What’s the most important dynamic of an effective workplace team?
In 2012, Google launched “Project Aristotle” with the goal of answering this very question. For the next two years, Google researchers studied more than 200 teams of various sizes in a multitude of departments within their organization, rating each team on more than 250 different attributes.
Google’s Natasha Tamiru notes that, in the end, the top characteristic that defined successful teams was not personal drive or high levels of education or training; it was psychological safety.
A psychologically safe work environment allows team members to ask questions, take risks, be open about mistakes, share new ideas, and question assumptions without fear of reprisal or recrimination. Psychologically safe leaders and teams provide space for honest, respectful discussion based on mutual trust. Without it, relationships break down and each team member suffers. Amy Gallo of Harvard Business Review notes, “On teams without psychological safety, employee well-being suffers, resulting in stress, burnout, and turnover.”
Building the kind of team rapport that encourages psychological safety is possible when the team is located in a single office. But how do virtual teams in hybrid or fully remote offices accomplish this kind of connection?
Connection Interrupted: The Difficulty of Virtual Team Cohesion
Teams that work remotely and meet virtually face certain challenges to team connection that those sharing a workspace often do not:
- Mediated Meetings: Lack of a shared workspace means team meetings are conducted through online video conferencing software like Zoom. Screen-mediated interactions can create an added layer of distance and depersonalization between participants. Plus, if any team members run into connectivity issues or other local disruptions, their contribution to the meeting is limited or even eliminated.
- Loss of Impromptu Conversation: Team members who don’t share a workspace miss out on opportunities for organic interactions that can lead to better interpersonal connections, such as quick conversations en route to the break room. While messaging apps and online chat windows allow for incidental communication throughout the day, these conversations become one more open window on an overfilled screen.
- No Off-Site Get-Togethers: A great way to improve the connection and cohesion of a work team is to provide opportunities outside of the office for activities that build relationships. Activities like intramural sports, happy hour meetups, and volunteer opportunities all encourage personal interaction and build camaraderie. If the members of your remote team are not all in the same geographical area, these types of get-togethers are often not practicable.
Without these daily interactions or opportunities for after-hours activities, remote teams have more of an uphill climb in building team unity and trust. But that doesn’t mean it is impossible for virtual teams to establish collegial relationships and develop psychological safety. However, it does require intentionality and commitment from both team leaders and team members.
The Virtual Team Leader’s Role in Promoting Psychological Safety
If you are leading a virtual or remote-working team, you have a key role in creating an environment of psychological safety that allows your team to share, explore, risk, and even fail together without condemnation or punishment. While everyone has a responsibility to maintain this dynamic, the team leader sets the tone for the group:
- Team leaders get to shape the dynamic alliance shared by the team. From the outset, they can clearly establish shared expectations of open-minded listening and respectful feedback. By inviting the team to collaborate in this manner, the leader encourages buy-in from each participant with the expectation that they will be treated in the same way. Having clear group conversations about camera use, interruptions, and appropriate feedback can help meetings run more smoothly by ensuring everyone is on the same page.
- Virtual team leaders can encourage open, trust-based dialogue by being honest about their own shortcomings, mistakes, and blind spots. Acknowledging personal errors in appropriate ways can model an atmosphere of forthrightness and respect, demonstrating that there is no expectation of perfection but rather of honest effort toward improvement. Asking for help from team members also demonstrates humility and a willingness to collaborate, showing that the leader values the perspectives of others.
- Team leaders can demonstrate skills of active listening even in a virtual setting. Using open and receptive body language, asking clarifying questions (with pauses to confirm understanding), and encouraging follow-up responses helps to set the tone of virtual meetings and provides an example for other team members to follow.
- Team leaders should also take the time to check in on each team member’s personal well-being. Intentionality about one-on-one contact that focuses on a team member’s overall state and not their specific work performance can reaffirm human connection, even without a shared physical workspace. Leaders can also build in time during group meetings for low-stakes conversations about personal news or family updates. Because virtual teams can’t enjoy gathering in person during the day, these “watercooler moments” can be a welcome respite during virtual meeting times.
The Virtual Team Member’s Role in Preserving Psychological Safety
The team leader isn’t the only one responsible for supporting psychological safety. One individual team member can make or break a psychologically safe team dynamic, so healthy teams rely on each team member’s commitment to building trust and accountability.
Part of a psychologically safe virtual team dynamic is a mutual commitment to having a “team first” attitude. When virtual team members learn to celebrate each other’s successes, encourage each other through challenges, and demonstrate respect in how they speak to and about each other, this allows mutual trust to flourish.
It’s important to remember that psychological safety is not the same as niceness or the absence of conflict. Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson notes that there is a difference between safety and silence. Edmondson explains, “Psychological safety [means] people feel able to speak up with candor, even when it’s uncomfortable. It’s not about avoiding disagreement. It’s about knowing that when you raise a concern or share a dissenting view, you won’t be penalized for it.” When a team has collectively agreed to promote a psychologically safe environment, it encourages honest, constructive feedback focused on examining ideas instead of criticizing people.
Connection Restored
Peter Economy of Inc. Magazine writes, “Project Aristotle confirmed what people often experience firsthand: A group of brilliant individuals will fail to reach its potential if they lack mutual trust and do not feel comfortable expressing their opinions to each other.”
Even in a remote-work environment, each team member is still a human being who needs connection and trust to thrive in a collaborative setting. By establishing practices and expectations for psychological safety in virtual meetings and online interactions, teams that span the globe can still enjoy a professional rapport based on dignity, integrity, and mutual support.
The Co-Active Training Institute (CTI) can help develop leaders as they seek effective ways to foster and preserve psychological safety within their teams. Do you specifically lead a virtual team for your organization? If so, learn more about how Co-Active coaching can help you lead with clarity and strengthen the cohesion of your remote team.
Learn more about Co-Active Coach Training Pathway.