'Psychological safety' the most important factor in successful teams, claims veteran technology team builder Tom Geraghty

A work culture in which failure is encouraged helps teams to experiment, work better together and will be more adaptable to change, argues Geraghty

"You can't do digital disruption if you haven't got an effective team," according to Tom Geraghty, a veteran technology team builder and leader, and head of technology at MoreNiche. And the most important element of a well-functioning team, he added, is fostering an atmosphere of ‘psychological safety'.

Geraghty was speaking at this week's Computing IT Leaders' Summit in London, which focused on digital disruption, the technologies behind that, and how IT leaders can best take advantage.

Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes

"Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes," suggested Geraghty, quoting psychologist Dr Amy Edmonson, following research conducted in hospitals. "She found that the best teams make more mistakes than the worst teams, but couldn't work out why this was the case.

"Delving into the data a bit more, she found that wasn't actually the case, it was simply that the best teams admitted more mistakes," said Geraghty. In other words, they were more self-critical and, in the process, more open to learning from their mistakes.

"Think about the best teams you have been a part of. The chances are that what made that team great is not that they were super-skilled and super-experienced, the chances are that what made it great is that you trusted each other and enjoyed working with each other. You were able to admit fault, to experiment and bring your true self to the team."

He continued: "People need a ‘safe' place to operate in. They need to know what they're doing when they come into work; they need to know, first, how to do it and what not to do… but the big thing is leadership. Leadership is far larger in scope [than management]… and one of the most important elements of leadership is ‘ensuring psychological safety'."

The concept of psychological safety has been backed-up by years of research conducted by internet giant Google

The concept of psychological safety and its importance to successful, well-functioning teams was also explored by Natasha Sayce-Zelem, Head of Technology, Digital Service at Sky in Computing's recent Women in Tech Festival, which will be returning next year.

A psychologically safe team, Geraghty added, empowers team members to speak up, "whether speaking about a critical safety issue or the behaviour of a senior member of staff… psychological safety is about being fearless [in the sense of] actually having nothing to fear".

An example of a team that was not only psychologically unsafe, but unsafe full-stop, suggested Geraghty, was the team of engineers in charge of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on the morning of 26^th April 1986, who ultimately feared the wrath of their incompetent bosses more than they feared sending a nuclear reactor into a supercritical state.

"[The concept of] psychological safety stems from safety culture. The root cause of the Chernobyl nuclear accident was the lack of a safety culture," said Geraghty. "Economic and political interests took priority over safety," added Geraghty, with safety ultimately a long way down the list of priorities, regardless of whatever lip service was paid to it.

Junior staff felt unable to challenge the orders of more senior staff, despite being asked to conduct a manifestly unsafe experiment. "They were afraid of their bosses and were afraid to tell their bosses, ‘no, I think that's unsafe' resulted in, first, a steam explosion that blew up the plant and the second explosion was a nuclear explosion."

The power plant, like the Soviet Union itself, was operated in a secretive and rigidly hierarchical environment that did not value safety, while knowledge of the fundamental design flaws of the reactor had been suppressed by the Soviet Union's broader political hierarchy.

The concept of psychological safety has been backed-up by years of research conducted by internet giant Google, which wanted to work out how teams worked best.

"They came up with five different attributes that make a great team. The first one is ‘impact'. Team members feel that their work has a value and that they have an impact. The second one is ‘meaning,' which is to say it has personal meaning to members of the team.

"The third one, ‘structure and clarity', and that comes back to management, which means they know what to do and how to do it. Fourth is ‘dependability'. They can rely on each other and rely on team-mates to do what they mean to do - if they ask someone to do something, they will do it.

"The top one, psychological safety: the peak driver of all high-performing teams in Google was found to be psychological safety. It's the one thing that you cannot be a high-performing team without."