[00:00:00] Pia: Good teams are often nice. You feel it. Everyone's friendly, meetings are smooth and people are polite. But these teams can be missing the ingredients of psychological safety that would actually accelerate their performance. What do the best teams do to build on the niceness to really deliver? We'll take a look at the theory and also share some Squadify client success stories about how they made the shift and the impact that it had. I'm Pia.

[00:00:29] Dan: And I'm Dan, and this is Squadify Connects. Psychological Safety, according to Dr. Tim Clark is built from four parts inclusion learning. Contribution and challenger safety. Interestingly, Squadify data tells that people rate almost all of these elements of psychological safety and the top 10 for importance, but only one, inclusion is in the top 10 for presence in teams. This shows that there are some big gaps across most teams between what is wanted and what is present. That has a proven impact on performance.

[00:01:05] The worst scores across all teams is for straight talking without offense. Teams are often nice, but don't have the depth of relationships to talk straight and therefore accelerate performance. So what do high performing teams do to close the gap?

[00:01:18] Pia: One team we work with, the global HR team of a pharma company used Squadify to identify connecting to perform as a priority for them in order to succeed. They took time, too, and used a number of exercises to gradually deepen their relationships. These included becoming more present, building curiosity, learning new levels of listening, not just hearing. They built trust to a point where they could comfortably give each other developmental feedback.

[00:01:48] The results were that in four months, they improved their lowest scoring conditions by 16%, and strong personal relationships rose by a whopping 23%. The team has gone on to lead one of the biggest transformations in the company's recent history.

[00:02:06] Dan: So take a look at the three exercises in the show notes. You can run them with your team virtually or in person to build all elements of psychological safety in your team. You can still be nice, just build on it to help your team to have deeper, more engaged conversations to become high performing.

[00:02:22] Pia: So we'll see you next time when we look at how you can build the climate in your team to actually build and deepen these personal connections.