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Psychological Safety leads to High-Performing Agile Teams

Blog: Agile Adoption Roadmap

There are two types of safety that factor into a healthy and productive enterprise environment and high-performing teams.  The first is physical safety. This is where employees have an environment where they are free from physical hazards and can focus on the work at hand. This type of safety should be part of the standard workplace promoted by company and government regulations.

The second is psychological safety that is core to enterprise effectiveness. According to Google research, high performing teams always display psychological safety.  This phenomenon has two aspects.  The first is where there is a shared belief that the team is safe to take interpersonal risks and be vulnerable in front of each other.  The second is how this type of safety along with increased accountability leads to increased employee productivity and ergo high-performing teams. 

From both a psychological safety and an Agile perspective, the goal is to create a safe space for employees to share their ideas, discuss options, and take methodical risks, and be productive.  An Agile mindset promotes teams to self organize around the work, take ownership and accountability, and create an environment where in order to learn what is customer value, it requires taking risks.
However, accountability without psychological safety, leads to great anxiety.  This is why there is a need to move away from a negative mindset when results aren’t positive or new ideas are seen as different. If this occurs, employees are less willing to share ideas and take risks.  Instead consider ways to build psychological safety paired with team ownership and accountability of the work. This can lead to high performing teams.

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