Increasing Trust, Psychological Safety, and Team Performance Through Dyadic Leadership Discovery

Abstract

In this article, the author uses a case-based argument to explore the idea that team members have grounded rationality, which may be actively learned by team leaders through a process of leadership discovery. The analysis reveals evidence that leaders using dyadic discovery methods learn more and more effectively customize leadership behaviors to increase trust, psychological safety, and team performance. A comparison of dyadic and group-level discovery cases lends support to the theory that dyadic-level discovery is psychologically safer and more consistently effective than is group-level discovery in most work team settings. This is an important finding, as many “action” and “organization development” methods presently rely on group-level interventions as a means of uncovering individual-level rationality.