201 Reading Assignment 14b - marsecguy/reading-notes-cyberops GitHub Wiki

Psychological Safety

There is a lot to unpack in this article. One of the things that stands out to me is the difference between who people are as individuals and how teams made up of great workers can be terrible. Put another way, who workers are as people and how they interact as individuals in the workplace has no relevance for predicting how they would work together as a team. Group dynamics will override virtually anyone's personal traits. This is an odd new paradigm for someone like me, who has years of experience in management in both the military and civilian sectors.

As managers, we are used to evaluating people and missions. We conduct employee evaluations and we conduct after action reviews (AARs) of completed tasks. Those AARs are generally focused on the mechanics of how the mission was carried out. Any look at the team's performance and it's impact on success or failure is generally superficial and tangential. Maybe more managers would benefit from evaluating the teamwork dynamic of their teams and workgroups to find where negative group norms come from and encourage the positive norms.

What are three key factors that contribute to psychologically safe teams?

Equal participation
Openness to other ideas without judgement
An concurrent comfort level for people that they CAN safely speak up and voice their opinion. Being open to what someone has to say is useless if they don't feel that you are open.

Evaluate, with details, a previous professional setting (or team) you were in with regards to psychological safety.

As a lead field manager in a previous job, I was in charge of several hundred field employees. I had six managers and about twenty clerical staff in the office. Other support managers and staff brought the number of office personnel to around fifty. I was number two in command, under the office manager. The office manager was a very "my way, or the highway" person who was much more focused on "running a tight office" than actually performing the mission. I was daily getting chewed out over small things that workers were doing, such as glancing at their cell phones for a moment or wearing a skirt that the manager felt was just a bit too short. She would get upset over something she would overhear in the cubicles from her office that wasn't work related and call me in to tell me to deal with it. However, I was not allowed to say anything about it being her when I brought the discipline. I was expected to "be a manager" and stand up on my own, even though I didn't agree with the petty things I was being made to enforce. The whole office was constantly tense and scared of accidentally doing something to bring down the wrath. It was a horrible, untenable situation. Ironically, COVID was what saved me. I resigned and made an excuse that, as a field manager, I didn't feel safe going into the field with the pandemic peaking at the time.

What impact do teams that operate with a high degree of psychological safety have on their company and the team members?

Teams with a high degree of psychological safety nearly always perform better, meeting or even exceeding goals, typically in less time than other teams where that factor is not so high. This results in happier team members, which increases their overall job satisfaction, which can lead into increased productivity not just when working in the team, but in their other duties as well. The collective lift from numerous teams like this can have a significant positive impact on the profitability of the company.

Source: The New York Times Magazine