Cultivating successful teams across disciplines and organisations

_{Picture: Future Design Studio MOME © Lakos Máté}

As the world becomes more complex, it’s important to understand and tackle challenges from as many perspectives as possible. To overcome this, it is valuable to have team members who come from different educational backgrounds and sectors. The main advantage of this is learning from each other and gaining a greater shared understanding.

However, multidisciplinary teams this also comes with challenges regarding language use, different priorities, and different working processes. This can lead to frustration in teams, or even result in a failing project. Establishing a supportive team culture can help overcome this, and is crucial when working across sectors and organisations.  

So what is team culture?‍

Team culture consists of values, norms, communication styles, and collective behaviors that influence and shape the groups’ day-to-day work. Having a clear understanding of team culture should be a top priority for any organisation that strives to raise employee satisfaction, encourage collaboration, and enhance productivity. 

Erwin Elling, innovation strategist at Fundamentals, describes team culture as the greasing oil that is not visible, but necessary for everything to run smoothly. According to a report by Haufe, a company providing HR advice, several factors contribute to having a high-performing team. These are psychological trust and safety, team purpose, team effectiveness, team reflection, support, and communication. 

This article explores how to build psychological safety within teams—a key focus in Fundamentals' programmes, where we prioritize creating safe, collaborative environments.

Psychological safety

The term psychological safety comes from Amy Edmonson (1999), who defines it as a trusting environment where all team members can be themselves and express themselves openly without fear of negative consequences. Psychological safety consists of providing trust, showing vulnerability, and taking responsibility. 

_{Figure: Inspired by Haufe and created by Lena Wagner}

How does Fundamentals work with psychological safety in teams?

Erwin Elling: “Fundamentals’ role often consists of providing a neutral space, for example between educational institutions and their partners in the work field. Fundamentals is often called to situations where something has to be done differently or in entirely new way. This can be scary and feel uncomfortable for a team, especially when the team members have a different background and different work culture. Therefore, creating a sense of psychological safety in a team is essential when wanting to innovate.”

In practice, some people find suggesting an idea uncomfortable, especially if it is okay in their team culture to make fun of someone who shares a crazy idea. Team members need to get to know each other, build trust and form new norms to be able to move forward. Simple but well timed interventions can help tremendously. For example, using some private time to write ideas on post-its, lowers the threshold to sharing ideas. Erwin shares that building trust is a continuous process that takes time and effort. 

_{Picture: Erwin Elling at CIIIC © Jelle Leusink}

Another aspect that builds trust is creating awareness. Having a team conversation about how the team culture is right now, what it should look like according to them, and what is necessary to transform it. Erwin mentions that simply reflecting together on the current team culture and where improvements might be in order, builds trust and and gives space for vulnerability. He adds that his own attitude and behaviour can help others to also behave differently, for example when it comes to showing vulnerability.

Furthermore, Erwin points out that project leaders are crucial to providing psychological safety. Project leaders, who create a space to collectively decide on the values, norms, communication styles and collective behaviours, are more likely to build trust, share responsibility and give space for vulnerability in teams.

To summarise, psychological safety is a crucial aspect of creating a high-performing team culture of people from different disciplines and organisations. The conversation with Erwin Elling provided specific examples and insights about how trust, vulnerability, and responsibility can be created. 

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Contact us today to discuss how we can help your team thrive across disciplines and organisations.