Google’s Psychological Safety and Managerial Research With Two Technology Legends
By: Kristopher Saber
Tags: Technology, Management, Business, Tech, Leadership

Google’s Psychological Safety and Managerial Research With Two Technology Legends

Psychological safety framework and a couple of exceptions

On November 15th, 2015, Google’s People Operations Organization published an internal study looking at the factors that influenced how their most successful teams operated. They interviewed over 200 employees and observed 250 attributes with more than 180 teams. They determined that psychological safety was the most important factor in achieving team cohesiveness and production.

The feeling of psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. It’s being allowed to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status, or career. In teams that embody psychological safety, members feel accepted and respected. Calling other team members stupid for proposing a risky idea, or putting them down, would foster a team dynamic of timidness. The benefit of having a team with high levels of psychological safety is that employees can suggest bold and innovative ideas that might seem “out there” in their mind, but might result in a great interaction, or group discussion. According to Google’s research, who is on the team isn’t as important when compared to how the team is structured, and how teammates interact with each other.

Source: Re Work. The 5 factors that make a successful team dynamic according to Google

The other factors that make a successful team were documented in the study as well: Dependability, structure & clarity, meaning, and impact. These variables were important, but according to researchers, the results from the study suggest that psychological safety formed the foundation for them to exist:

“Psychological safety was far and away the most important of the five dynamics we found — it’s the underpinning of the other four.” — Source: Rework

Google also researched what qualities makeup a good manager. A manager is important to create an environment where team members can interact with each other in a respectful manner. Separate than the traits that make a good team dynamic, the qualities that make a good manager are the following:

1. Is a good coach 2. Empowers their team and does not micromanage 3. Express interest/concern for a team members’ success and personal well being 4. Is productive and results oriented 5. Is a good communicator 6. Helps with career development 7. Has a clear vision/strategy for the team 8. Has important technical skills that help him/her advise the team 9. Collaborates across Google 10. Is a strong decisions maker —Source: Re:Work

A manager that adopts these 10 qualities would be one that is mentally strong, competent, prefer to see tangible outcomes, and is supportive by looking out for their subordinates long term career goals, and well-being. For managers, being a good coach, and expressing concern for employees, are among the most important qualities to foster a team of psychological safety. If the best performing teams at Google need to feel psychologically safe in order to do well, then the manager who leads the team needs to create an environment where that’s possible.

Enter Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.

When Bill Gates was growing Microsoft in the 1980’s and 90’s, psychological safety, and concern for employees well-being, didn’t shine its way through in his leadership style. He had a ruthless, confrontational, and even demeaning management style. He’d memorize employees license plates, and then on weekends, would walk through the Microsoft parking lot to check to see who was in the office. He also purposefully built the Microsoft office (no pun intended) in Seattle Washington, instead of Silicon Valley in California, so employees couldn’t leave the company as easily for another technology job, among other reasons. Despite all these ruthless management techniques, and more, the business became the world’s premier software company. He was worth 4.8 billion dollars in 1991, the second richest person in the world, at only age 35. If anyone knew how to run a team that produced fantastic programs, it was Bill Gates. It cannot be understated how contentious and aggressive Bill was, especially earlier on in his career. According to several of his employees, Bill would routinely put down employees on his team for their code:

“There would always be heated arguments between Bill and the programmers. He’s very famous for having always said ‘that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard’.” -Miriam Lubow

Later on, in that same clip, there was a 1994 CBS interview/show that highlighted a portion of Bill Gate’s management style. In this video, you can see Bill Gate’s scolding his developers.

“That’s ridiculous, I’m not using this thing… No, no, no- somebody’s confused — somebody’s just not thinking… I mean there’s no way (makes mocking face)… You guys never understood- you never understood the first thing about this.” — Bill Gates

Google’s psychological safety framework would predict an unsuccessful Bill Gate’s team. According to the research, in order to allow people to propose bold and innovative ideas, the manager has to set the culture to encourage these kinds of interactions. Along with managing developers, Bill Gates directly worked on writing the software code itself. He was very involved with the technical details and acted as an individual contributor, as well as a leader. He wasn’t just an executive barking high-level orders to management, he was directly involved with building the product, and collaborating with other developers. The CEO sets the culture that permeates to the other parts of the company. Being aggressive, and putting employees down, would disseminate through to the rest of the company.

Steve Jobs was another technological superstar (although not purely software-based like Bill) who held a similar ruthless attitude. Although Steve didn’t directly write code himself, he was heavily involved with details of the design, and the product. He’s famous for being aggressive if someone on his team didn’t agree with his ideas, outright firing them if need be. He was also known to be aggressive with recruiting. Steve is famous for having a distinct recruiting style, where he would hype up how impactful his company’s work was, while also putting down the prospect’s company. An example of this style would be how he recruited Bob Belleville, who worked at Xerox:

“Everything you’ve ever done in your life is shit … So why don’t you come work for me?”-Steve Jobs

He was also known for outright firing people at a moments notice, on the spot. Employees would avoid riding an elevator with Steve to avoid the pressure of interacting with him, fearing of misspeaking or not impressing the judgmental boss.

Explanations for how they led teams successfully absent of psychological safety

How can the two most well known technological experts have built great companies, and products, while being combative? Doesn’t this go against the Google research? Steve and Bill were after all attracting, and collaborating, with a similar breed of technical talent: Software developers and technology professionals.

For one, It’s possible that the other managerial qualities Steve and Bill had heavily influenced the team’s dynamic (i.e. being a good communicator, results-oriented, strong technical skills etc.) that it wasn’t necessarily as big of a deal for a team to be more hostile and competitive. Their leadership and culture setting could have been effective in boosting the other qualities (dependability, meaning, impact etc.) Maybe their teams didn’t need to be psychologically safe and that other qualities, like competitiveness, served as the underpinning to the other 4 factors. Being concerned for team members didn’t matter when the other factors still existed but with a different foundation. The other factors: Dependability, impact, meaning, structure, and clarity could have been so strongly pushed by Bill and Steve’s leadership, that their team didn’t need to be psychologically safe. If Bill and Steve gave the go-ahead, you knew the product was going to be used by millions of people, which would make any team’s work meaningful, and impactful. Employees could have also trusted Bill and Steve to build great products and work hard, making them dependable. Bill Gates might have been tough and ruthless, but his dependability might have been more easily noticed when he used to regularly work until 11 or 12 at night. Instead of bonding over long hours, maybe competition amongst each other over long hours was just as effective for achieving business goals. Bill and Steve had a reputation for building great products before in the past, so if employees could just get through the yelling, and have a really thick skin, then the technology would be exceptional. It took a lot of mental fortitude to be able to put up with Bill and Steve in their heyday, but weathering the storm usually paid off.

It’s also possible that Google’s collaborative culture makes their company’s interpersonal interactions act in a different way when compared to Bill or Steve’s businesses. Google could have structured their business to work well with a collaborative dynamic, Steve and Bill could have structured their’s to work well with more competitiveness or combativeness. If the 1980’s/1990’s version of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs were time-warped into 2015, and given a team of Googlers to manage inside of Google’s structure, they might have to change their tone in order to be a high functioning team. However, if they were working within the organization, and allowed their more contentious management style to shine through, they might upset employees, and disrupt the company culture. Their management style might only be effective in certain business contexts. It’s also possible that as Apple and Microsoft grew larger, and Bill/Steve grew older, it became less of a chopping block. When a company is trying to grow rapidly in the beginning, ruthless competitiveness might work well. Google’s research was completed in 2015, which by that time they were fairly large, stable, and out of their early growth period.

Regardless of the reason, it’s apparent that Steve and Bill were an exception to the framework that Google developed. They didn’t adhere to the psychological safety and managerial research model. Despite their successes, as a general rule, it’s not recommended to be unnecessarily mean and confrontational as a manager. If someone were pursuing management, or are currently managing employees in a software/technology company, it’s probably best to encourage subordinates to participate without fear of being judged too harshly. A manager can be results-oriented, and a strong decision-maker, without having to put workers down. If an employee proposes half baked ideas, a manager can simply tell them their ideas aren’t going to work, instead of just humiliating them in front of the rest of the team. Both approaches shoot down bad ideas, but only one achieves a safer environment.