Psychological Safety: The #1 Factor for Building High-Performing Teams | Walk and Talk with Dr. AZ

🌟 What’s the #1 factor that separates high-performing teams from the rest?

It’s not talent, strategy, or resources — it’s Psychological Safety.

🔍 Research shows teams with high psychological safety:

✅ Perform 27% better

✅ Engage 76% more

Yet many leaders think their environment is safe — without realizing their people don’t feel safe enough to speak up, innovate, or stay.

In my latest episode of Walk and Talk with Dr. AZ, I share:

1️⃣ What psychological safety really means

2️⃣ The hidden costs of ignoring it (like losing top talent)

3️⃣ 2 real world stories

4️⃣ 3 practical steps to build a culture where people thrive

🎥 Ready to lead a team that’s engaged, innovative, and loyal? Listen the full clip below👇

Your turn:

Have you ever worked on a team where you didn’t feel safe speaking up? Or a team where psychological safety helped you thrive?

Share your story or thoughts below — I’d love to hear how psychological safety (or lack of it) has impacted your work experience!

👇 Drop a comment and let’s start the conversation.

#Leadership #TeamPerformance #PsychologicalSafety #WorkCulture #WalkAndTalkWithDrAZ

Transcript

00:00:00:05 - 00:01:01:55
Unknown
Recent research by Google reveals that the number one differentiator of high performance teams is psychological safety. Another research also shows that teams that have psychological safety, they perform 27% better and 76 better engagement than those that are not. I’ll repeat it. Teams that have psychological safety, they perform 27% better and engage 76% better than those which don't have. Today, I'm going to talk to you about the importance of psychological safety and how you as a leader of your team or organization could be able to create that kind of culture where your people feel safe so that you could be able to benefit all that come with creating that kind of culture.

00:01:02:09 - 00:01:51:23
Unknown
Let's first talk about what is psychological safety. Psychological safety is about an environment where people feel safe to air their opinions, speak their minds, take risk, create, innovate without feeling embarrassed or punished. This is very important for many, many reasons. But first, I want to talk to you about the side effects of not having psychologically safe culture. The first one is high turnover, especially high performers they cannot survive, let alone to thrive in a culture where they don't feel safe and therefore you're going to experience high turnover.

00:01:52:08 - 00:02:21:54
Unknown
The second one is the well-being of your people. When people don't feel psychologically safe, what happens? They are stressed out, they hurt their health and they're not at their best. The third thing is performance. In a psychologically unsafe environment, people don't perform well. As I told you, those that have that kind of culture, they outperform those who don't

00:02:22:26 - 00:02:57:16
Unknown
by 27%. We're talking about almost one third better than those which don't have psychological safety. The fourth one is the ability of your people to go the extra mile. When people are struggling, try to be safe, survive, they're not going the extra mile. They're not giving the best. And because of that, they are reserved. They're not creating.

00:02:57:23 - 00:03:26:45
Unknown
They're not innovating. They don't want to fail and experience setbacks. The next question is how do you create that kind of environment? You are a team leader or a CEO of an organization. How do you create that kind of culture? The first thing is to model vulnerability, which means people don't hear what you say. People hear what they see

00:03:26:47 - 00:03:57:46
Unknown
you do. Which means if you become vulnerable and demonstrate taking risk, if you open up and share with your team that you are struggling in this or that, if you ask them for help, what happens? They see that you are vulnerable. They see that they can be safe if they open up, they can feel safe. If they ask for help, if they speak up their mind.

00:03:58:22 - 00:04:36:14
Unknown
The second thing you could do is rewarding people who speak up. People are watching you tell them that this is the safest environment that you have. Speak your mind. Take risk. Create and innovate. Fine. But they are watching. They want to see what happens to those who speak up. Take risk. If you reward those people publicly and in private that are taking risks, those that are speaking up their mind, providing feedback, feedback that you may not feel okay if they tell you something you don't want to hear.

00:04:36:24 - 00:05:08:14
Unknown
What do you do? They're watching. If they see that people like that are rewarded. What happens? Yes, they start to open up. They start to feel safe, which means they give it all. They create, innovate, take risk. They speak their mind, provide feedback to you. This is a win win. The third thing that you should do is that you should involve your people asking them, How can we create this safe environment?

00:05:09:31 - 00:05:43:56
Unknown
Because you may think that whatever you're doing creates safety for your people. Maybe it's not creating any safety. I can give you a good example. I was mentoring a young lady. She's very dynamic. Whenever we brainstorm and come up with some great ideas for her to take to her boss, she retreats. She shows hesitation when I keep on asking her why is she feeling like that?

00:05:44:48 - 00:06:12:06
Unknown
She kept on telling me that she doesn't know how her boss is going to react. For her, the most important thing is how the boss reacts, not how much that great idea could be able to help the team. You see, if you ask your boss, if you if she asked her boss, the boss most probably would say this is a safe environment.

00:06:12:49 - 00:06:42:01
Unknown
If this lady goes and share her ideas, maybe she will be receptive. Her boss will be receptive. Maybe not. There is no security. The point I'm making is even if you think the environment is safe, unless your people feel safe, they won't feel safe and they don't give it all. Which requires to talk about it, to talk about it publicly, openly with your team.

00:06:42:24 - 00:07:13:51
Unknown
Is our environment safe? How can we make it better? You can ask, of course, that question publicly. And also you can send surveys. You can have one on one talk to figure out that you could be able to create an environment that they think is safe. I remember I had a very interesting and very engaging conversation with someone. Before I shared that story,

00:07:13:52 - 00:07:42:08
Unknown
I have to disclaim that I cannot tell you the name of the organization and the person, but in general, I'm going to give you some ideas. This was in a higher education environment. I was working with the president of that university, and he was very receptive to the leadership ideas that I suggested. And he wanted me to work with his admin assistant. And his admin assistant,

00:07:42:13 - 00:08:06:35
Unknown
she was always there when I talked to the president and he told her again and again, if Assegid, they call me back home in Ethiopia, Assegid. If Assegid comes and asks you anything, any help, please stop everything that you do and help him. As we worked together with this lady, after a while, she starts to become vulnerable.

00:08:06:37 - 00:08:33:17
Unknown
She opened up and she told me that she's planning to leave her work. I was stunned because I know how much he appreciates her. I know how much he is dependent on her, but she's planning to leave. My first question was, did you talk to him? She was like, No, I cannot talk to him. I asked why is that.

00:08:34:08 - 00:08:37:56
Unknown
She said, Because I don't know how he's going to react. What if if he fires me?

00:08:40:41 - 00:09:06:32
Unknown
And then we were talking and I asked more questions about why she wanted to leave. Her reason was she's overwhelmed. She's getting a lot of work and her plate is full. She's hurting her relationships, her health and so on and so forth. As she wanted to quit, she asked me a favor. Please, would you connect me with the CEOs that

00:09:06:49 - 00:09:36:32
Unknown
you know, so that I can get a job? My first impression was that she doesn't know that he appreciates her, he values her. The second thing I thought was maybe he doesn't know, too. If he knew that he was stressing her out, he wouldn't have given her a lot of work. And I talked to her. Look, you don't know from where he's coming from.

00:09:36:51 - 00:09:57:48
Unknown
Maybe he's thinking you're the best. He's trusting you. And he may even think that he is favoring you, showing you that he has confidence on you. She said, No, I don't think so. I told I told her, the only way to know that is to talk to him. I was coaching her, look, go there. Don't make him fire you.

00:09:57:59 - 00:10:22:57
Unknown
Don't go out there and complain and tell him that you're not happy. No. Go there and tell him that you enjoy working with him and she appreciates that he trusts her. But the situation I'm in is that I am stressed out. My plate is full. I am hurting my relationships and my health. And I want you to know that I'm in deep trouble.

00:10:23:11 - 00:11:00:10
Unknown
I'm barely raising my head above the water. And I promised her if she communicated this way, he could be able to listen to her, most probably asking her, How can we fix this? But she wasn't feeling safe. That's why we need to know how our people are feeling before they quit, before they walk away. It is a problem for organizations when people feel unsafe, especially if they are high performers, like these two examples that I gave you.

00:11:00:19 - 00:11:32:59
Unknown
They walk away because they have other opportunities out there. For you, you lose your best people, and then when you hire other best people, what happens? They come to that environment, to that culture. They find it unsafe. And therefore, what do they do? They walk away. You're spending a lot of money, energy, time, educating people, training them. Once they become the best in your organization, they walk away because of unsafe environment.

00:11:33:14 - 00:12:09:10
Unknown
In conclusion, psychological safety is recognized as the number one differentiator of high performance teams. To create this kind of environment and enjoy its benefits, such as creativity, innovation, transparent and pro feedback culture. You should take some steps, and I shared with you the first is for you to believe that this is important and then model it. Show vulnerability and then reward it.

00:12:09:55 - 00:12:35:52
Unknown
Engage the team. Ask them to provide feedback. Whenever they give you feedback or suggest some ideas that you don't believe in or you don't understand, don't. Don't judge them. Just ask them. Wow, this is interesting. I have never heard of it. Tell me more. If you ask them rather than judging them, they open up. Let me tell you this.

00:12:36:19 - 00:13:05:45
Unknown
Many organizations and teams are not suffering because of bad ideas. They are suffering because of no ideas. People are not opening up. They're not sharing their opinions. I hope this will help you to understand the importance of psychological safety and some tips on how to create such a culture. Good luck to you. If you need any help in this regard in creating such a culture,

00:13:06:05 - 00:13:13:04
Unknown
please reach out and we would love to work with you. Now I'm going to turn my camera and show you this beautiful beach.

00:13:15:31 - 00:13:41:19
Unknown
This is, you see this is sunrise? Beautiful. It's not yet crowded. This place is going to be very, very crowded very, very soon. Right now, it's not. All right. Enjoy the rest of the day. And bye.