Low-Risk Ways to Build Psychological Safety on Design Teams
Photo by Bharathi Kannan on Unsplash
Many of us are aware of the Google study showing that the top attribute shared by high-performing teams is psychological safety — whether team members “feel safe to take risks and be vulnerable with each other”. In an in-depth NYT article about the study, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson described psychological safety as ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up.”
As a manager of design teams for the past five years, I’ve observed that encouraging risk-taking and vulnerability not only leads to happier designers, but also better feedback sessions and ultimately better-designed products. But how does one actually go about creating this sense of psychological safety in a team?
First, the not-so-great news: I can tell you from experience that there is no instant fix, and definitely no “one-size-fits-all” solution. What works for one team won’t work for another, and you cannot follow certain steps in a certain order and reliably achieve a perfect outcome.
However, the good news is that as humans we have a universal need to be understood. Building in rituals that help your team safely share their opinions and needs with each other, in my experience, always leads to psychological safety. It’s just a matter of how much time it takes and which methods you choose based on the individuals on your team and your company culture.
In this article I’ll share a few exercises that have worked for the teams that I’ve managed. These ideas don’t require too much vulnerability, so I see them as low-risk ways to start building a culture of psychological safety in a new team. As you become more at ease with each other, you can move on to medium-risk and higher-risk ways of connecting. This isn’t set in stone; you might end up with a team of feelers and sharers who are happy to dive right into higher-risk exercises, or you might only have a short amount of intense time together in which case you’ll want to ramp up the vulnerability quickly. But if you are planning on working together for a year or longer, I’d suggest building up people’s risk tolerance gradually.
Note: if you do want to check out higher-risk ways to build up psychological safety, check out part two in this series!
Strength-sharing
Almost everyone loves talking about what they’re good at, so one easy thing to do with a new team is to have your designers share their strengths. In the past I’ve done this by having team members take a CliftonStrengths test (formerly known as “Strengthsfinder”) online, then share the results with the rest of the team over a meal. It’s a nice way to share without getting too vulnerable, and even if people disagree with the results of the test, that makes for a great conversation.
Another bonus is that as a new manager, knowing a person’s strengths will give you something to talk about with your direct reports during one-on-ones. It’s a good way to learn what kind of tasks that person might succeed with. I would never rely on test results alone, but talking over the results with my designers has helped me to understand what kinds of projects they enjoy and feel they are good at.
If you’re on a budget you can also do something free and less time-consuming, like the High5 Test, or just have people list out a few areas in which they feel they excel. Another free and lightweight option focused on designers is the lovely “Creative Types” test from Adobe (my type when I took it a few months ago was “Thinker,” although I’m guessing it also depends on your current state of mind!).
Timing: do it once, usually with a new team
Cost: $49 per person for CliftonStrengths or otherwise, free!
Everyone has a talent
Team retros
Software development teams have been doing sprint retrospectives, or retros, for years as a method for continually improving teams’ communications and processes. I’ve found it to be a great tool for design teams as well. It’s a lower-risk exercise because people can be as vulnerable as they want to be while discussing problems and solutions that everyone experiences.
For a retro, I’ll meet for an hour with my team, usually on a Friday afternoon (it’s always nice to get out of the office if there’s a cafe or park close by). A basic framework that I’ll start with is to ask teams for three buckets of responses:
What should we continue doing? (What’s working)
What should we stop doing? (What’s not working)
What should we start doing? (New ideas)
To avoid bias toward extroverts and give introverted people time to think, I recommend having a quiet stretch of time for participants to write short answers on post-it notes, then give them a few minutes each to read out their responses. An even lower-risk way is to send out a survey ahead of time and have someone read the results out anonymously; however then you have to rely on people doing their homework. It really depends on your team so I would recommend trying both methods and seeing what works best for you.
The biggest problem I’ve seen with retros is that they can turn into depressing complaint sessions. As a manager this can make me feel helpless, especially if the problems are not in my control. One way to help with this is to make sure to end on a positive note, such as asking people to save the “keep doing” for last, or having each designer name one team accomplishment that they’re proud of. You’ll also want to build in time to assign tasks to individuals to follow up on all of the ideas for improvements that will come up. We sometimes forget that retros are about continually improving, so make sure you focus on addressing problems rather than just raising them.
Problems without solutions can become depressing
Another key to retros is to keep good notes. It takes some extra work to transcribe the post-it notes, but it’s important to track whether issues are consistently coming up and need to be addressed. On the flip side, it’s also nice to be able to look back after a few months and see problems that you’ve managed to fix as a team. Make sure to bring these up at your next retro; celebrating team successes is an important part of bonding!
When you get tired of using the same “continue / start / stop” framework, you can go online and search for retro ideas. You’ll find hundreds of creative questions to ask in a retro that will keep things fresh and help you as a manager understand the team pulse and what you need to help with.
Timing: I’ve found monthly to be best to allow time to address issues that will arise. One hour is usually long enough to get through all of the ideas.
Cost: free!
Learning new skills together
Whether it’s attending a design meetup, bringing in external speakers, or just sharing what you already know, learning new skills as a team is a great low-risk way to bond and grow together. It seems like a no-brainer, but there are barriers to setting up training sessions that result in teams never getting around to it. First, finding and organizing training sessions takes a great deal of time and attention. Second, it will require monetary and time commitments, meaning that you as a manager will need to make the case to your company that it’s worth the cost.
If you don’t have a training budget at your company, or even if you do but want to do something a little more hands-on, try setting up a series of lunch and learn sessions with your team. Everyone has something to offer — this is a great time to refer back to your strengths-sharing exercise! Be prepared: setting up the sessions, finding volunteers, and reminding speakers to create their presentations will require more effort and preparation from your team and from the facilitator. However it can also boost presenters’ sense of accomplishment and give everyone a newfound appreciation for the skills that the rest of your team has.
I also love having team-building sessions outside of the office learning a skill that’s not related to design. My teams have tried cooking, improv, and woodworking classes, which have all been unique and fun bonding experiences. It’s up to you to gauge your team’s level of energy; if they’re working hard and often seem stressed, piling on homework isn’t the answer. Learning new skills outside of design might help them to relax and see things in a different light when they come back to the office.
Timing: once a quarter
Cost: varies quite a bit
Team product critique
We designers love to point out how things could be improved, and another low-risk way to understand your team and help junior designers flex their critiquing muscles is to do a team product critique.
The first choice is whether to critique an existing product related to the one you work on, or look at your own product. Of course the latter requires a bit more vulnerability from your team as it will include areas of the product they’ve designed. In my experience, though, most designers are happy to point out the flaws in the production version of what they’ve designed. You’ll have to gauge your team’s level of self-awareness.
So many confusing apps out there
The benefit of a team critique session focused on a product, not an individual designer, is that it helps designers hone their sense of what’s good or not so good for users. It provides a safe space to practice speaking about design in a productive way before asking team members to hold up their own in-progress work for critique.
Before starting, you’ll want to remind the designers to
Talk about how the design addresses the users’ needs (if it’s not your product you’ll have to make educated guesses)
Refer back to universal design principles or heuristics, rather than talking about “likes” or “dislikes”. If your team don’t know what to refer to, Nielsen Norman Group’s “10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design” is a great start; or you could get fancy and buy a book like The Pocket Universal Principles of Design.
Timing: monthly, quarterly, or one-time
Cost: free!
In summary, I’ve found these four practices to be fairly painless and helpful for new teams to learn, grow, and understand each other without jumping right into the deep end of vulnerability. After doing a couple of these, you should start noticing your team is already feeling more comfortable with each other. Congratulations — you’re on your way to building a culture of psychological safety!
Ready for more? Read my next post for some medium-risk ideas to help you get to the next level.
If you’re looking for someone to facilitate a team-building workshop or provide individualized coaching to help your design managers create high-performing teams, you can hire me; find out more on my coaching page.