Masuda influenced the workers to act, even as the ground shook beneath their feet. Through his calmness, openness, and willingness to admit his own fallibility as a leader, Masuda created the conditions for the team to make sense of their surroundings, overcome fear, and solve problems on the fly. Although their physical safety was in constant danger, they felt psychologically safe, and this allowed them to come together, try things, fail, and regroup. In the many moments of fear for their lives over the course of those days, interpersonal fear within the group was nearly nil. Masuda's words and actions set the tone and reassured workers that they could – and must – save the plant.

She introduced new terminology (“words to work by”) that altered the meaning of events and actions in important ways; for instance, instead of an “investigation” into an adverse event, the hospital would use the term “study;” instead of “error” she suggested people use “accident” or “failure.” In subtle but important ways, Morath was trying to help people think differently about the work – and especially about what it means when things go wrong. These leadership actions comprise what I refer to as framing the work.

Google’s final report stated that these positive norms include psychological safety, structure and clarity, dependability, meaning, and impact.

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY: Team members developed a high level of trust and vulnerability. No one person dominated the discussions; everyone on the team spoke roughly the same amount of time during discussions. Team members showed a high level of emotional intelligence as measured by the ability to read facial expressions. In a sense, any and all mindfulness practice is a tool for developing greater psychological safety. At work, this means that each person on the team is open, curious, and vulnerable. They are engaged in the practices of not being an expert, connecting to their own pain, and connecting to the pain of others.

STRUCTURE AND CLARITY: High-performing teams exhibited clear goals and clear roles for team members. This was something that was done really well in the Zen monastery kitchen: we set clear goals and gave concrete assignments. It seems obvious but is often not given the attention it deserves — the importance of each person knowing exactly what success looks like for them, for their team, and for the organization.

DEPENDABILITY: Agreements were honored, and communication was clear about deadlines and expectations. My experience, such as with the open-leave policy at SIYLI, is that this requires putting regular systems into place regarding reports, measures, and feedback.

MEANING: The work the team was doing had some personal significance for each member. Identifying what’s meaningful is an ongoing process for the leader and for all team members, and it requires regular storytelling about aspirations and about successes and failures. For the leader, this means inspiring others, whether they are cooking meals or coding a search engine. It also means focusing on the personal growth and well-being of each member as part of the team’s mandate.

IMPACT: The work of the team was purposeful and seen as contributing to a positive impact. Impact can be experienced on a variety of levels: how working together improves the well-being of each team member and of the team as a whole, how the team is impacting the division or company, and how the organization impacts its customers and society.

Not surprisingly, when Google conducted a study to determine the factors behind high-performing teams, psychological safety came out at the top of the list. (More details about the study can be found in James Graham, “What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” New York Times, February 25, 2016.)

As I worked on this book, I puzzled where core values fit into the research findings. To be clear, there is no single unified set of core values across all the people in this study. That said, each person developed a set of values somewhere along the way, some more explicitly than others. These values might have come from family, or mentors, or teachers, or military service, or the ethics of their field, or the social milieu in which they lived, or their faith traditions, or reading and reflection, or personal experience, or some combination. I came to see that living to a set of core values is a choice, a personal responsibility of the highest order.