Psychological Safety
In 2012, Google embarked on an internal research project codenamed ‘Project Aristotle’. The focus of this project was to study teams within Google to understand what factors created an innovative team.
The project uncovered that the key driver of innovation was psychological safety. Google defined psychological safety as; team members feeling safe to take risks and be vulnerable in front of each other. In other words, the feeling of ‘My team has my back and they are a soft place to land if I make a mistake’. Since this research was published, the interest in psychological safety has exploded.
While everyone is talking about psychological safety, our research with Deakin University has actually decoded what factors enable psychological safety in a team. This module goes into the four drivers of psychological safety and how you can systemise them into your team.