The Joseph Pelrine's Team Health Index

Finally! It turns out that I am a part of a bigger group of people who think that Psychological Safety itself is not a sufficient factor in a team's health. Yes, psychological safety is a necessary condition for teams to be healthy yet, there is more to it.

 

According to Joseph Pelrine to assess the team's health it actually takes three factors into consideration. Here is the full equation: 

The Team Health Index = Psychological Safety + 

                          Empathy + 

                                      Thought Diversity 

or actually this should be a multiplication equation to highlight that the combination of these three factors is what impacts the final result:

The Team Health Index = Psychological Safety x 

                          Empathy x 

                                      Thought Diversity

Only now I feel comfortable that we have set up the stage properly. This triad of factors as a whole is what really matters when we talk about team health. I think this equation should be called somehow and framed together as "Pelrine's Team Health Index" ;) .

Countless number of times I met teams who were "just" safe. Safe ot the extent that there was no development possible. They missed empathy and rejected any thought provoking challenges from external stakeholders and/or clients. Many times all other voices were treated as endangering the status-quo. And those teams were let to proceed with their limited worldview and produce solutions. And those solutions reflected the worldview of those teams as a natural consequence. Only when solutions turned to be suboptimal with hard evidence, the status-quo could be challenged and a space for a wider discussion was opening.
To some extent it is called a learning loop, yet there is a thin line between the necessity to learn by failing versus getting things done effectively by upfront collaboration through empathizing and being open.

In terms of system dynamics, an exchange and mutual benefit between a team and its stakeholders / clients, one could say that a team needs to give back for Safety with Empathy and be grateful to external voices for enriching their Thought Diversity.

Thank you Joseph Pelrine for bringing the full picture together in your post!