The most important factor in team success, by far, is psychological safety.

Safety means risk taking is OK. 

Remarkable success requires risk taking.

Skillful leaders build learning environments where risk taking is allowed, encouraged, and honored.

Source - Read More at: leadershipfreak.blog

Do you know what psychological safety means?

It means  feeling secure in your environment, knowing that you are free to try new things, knowing that if you try and fail, you will be rewarded for the effort as opposed to penalized for the shortfall.  

We used to recruit for a nationally known company, whose employees were so afraid to make the wrong decision, that they  were afraid to make ANY decisions at all.

We could not get an entry level sales person hired because no one, not a district sales manager, not a regional sales manager, not the  VP of Sales,  was comfortable in pulling the trigger.

We would have to wait until the President of the company, that was based out of the country, would make his quarterly trip overseas, to give his blessing, and of course more than half the time, the candidate  was either off the market because good people do not have long shelf lives, or more often, the candidate would see what a dysfunctional company he was interviewing with, and run for the hills .

Needless to say, we do not recruit for them anymore.

Hiring the best people you possibly can, training them to the very best of your ability, and then EMPOWERING THEM is the key to building a successful team.

Showing what happens  when someone  thinks outside the box, and it does not work out as hoped is what will embolden the rest of your team to puff out their chest, and find the courage to push the limits of excellence.  Do not penalize the failure but praise them for having the courage something new.

MEANINGFUL PROGRESS IS ALWAYS RISKY. 

As is the case for so many things, these life lessons apply to raising children equally as well as building teams. 🙂