Psychologically Safe Teams: Improving the Quality of Your Outcomes by Changing the Nature of Your Conversations

When it comes to company culture, fear of judgment, criticism, or failure can be some of the biggest impediments to creative thinking, employee involvement, and healthy relationships in the workplace. Extensive research by Google and the Harvard Business School on what makes a company’s work groups most effective showed it has less to do with the skills, IQ, or roles of people on the team than you might think. In reality, the biggest indicator of success on work teams was whether or not their norms and behaviors encouraged high levels of involvement, inclusion, and a sense of psychological safety, an environment that instills a sense of safety and confidence when sharing perspectives, ideas, and feedback with their peers and supervisors. This session will focus on the role psychological safety plays in the workplace, why it is so important, and strategies for building leadership practices and company cultures that reduce stress while maximizing success.