In the final article in this series, I'm going to return to a quote I started with in the overview:

A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships are for.

 ~John Shedd

Beyond the safety of the psychological kind that I have been writing about, safety, in general, certainly seems to be in the air these days.

Is there more real danger afoot than there was 50 or 100 years ago? Maybe.  Is there more perceived danger?  Almost certainly.

As the quote above implies, an increased focus on safety certainly has benefits, but it comes with costs as well, and not just for adults.

To wit, you can hear a greater hue and cry coming from across the political and scientific spectrum that this emphasis on safety, and the concomitant "helicoptering" and "snowplowing," is hurting our kids: Why Kids Need to Take More Risks: Science Reveals the Benefits of Wild Free Play.

Maybe we all need lives that allow for more risk...in general, and in our relationships and on the teams we're on.

The final installment of this series asks: is there is a place we can aspire to, one where psychological safety, while certainly nice to have, is not the primary concern of the team as a whole or the individuals on it?

I think there is.

And I think this story from San Francisco 49er and Hall of Fame Quarterback Steve Young describes that place better than I ever could.

A little set-up will help. 

Steve Young started with the 49ers in 1987 as the backup QB to Joe Montana.  Montana had already won two Super Bowls and would go on to win two more before Steve Young would start.  Montana was absolutely worshiped by 49er Nation.

There was fierce competition between the two of them...from the moment Young arrived in San Francisco...and for the four years Young backed up Montana. 

Young described the atmosphere between them as "odd and awkward...it was awkward from the first moment of the first day, and it was awkward forever."

Young wanted to go to the 49ers because he thought he was going to be able to play, but it quickly became clear he was "just" a back-up.  He knew he was good and deserved to start somewhere and he hated it.  It got so bad he wanted to be traded.

But then Montana got hurt and Young was thrust into the starting job.

He got what he wanted, but his first starts did not go well.

(The following story is from a podcast...edited slightly for readability, with additional excerpts from Steve Young's biography).

"We were losing.  And I felt immediately the stares of everyone in the building and the constant comparisons to Joe Montana.

At times I wanted to go tell everyone, 'Hey, you know what? Montana actually threw an incomplete pass. Like, that happened.  Did you know that?' "And he actually threw an interception one day. I don't know if you ever saw it, but he did."  And "Hey, everybody, Montana actually lost a game, did you know that?'

I quickly became victimized. Like, I can't do anything right. I can't do anything that anyone's satisfied with. I'm over invested in trying to do this, and I am clearly not getting it done.

And I remember Bill Walsh [the coach] called me one day. He put me in front of his office, and he says, 'Look, you got to quit taking the blame for everything." I said, 'What else you want me to do? Say to everyone, "Hey, I know I'm the QB and all, but, hey, it's not my fault.'"

It was a rough—it was a rough go. It got so bad there was even a headline on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle: “The Gulf War: It’s Steve Young’s fault.” I understood it was *mostly* a joke. But the 49ers were not playing well and everyone was looking at me. 

One game, he didn't see a wide open Jerry Rice waiving his arms in the end zone, got sacked on the final play, and lost the game.  Oh, and by the way, in front of 100,000 people.

Distraught and convinced he was going to be let go, he left town so he didn't have to face his team or the media or hear the talk on sports radio.  The talk in his head was bad enough.

"On my way back, I sat next to a guy on the plane.  It was Stephen Covey [author of Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and 30 other leadership and self-help books].

He asked me. 'How's it going?' 'Terrible,' I said. 'It's terrible'. And I proceeded to tell him how bad my life was.

He said something that was amazing to me. 

He said, 'Steve, I travel the world looking for platforms... businesses, families, offices....places where they allow the humans that are on the platform the chance to iterate and find out how good they can be. And when I see those qualities in a place, I write about them in my books.'

Covey went on: 'And I see you, as a 49er—with Eddie DeBartolo, the first owner in the history of sports who wants to be a partner with his players.  With Bill Walsh [coach] who is famously three generations ahead of every other coach in his thinking and play calling.  With Joe Montana on your team, who you can use as a mentor.

'You have the greatest platform I've ever seen for any human to go find out how good they are.'

'So that's the question for you: Do you want to find out how good you can get?  Because many are afraid to.'

And him saying that—honestly, it was as if I had been in a trance, and someone snapped their fingers.  I was like, 'Oh my gosh, what am I doing?'

I didn't realize at the time that I was the one that had dug the hole. I was the one who was playing the victim because I had misdiagnosed the situation.  I had only found the death in it, rather than the profit in it.

All of a sudden I saw nothing but opportunity. I never worried about comparisons to Joe [Montana] again. The quest was, how good can I be?  And let's go.  Let's just go and be about that.

That's how I learned you have to define stuff in the proper way, or else you'll play the victim and waste your life in the bottom of a hole that you thought someone else dug and threw you into, when really you dug it yourself...by hand...and jumped in.

That was one of the biggest gifts of my life...sitting on that plane next to Stephen Covey and him telling me, "You complain a lot, but you're the luckiest man alive."

Steve Young went on to win two MVP awards and a Super Bowl. He was the MVP of that Super Bowl and was elected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame the first year he was eligible for it.

The place beyond psychological safety that I wondered about at the beginning is one where psychological safety is a nice-to-have...a real plus...but not what you are looking for or focused on creating.

You're not focused on it because you:

• see that where you are is learning ground and you see the potential for how much you can grow
• see that the mission and the team you are on are actually "platforms" for you to get reps in, iterate, and see how good you can become at what you do and even expand your capabilites
• or perhaps because you have become more focused on the mission...on winning...and on helping the team and the individuals on it win and taste success themselves

And some or all of these things are now far more important to you than whether there is conversational turn-taking on the team, whether you can bring up whatever is on your mind, or whether you can fully be yourself.

There is even a chance you might come to see that it's actually because of that rather rough environment...that's a bit unforgiving...with your mistakes publicly aired, followed by bouts of doubt, but then a redoubling of your efforts...that is, in part, why this opportunity is such a platform for your learning, your growth, and your and the team's success.

Coda

We've looked at psychological safety from many angles across these six articles.

Rather than try to summarize this series, I will close with an excerpt from a poem.

This excerpt touches on many of the themes of this series: how to deal with your feelings of insecurity, an intimation about a more fulfilling place beyond safety we might aspire to, and how to live there if we find it.

And finally, if this series has nudged your views on psychological safety and teams, an entreaty to continue to carry that perspective with you.

Excerpt from

The Great Wagon.

~Rumi

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened.  Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

~

Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other'
doesn’t make any sense.

 ~

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the door sill
where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

May you find a platform...a Great Wagon of your own...the one that allows you to see how good both you and your team can become...where finding out what's possible becomes so pressing...so paramount, questions about safety are afterthoughts.

Dennis Adsit, Ph.D. is an executive coach, organization consultant, and designer of The First 100 Days and Beyond, a consulting service that has helped hundreds of leaders stepping up into challenging new jobs get the best start of their careers.

Links to the other articles in this series:

Intro: Over Emphasizing Psychological Likely Undermined Team Effectiveness

Part 2: Unlikely the Main Conclusion from Google's Project Aristotle is True

Part 3: Variation and Helping Teams Find Their Way to Win

Part 4: Psychological Safety Took Our Eye Off the Talent Ball

Part 5: All Treatments Have Side Effects. Increasing Psychological Safety is a Treatment.