This was an interesting read. It was not only informative, but also made me reflect on my past experience both as a leader and a member. Empathy is certainly a trait every person in the team should practice to create a psychological safey within a team environment. We all come from different backgrounds and it’s impossible to expect someone to fully understand me and vice versa without practice. I wholeheartedly agree different communication styles, verbal and non-verbal, amongst team members should be respected and heard. We all know most problems arise simply from poor communication, or lack thereof.
However, Aristotle project left more questions than answers. Study was based on subjective answers from Google employees, which makes the study not highly reliable to be applied in other fields. Does personality trait have a effect on perceived job satisfaction? Based on what criteria did the study based its definition of good versus bad team? Does everyone expect every team member to practice the same level of empathy? Can empathy be quantified? If so, at what point does empathy start to negatively affect team goal? Can a empathetic leader fulfill the importance of psychological safety by itself, or does it have to be a shared responsibility? It would be interesting to find out what results can be obtained from further studies with different parameters, and how the results are interpreted by different academics.