Want your project team to perform better? Try creating a psychologically safe space.

Are you a leader or project manager wanting to increase the performance of your team?

The answer?

Create a psychologically safe space for your team.

A recent research study published in the Journal of Research-Technology Management found that in a psychologically safe workplace, project teams:

• performed better

• more readily shared knowledge

• engaged in organizational citizenship behaviour

• were less likely to leave

All elements required to move us towards our business goals.

What is psychological safety?

As stated by the authors of the study, psychological safety is a belief that a team member “feels able to show and employ his or herself without fear of negative consequences to self-image, status, or career”.

Essentially, people feel they can take interpersonal risk at work. For example, expressing opinions or behaviours that may be different from the norm.

The Study

The authors of the current study took a deep dive into the scientific literature on psychological safety and used this knowledge to develop a questionnaire around 5 key areas: 

1. Psychological Safety - how safe team members perceived their work environment for taking risks, making mistakes, asking for help etc.

2. Task Performance - how well team members perceived they completed tasks.

3. Knowledge-Sharing Behaviour- the sharing of work reports, official documents and his/her own experience with the team.

4. Organizational Citizenship Behaviour - a team members voluntary commitment to their workplace that aren’t part of their contractual tasks e.g. attendance above the norm, taking underserved breaks, and giving advance notice when unable to come to work.

5. Turnover Intention - whether or not the team member intended to leave their workplace.

The authors then used their questionnaire to survey team members and leaders working for a variety of Taiwanese Research & Development (R&D) companies.

80 teams of 320 team members in 36 different companies completed the questionnaire.

What did they find?

The authors found that team members that felt they were part of a psychologically safe workplace performed their tasks better, more readily shared knowledge, had better attendance and organizational citizenship behaviours, and had a reduced intention to leave their current workplace.

They also found that team members with higher levels of education and longer work experience tended to “perform greater amounts of organizational citizenship behaviours”, and that older employees were less likely to quit their jobs.

The authors also consider psychological safety a key component for successful teams especially those involved in R&D and innovation - without it, team members can be disengaged and unstable with higher turnover rates.

What should leaders do?

Here are our TOP 5 TIPS for leaders to help foster a psychologically safe workplace:

1. Make it a priority!

2. Facilitate everyone speaking up.

3. Lead with empathy, not ego.

4. Be open to feedback.

5. Build trust by being transparent and avoid blaming.

Consciously design your day, or someone else will.

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