Yet a 2017 Gallup poll found that only 3 in 10 employees strongly agree with the statement that their opinions count at work. Gallup calculated that by “moving that ratio to six in 10 employees, organizations could realize a 27 percent reduction in turnover, a 40 percent reduction in safety incidents and a 12 percent increase in productivity.” That's why it's not enough for organizations to simply hire talent. If leaders want to unleash individual and collective talent, they must foster a psychologically safe climate where employees feel free to contribute ideas, share information, and report mistakes.

Of the eight conditions that are the signature of the highest-performing teams, there is one in particular that stands out —in study after study, irrespective of industry and irrespective of nationality—as the single most powerful predictor of a team’s productivity. It is each team member’s sense that “I have the chance to use my strengths every day at work.” No matter what kind of work your team is doing and no matter which part of the world you’re working in, your team will always be most productive when more team members feel delight and joy in what they do every day.

Critically, bonuses are paid to teams, not individuals. A typical team comprises twenty to thirty operators who work across multiple shifts and have joint accountability for a particular process. Team rewards encourage collaborative problem solving, which is essential in a process industry where tasks are highly interdependent. (See figure 4-1.) The furnace, caster, and maintenance teams, for example, are all part of a continuous process, so they have a common production target. One caster crew member in the Hickman plant remarked, “If one area goes down, we all go down with it. My problem is their problem, and everyone will jump in to solve it.

In our survey of ten thousand Harvard Business Review readers, 61 percent of large-company respondents said it’s “very difficult” for frontline employees to try something new. Corroborating this, Gallup’s 2019 Great Jobs survey revealed that in the United States only 9 percent of nonmanagerial employees strongly agreed that they are free to take risks to improve products and services or solutions. Managers also feel hemmed in. In the Boston Consulting Group’s long-running annual poll of senior managers, a “risk averse culture” and “overly lengthy development times” consistently rank as the biggest barriers to innovation.

In the most recent iteration of Gallup’s annual State of the Global Workplace report, it is revealed that only very few people find their work meaningful or interesting. They note soberly that “the global aggregate from Gallup data collected in 2014, 2015 and 2016 across 155 countries indicates that just 15% of employees worldwide are engaged in their job. Two-thirds are not engaged, and 18% are actively disengaged.