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- The #1 trait of effective teams
Last week we talked at length about how to get the feedback you need.
What we didn’t talk about is the elephant in the room.
When we ask for feedback we are admitting that we need other people’s help. By doing that, we are also implicitly admitting that we don’t have all the answers. We are revealing our finitude. In other words, we are making ourselves vulnerable in front of others.
Teammates willing to be vulnerable in front of each other is the hallmark of a psychologically safe team.
Why is psychological safety important?
Psychological Safety is the single most important thing to make a team work.
Don’t believe me? You shouldn’t 😀 But I’ve got data!
In 2015, Google launched a study known as Project Aristotle to identify the characteristics of effective teams within the company. Here is what they found out (excerpt from an NYT Magazine article).
For Project Aristotle, research on psychological safety pointed to particular norms that are vital to success. There were other behaviors that seemed important as well — like making sure teams had clear goals and creating a culture of dependability. But Google’s data indicated that psychological safety, more than anything else, was critical to making a team work.
Like everything else, being vulnerable in front of your team is a muscle that can (and should!) be trained.
As team captains, it is our responsibility to demonstrate the behaviors we want people in our captainship circle to demonstrate. It is our responsibility to lead by example since our behaviors have an outsized impact on our team’s culture.
Tomorrow I’ll share one of my favorite ways you can borrow to show vulnerability in front of your team. I call this technique “The manager question”.
See you tomorrow!
-Ale
P.S. What did you think about this post? Reply to let me know. You can also leave me anonymous feedback.