Leading Psychologically Safe Digitally Enabled Project Teams

Using a human-centric view, this work investigates how digitalization impacts the human and social capital of projects beyond task orientation. How do leaders nurture psychological safety—encouraging interpersonal risk-taking—to support digitalization, fostering creativity, learning and growth? Through empirical research with interviews, focus groups, and soft systems methodology, we identified six factors conducive to psychological safety in digitally enabled projects: adaptability, learning, communication, organizational development, technology, and workplace. The findings revealed a threefold role for leadership in developing innovative and highly collaborative project teams: strategic leadership, horizontal leadership, and project leadership, positioning human and social capital at the core of digitalization in projects.