I spent a little time reading and thinking about safety recently: what it means to feel ‘safe’ in a team or an organisation, what impact that has on your and your team.
I haven’t really formed this into coherent thoughts yet but I’ll leave some links as a placeholder.
The first I really read about this was looking at Google’s work on building successful teams. One their five keys to a successful team is Psycological Safety, in fact they list as the most important.
In a team with high psychological safety, teammates feel safe to take risks around their team members. They feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.
And then someone posted a couple of podcasts about safety in the Rands leadership slack:
Both of these are well worth a listen.
I’m still reflecting a bit on how this applies to me, to my team and to how I manage them. I’ll post a link if I have future thoughts or updates.