You might have heard about psychological safety.

You might have heard about it especially in the context of teams and team effectiveness. 

This familiarity might be because psychological safety seems to be every third and fourth word out of the mouths of many consultants who work with teams.

Or you might even have heard about Google's Project Aristotle and feel a need to start talking about that study to justify the obvious importance of psychological safety for teams.

And if you do, no problem, but I may start screaming.

Before the screaming begins, let me say what I absolutely loved about Project Aristotle.

I do think 1) what the researchers explored and 2) the circulation of the findings accelerated the discussion on the most important org behavior topic in organizations today: group and team effectiveness.

Groups of people working together produce the lion's share of organizational outputs and I don't think businesses are focused enough on making these groups and teams more effective.

For me then, the biggest contribution of Project Aristotle was that it got people talking about a neglected lever critical to organizational success.

The pursuit of psychological safety had side effects for many teams (what treatment doesn't?), a possibility which never even entered the minds of the consultants touting its importance.  And because they never considered side effects, they neither taught teams to be on the lookout for them, nor how to respond should they occur.

Now the screaming part. 

My frustration is with the study's main conclusion...that psychological safety is the most important factor that distinguishes successful teams from less successful teams.

Let me be clear. 

I am not saying that increasing psychological safety might not be important for a particular team, because it is absolutely one of several factors that can have a profound impact on how effective a team is or can be. 

Lost in all the hype about psychological safety, Project Aristotle did highlight that team effectiveness is multidimensional.

But I don't think you can argue psychological safety is the most important factor behind or common to high performing teams.

And in my view, doing so and guiding teams in that direction...with preaching, or articles, or facilitation bias...is likely undermining team effectiveness.

Here is the case I will be making over this next series of articles: 

1. There is little chance that Project Aristotle's leading conclusion is true.  This arises from a simple fact: the result cannot and will not be replicated which means the conclusion should not be relied upon, no matter how much face validity you think that finding has.  In my view, continuing to tout it is contributing to the problems that I will outline in this series.
2. The very idea of even looking for a generically most important factor in team success strikes me as a problematic push towards artificially reducing the variation and complexity of teams and team success.  If you are going to help the team help itself, you have to get comfortable with variation...assessing it, working with it and showing the team how to harness it...so they can find their way to win.
3. The proliferation of the study's conclusion caused what can only be described as an astonishing over-rotation towards psychological safety on teams, which has worked against overall team effectiveness in two additional ways:
   • it took our eyes off the Talent ball, and
   • the pursuit of psychological safety had side effects for many teams (what treatment doesn't?), a possibility which never even entered the minds of the consultants touting its importance.  And because they never considered side effects, they neither taught teams to be on the lookout for them, nor how to respond should they occur.
4. Finally, and for me worst of all, the focus on psychological safety lowered our aspirations.  It lowered our aspirations for what's possible for teams...the place they can get to and what they can achieve.  It even lowered our aspirations for what the individuals on those teams could become.

 

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

 ~John Shedd

Part 2 will focus on why there is little chance Project Aristotle's main conclusion...that psychological safety is the most important factor that distinguishes successful teams...is true.

Dennis Adsit, Ph.D. is an executive coach, organization consultant, and the designer of The First 100 Days and Beyond, a consulting service that has helped hundreds of leaders get the best start of their careers, while also providing frameworks and templates for continued success long past their First Hundred Days.