Unlocking Peak Performance: The Power of Psychological Safety in Product Teams
“Just as safety is crucial in improving results in industries such as manufacturing and oil drilling, psychological safety is crucial for improving results in knowledge and creative work, which is what people like us do. The safer team members feel with one another, the more likely they are to admit mistakes, partner, and take on new roles. And it affects pretty much every important dimension we look at for employees.” — Eric Schmidt, Former CEO of Google
There I sat in a room as the CFO berated the team.
He criticized each and every member for what seemed to me a simple mistake and one easily corrected. Fear hung in the air. Every word seemed to take an eternity for him to complete. I was early in my career and wondered if this was how corporate teams worked. It was completely foreign to my experience in collegiate sports and academics. Since I didn’t know better, I buckled in for the ride.
Then the yelling stopped. And the silence was deafening. Did the CFO pause to ask a question? If he did, I didn’t hear it. I was mentally checked out as a means to protect myself. I wasn’t the only one, as no one spoke. Then the CFO got even more agitated. “Why aren’t you talking? I asked for solutions?” he said — still silence. No one dared to move a muscle. “Well, if you don’t have any solutions, prepare some, and we will meet again tomorrow.”, he snorted.
Projecting to tomorrow — I wasn’t sure I was willing to go out on a limb and offer a potential solution after that performance, I thought to myself. As I connected with colleagues after, they all felt the same. It looked like we were in for another berating tomorrow. Maybe the corporate world wasn’t for me after all.
And with that, a psychologically unsafe team experience almost ended my corporate career and forced me back to get a Ph.D. or some other avenue to escape the madness.
Have you ever been in a situation like that? Was the team productive? Hopefully, you have yet to experience what I went through, but if you have lived through it, I can bet the team was not at peak performance. Psychologically unsafe teams underperform.
Google has proven what I suspected all along
Google wondered what many of us have wondered from time to time.
What makes an effective team?
Their hypothesis: it’s a mix of the right people with the right skills and the right traits. Want to guess whether this was the right answer?
Despite the amount of data Google has and the incredible access to talent, their initial hypothesis couldn’t have been more off.
What did they learn? — Who is on a team matters less than how the team members interact, structure their work, and view their contributions.
Can you guess the first and most important of the five dimensions of the successful teams they studied? Psychological safety. Teams must feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.
Psychological safety was far and away the most important of the five dimensions they found. And it underpinned the other four. Self-protection due to an unsafe environment is natural but deadly to effective teamwork.
According to HBR, psychological safety “allows for taking moderate risks, speaking your mind, being creative, and sticking your neck out without fear of having it cut off — just the types of behaviors that lead to market breakthroughs…When the workplace feels challenging but not threatening, teams can sustain the broaden-and-build mode. Oxytocin levels in our brain rise, eliciting trust and trust-making behavior.”
So what exactly is that loving feeling?
Psychological safety, a term coined by Amy Edmondson, is a shared belief among team members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. It’s about creating an environment where team members feel comfortable asking questions, admitting mistakes, and taking risks. This environment is crucial for fostering innovation, unlocking the benefits of diversity, and adapting well to change.
So, why is psychological safety so critical to product management? The answer lies in the nature of the role itself. Product managers are uniquely positioned to foster a psychologically safe team dynamic due to their position overseeing and advocating for all team members. They are the catalysts, empowering and enabling other leaders on the team — even those with no formal authority — to help cultivate psychological safety by role modeling and reinforcing the behaviors they expect from the rest of the team.
How can product leaders and managers create a safe space?
But how do product managers create psychological safety? It begins with practicing open communication and feedback. Team members should feel comfortable expressing their opinions without fear of being ignored or ridiculed. Product leaders and managers should provide respectful and encouraging feedback, even when they disagree with the ideas presented.
That aside, creating psychological safety within a product team is a multi-faceted process that requires a deliberate and consistent effort from the product manager. Here are some key steps that a product manager can take to foster psychological safety:
1. Practice Open Communication and Feedback: The product manager should encourage open communication within the team. This means creating an environment where team members feel comfortable expressing their opinions and ideas without fear of being ignored or ridiculed. The product manager should provide respectful and encouraging feedback, even when they disagree with the ideas presented, and seek feedback. This practice helps to build trust and respect among team members, which are fundamental to psychological safety.
2. Get to Know Your Team: Speak human to human. Building trust also requires understanding your team members on a personal level. You can achieve this through team-building activities and social events that allow team members to interact outside of a professional context. By getting to know each other better, team members can develop a more profound sense of empathy and understanding, further enhancing psychological safety.
3. Promote Collaboration and Shared Ownership: Collaboration is key to success and psychological safety. The product manager should encourage team members to work together, share ownership of projects, and break down silos. You can achieve this by involving all team members in the planning and development process, fostering a sense of shared responsibility and trust.
4. Address Issues Promptly: The product manager should address issues and conflicts as they arise. Ignoring or delaying action on problems can lead to frustration and resentment, undermining the sense of safety within the team. By addressing issues promptly and valuing the expertise of team members, the product manager can demonstrate their commitment to maintaining a psychologically safe environment. Approach conflict as a collaborator, not a combatant, and work toward a shared and desirable outcome.
5. Regularly Check-in on Team Members’ Well-Being: The product manager should regularly check in on team members’ well-being. This can help prevent burnout and promote a culture of honesty and mental health. The product manager can further enhance psychological safety by showing genuine concern for their team members’ well-being.
6. Role Model Positive Behaviors: As a leader, the product manager should role model behaviors that promote psychological safety. This includes demonstrating transparency, authenticity, and reliability. By embodying these behaviors, the product manager can set the tone for the rest of the team.
7. “Replace blame with curiosity.” is how Google phrased it. I love that idea. Blame leads to others digging in their heels. According to HBR, “blame and criticism reliably escalate conflict, leading to defensiveness and — eventually — disengagement.”
Wrapping it up
High-performing teams have a psychologically safe environment to collaborate. There is no higher indicator of a team’s likelihood to deliver with excellence. While this may seem obvious to many, it wasn’t discussed or considered for most of my career. And even now that its importance is known, it’s often overlooked in favor of engrained behaviors or for convenience since it takes effort.
My advice, focus first on creating psychological safety first and building trust. Your team will thank you for it, and the outcomes will be exponentially better.
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