How to Create Psychological Safety in a Virtual Team
Even the best leaders, with the best intentions, have found themselves struggling under the weight of a pandemic that has long since shifted from anomalous irritant to chronic “pain in the @$%#” as my client Peter put it recently during one of our check-ins. “I’m really committed to maintaining an engaged team,” he told me, “but this virtual work thing is draining. I’m concerned that we are all getting burned out on Zoom, and some of my best employees are checking out.”
I was saddened to hear this. Having worked with Peter for many months prior to the pandemic, I was aware of how he had built a solid team of talented and committed workers at the global non-profit organization he runs as Executive Director. Peter’s leadership style had evolved a lot during our time together, from highly directive and authoritative to a more flexible, consensus-building, collaborative approach. So why wasn’t that working now?
“I recently had my team do the mini-version of the psychological safety assessment that you recommended (an simplified version of an assessment originally created by Amy Edmondson, Professor at HBS) and the results shocked me. The team performs well together overall, but on a couple of dimensions — taking risks, learning from setbacks — it seems they don’t feel totally safe. I was taken aback, to be honest, and am a bit lost as to what to do.” And so we were off.
There has been much written and studied recently around the topic of psychological safety — especially in the aftermath of a major survey done within Google that showed “a sense of safety” to be one of the top five indicators of a team’s engagement and performance. McKinsey recently reported out a new survey (Feb, 2021) that indicates leaders who are skilled at building psychologically safe teams are 50% more likely to have high performing, engaged employees. Yet, as important and readily understood as the concept of psychological safety may be, it is not always easy to translate into the ‘real’ (let alone virtual) world, as my client Peter discovered.
So to help Peter, and others who are struggling with the challenge of creating a psychologically safe work space — especially in the cyber world — I suggested the following five steps.
1.Be the role model: Peter has the best intentions: he wants his team to feel safe. But just sharing the negative results of the assessment and pointing out deficiencies isn’t going to move the needle.
Instead, the starting point for Peter, as challenging as it was on a virtual call, was to own the fact that he was disappointed in the results, be self-reflective and empathetic to the team dynamic, and willingly acknowledge that he “didn’t know what he didn’t know” about how to fix the situation. Expressing this new level of vulnerability would be huge — for Peter — and for the team. By sharing that he didn’t have all the answers, and asking for help, he was modeling the very human qualities of sincerity, openness, and humility that would serve to relax the entire team. Everyone could then breathe a sigh of relief — recognizing that this was a team dynamic that would not be solved by one person atop the hierarchy. They were all in this together.
2. Empower with Strengths: Peter’s eight direct reports all have strengths that could be brought to bear in the dialogue around how to make the team feel safe. Yet, as Peter noticed, some had become burnt out working from home, struggling with endless project updates, missing the social interaction that had always rejuvenated them in the past.
He remembered that at social gatherings — a cocktail hour or a team luncheon — he would spend a good amount of time on positive recognition, celebrating individual and team wins. None of this was happening in the virtual space — or at least not as often or as effectively, so Peter needed to make a change. This intentional shift included making a point of reminding the team of each individual’s gifts — and contributions. By explicitly calling forth the strengths that he knew about each of his people, more regularly and with sincere gratitude, he could “rally the troops.”
3. Hold positive intent: One of the challenges of virtual teaming, is that the team just doesn’t have the same level of energetic variation and visibility that comes from daily in-person gatherings, hallway chats, coffee breaks, even the subliminal connection engendered by seeing others working at their desks. It is far too easy for people to become a bit suspicious — and mistrustful — of each other when ‘out of sight and out of mind’: Is Mary taking care of her kids or working? Are you sure Steve is working long into the evening as he regularly says?
Peter noted that even his own level of trust had diminished with distance and lack of visibility. It helped for him to remember that his team had always worked hard during the “normal times” — so why would that change? Studies show that employees may actually work harder when working virtually, because the commute time is eliminated and barriers between work life and “real” life disappear. Another level of intentional communication was called for — to remind the team, regularly, that Peter trusted them to manage their time professionally, thus reinforcing a key message: they could trust each other as well.
4. Clarify Purpose: As Peter led regular meetings online, he was also falling into a common trap: focusing on work tasks to the detriment of the other “stuff” (e.g. social updates, personal catch-ups, humorous anecdotes). But this focus on work, work, work, comes at a steep price: loss of social cohesion, loss of mutuality, loss of a sense of belonging — and ultimately, a loss of safe space. So another key step for Peter was for him to step back and reflect on the quantity, timing, purpose and agenda of gatherings: the devil is in the details when it comes to virtual work.
Perhaps the team might need more, but shorter meetings that focus on social interaction instead of work all the time. Rituals (a short focused meditation, a shared meal, a group stretch), story-telling, and humorous anecdotes, all can help to re-insert vitality and vibrancy into cyber-routines.
One-on-one time is also key: Peter needed to regularly check-in with each team member (on a personal level, not just work), and consider initiating a mentor or buddy program so others on the broader team also receive quality support time from peers or team leaders.
5 . Challenge everyone to Lead: The McKinsey study of psychological safety showed unsurprising results: highly supportive, consultative leaders with good listening skills generally do better than directive, authoritarian leaders in creating safe spaces. That said, there was one result that was counter-intuitive: leaders who “challenge” their people also had higher scores on psychological safety. why?
The study showed that team members appreciate being pushed to grow; to not become complacent with current skills. The best leaders gently but effectively push their teams to stretch out of comfort zones, to take calculated risks and de-brief for learning (not criticism) — thus creating a growth mindset in the entire team, not just the leader.
This challenge style also encourages everyone on the team to see themselves as a leader — and so long as the official leader is intent on soliciting new ideas and learning from mistakes rather than being judgmental, the team is more likely to be trusting and cohesive. This upward spiral of engagement is particularly powerful when it naturally emerges among peers — not just from the top.
A few weeks after my check-in with Peter, he reached out to me and was much more upbeat. I asked him what had made the difference: why was the team feeling more ’safe’ now? His answer was a synopsis of all of the above — but what stood out was this: “I think the real key was my letting go of the belief that because I am the leader I should have all the answers. Now my team is brainstorming, bringing new ideas, tips and techniques to the table that I had not even thought of. We are all working together to make us all feel safe.”
The bottom line on safety in teams: it doesn’t come easily. But as we are likely to see virtual work become a new norm, even post-pandemic, there is a silver lining: Bringing everyone into the conversation, asking everyone to play their part, step up, and lead, moves us all towards a more just, inclusive and equitable work environment. From across the room or across the airwaves, we can build psychologically safe learning communities, one Zoom call at a time.
