SafetyInsights.org

This explored the role IT plays in facilitating psychological safety in virtual teams compared between men and women.

Providing background, it’s noted that:

• One study found that some individuals held back correct information on decision errors among their team during virtual meetings
• In online settings, men engaged in significantly more criticisms and oppositional views than women
• Women were found in another study to refrain from voicing their suggestions openly even when disagreeing with others
• Women were noted to participate less than men in commenting online on electronic newspapers
• They say “decades of empirical studies have shown that the same gendered power imbalances in face-to-face settings still manifest online” (p2)
• Specifically, this manifests as men dominating conversations and critising others more. Anonymity in online commenting has been shown in some work to promote gender equity, but contradicted in other work

It’s highlighted that men and women have “distinct gender-stereotypical behaviors and communication patterns that persist in online settings” (p2). Men prefer independence and interacting with others enhances their relative social standing. Research has shown women tend to prefer building rapport with specific others and to save the face of others when pointing out errors.

Task awareness and presence awareness were the key concepts considered in this research and their impact on psychological safety. Task awareness is “up-to-minute knowledge of who is doing what in the team to facilitate the performance of the team’s task in ways that affect each member’s work” (p4) – allowing somebody to have visibility over the evolution of others’ work and thus reducing their reliance on asking for help.

In the IT context this could include a document repository with the history of documentation and other technology allowing one to see where others are up-to regarding work at a point in time. It’s argued men would prefer to review documentation and other materials before a meeting.

For women, who tend to prefer building rapport, presence awareness permits people to target specific remote individuals and build familiarity with them, such as being able to send direct messages.

They hypothesise that task knowledge is more beneficial for men in eliciting psychological safety and presence awareness for women.

Shared electronic databases in task awareness allows one to review materials before meetings and more beneficial in “facilitating men to maintain their independence” (p5). Further, annotations of comments made by individuals (text boxes or via document mark-ups I assume), offers a mechanism for individuals to improve their reputation; another facet likely benefitting men more often than women.

For women, directing messaging and the like allows spontaneous and rapid informal communications with remote partners and thus “one can more rapidly clarify ambiguities and discrepancies regarding work coordination procedures, work roles and assumptions behind opinions, all of which generate understandings of shared context” (p6). This may allow higher interpersonal risk-taking and permit more cooperative interactions over competitive interactions. This may more frequently benefit women than men. For instance, women were more likely to send private messages on Facebook compared to men.

Data was collected via surveying 94 students across 19 teams.

Results

As predicted, “task knowledge awareness predicted psychological safety for men, but no impact was found for women” and further “Compared with women, men often resist relying on others for help and seeking feedback, as these behaviors are incongruent with men’s learned gender roles” (p12).

Task knowledge awareness was said to assist men more than women by facilitating their knowledge of the environments, past and present discussions and to expedite discussion preparation for online meetings. Thus allowing men to value their independence and try increasing their relative social standing.

Further, it’s said that “task knowledge awareness enabled by ITs emboldens men to voice opinions more openly. By contrast, expressing one’s views in the presence of all members is incongruent with women’s learned gender communication patterns” (p12).

Presence awareness increased psychological safety for women but had no impact for men. For IT solutions, facilitating communication that emphasises rapport building seems to impact psychological safety more for women.

The authors note that “As women are more concerned about face-saving for others than men … presence awareness enabled by ITs allows women to send private messages to remote others” and being able to send private messages allows them to gain greater team familiarity, which then improves psychological safety and permits them to express their thoughts more openly.

In concluding it’s noted that demonstrating the role of awareness in promoting psychological safety by gendered roles in virtual teams allows greater insights into how to reduce online gender inequitable issues.

IT solutions in this sense could play an important role in breaking down gender inequalities in communication via psychological safety.

Authors: Lim, J. Y. K. (2022). Team Performance Management: An International Journal, (ahead-of-print).

Study link: https://doi.org/10.1108/TPM-01-2022-0006

Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:ugcPost:6935347515907006464?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_updateV2%3A%28urn%3Ali%3AugcPost%3A6935347515907006464%2CFEED_DETAIL%2CEMPTY%2CDEFAULT%2Cfalse%29