Building Strong Teams: Balancing Psychological Safety and Accountability

Hello NABU Team and Friends,

Behind every strong team is a quiet tension: the need to feel safe, and the need to be challenged.

This week, I’m exploring how teams grow—not just through goals and metrics, but through the relational space between psychological safety and felt accountability.

With insights from Amy C. Edmondson’s work on learning organizations, we’ll unpack what makes that space expansive—or constraining.

The Power of Balanced Teams

In any organization, aiming to drive transformational change is not about choosing to prioritize psychological safety over felt accountability, but rather cultivating both to create a dynamic, high-performing team environment.

Psychological safety isn't about being nice or lowering standards. Instead, it's about creating an environment where team members feel comfortable taking risks, admitting mistakes, and challenging the status quo. This openness is crucial for innovation and continuous learning.

On the other hand, felt accountability ensures that team members take ownership of their work and strive for excellence. It's about setting high standards and expecting team members to meet them.

The magic happens when these two elements are in balance. In such an environment, team members feel empowered to voice their ideas and concerns (psychological safety) while also feeling a strong commitment to achieving team goals (felt accountability).

For organizations like NABU, this balance is crucial. We need team members who feel safe to propose innovative ideas for reaching children with literacy resources, while also feeling accountable for the impact of our programs.

A Closer Look at Psychological Safety and Accountability

In her Harvard Business Review article "The Competitive Imperative of Learning," Edmondson introduces two key elements to build strong, adaptive teams that are resilient in knowledge-based industries that require adaptability and innovation:

1. Psychological Safety: An environment where team members feel safe to take interpersonal risks, voice their opinions, and be their authentic selves without fear of negative consequences.
2. Felt Accountability: A sense of responsibility for one's actions and outcomes, driving high performance and continuous improvement.

These two elements are not mutually exclusive.

This quadrant diagram most effectively demonstrates how teams can find the high performing “Learning zone” where both psychological safety and accountability are high.

We explored this within hospital settings where staff felt safe to report mistakes in patient care, and used learnings to be better at their jobs and improve care outcomes.

Key Takeaways for NABU and Beyond

1. Foster open communication: Improve our governance structures so there are clear channels and opportunities for team members to share ideas and concerns without fear of reprisal – this is a key goal of our Board this year following our third party governance review that was led by TechSoup.

2. Set clear expectations: This is about clearly communicating team goals and individual responsibilities. NABU already does this well with the performance management system of Objectives and Key Results, and this is one way of promoting accountability. What are some others you can think of?

3. Celebrate learning from failures: Encourage experimentation and treat failures as learning opportunities rather than causes for punishment. Perhaps we could use Town Halls as a space for employees, including leadership, to share outcomes of projects that failed, and what they learnt?

Engage with Me

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Join Us On This Journey

This exploration of topics in early childhood goes beyond the NABU team; it's for anyone with a deep interest in development, education, technology, and media. Whether you're a donor, educator, partner, or practitioner, there’s valuable insight here for you. Together, we can collaborate, learn, and make a lasting impact.

Thank you for being an integral part of this journey. I’m excited to continue this exploration with you.

Tanyella Allison Leta

^{Note: The ideas presented here are my own, inspired by discussions and materials from my studies at Harvard Graduate School of Education. Any direct ideas are cited, and resources shared are in the public domain.}