Check out the full Impact program here.
Nir Eyal, who authored this piece, is one of the speakers.
Check out the full Impact program here.
After conducting interviews with BCGs staff, Perlowfoundthat this reputation was coming at a major cost.
Employees were leaving the elite consulting firm, in part because they lacked control over theirschedules.
Perlow ran the idea by George Martin, the managing partner of BCGs Boston office.
He told her to keep her hands off his team.
He gave her permission to wander around the office and look for another partner who might be willing.
After hearing a resounding Yes!
the team was left to figure out exactly how they would achieve that goal.
For years, BCG consultants had heard countless reasons why they had to be accessible at all hours.
Were in the service business, We work across time zones, and What if a client needs us?
The meetings yielded far greater benefits than Perlow had expected.
Participants began to address topics well beyond how to disconnect for one night a week.
There was no taboo, one consultant said.
You could talk about anything.
The senior members of the team did not always agree, but it was okay to bring anything up.
Rather than blaming technology for their problems, the teams reflected on the reasons behind its overuse.
Treating these symptoms often involves examining and addressing how teams work together.
Google recently set out to understand the drivers of employee retention and positive team outcomes.
Dream team assembled, right?
We were dead wrong.
What did they actually discover?
The term psychological safety was coined by Amy Edmondson, an organizational behavioral scientist at Harvard.
Although this kind of self-protection is a natural strategy in the workplace, it is detrimental to effective teamwork.
Psychological safety is the antidote to unhealthy work environments and toxic work culture.
Its also the magic ingredient BCG discovered when they began regular meetings to give employees predictable time off.
How does a team, or a company, create psychological safety?
Step 2:Acknowledge your own fallibility.
Managers need to let people know that no one has all the answersthat were in this together.
Step 3:Finally, Edmondson suggests that leaders must, Model curiosity and ask lots of questions.
