Classrooms and collaboration: learning from Year 10 about psychological safety

We recently spent the day with 20 Year 10 students at a secondary school in south London. We were there to run a BIMA Digital Day 2025, to give young people an insight into what digital work is, and encourage more to explore it as a career path.

The school we visited follows the Gatsby benchmarks, a set of principles to guide careers departments and work. They focus on creating a stable careers function and strongly encourage schools to engage with workplaces and employers across all age groups.

As such, we went in to teach the students about our industry. They were first set a brief and had to come up with ideas to promote two household brands (Hello Fresh and Aston Martin) and present them back. But by the end of the day, we realised they had learned just as much about how teams work together.

1. Digital is still misunderstood

The first lesson was immediate. We noticed that all the students came from Computer Science or Business Studies classes. There were no students from subjects like English or History.

This highlights a problem the careers departments see constantly. Parents, teachers and people working in industry still think that digital is only coding.

In our work, we know this is not true. We rely heavily on content design, which requires strong writing skills found in English classes. We rely on discovery and user research, which need the investigative skills taught in the Humanities. By limiting the ‘digital’ label to technical subjects, the sector is missing out on essential talent.

2. The pressure of the deadline

The students formed teams and started working on their challenges. At first, the atmosphere was positive. The teams worked really well together.

Then we gave them a deadline.

As soon as the clock started ticking, relationships began to become strained. The students got scared. The collaboration that had been easy moments before suddenly felt difficult.

This mirrors exactly what happens in professional projects. Teams often collaborate happily during the open exploration phase. But when delivery pressure hits, people retreat. They feel alone with the pressure.

We saw that the students needed distinct leadership to help them focus on what to do next. They needed someone to make decisions so they could stop panicking and start doing.

3. Techniques that fixed the dynamic

We used a few specific techniques to help the students get back on track. These are the same methods we use to help our clients.

The first was the ‘yes and’ technique. This encourages people to build on ideas rather than shutting them down. It gave the students a simple device to move past the fear of being wrong and collaborate.

We also found it crucial to combine ‘head down’ thinking time with group discussion. Constant collaboration can be exhausting; giving people space to think alone, before bringing ideas back to the group, lowered the stress levels.

Finally, we used information radiators. We asked the teams to place all their discovery work onto a mind map and refer back to it when discussing ideas. We also reminded them to keep coming back to the brief when assessing their ideas.

This simple act worked well. It meant the information was visible to everyone at a glance. It stopped the data being hidden in one person’s notebook and became a shared resource for the whole team.

Applying this to your work

These problems are not unique to a classroom. We see them in our day-to-day work with charities and other organisations.

If your team is struggling, ask yourself if you are falling into the same traps.

• Are you defining ‘digital’ too narrowly and excluding non-technical skills?

• Does your team fall apart when deadlines approach?

• Are you balancing group work with quiet thinking time?

The students in south London showed us that even with little experience, people react to pressure in predictable ways. The solution is rarely just ‘working harder’. It is about providing the right leadership and the right tools to help the team succeed.