85% of Fortune 1,000 companies used team- or group-based pay to some degree in 2005, up from 59% in 1990. But cooperation is often better fostered by teams' perception of fairness, which starts with an allocation of rewards that members consider equitable.

My colleagues and I studied 49 teams with four to seven members drawn from students at a U.S. business school, who collaborated on four-month projects. Team members who reported less trust of their colleagues' ability, honesty, and dependability had a greater preference for individual-based rewards (grades, in this case). And the less they trusted their colleagues, the more they cared about whether their preference was followed. This research dovetails with findings by Kristine Kuhn and Mark Yockey of Washington State University that people will even forgo potentially higher pay to avoid having their compensation tied to unproven team members.

Over the life spans of the teams in our study, trust increased and team members began to care less strongly about whether their reward preference would actually be implemented. But their preference for individual rewards decreased only marginally, suggesting that teams must have a very high level of trust for members to truly embrace group-based pay.

One U.S.-based global company that supplies manufactured parts for other companies' products has found a useful approach to designing rewards for teams. It follows these guidelines:

Listen to employees. When converting three siloed departments to a dozen multifunctional teams focused on customer accounts, the company queried a cross section of employees and learned that they were very resistant to team-based compensation.

Identify specific roles. The firm established a system of differentiated compensation based on the specialized skills each member provides to a team. Because each person has a unique function, it's relatively easy for managers to identify individual contributions. Employees are evaluated on measures such as job knowledge and work quality.

Be consistent about evaluation. All members of a given team are evaluated by one manager rather than an array of functional managers.

Unite teams through recognition. The company encourages teamwork and cooperation by acknowledging individuals' contributions to their teams and explicitly tracking and communicating the teams' role in the company's success.

The company realized that many employees find it unfair to have a significant portion of pay tied to the performance of team members they don't fully trust, and that a sense of unfairness is counterproductive to teamwork. So it made no attempt to forcibly unite teams through collective compensation. Instead the company provided rewards that better met employees' and teams' needs. As a result, it avoided the pitfalls of low-trust teams reported by the organizations in another study I completed: team member demotivation and withdrawal.

A version of this article appeared in the November 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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Low-Trust Teams Prefer Individualized Pay

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It's always a tough call-should managers base team members' pay on individual or collective performance? Recent research suggests that a fundamental factor is often overlooked in this decision: the degree of trust within the team. Evidence suggests that members of low-trust teams should be paid according to individual effort.

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Video: Brene' Brown on Trust

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Brené Brown, Shame_ Vulnerability ‐ Made with Clipchamp (1)

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Erin Bric, Erin Hall, Will Peterson & Lindsey Sands

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The Effects of Interpersonal Trust on Work Group Performance

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The Effects of Interpersonal Trust on Work Group Performance

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Dirks, K. T. (1999). The effects of interpersonal trust on work group performance

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How to Turn a Group of Strangers into a Team

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How to Turn a Group of Strangers into a Team

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Amy Edmondson- How to turn a group of strangers into a team ‐ Made with Clipchamp

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Book: The Thin Book of Trust

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How to Create a Culture of Psychological Safety

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How to Create a Culture of Psychological Safety

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Why do employees sometimes remain silent when they should speak up? Do they fear consequences or repercussions? Do they feel like new ideas can't be respectfully considered without an onslaught of criticism about its inherent risks, a barrage of demands for a detailed project plan, or an insistence on immediate proof of an overinflated ROI?

Put plainly, why do we hold back our potential contributions when we know a project or process is broken or headed for disaster?

Because it's not safe to engage. The benefit of saying nothing tends to far outweigh the benefit of speaking up. Employees fear their ideas will be rejected to their detriment, or that managers will go so far as to penalize them. So, they keep their heads down and their mouths shut. I'd imagine the workers at Volkswagen who failed to speak up about fudged emissions numbers can probably relate.

Gallup's data reveal that just three in 10 U.S. workers strongly agree that at work, their opinions seem to count. However, by moving that ratio to six in 10 employees, organizations could realize a 27% reduction in turnover, a 40% reduction in safety incidents and a 12% increase in productivity.

Dr. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, uses the term "psychological safety" and defines it as "a climate in which people are comfortable being (and expressing) themselves." Edmondson has confirmed that psychological safety predicts quality improvements, learning behavior and productivity. An internal study conducted by Google found that teams with high rates of psychological safety were better than other teams at implementing diverse ideas and driving high performance. They were also more likely to stay with the company.

A culture of psychological safety enables employees to be engaged. They can take risks and experiment. They can express themselves without the fear of failure or retribution. Juxtapose this type of culture with one where employees feel too intimidated to speak up or share a new idea. It's hard to imagine these employees can mentally allow themselves to be engaged at work.
Four Questions That Lead to Psychological Safety
I recently worked with a client organization that hired a new CHRO to help enact a turnaround, starting with the HR department. After a time, things still weren't getting better. The CHRO was frustrated with how long the transition was taking, yet the team still felt too much uncertainty to be fully engaged. It was clear to me that no one in the department felt safe defending or actively pursuing a new idea, an opinion or a criticism -- they were worried about their job. The environment wasn't negative; it included plenty of cordial interaction and can-do spirit in person. But it was unproductive once real work began.

I got the team together in a conference room and posed four questions to them:

1. What can we count on each other for?

2. What is our team's purpose?

3. What is the reputation we aspire to have?

4. What do we need to do differently to achieve that reputation and fulfill our purpose?

The questions are designed to create a culture of psychological safety. Please note that the order is as important as the questions themselves. The first question speaks to strengths and is fundamental for establishing individual security before diving into the broader team psychological safety challenges.

After some preparatory education and activity, I asked the first person to my right, "So, what can these people count on you for?" She thought for a minute and said, "Above all, you can always count on me to meet deadlines. I will never deliver late." The people around the table all nodded. "But doesn't everyone do that?" she asked. Then team members began sharing examples of occasions when her timeliness made the difference in their success, and she began to realize that her team truly valued and genuinely needed her contribution to their work.

I asked the next person what the team could count on him for, with the same affirmative result. Eventually, everyone heard -- out loud -- from their teammates that their specific contribution was unique, appreciated and highly valued. One by one, each member of the team expressed what they believed they contributed to the team, and each was validated and felt more secure.

It was a good start, but the team needed to dig deeper to create the kind of safety that leads to real business improvement. They needed to align with a shared purpose and identity. I pushed them to think through these elements together. Why do they come to work every day? What is the purpose of HR in that company? How do they achieve that purpose together? Then, with that purpose and process in mind, what do they aspire to be known for in the company? What is the brand they want to create?

The team members eventually came up with their "Guiding Principles." Today, they use these principles to reinforce a shared direction, approach, unity and identity, ultimately building an ever-deepening sense of safety among team members.

Some of the ways the team uses these principles are practical: They use them to filter out and prioritize staff meeting agendas, based on whether agenda topics meet the principles. The HR team uses them when they interact with business partners, setting expectations and accountability partners with its stakeholders.

Some of the uses, however, are a little more theoretical. When a team member needs to ask for help, or bring a new idea or challenge to an existing process, they can couch their request in the language the team uses to describe its collective purpose or brand. The CHRO uses the team's principles to explain behavior and coach performance. By consistently using them across the board, these shared Guiding Principles help them to talk and work together in a way that promotes individual and team psychological safety.

Six months after creating and implementing its Guiding Principles, the team took a reading of its engagement using Gallup's Q¹² employee engagement survey. The team's score shot up 0.70 points on the Q ¹²'s five-point scale. For context, 0.20 is a meaningful improvement.
Building the Culture of Psychological Safety
While critical elements like organizational structure, process and system considerations can influence a company culture, the behavioral side of culture is built person by person, team by team, day by day. Team and individual safety are both essential, but individual safety must come first in the process of building psychological safety. And it must come first for any hope of improved engagement and performance.

That's what the answers to the four questions gave to the individuals on the HR team -- a safety net with which to trust and be open with each other. It allowed them to be vulnerable enough to be engaged. Exploring those four questions can do the same for any team or organization that wants to create a culture of psychological safety. Leaders and managers can use the four questions to encourage participation, ideation and honesty. Ideally, every team in an organization would work through the four questions to get to its shared value, purpose and identity. In the best case scenario, for real culture change to transpire, this has to include -- and start with -- the executive team. Leaders should answer the four questions from a team and organizational perspective. It is when leaders then share their organizational answers with the rest of the company that the expected behavior is encouraged and alignment occurs.

While culture change rarely follows a straight-and-narrow line, a single team can spark a social contagion in an organization. Managers don't have to wait. They can foster psychological safety within their workgroups immediately by posing and talking through the four questions above. They can create an environment where people are safe to engage, safe to address the elephant in the room and safe to put their whole selves into their work.
Learn more about how Gallup can help you achieve higher levels of engagement and performance by instilling a culture of psychological safety within teams:

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How to Create a Culture of Psychological Safety

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Why do employees sometimes remain silent when they should speak up? Do they fear consequences or repercussions? Do they feel like new ideas can't be respectfully considered without an onslaught of criticism about its inherent risks, a barrage of demands for a detailed project plan, or an insistence on immediate proof of an overinflated ROI?

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Reprint: R0906H Will we ever learn? We’d barely recovered from Enron and WorldCom before we faced the subprime mortgage meltdown and more scandals that shook our trust in businesspeople. Which raises the question: Do we trust too much? In this article, Stanford professor and social psychologist Kram…

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Facilitative process interventions: Task processes in groups - NEEDS LINK OR IMAGE

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Facilitative process interventions: Task processes in groups - NEEDS LINK OR IMAGE

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The Experience & Evolution of Trust: Implications for Cooperation & Teamwork

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The Experience & Evolution of Trust: Implications for Cooperation & Teamwork

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Jones, G. R., & George, J. M. (1998). The experience and evolution of trust- Implications for cooperation and teamwork. 

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Too Much of a Good Thing? Negative Effects of High Trust and Individual Autonomy in Self-Managing Teams.

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Too Much of a Good Thing? Negative Effects of High Trust and Individual Autonomy in Self-Managing Teams.

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Langfred, C. W. (2004). Too much of a good thing_ Negative effects of high trust and individual autonomy in self-managing teams.

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Making it safe: The effects of leader inclusiveness and professional status on psychological safety and improvement efforts in health care teams

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Making it safe: The effects of leader inclusiveness and professional status on psychological safety and improvement efforts in health care teams

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Get access to files anywhere through secure cloud storage and file backup for your photos, videos, files and more with Google Drive.

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Article: Not So Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View of Trust

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Article: Not So Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View of Trust

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Denise Rousseau., et al (1998) - Not so Different After All_ Cross-discipline view of trust

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Article: Facilitative process interventions: Task processes in groups

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Article: Facilitative process interventions: Task processes in groups