The Teaming One

Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. – Helen Keller

Welcome to another edition of The Leadershifts Chronicle, a newsletter where I share ideas and resources for leaders who build better businesses and explore new ways of running an organisation.

This week, I facilitated, together with Bettina Willemsen , a two-day retreat for a management team in the Netherlands. The goal was to explore what was happening in the undercurrent of the team, explore the hidden tension and discuss the elephants in the room.

One of the most significant topics during the retreat was psychological safety, so I decided to compile some of the resources we explored. Psychological Safety is one of the most important factors for better team learning and performance. It means team members feel accepted and respected and can speak up, ask questions, voice concerns, and make mistakes without fear of negative consequences.

Psychological safety is important for several key reasons:

1. It enables learning, innovation and growth
2. It fosters employee engagement and well-being.
3. It supports diversity and inclusion.
4. It improves team effectiveness and performance.
5. It has become an increasingly important priority for leaders and organizations.

Psychological safety is a key ingredient for high-performing, innovative and inclusive teams. It was great to see the steps the management team took to carefully and respectfully discuss their worries and the elephants in the room.

Welcome to this week's Leadershifts Chronicle...

Enjoy...

Things to Explore

🔍 What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team Google's Project Aristotle was a study conducted by Google to determine the key factors that make teams successful.

1. Psychological safety is the most important factor for team success. It refers to an environment where team members feel safe taking risks, being vulnerable, and expressing ideas without fear of negative consequences.
2. Dependability is a main contributor to team success. Team members need to be able to count on each other.
3. Personality and individual skills are less important than how the team communicates and interacts.
4. A culture of trust, respect and openness is crucial, as well as giving everyone a voice.

🔍 As part of the Project Aristotle research, Google has developed a "team effectiveness discussion guide," a 10-minute pulse-check survey that assesses a team's performance on the 5 key factors that make a team successful.

Things to Watch: A Crash Course into Psychological Safety

When we think of psychological safety, the name AMY C. Edmondson immediately comes to mind. Amy is a professor at Harvard Business School, known for her pioneering work on psychological safety in the workplace and author of "The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth" and "Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well".

What is psychological safety, and what is not?

This next video with Trevor Ragan about Building a better learning environment explains that psychological safety is not about lowering standards but creating an environment where individuals can openly communicate and learn from mistakes.

Things to Read

During the retreat, I discovered "Care To DareUnleashing Astonishing Potential Through Secure Base Leadership" by George Kohlrieser .

What is a Secure Base Leadership? George Kohlrieser defines it in the following manner: “The way a leader builds trust and influences others by providing a sense of protection, safety & caring, and offers a source of inspiration that together produces energy for daring, exploration, risk-taking and seeking challenges.”

The author talks about 9 characteristics of secure base leaders and lists them as below:

1. They stay Calm
2. They accept the individual
3. They see the potential
4. They listen and enquire
5. They often deliver a powerful message
6. They focus on the positive aspects
7. They encourage risk-taking
8. They inspire through intrinsic motivation
9. Their behaviour signals accessibility

So that's it for this week.

Like always, feedback is very welcome and appreciated. It helps me grow on my path to becoming a better leader.

Have a great weekend and till next week...

Wouter

The Leadershifts Chronicle dives deep into the evolving paradigms of leadership, offering a regular exploration of how visionary leaders are transforming their approach to navigate the complexities of today's world. It's your curated guide to the stories, strategies, and insights that define the next generation of leadership excellence, curated by Wouter Gheysen. Wouter is the founder of Systemic Rebels and Out of Our Minds, which provides services to transform your organisation into a future-ready one.

Subscribe to receive the updates…