If somebody were to ask me about the most valuable skill you can develop to thrive in the work world, being an excellent team player is at the top. A company is not about individuals; it is about a team, and knowing how to work with others effectively will add tremendous value to your life and the lives of others.
On one end of the spectrum, there are dysfunctional teams where personal agendas prevail, and sabotage occurs. On the opposite edge, there are great teams where everybody is growing, rowing in the same direction, and eliciting each other’s best. The most important part of a great team is that it can satisfy a fundamental human need: a sense of belonging through community.
So, what are the magical ingredients that go into a high-performing team? In 2012, Google embarked on a quest to answer that question – how to build the perfect team? They launched a major study codenamed Project Aristotle, inspired by the philosopher’s quote, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." They spent two years studying 180 teams and concluded that excellent teams at Google have the following five components: psychological safety, dependability, structure and clarity, meaningful work, and impact.
#1 Quality Of A Great Team: Psychological Safety
Have you ever been in a room with your team where you wanted to contribute or speak against an idea, but you stopped yourself because you thought, this could be stupid, I could get laughed at, people will think I’m dumb, or aggressive, or something worse? So, you choose silence. You rob yourself of taking a risk and potentially innovating. This strategy works for you because you are protected from those doom-and-gloom scenarios that you conjured in your mind. Psychologists call this impression management, a conscious or subconscious process of regulating information in social settings.
Perhaps, a few seconds later, another part of you pushes through the discomfort, and you speak up. Oops, your worst fear is realized as you are interrupted and even shunned. There is an absence of psychological safety, a climate where people feel comfortable being and expressing themselves. Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson says psychological safety is the “belief that it's absolutely okay, in fact, it's expected, to speak up with concerns, questions, ideas, and mistakes.” Not having this condition can spell disaster, making teams rife with inefficiencies.
Unfortunately, most teams are not as psychologically safe. Gallup data reveals that just three in ten U.S. workers strongly agree that at work, their opinions seem to count. Without psychological safety, teams hold back from interacting and may make mistakes. It is when the co-pilot does not feel comfortable telling the pilot that something is wrong, or it is when the nurse does not want to speak up in the operating room for fear of reprisal from the doctor so the patient’s wrong organ is extracted. Essentially, teams cannot be at their best when they feel constrained.
In a fascinating challenge, Peter Skillman, former VP of Design at Palm, and Author Tom Wujec had a team-building competition where participants had to build a marshmallow tower made from spaghetti, tape, and string. The only requirement was that the marshmallow had to sit at the top. He ran this competition with different groups, such as kindergarteners, business school students, and lawyers. The winner…reaching a whopping 26 inches were kindergarteners, while the average score for business school students was 20 inches. This experiment showed that it is more about team interaction than the caliber of individual skill. Kindergartens’ felt comfortable to take chances, fall flat on their faces, and try again. There wasn’t even an incentive that they got to eat marshmallows if they won! Business students were censoring their actions, sizing up everybody’s power in the group, and holding back their experimental approaches. They were ensconced in too much drama and not enough risk-taking. The lawyers…well, they may have been more preoccupied with arguing in and out of their minds.
Edmondson has confirmed that psychological safety predicts quality improvements, learning behavior, and productivity. When there is an opportunity for you to speak and feel fully listened to, you are more likely to take risks without feeling insecure or embarrassed and know that even if you fail, your teammates and managers will have your back. Gallup data supports these benefits, including “a 27% reduction in turnover and a 12% increase in productivity.”
Ways To Build Psychological Safety
Psychological safety doesn't emerge from a single gesture or policy — it's built through consistent leadership behaviors, intentional culture design, and genuine human connection. Here are five evidence-based themes to help you create it on your team.
1. Lead with Vulnerability and Role Modeling
Psychological safety starts with what leaders do, not what they say. People take their cues from the top. When a leader admits a mistake, asks for help, or openly shares a lesson learned from a setback, it sends a powerful signal: it's safe to be human here.
Don't just tell your team it's safe to speak up — demonstrate it. Share a recent misstep and what you took from it. Acknowledge when you don't have the answer. Model the interpersonal risk-taking you're asking of others, especially early in a team's formation, when norms are still being written. Vulnerability, expressed with intention and appropriate context, is one of the most underrated leadership tools available to you.
2. Create Inclusive Participation and Amplify Every Voice
Psychological safety increases when people genuinely believe their perspectives matter — regardless of title, tenure, or expertise. That belief is built through action, not assumption.
Intentionally level the status in the room. Bring everyone to the same starting gate, especially those who joined the team late or missed prior meetings. Ask everyone their opinion on a topic — not just the loudest voices or the most senior ones. Create structures that invite participation: go-arounds, written reflection before open discussion, or explicitly naming who hasn't yet weighed in. Inclusion isn't a feel-good add-on; it's a performance strategy.
3. Establish Norms for Respectful Dialogue and Constructive Communication
The goal of psychological safety isn't endless agreement — it's creating an environment where disagreement, feedback, and new ideas can be expressed without fear of judgment or retaliation. That takes intentional norm-setting.
Consider co-creating a "Candid with Care" agreement with your team — a shared commitment to challenging ideas without attacking people. Then live it through your real-time responses:
Appreciate participation first. When someone speaks up — even if what they said misses the mark — thank them before you respond to the content. Speaking is contagious, and how you receive contributions will determine whether others try. Don't evaluate; appreciate.
Respond well to failure. As Amy Edmondson writes in Right Kind of Wrong, one of the fastest ways to identify an unsafe environment is to watch how leaders respond to failure. If mistakes are condemned and successes celebrated in isolation, people learn quickly to hide their errors. The way you respond to failure will amplify — or suppress — what surfaces next.
Address infractions directly. What you tolerate is what you allow. Whether it's someone talking over a colleague or more serious behavior like bullying, leaders must name and address it — because silence communicates permission. In the moment, a calm redirect is often enough: "Let's make sure everyone gets to finish their thought." For more persistent patterns, the first conversation should be private — lead with curiosity, not judgment, and give the person a chance to understand their impact without public embarrassment. The goal isn't to shame; it's to protect the team's culture while giving the individual a real chance to grow. Firmness and dignity aren't opposites — the best leaders practice both.
Assign the devil's advocate role. Give someone the explicit job of challenging assumptions or stress-testing ideas. This normalizes disagreement and takes the personal sting out of it — the person isn't being difficult; they're fulfilling a function the team has agreed is valuable.
Close the loop with reflection. After key meetings or decisions, invite brief feedback: What went well? What would make this even better next time? This signals that psychological safety isn't a destination — it's a practice.
4. Invest in Human Connection and Trust
Psychological safety is not just a leadership responsibility — it's built through the quality of relationships across the entire team. People feel safe when they feel seen, understood, and genuinely cared about as human beings, not just as contributors to a deliverable.
Take time to humanize your team members. Acknowledge what's already in the room — anxiety before a big presentation, grief after an organizational change, fatigue after a hard quarter. Naming the unspoken often releases it. And if you realize after a meeting that you may have unintentionally shut someone down, follow up. That small act of repair is one of the most trust-building moves a leader can make. Relationships are the infrastructure that safety is built on.
5. Anchor the Team in Shared Purpose and Collective Success
When people are united around a meaningful shared mission, they are far more likely to contribute openly and far less likely to operate from fear, status, or self-preservation. Purpose is a psychological safety amplifier.
Help your team understand not just what they're doing, but why it matters — and how each person's role connects to that larger aim. Appeal to your team's service orientation: what are we trying to accomplish together, and who benefits? When people are focused on collective success rather than individual protection, the interpersonal risks that psychological safety requires feel worth taking. Frame your work not just as execution, but as shared contribution to something bigger than any one person.
Being a part of a good team is a special experience because you get to be exactly who you are and have opportunities to grow in the process. Surrounding yourself with supportive high achievers will level up your abilities. The best teams have psychological safety, the conditions where you feel comfortable to take interpersonal risks and know there will be no consequences because it is an environment without judgment; those freewheeling contributions are necessary for innovation.
Quote of the day: “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” -Helen Keller
Reflection Question: What does your manager do to build psychological safety in your team? Comment and share with us, we would love to hear from you?
*The next blog in the team series 2/10 explores the other characteristics that comprise excellence in teams.
As a Leadership Development & Executive Coach, I work with teams to build psychological safety for peak performance. Contact me to learn more.
