Overcoming Barriers to Collaboration: Psychological Safety and Learning in Diverse Teams

A.  Edmondson; Kate  Roloff

Chapter | Team Effectiveness in Complex Organizations: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives and Approaches | 2008

Overcoming Barriers to Collaboration: Psychological Safety and Learning in Diverse Teams

by A. Edmondson and Kate Roloff

Abstract

We review research on psychological safety and team learning to identify core ideas and findings in these closely related literatures and to propose a model in which a negative relationship between team member diversity and team collaboration is moderated by psychological safety. We argue that when team members with diverse backgrounds must work together to accomplish challenging goals, psychological safety will facilitate their ability to overcome barriers to communication created by their differences. Although psychological safety may be of intrinsic value for all employees because it allows them to voice ideas, concerns, and questions at work, this chapter emphasizes the especially critical role of psychological safety in diverse teams. We hypothesize that the—potentially negative—effects of diversity on team collaboration and performance are mitigated by psychological safety.

Keywords: Interpersonal Communication; Groups and Teams; Social and Collaborative Networks; Performance Improvement; Learning; Diversity;

Format: Print

Citation:

Edmondson, A., and Kate Roloff. "Overcoming Barriers to Collaboration: Psychological Safety and Learning in Diverse Teams." In Team Effectiveness in Complex Organizations: Cross-disciplinary Perspectives and Approaches, edited by E. Sales, G. G. Goodwin, and C. S. Burke.Organizational Frontiers Series. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2008.

Today the most promising innovation and business opportunities require collaboration among functions, offices, and organizations. To realize them, companies must break down silos and get people working together across boundaries. But that’s a challenge for many leaders. Employees naturally default to focusing on vertical relationships, and formal restructuring is costly, confusing, and slow. What, then, is the solution? Engaging in four activities that promote horizontal teamwork: (1) developing cultural brokers or employees who excel at connecting across divides; (2) encouraging people to ask questions in an open-ended, unbiased way that genuinely explores others’ thinking; (3) getting people to actively take other points of view; and (4) broadening employees’ vision to include more-distant networks. By supporting these activities, leaders can help employees connect with new pools of expertise and learn from and relate to people who think very differently from them. And when that happens, interface collaboration will become second nature.

For too long, the worlds of business and health have been mired in a checkered, sometimes contentious, history. Millions of deaths worldwide can be attributed to risk factors including tobacco use, alcohol and drug misuse, and suboptimal dietary intake linked to commercial products. Media (including social media) coverage about the safety and cost of many consumer goods, both medical (drugs, devices) and nonmedical, reflect profound public concerns. Longstanding societal scrutiny about the role of business in environmental pollution has only increased in the era of global warming.

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Overcoming Barriers to Collaboration: Psychological Safety and Learning in Diverse Teams

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