Blog Posts

Importance of Psychological Safety

7/24/2018

July 24, 2018
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #75
From the Greenbelt of Boise Idaho, Summer heat

Psychological Safety provides a foundational element for Team Success. Google researchers found it to be the most important dynamic of their effective teams.

Unfortunately, during times of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, people can resort to reactive tendencies that make it difficult to maintain. It requires constant tending by teams and leaders committed to providing the necessary conditions for team success.

The term Psychological Safety describes a climate in which people feel free to express relevant thoughts and feelings without fear of being penalized. Although it sounds simple, the ability to ask questions, seek help, and tolerate mistakes while colleagues watch can be unexpectedly difficult.
– Amy Edmondson

In her book Teaming, Edmondson outlines seven benefits of providing Psychological Safety:

Encourages Speaking Up
Enables Clarity of Thought
Supports Productive Conflict
Mitigates Failure
Promotes Innovation
Removes Obstacles to Pursuing Goals
Increases Accountability

Here is a quick check you can do:

Are your team meetings dominated by one person speaking, or do all team members take turns with the time spread more evenly?
Are people empathetic to the challenges and issues team members are experiencing, or not?

Taking turns speaking and having empathy creates bonds between team members, providing Psychological Safety, the cornerstone of effective team norms.

I assist teams and leaders to create better results by developing the practice of team leadership, including Psychological Safety. To learn more visit here. Let’s create a better future today!

Previous Posts in the Series:

Our Collective Leadership Challenge

7/12/2018

July 12, 2018
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #74
From the Greenbelt of Boise Idaho, Warm with a light breeze

In a world of constant change and increasing complexity, our greatest leadership challenge is developing collective leadership in teams, organizations and communities.

Creating better results and a better future requires more than lots of well-intentioned leaders operating from their own domains of expertise as the image depicts. While the myth of one heroic individual leading people to success persists, the reality is today’s polarizing world requires concerted action within and across teams. The leadership challenge is in bringing people with diverse knowledge, skills and experience together in networks of teams to create better solutions.

The dynamics of collective leadership require more than Setting a Team Up for Success. While it is easy to allow someone to take charge, it requires focused effort to grow collective leadership capacities together.

I use The Leadership Circle® Leadership Culture model to assist teams in growing their leadership competencies. It enables teams and groups to assess their current and desired leadership culture in comparison to thousands of other teams.

Take this example where a team has strong reactive tendencies in controlling combined with a medium tendency to protect. These limit their ability to creatively relate and engage with other people, each other within the team and the broader system in which they operate, which limits their achievements.

Now consider the teams and groups you’re a part of. Imagine walking around the circle and think about how much time and energy is spent on each of the eight summary dimensions.

Consider these questions:

How much of your team energy is focused on creative leadership?
How much is spent on reactive tendencies?
What is the balance between tasks and relationships?
During the average team meeting, where do you most frequently stand?
When team meetings become stressful, where’s your go to place?
What helps you and your team shift from reactivity to creativity?
What steps can you take to develop collective leadership in your teams, organizations and communities?

I work with teams and leaders to create better results through the conscious evolution of our practice of team leadership. To learn more visit here.

Let’s create a better future today!

Set Your Teams Up for Success

7/2/2018

July 2, 2018
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #73
From the Greenbelt of Boise Idaho, Sunny Summer Day

Evolution has wired us not merely to form dominance hierarchies but to work together when a vital task demands more than any single individual can accomplish alone.
– Ruth Wageman, etal, Senior Leadership Teams

Setting teams up for success takes intentional focus and design. Research by Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman identified six steps to enable effective teams. You can use the following overview to do a quick assessment of your team(s). Rate each of the six steps on a scale of 1-5 with:

1 = unclear and/or poor definition,
3 = some clarity and mediocre functioning,
5 = Clear to everyone and functioning very well.

1. Decide if a team is needed.
Some work is best done by individuals, and it is unproductive to assign to a team. A team is best utilized when work requires interdependent application of diverse skills and perspectives to arrive at the best possible outcomes. Clarify the scope of the teamwork required. Think through what the team exists to accomplish. Is it to provide information exchange, consult and advise, coordinate action, make decisions or a combination of the four?

2. Define a clear compelling purpose.
Define a purpose that is consequential, challenging and clear. A few questions to answer are:

What is the creative purpose that requires the team to work together interdependently?
What is the desired impact that has sufficient challenge for the team to pursue together?
Is the purpose clear to all the team members?

3. Get the right people on and the wrong ones off.
Select team members based on their teamwork abilities and their capacity to provide the diversity of skills, experience and representation to make the team effective. Be clear about who is on the team and who isn’t. Don’t keep people on the team who aren’t collaborating and delivering what the team needs, as that undermines team effectiveness. Provide for team stability to enable them to learn and grow together, and support onboarding for new team members when needed.

4. Develop a solid structure.
Set clear roles and responsibilities including team leadership expectations, and limit the number of team members to the critical few needed to complete them. Each additional person added to a team significantly increases the number of connections required between team members and slows decision-making, coordinated action and effective discussions. Adding more people for representation bogs teams down unnecessarily. Enable the team to establish clear norms for how they will work together and hold each other accountable for the work and the expected outcomes from the team’s stakeholders.

5. Provide the support needed.
Provide the information, educational resources, technical, financial and other material resources the team needs to do the work well. Have a clear executive champion who clears roadblocks holding the team up from effective progress. Ensure teams and team members are recognized, acknowledged and rewarded for their work as a team.

6. Coach the team
Identify who and how the team will be coached to accelerate learning, growth and effectiveness. The coach could come from within the team, the team leader, or from an external team coach. Ensure whoever is coaching the team has the necessary skills and rapport with the team to be effective in elevating their results.

Reflecting on these six steps, how solid is your team’s foundation for success? If your score was:

6-18: the team is setup to struggle. Consider putting the right pieces in place and relaunching the team.
19-24: the team has many elements in place. Focus on the important areas to accelerate team effectiveness.
25-30: the team has a solid foundation. Consider what enables further growth and learning within the team to expand their results and share their insights with other teams, building a network of teams for the organization.

I work with teams and leaders to create better results through the conscious evolution of our practice of team leadership. To learn more about team assessments and design contact me at info@generativeleadershipgroup.com. Let’s create a better future today!

Assess Team Effectiveness

6/11/2018

June 11, 2018
Clear Confident Leader Weekly Observer, Issue #72
From the Greenbelt of Boise Idaho, Cloudy & Cool

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.
– Lewis Carroll

If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
– Lao Tzu

Most organizations regularly set goals, assess progress and provide ways to help their people improve, yet very few do the same with the many teams that make up the heart of their organization’s success. Mediocre and poor performing teams are often tolerated until they become dysfunctional.

How does your organization assess team effectiveness, and help them to improve?

In the previous post in this series, we covered four contextual elements that set the stage for team effectiveness: stakeholders, systemic scope, level of complexity and uncertainty, degree of work interdependence. We’ll build on those using three lenses to assess team effectiveness.

First, what are the team’s stakeholders expecting from them?

It is critical for teams to know what their stakeholders expect with both minimal acceptable and excessive thresholds, so they can guide their work and course correct along the way. Frequently used criteria include:

a quality deliverable, product, service or solution,
delivered within a certain timeframe,
meeting safety, regulatory and other specified requirements,
at an acceptable price or cost,
that achieves a specific adoption, use or purchase rate.

Second, what are the critical improvement drivers the team needs to address?

Whether they’re improving routine operations, innovating new solutions or inventing something, teams are building upon what has been done before and seeking a better outcome. By clarifying what combination of specific improvements they’re focused on, teams can be more effective. Frequently used examples are:

Deliver Better (e.g. experiences, services, products, etc.)
Deliver More (e.g. serving more niches to more customers more frequently, etc.)
Deliver faster (e.g. less lead time, etc.)
For Less (e.g. price, cost, margin, etc.)
More Sustainably (e.g. renewable resources, lower environmental impact, etc.)

Finally, what are the health indicators that enable teams to adapt and thrive?
Teams need to manage their own fitness, growth and development to enable progress and ongoing success. Key indicators include:

Psychological safety and conversational health
Collective leadership culture, presence and resilience
Workflow improvement and innovation
Team learning and adaptability, internally and externally with other teams
Individual growth

Knowing how to measure team effectiveness and providing ways for their teams to improve is crucial for organization success in today’s complex, uncertain and ever-changing world.

I work with teams and leaders to create better results through the conscious evolution of our practice of team leadership. Let’s create a better future today!

Previous Posts in the Series:

<<Previous

Forward>>

Importance of Psychological Safety

Our Collective Leadership Challenge

Set Your Teams Up for Success

Assess Team Effectiveness

Archives

Categories

Home

About

Observer

Services

Privacy