How To Unlock The Potential Of Your People

Build psychologically safe teams

Back in the 80s, the famed public opinion analyst and social scientist Daniel Yankelovich coined the term, discretionary effort to describe patterns that emerged as he studied work ethic-related practices of American workers with his partner, John Immerwahr. They noticed an interesting trend. It turned out that almost half of their research subjects indicated they did the least amount of work possible—just enough, to not get fired. Additionally, 70 percent indicated they had more effort and/or creativity to offer than they were invited or allowed to give¹.
 

 
Now, since Yankelovich and Immerwahr developed the survey, they weren’t overly surprised people would agree with such unfavorable statements, but they weren’t prepared for the percentage of respondents who did—70 percent is a rather unfavorable number just in case it wasn’t speaking loud enough for you. As they presented their findings, the researchers started to refer to this gap in the level of effort an employee is capable of bringing to his or her work and the effort required to simply get by or make do, as discretionary effort—and just like that, a movement was born.
 
So, for the past 40 years, leaders and other concerned individuals have moved from exploiting to extracting, to earning discretionary effort. And through this endeavor, you’d think they’d have earned almost every last discretionary effort joule inherent in organizations. But, you’d be wrong—at least somewhat wrong. You see, most people have been focused on the discretionary effort an individual brings to an organization, and so missed a secondary, subtler and more elusive type of discretionary effort—team-based discretionary effort.
 
Now, some of you are probably thinking, “Wait a minute! He just put ‘team-based’ in front of discretionary effort as a way to pass it off as something new. ”Well yeah, because it is. It’s not enough to simply focus on the individual in order to unleash all the potential discretionary effort within an organization. There’s a certain amount of effort that can only be realized as individuals interact with others—as they share ideas and collaborate with others to create something they couldn’t create on their own. That’s team-based discretionary effort.
 
The teams that do this most effectively establish and promote psychological safety—in other words, team members have to feel comfortable contributing, pushing back, and otherwise being able to express their point of view. And (and this is the big “and” here), they have to create the conditions in which others feel they can do the same. You need to balance the amount of the time and energy with which you advocate for your ideas, with the time and energy spent on inquiring about others’ ideas.  This is easier said than done. Most of us tend to blow it by spending too much time on the advocacy bit.
 
If you want to affect this balance, you first need to know what the balance is, and one of the best ways to do this is, create a mental or physical sociogram of your team’s interactions. A sociogram is a graphic representation of how your team interacts. Who speaks first? Who speaks to who? How often people chime in? Who speaks least? Who speaks most? This makes what was previously invisible (the pattern of your team’s interactions), visible. And once you make it visible, it gives you the opportunity to slant the interaction in favor of maximizing team-based discretionary effort. You can consciously interrupt the less productive patterns and encourage ones that more evenly distribute time to share ideas, encourage collaboration, and facilitate active participation.
 
Now, psychological safety is only partially accomplished through tracking and establishing a greater sense of equality in dialogue (monitoring turn-taking and calling on people who haven’t had a chance to speak). It is more fully realized by providing a voice for those who aren’t speaking up for themselves, for whatever reasons, on a regular basis. You have to be the bridge: asking the more silent members what their response to a particular idea might be, rephrasing comments back to individuals so they get a chance to hear and respond to their own words, prompting members of your team to switch to inquiry mode more often during discussions. In essence, as a leader, your challenge becomes: how can you actively draw each member of the team out without making them feel like they’ve just been called out. It’s not only the right thing to do, but it also happens to be the best way to ensure your team is engaged and successful.
 
Teams have the potential to enable each of its members to provide their very best efforts. And when you create psychological safety, you become the bridge between the status quo and a more fully realized/utilized team-based discretionary effort that yields those best efforts.
 
Note
¹Yankelovich, D. &Immerwahr, J. Soc. “Putting the work ethic to work” (1984) 21: 58. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02695027

Author Bio

Steve Willis is the Vice President of Professional Services at VitalSmarts, a top 20 leadership training company. He has been at the forefront of developing, perfecting, and delivering award-winning training programs that have influenced two million people worldwide. Visit www.vitalsmarts.com Connect Steve Willis Follow @VitalSmarts