The Swoosh

Legendary New York Yankees manager, Casey Stengel (Stengel was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame largely due to his managerial stint with the Yankees during the 1950's when the team the American League pennant ten times and the World Series seven times), once said, "Gettin' good players is easy.  Gettin' 'em to play together is the hard part."  Similarly, NBA Hall of Famer (and one of the greatest basketball players of all-time) Michael Jordan once said, "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships."  As I've previously discussed (see "There's no 'I' in Team"), there have been a number of sports teams throughout history who have performed far below expectations despite having a number of so-called "All Stars" on the team.  But what then are the key ingredients in the "secret sauce" for building a high-performing team?  Certainly having a so-called "glue guy" (or "glue gal") is important, as I've also previously discussed (see "He's the glue..." and "In search of David Ross"), the one individual who is perfectly comfortable and capable of playing a supporting cast kind of role (hence the term, "role player").  Team "chemistry" is important too.  As I've stated in the past ("Chemistry is culture"), team chemistry is just another word for culture.  Having the right organizational culture, where individual members of the team hold each other accountable (as just one example) can make a difference between winning and losing.  Collaboration with each other and a commitment to a standard of excellence with a clearly defined goal is also important (see "Team Chicken McNugget").  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the individual members of the team have to trust each other.  As Simon Sinek said, "A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other."

Charles Duhigg (author of The Power of Habit and Supercommunicators) would add one more essential ingredient for high performing teams.  He said, "Teams need to believe that their work is important. Teams need to feel their work is personally meaningful. Teams need clear goals and defined roles. Team members need to know they can depend on one another. But, most important, teams need psychological safety."  The Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson has written extensively about psychological safety, including The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth and most recently, Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well (both are superb and highly recommended, by the way).  "Psychological safety" means that individuals can openly admit their mistakes and learn from them.  Leaders have to create the kind of environment where members of the team, regardless of their role or place in the hierarchy, are free to speak up about their concerns without fear of retribution or ridicule.

Some of Dr. Edmondson's latest research findings on psychological safety are of interest here, particularly since it involves health care teams and it examines the change in psychological safety that occur over time from the time with tenure.   Dr. Edmondson and her colleagues, Derrick Bransby and Michaela Kerrissey found in a study of more than 10,000 employees at a large health care system that (1) new members of the team have higher psychological safety compared to their longer tenured colleagues and (2) psychological safety decreases fairly rapidly and takes years to recover.  They called this drop in psychological safety a "swoosh" (see their Figure below) and noted that it could take up to 20 years for team members to get back to the levels of psychological safety they had when they first started.

Why does the "swoosh" occur?  Think about it.  When individuals first join a new team or organization, they are usually filled with excitement and enthusiasm.  These individuals are eager to get started and feel confident that they have been hired for a reason.  Things may even go well initially, but soon the new members of the team may find (hopefully not, but it can happen) that the proverbial grass is not always greener on the other side.  They may encounter friction or in some cases experience a problematic interaction with another member of the team (MIT investigators John Van Maanen and Ed Schein call these experiences "reality shocks").  Unfortunately, it only takes one bad interaction to kill psychological safety.  Just one instance of public humiliation or dismissal of a concern will make it less likely that an individual will raise a concern in the future.  Even more concerning, it often takes years to recover from that one experience!  

The good news is that leaders can create an environment of psychological safety.  Edmondson and her colleagues noted that the "swoosh" was less severe in departments with high psychological safety at baseline.  They emphasize that "Psychological safety is note the default in any workplace, and those who need it most - newcomers - are also most vulnerable to losing it.  Cultivating and reinforcing a climate favorable to learning requires deliberate leadership."