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Yes, but what leads to anxiety? Toxic team dynamics. Google did a study and found the number one predictor of strong teams was a feeling of "psychological safety."

> Within psychology, researchers sometimes colloquially refer to traits like ‘‘conversational turn-taking’’ and ‘‘average social sensitivity’’ as aspects of what’s known as psychological safety — a group culture that the Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson defines as a ‘‘shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.’’ Psychological safety is ‘‘a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject or punish someone for speaking up,’’ Edmondson wrote in a study published in 1999. ‘‘It describes a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.’’

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-lear...

My takeaway is you need to be nice, be respectful, and fire toxic people even if they do jump through all the right hoops.



I wonder if the same effect holds true if a team is made up of mostly confident/brash people, or if safety-to-project-yourself can be trained and elevated independent of any other aspect of social environment.

Maybe improv classes or subsidizing employees to exhibit art or publicly perform music?


False dichotomy. You can be confident, brash, and rude to each other all day long, as long as everyone is in on it and everyone is socially intelligent enough to know each other's boundaries.

The problem is when people tell themselves "that's just how I am" and don't have a high enough EQ to notice that they're coming across as jerks.

Everyone is different and everyone requires a personal touch. It's important for people to understand how to get along with those who aren't exactly like them.


Didn't mean to assert a dichotomy, more wondering whether the size of the effect of importance of emotional safety for expressive freedom varies with some kind of external measure of confidence


> Maybe improv classes or ...

Some ppl have a whole life behind them with insecurities and bullying and traumas, and

... Itll be hard for improv classes for a week to have much effect compared to that

But still it's an interesting idea, I suppose if the more shy ppl in the company got to do impro, that'd be good for the company (and them too)


If it has an effect it could be worth pursuing just to measure the size of the effect. If perfection isn't needed, "good enough" might be better.


Yes, and maybe practicing public speaking can make [those who otherwise might not say anything], participate more in meetings and letting others hear their good ideas

+ Can be teambuilding too


There are plenty of shy musicians and theatre performers. When you're on stage you've been explicitly given permission to perform a role, makes it possible for people to put their shyness aside

Maybe the improv world is different, I've never done improv (yet)




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