Saturday, December 31, 2016

Psychological Safety leads to High-Performing Agile Teams

There are two types of safety that factor into a healthy and productive enterprise environment and high-performing teams.  The first is physical safety. This is where employees have an environment where they are free from physical hazards and can focus on the work at hand. This type of safety should be part of the standard workplace promoted by company and government regulations.

The second is psychological safety that is core to enterprise effectiveness. According to Google research, high performing teams always display psychological safety.  This phenomenon has two aspects.  The first is where there is a shared belief that the team is safe to take interpersonal risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.  The second is how this type of safety along with increased accountability leads to increased employee productivity and ergo high-performing teams. 
Psychological safety helps establish Agile in that it promotes a safe space for employees to share their ideas, discuss options, take methodical risks, and become productive.  An Agile mindset promotes self-organizing teams around the work, taking ownership and accountability, and creating an environment for learning what is customer value through the discovery mindset, divergent thinking, and feedback loops. Agile with psychological safety can be a powerful pairing toward high-performing teams.   

However, accountability without psychological safety, leads to great anxiety.  This is why there is a need to move away from a negative mindset when results aren’t positive or new ideas are seen as different. If this occurs, employees are less willing to share ideas and take risks.  Instead consider ways to build psychological safety paired with team ownership and accountability of the work. This can lead to high performing teams. 

Everyone has a role to play in establishing a psychologically safe environment.  Agile Coaches and ScrumMasters can help you evolve to an enterprise where psychological safety and accountability are paired. Leadership has a strong role to play to provide awareness of the importance of a safe environment, provide education on this topic, and build positive patterns in the way they respond to results of risk taking by teams.  Team members must adopt an open, divergent, and positive mindset that is focused on accepting differences and coaching each other for better business outcomes.  Employees at all levels must be aware of the attitudes and mindset they bring.