New research reveals surprising truths about why some work groups thrive and others falter.
Source: What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team
As we work to foster interdisciplinary skills among our Environmental Studies students, and collaborate with faculty across disciplinary boundaries to rethink general education at Lewis & Clark, this article suggests important skills—shall we say virtues—to cultivate. In brief, success does not primarily derive from everyone being super smart (as one example), because this can lead to excessive competition and unbalanced contributions; rather, it’s primarily about “psychological safety,” or the ‘‘…shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’’
What would a culture of psychological safety look like among students and faculty? The article offers some rather obvious examples. But, to me, one important quality in higher education, given our justifiable obsession with ideas, would be what in other contexts is known as civil disagreement. The question becomes: how can we foster skills/virtues that mingle empathetic listening with speaking our minds? Perhaps we would benefit from the thought (if not real) experiment of considering how to create a space that welcomes the enemy (whoever that may be)…if we can do that, then surely we can promote psychological safety, and hopefully some better, bigger, more inclusive ideas as well.