What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team
Psychological safety is key for good teams, and it’s highly relevant to what we’re learning. As devs, we work together a lot - agile teams, pair programming, code reviews, etc. When everyone feels good enough to speak up, ask questions, and own up to mistakes, it allows the team to work together better.
Ideas flow, bugs get squashed, and everyone levels up. Psychological safety builds the trust we need to work together and deliver that app.
Psychological safety makes sure everyone on my team feels heard and supported. Better communication, better code, better apps, more fun!
- What are three key factors that contribute to psychologically safe teams?
Equality in that everyone speaks roughly equal amounts. Ability to pick up on nonverbal cues and intuit how others feel. Team that encourage interpersonal risk-taking and expressing vulnerability.
- Evaluate, with details, a previous professional setting (or team) you were in with regards to psychological safety.
our leadership team did not prioritize psychological safety early on. There was an uneven distribution of talk time, with myself and the CTO dominating conversations. Additionally, social sensitivity was low - it was hard to discuss tensions or conflict productively. I wish I had focused more on fostering norms of trust, active listening, and comfort expressing emotions/weaknesses. The high stress of a startup made this difficult, but it led to burnout and less cohesion. More check-ins on mental health and modeling vulnerability could have improved our team psychology.
What impact do teams that operate with a high degree of psychological safety have on their company and the team members?
Psychologically safe teams have higher collective intelligence, increased ability to innovate, faster problem-solving, and higher job satisfaction. For a company, this builds trust, improves communication, and fosters creativity. For individuals, psychological safety lowers stress, creates a sense of belonging, and leads to professional growth and learning. Overall, it enables teams to optimize collaboration, performance, and member well-being.