Confused, Edmondson decided to look at these nurses’ responses, question by question, alongside the error rates to see if any explanations emerged. Edmondson had included one survey question that inquired specifically about the personal risks associated with making errors. She asked people to agree or disagree with the statement: “If you make a mistake in this unit, it is held against you.” Once she compared the data from that question with error incidence, she realized what was going on. It wasn’t that wards with strong teams were making more mistakes. Rather, it was that nurses who belonged to strong teams felt more comfortable reporting their mistakes. The data indicated that one particular norm—whether people were punished for missteps—influenced if they were honest after they screwed up.
Some leaders “have established a climate of openness that facilitates discussion of error, which is likely to be an important influence on detected error rates,” Edmondson wrote in The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science in 1996. What particularly surprised her, however, was how complicated things got the closer she looked: it wasn’t simply that strong teams encouraged open communication and weak teams discouraged it. In fact, while some strong teams emboldened people to admit their mistakes, other, equally strong teams made it hard for nurses to speak up. What made the difference wasn’t team cohesion—rather, it was the culture each team established. In one ward with a strong team, for instance, nurses were overseen by “a hands-on manager who actively invites questions and concerns….In an interview, the nurse manager explains that a ‘certain level of error will occur’ so a ‘nonpunitive environment’ is essential to deal with this error productively,” Edmondson wrote. “There is an unspoken rule here to help each other and check each other,” a nurse told Edmondson’s assistant. “People feel more willing to admit to errors here, because the nurse manager goes to bat for you.”
In another ward with a team that, at first glance, seemed equally strong, a nurse said that when she admitted hurting a patient while drawing blood, the nurse manager “made her feel like she was on trial.” Another said doctors “bite your head off if you make a mistake.” Yet measurements of group cohesion on this ward were still very high. A nurse told the research assistant that the ward “prides itself on being clean, neat and having an appearance of professionalism.” The nurse manager for the ward dressed in business suits and when she delivered criticism, she considerately offered her critiques behind closed doors. The staff said they appreciated the manager’s professionalism, were proud of their department, and felt a strong sense of unity. To Edmondson, the team seemed like they genuinely liked and respected one another. But they also admitted that the unit’s culture sometimes made it hard to confess making a mistake.
It wasn’t the strength of the team that determined how many errors were reported—rather, it was one specific norm.
When Edmondson started working on her dissertation, she visited technology companies and factory floors, and asked people about the unwritten rules that shaped how their teammates behaved. “People would say things like, ‘This is one of the best teams I’ve ever been on, because I don’t have to wear a work face here,’ or ‘We aren’t afraid to share crazy ideas,’?” Edmondson told me. On those teams, norms of enthusiasm and support had taken hold and everyone felt empowered to voice opinions and take risks. “And other teams would tell me, ‘My group is really dedicated to each other and so I try not to go outside my department without checking with my supervisor first’ or ‘We’re all in this together, so I don’t like to bring up an idea unless I know it will work.’?” Within those teams, a norm of loyalty held sway—and it undermined people’s willingness to make suggestions or take chances.
Both enthusiasm and loyalty are admirable norms. It wasn’t clear to managers that they would have such different impacts on people’s behaviors. And yet they did. In that setting, enthusiastic norms made teams better. Loyalty norms made them less effective. “Managers never intend to create unhealthy norms,” Edmondson said. “Sometimes, though, they make choices that seem logical, like encouraging people to flesh out their ideas before presenting them, that ultimately undermine a team’s ability to work together.”
As her research continued, Edmondson found a handful of good norms that seemed to be consistently associated with higher productivity. On the best teams, for instance, leaders encouraged people to speak up; teammates felt like they could expose their vulnerabilities to one another; people said they could suggest ideas without fear of retribution; the culture discouraged people from making harsh judgments. As Edmondson’s list of good norms grew, she began to notice that everything shared a common attribute: They were all behaviors that created a sense of togetherness while also encouraging people to take a chance.
“We call it ‘psychological safety,’?” she said. Psychological safety is a “shared belief, held by members of a team, that the group is a safe place for taking risks.” It is “a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up,” Edmondson wrote in a 1999 paper. “It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.”
Julia and her Google colleagues found Edmondson’s papers as they were researching norms. The idea of psychological safety, they felt, captured everything their data indicated was important to Google’s teams. The norms that Google’s surveys said were most effective—allowing others to fail without repercussions, respecting divergent opinions, feeling free to question others’ choices but also trusting that people aren’t trying to undermine you—were all aspects of feeling psychologically safe at work. “It was clear to us that this idea of psychological safety was pointing to which norms were most important,” said Julia. “But it wasn’t clear how to teach those inside Google. People here are really busy. We needed clear guidelines for creating psychological safety without losing the capacity for dissent and debate that’s critical to how Google functions.” In other words, how do you convince people to feel safe while also encouraging them to be willing to disagree?
“For a long time, that was the million-dollar question,” Edmondson told me. “We knew it was important for teammates to be open with each other. We knew it was important for people to feel like they can speak up if something’s wrong. But those are also the behaviors that can set people at odds. We didn’t know why some groups could clash and still have psychological safety while others would hit a period of conflict and everything would fall apart.”
III.
On the first day of auditions for the television show that became known as Saturday Night Live, the actors showed up, one after another, hour after hour, until it felt like it would never stop. There were two women who played midwestern housewives preparing for the annual meteorological disaster (“Can I borrow your centerpiece for the tornado this year?”) and a singer with an original composition named “I Am Dog” lampooning the women’s liberation anthem “I Am Woman.” A roller-skating impressionist and an obscure musician named Meat Loaf took the stage around lunchtime. The actor Morgan Freeman and the comic Larry David were on the call sheet, as were four jugglers and five mimes. To the exhausted observers watching the auditions, it felt as if every vaudeville act and stand-up comedian between Boston and Washington, D.C., had shown up.
Which is the way the show’s thirty-year-old creator, Lorne Michaels, wanted it. Over the previous nine months, Michaels had traveled from Bangor to San Diego, watching hundreds of comedy club shows. He talked to writers from television and radio programs and every magazine with a humor page. His goal, he later said, was to see “every single funny person in North America.”
By noon on the second day of auditions, tryouts were running late when a man burst through the doors, leapt onto the stage, and demanded the producers’ attention. He had a trim mustache and wore a three-piece suit. He carried a folded umbrella and an attaché. “I’ve been waiting out there for three hours and I’m not going to wait anymore!” he shouted. “I’m going to miss my plane!” He marched across the stage. “That’s it! You’ve had your chance! Good day!” Then he stormed out.