Are You Safe? | Why Trust Is So Important

People do what they do for a good reason, but remember–it is for their reasons and not yours.

Are You Safe?

There is an overwhelming body of scientific evidence pointing to the importance of trust and psychological safety.

Interestingly, Google conducted an extensive study on what makes for effective teams. The study was named after the Greek philosopher Aristotle siting his famous statement that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Our modern term for this is synergy. They did extensive research and used 35 different analytical models to crunch the data. To their surprise, team effectiveness had very little to do with who was on the team. It didn’t matter how smart, creative or experienced they were. What mattered most was psychological safety.

If we want to be effective leaders, we need to be a safe person to be around. All our knowledge, ability and insight go for naught if people don’t see us as safe. Ask yourself, when people interact with me do they feel:

• Esteemed
• Valued
• Safe
• Understood
• Respected
• Better-off

If you can’t resoundingly answer “yes” to the above checklist, you have some serious work to do before you maximize your leadership effectiveness.

If you would like some help applying this concept, let’s talk.

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash