Team-based games: Catalysts for developing psychological safety, learning and performance

Abstract

Psychological safety has recently emerged as a necessity for effective teamwork. We evaluate whether psychological safety can be developed through a team-based game intervention. Using pre-test and post-test data, we find that participants in a team-based game, experience an increase in psychological safety through engaging in the intervention. Post-test data were used to assess relationships between psychological safety, team learning and performance. We find that psychological safety is positively related to performance and team learning. While team learning was also found to be positively related to performance, the hypothesis that team learning mediates the psychological safety–performance relationship, was not supported. The context for this study is a large resource-constrained healthcare organization based in an emerging economy.