An Exploration of Psychological Safety and Team Behaviors in a Construction Global Team

Psychological safety is a construct that has garnered attention in academia and industries over the last two decades. Research has shown the connection between psychological safety and several team behaviors, from learning to active caring. Most research however has focused on exploring psychological safety within traditional teams. This paper extends the research on psychological safety by capturing the psychological safety and behavioral dynamics of a global virtual corporate team in the construction industry. We found that psychological safety positively relates to some behaviors such as making reliable promises and active listening, and these in turn positively relate to better team performance. This paper also describes actions the team in the study committed to follow to improve, based on the assessment conducted in this study. Future research should concentrate on using longitudinal assessments to explore variations within the team over time and understand what interventions can improve team dynamics.