Developing Psychological Safety in Technical Teams

Being promoted from an individual contributor to a supervisor brings new challenges and opportunities. One challenge new supervisors face is creating and fostering a psychologically safe environment to encourage teams’ interpersonal risk taking. This research introduces the antecedent of first level technical leaders perceived transformational leadership training on team members psychological safety. A study of 92 technical teams (400 participants across nine companies, three industries, and four US regions) measured the impact of four hypotheses related to psychological safety. A positive relationship between leaders training and team psychological safety was discovered. The highly correlated variables, training and emotional intelligence, led to a recommendation for more research into four transformational leadership training elements and four emotional intelligence elements. A strong positive relationship between team psychological safety and team learning behavior was revealed. A strong negative relationship was realized between team psychological safety and team knowledge hiding. Qualitative remarks are included from 42 survey participants and 14 interviews. A call to action for organizations to shape their first level technical leaders’ training as training and behaviors will need to evolve to effectively address the changing needs of organizations, inspiring better leadership and consequently promoting improved psychologically safe working environments and resulting outcomes

Genetic Differentiation.

<p>Weir and Cockerham’s <i>F</i>-statistics (θ) for sample pairs (below diagonal) and the harmonic mean across loci of Jost’s <i>D</i>_est of actual differentiation (above diagonal). Sample codes are as in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0122315#pone.0122315.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>. BB61, BB65, DRL, SES and SS are demersal spawning locations; all others are beach spawning locations. Values outside the upper 95% confidence interval of θ are indicated in bold-type. Values of θ not significant at <i>α</i> = 0.05 in exact tests are underlined.</p><p>Genetic Differentiation.</p

Details of Samples.

<p>Capelin sample identifier code, location name and geographic coordinates (decimal degrees) and summary information for each sample including number of fish collected (<i>N</i>), minimum and maximum collection year of collection, number of males and females in each collection and the average, standard error (S.E.), minimum and maximum of total fish-length among the 15 sampling locations used in this study.</p><p>¹Demersal spawning location.</p><p>Details of Samples.</p

Spatial Genetic Structure.

<p>A. The average genetic difference (Jost’s <i>D</i>_est; <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0122315#pone.0122315.t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a>) between the samples identified by each of 10 successive barriers. B. Genetic “barriers” to gene flow (numbered brown lines) among capelin calculated using the Monmonier algorithm from the overall Jost’s <i>D</i>_est matrix (<a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0122315#pone.0122315.t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a>) based on samples from 15 locations. Blue lines illustrate the Voronoï tessellation. Filled circles represent the geographic position of samples identified through Bayesian clustering with Structure as belonging to Cluster I (blue) or Cluster II (red). Barriers are numbered sequentially in order of strength using Roman numerals. Six barriers are shown. Bracketed numbers represent the number of loci supporting the barrier (maximum 6). Barrier i surrounds the BB65 location.</p

Bathymetric chart of the northwest Atlantic Ocean and adjacent Canadian-Atlantic provinces.

<p>Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation (NAFO) statistical divisions (solid black line boundaries) and identifiers (italic font), and the 15 spawning capelin sampling locations at beach (solid circle) and demersal sites (solid square) along with their sample code identifiers (bold block font), as detailed in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0122315#pone.0122315.t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>, are indicated.</p

Genetic Structure of Capelin (<i>Mallotus villosus</i>) in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean

<div><p>Capelin (<i>Mallotus villosus</i>) is a commercially exploited, key forage-fish species found in the boreal waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. We examined the population structure of capelin throughout their range in the Canadian northwest Atlantic Ocean using genetic-based methods. Capelin collected at ten beach and five demersal spawning locations over the period 2002 through 2008 (<i>N</i> = 3,433 fish) were genotyped using six polymorphic microsatellite loci. Temporally distinct samples were identified at three beach spawning locations: Chance Cove, Little Lawn and Straitsview, Newfoundland. Four capelin stocks are assumed for fisheries management in the northwest Atlantic Ocean based on meristics, morphometrics, tag returns, and seasonal distribution patterns. Our results suggested groupings that were somewhat different than the assumed structure, and indicate at least seven genetically defined populations arising from two ancestral populations. The spatial mosaic of capelin from each of the two basal cluster groups explains much of the observed geographic variability amongst neighbouring samples. The genetic-defined populations were resolved at Jost’s <i>D</i>_est ≥ 0.01 and were composed of fish collected 1) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 2) along the south and east coasts of Newfoundland, 3) along coastal northern Newfoundland and southern Labrador, 4) along coastal northern Labrador, 5) near the Saguenay River, and at two nearshore demersal spawning sites, 6) one at Grebes Nest off Bellevue Beach on the east coast of Newfoundland, and 7) one off the coast of Labrador at Domino Run. Moreover, the offshore demersal spawners on the Scotian Shelf and Southeast Shoal appeared to be related to the inshore demersal spawners at Grebes Nest and in Domino Run and to beach spawners from the Gulf of St. Lawrence.</p></div