Team Emergent State Development, an Enigma No More: Investigating Psychological Safety Emergence

Psychological safety is an important team construct, popular among both scholars and practitioners due to its notable strengths in improving team dynamics and performance. While previous research has provided rich data highlighting the value of team psychological safety, a common call among team scholars is the need for longitudinal examinations of this team construct. By analyzing team psychological safety over time, we respond to this need and open up the black box regarding team emergent state development. In doing so, we broaden our insight regarding team dynamics and leverage state-of-the-art research methods to test our proposed model. Results suggest that team psychological safety climate develops over time through consensus emergence and that this process is triggered by early information sharing. We also find that gender diverse teams are more likely to engage in early information sharing, thus heightening psychological safety climate emergence. Implications for science and practice are discussed.