Psychological Safety and Innovation

Rob Sanchez

I’ve been in the software space for six years. One thing that can be overlooked in a company is psychological safety and its impact on innovation. On the product podcast on September 2022 Deepika Adusumili, the SVP of Product at King, discusses the impacts and importance of psychological safety to echo Google’s aristotle study. It boils down to this: build better products by instilling confidence in your teams. This may be hard to connect at first, but there’s even a “law” in software known as Conway’s Law which explains that the products organizations create are constrained by their communication internally. Toxic communication and leadership styles drain your workforce of innovation and ruin any chance at maximizing the value created on a team.

Innovation is inherently risky. The folks behind this need to feel safe so that they can work with others, be vulnerable and contribute to creating something great. It’s the psychological side of building products; communication should really be done on the terms of the person receiving the communication, which is easier said than done at times.

Berne Brown’s book Dare to Lead mentions that accepting yourself is the first step towards brave leadership, and it could be extended to the team. Diverse teams come from different backgrounds and have different perspectives and methods for solving problems. THIS IS A GOOD THING! If companies are not careful, they may find themselves losing wonderful talent.

Building products is more than technique and rigid process; in fact, Agile methodologies urge leaders to not rely on process as an end all be all. The Agile manifesto itself points out that we should pay more attention to “individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” You’d be surprised how often this can be reversed.

Project Aristotle is a study looking at Google teams to determine what the factors were for high performing teams. Guess what? The team composition doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, it’s all about the team dynamics and operations. Teams with a culture of belonging and inclusion lead from their heart and take action proactively. This creates a team of missionaries working towards something they believe in versus a team of mercenaries being paid to undertake a task.

Product Management is all about delivering value. Teams need to be built to accomplish this and leadership at all levels should support it, the future of their company is at stake if they do not. If you burden a team or a particular individual with cynicism, perfectionism and contrarian behavior, you will get ineffective solutions that do not scale. This is a major factor that prevents companies from getting past that “start-up” level.

The answer, as I’m sure you can tell by now, is psychological safety, which is actually important in all arenas of life but today we’re focusing on the workplace in and around product management. What do you give Product teams then? Psychological Safety is the answer. It is important in all walks of life, of course, but especially so in product teams. I’d be willing to bet that if anyone in an organization views psychological safety as a negative term then they are in fact the contributors to negative workplace culture and the potentially the problem themselves. This can be very uncomfortable when you realize your manager is okay with toxic leadership styles and behaviors.

Professor Edmondson at Harvard describes it as a shared belief that risk taking is safe within the group. He follows up with a warning, “do not have a culture vulture of cynicism, blame and shame in your company!”, Instead have accountability and build towards something great. It needs to “feel” safe for members of a team to be okay risking innovation and contributing their ideas unhindered.

Teams and organizations that deny the importance of psychological safety instead value toughness or aggressive challenges; this is toxicity at its finest. When people on a team are uncomfortable with this approach (in that they are not feeling psychologically safe), their behaviors are framed as “not fitting the culture” when in reality the culture is the problem. 

So what does this actually look like for Product Managers outside of the theory and reasons for pursuing it from an organizational perspective? Product Managers get ideas, solve problems and challenge the status quo to build the right products. For this a level of inclusion, challenge and learner safety is required. It can all start at the Product Manger level by displaying behaviors of confidence, motivation, optimism, innovation and inspiration. This team element cannot be overlooked. We could talk about OKRs all day, but without a good team, they are only wishful thinking.

Scrum/Agile processes encourage psychological safety when run correctly. They can inject a sense of clarity and purpose into the team during daily scrums that can spread across the company. Product Managers should make sure to contribute to an environment of understanding and work within and outside of the team to build the right things.

Recognize your team(s), and help them to understand how their efforts as a team and as individuals contribute to a culture of belonging. Teams should be given the trust to accomplish their goals while they trust leadership to provide clear directions and safe environments to accomplish the work.

Because Product Managers oversee, protect and advocate for all the members of the team they are in a unique position to lead the charge for a more psychologically safe team dynamic. Start every conversation with a perspective of empathy and understanding that the team member you’re working with has unique experiences, which contribute towards their communication styles and ideas. This allows everyone to move forward and solve complex problems regardless of what’s happening outside work. You can push others for this but acting as an example is the best approach for a product manager.

When the team isn’t afraid of failure real growth and innovation happens.