Hey everyone, today we talked about psychological safety what
it is and what happens when it's not there.
My guest is super passionate about this subject and taught
me, it's one of the key components.
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Here's your host, Patrick akhil. Hey geetha, thanks for joining
us. Remotely, thank you for having
me. Yeah, no problem.
We've done this. I think a few weeks back but
that's going to go into the bin of Lost episodes, I guess
because the audio messed up so I'm really happy.
You joined us to do this again. Oh no worries.
It's like all software stuff messes up and then we do a
repeat and see if we can do it better the second time.
Yeah. And I think we can because I'm
actually looking to you You have a microphone setup and it looks
like you're actually here which it does.
It looks very nice. I like this.
Yeah, you've seen it all. I'll post a picture on Twitter
somewhere later on today, but I invited you on to talk about
psychological safety and one of the first questions that popped
into my mind. Is why are you kind of
passionate about this subject in the first place?
And then we'll go into a kind of what it is.
Yes, I think I'm passionate about it because I've
experienced so many times to not feel safe to not feel.
I could express myself neither as a person but also with the
opinions I had. Yeah.
And I when I first learned about this in 2017, I'm realized that
I spent a big part of my career but also like attending things
helping other people feel safe enough to speak up and and be
who they are. So it kind of fit Right into my
values and the things I was already working with.
Yeah. And then when I discovered it,
that it was a thing and it wasn't just something I kind of
made up, but I was actually important thing and even more
important than I thought significant for a lot of our
work as well. I just became more and more
interested in this and starting exploring it working with it and
recently, riding a little bit about it as well.
Nice, I think that's a Very powerful moment when you find
kind of a term or a word, the kind of describes, where your
values lie in, what you've already been doing in that way,
kind of form, some attachment I can I can imagine.
So can you explain to our audience kind of what
psychological safety is in the first place?
So psychological safety is something internal.
It is a feeling we have where we are.
Not afraid to express ourselves. Have opinion speak up.
Yeah, and when I say a phrase, Raid.
I mean, as afraid of being punished and punished can be
anything from being fired, being made fun of people thinking that
we are stupid. So losing our status, the basic
psychological safety is about not having that fear, knowing
that, even if I say something that is wrong, now, people are
not going to make fun of me. Yeah, they are actually going to
listen to me and if it's something wrong, they're going
to help me. Learn the right thing.
If it's something we disagree on, we can have a discussion
without me losing either my status on my job.
Yeah, I think if I've been in such a scenario where I'm like,
man, right now is not the good time to speak up and I probably
is because the psychological safety was not there, either in
that moment or just within the environment.
So I can definitely relate to that.
But how do you create such an environment in which there is
kind of that? Psychological safety to speak up
your mind, speak about your opinions, feel safe to do so
even though they might be wrong, just to challenge things, I
guess. I think the first thing we need
to do is to talk about it and talk about that.
It's a thing. Yeah.
That it's okay to make mistakes. I see companies going like, like
one of the things I really don't like it when it says, 0 fault
culture. Yeah, cause we all make
mistakes. We make mistakes all the time
and the idea behind Behind psychological safety.
And some of the stuff that Amy Edmondson writes about is that
are mistakes that are preventable.
Like in code, it could be that we have a testing framework, we
run some automatic testing and we catch some stuff or it can be
that. When we produce medical things,
we have a checklist. We do research in a specific
way. So there are mistakes we can
avoid by testing things. Yeah.
But then there are also mistakes and risks that we need to take
to be able To grow and learn as technical people, and as humans,
where sometimes you take One Direction you think this is
going to be the solution and then you find out it's not.
And the idea is to have an environment but we can do that.
And one of the things is that it's especially important when
we have knowledge workers. So people who are basically
working with their brain and even though a lot of what we
feel like we're doing is typing, or Or stuff like that.
It's actually our brains working.
It's we are not our craft is not done with our hands.
It's done with our brains. Yeah.
And in this case, because we need kind of the front part of
our brains, we need to feel safe, so framing this, in a way
of learning, this is something. We are trying out some what
we're trying to find the best solution is something.
We are learning. That is part of what can help.
What is also very important is that the leaders will There it
is, official managers or leaders by maybe more senior or speaking
up or whatever that they are. Good role models that we
actually talked about when we make mistakes there.
And that we do it in a way that is helpful.
So, not saying, oh I was so stupid.
I did this. Because if we do that at the
same time, we are saying it's stupid to make mistakes.
Yeah, but saying, hey, I made this mistake yesterday and I
really struggle with it. It can you help me fix it for
instance, or asking for help. So showing that as a leader,
whether its formal or not that you are fallible, you make
mistakes and you don't know everything and that is.
Okay, so a lot of the senior Engineers have been working
with. For instance, I really good at
this. So they will ask questions as
soon as they don't know. Because first of all, they will
get help. Second of all they will.
Show people who haven't been in the industry for so long that
it's okay to ask for help. Yeah.
So having these discussions and then starting to show that
vulnerability is really part of creating that safety.
But it's also really hard because a lot of it will depend
on the environment way and some other will be depend on
experiences that we had earlier. Yeah, so some are also will have
triggers where even though looking from the outside, it's
perfectly safe and you will not be punished, you may feel that
you would like if you did talk in public once and it was a big
failure and people make fun of you.
You are not going to feel safe stepping on stage on.
This you work with it, a lot? Yeah.
And I think we need to be aware of this.
Is that We can't just set all these are the ten rules and if
we just fulfill this we have a safe environment.
Yeah. It is something that we actively
need to work with is something we actively need to discuss to
ensure that we are helping people.
The right way. Yeah, and it's very much based
on the individual in that case, right?
What can we say for me based on my history doesn't necessarily
need to be safe for someone else and I really like that you said
management or even leaders, the leaders that we have within our
environments. They should kind of Hold that
safety, right? And probably speak out.
When they see some Behavior that's unwanted or is not
creating that safe space and be those role models that we want
basically, in which it is okay to make mistakes, right?
That's how we learn, that's how we can experiment.
That's how we can take risks and also reap the benefits of that.
Because without the mistakes, then you're not going to take
any risks and you're probably gonna stagnate to a degree.
Yeah. And I mean, we are evolving so
fast. The company's eye-rolling are
The things we work with eyeball being, I mean, right now you and
I are sitting in separate countries.
Yeah, having podcast. Yeah.
And even though it was possible to years ago, we wouldn't have
to Quality that we have now but no one in their right.
Mind would have said two and a half years ago.
Oh yeah. And almost everyone's going to
be working from home now. So we need Electronics to work,
ya know, things happen and we need to kind of build some
resilience and be prepared for this.
And this means That we need all the ideas that we can get, we
need people to take risks and of course not taking like huge risk
so that everything just falls apart for taking, those small
risk, but we can do experimentation and learn
things. Yeah, we think of scenarios of
my past that. I wonder if there was a safe
space, right? I think there is based on my
history and kind of based on my experience, but how can you
figure out if the environment you're in?
Has that safety? So the only thing I've found
that is Fairly reliable is actually asking questions.
Yeah. So Amy Edmondson has created a
survey that has seven questions that you ask people enormously.
Yeah. And that gives a good indication
of the safety. The first time I was using this,
we will be listed price because while people in the in that team
or that department, I'd decided for us to work on it.
We voted for what is the most? What's the most important thing
to work on within the people area?
Yeah. And we talked about
psychological safety, so we still kind of expected that most
people would be fairly safe. And when we read the results,
one of the things we realized was that one in seven had said,
yes to there is someone in my team who deliberately undermined
me really? And we were like, oh shit.
Yeah this is not. Good.
And if you look at the outside, you can't see this.
And that's one of the hard things about this.
Yeah. When I was brought in to work
with seti, which is the national televisions, it Department, one
of the things that the department did Sarah said to me,
is we think we have psychological safety, but we
also know that if we don't people are going to tell us
because they're not going to feel safe to do so.
Yeah. And and that's the hard part
about this. So I think the first thing we
need to do is kind of start addressing these things and then
using the survey and maybe having a lot of conversations
because safety is also something that's not necessarily
comfortable. Yeah.
I like to talk about feeling safe enough to be uncomfortable
because if you make a mistake that's not going to be
comfortable. It's not going to be.
Lets say you do something that takes all of CPS systems down.
Yeah, that's not going to be comfortable, but it needs to be
saved to Have that discussion about it, figure out what can we
learn from this? How can we move on?
How can we fix this? Because if it's not safe, what
we do is we hide our mistakes. And actually when when Amy
Edmondson was starting, had started to work on this.
One of the things she realized was that departments in the
hospital or I don't know what they're called in a hospital
different areas of the hospital, the ones that looked like they
had the best working environment also had The most medical
mistakes. Okay.
And the ones that had the worst working environment at the least
mistakes. So that did that didn't make
sense. So they went in, she had a
research assistant, come in and repeat some of the experiments
and what they found out was that where they had the bad working
environment, they were hiding their mistakes.
Yeah. Because they were afraid to be
yelled at or fired whereas in the good working environments.
They reported the mistake so they could learn from them.
Yeah. So so it's really hard to see
from the outside how this is and yes it's not going to be
comfortable like with whether you do something in an IT
company or even worse in medical, it can be even worse.
It's not going to be good to look at this.
It's not going to be nice to go in but we needed to be saved
because otherwise worst things will happen.
Yeah we saw a sad example with Boeing where there were a lot of
problems with the planes. The big, what was it?
787? 767 something.
I've got the some stuff on the plane.
Yeah, exactly. We're actually a lot of people
knew about these problems. They try to raise some of them.
People got fired a bullet to be quiet.
Okay. And they didn't start looking
into this property until two planes fell down.
Yeah, it wasn't until the second plane fell down and the more
they were digging in. To this the more they realized
that there were a lot of problems in the world.
A lot of bugs both like mechanical box but also suffer
box. Yeah and people did not speak up
about this because they were told to be quiet.
Yeah. If they were not fired and this
actually caused human life. Yeah.
So psychological safety. Can also help.
I'm not saying it he'll always helps us save lives but it does.
Give us the platform for us to be able to raise the problems
that that could save lives if we solve them.
Yeah, I mean, that speaks enormously about the
environment. Those people were in, in the, in
the mowing example, right? If a plane crashes, there needs
to be a lot that goes wrong and then you're actually looking at
a foundational issue in which, as you say, people get fired
when they speak up or people get shushed because it's not okay to
say when there is a mistake because no one makes mistakes.
But that's not Ality right? Everyone makes mistakes, but
then it's super difficult to look at it from an outside in
perspective, right? You need to be within that
environment to actually see through the things that happen
and then probably speak up about it.
Yeah. Sometimes you can see it, like
some, as you can see it on remarks, like how people are
talking to each other, like sometimes there is this.
We have a rough humor here. Yeah, and sometimes.
Yes, that is just because People have a rough.
You man. I mean I knew that with some of
my friends were like, we have this really black sarcastic
humor. Yeah, but in workplaces for me,
it's very often a warning sign where I will go in and see is
this actually people just making rude jokes at each other?
Or is there actually something going on?
Yeah, what kind of language are we using is a derogative.
We find is like in my company. We have, we think what one
nationalities because we're not ready, distinct, but people come
from but Out 40 nationalities among 200 people which means
that our language is English. Yeah and if you come into a team
and everyone else speak Swedish for instance then you don't know
what's going on and even though that's a small thing, that's
also something that can make you feel not included and thereby
not feeling safe to speak up because you don't want to be the
one that is different. Yeah.
If it changing the shift in that team then.
Yeah. And and and that something is so
that also means you need to work very actively with this.
If people are different which we want because the diversity helps
us create better products. Yeah.
You need to be extra aware of the safety aspect as well.
Yeah, that makes sense. I can see how psychological
safety can affect team performance, right?
Just as diversity would. But do you know if there's been
any studies to back that up because to me it's just a
feeling right now. Yeah, and that's also what I had
before 2017 when I started working with this.
So actually in 2014, Google did a big project called project
Aristotle where they looked into what does it take to create a
high performing team? Yeah, because like if you know
what it takes then we can repeat this and and the first things
that they looked into were stuff like what is the level of
Education in their team. Yeah.
How many senior Engineers do we have stuff like that and none of
this was And for high performing teams and then they started
looking into other aspects. And what they found was that the
most significant thing was to have high psychological safety.
Okay. That was the most significant
thing for teams to be high-performing and that was
unexpected. And I think the good thing about
this is that despite some of the problems that Google have, it's
still a company that a lot of people look up to and want to do
the same which means that they kind of brought psychological
safety. On the table.
Yeah, there were four other things.
Let me see if I can remember them.
It was about having clear expectations and clear roles.
It was about the team kind of taking responsibilities, meaning
that if you say you're gonna do something, you're going to do
it. Yeah.
And if something happens so you can't you're going to form the
stakeholders. It was about knowing that you
contribute to the whole, okay, that you actually what you do
actually matters and the last part of Think was about
believing in a stuff that you contribute to, yeah.
And if we have these things together with safety, that's
when we can create the high performing teams, that's
awesome. That's awesome.
I really want to achieve that or be within a team that has that
high performance, right? As an engineer as an engineer
myself. I think that's kind of the Holy
Grail of what you can do on a day to day.
Even if you work towards a vision and you completely
believe in it, you stand behind it.
You want to contribute? Have that ownership?
Even be accountable for the things that you do.
That seems like very much what the goal should be either within
a company within a team within your environment basically.
And I think sometimes when we look at it, we talk very much
about being efficient. Yeah, like how can we do things
as fast as possible but we also want to create the right things
we want to create the things that people need that they might
not know that they need yet. We want to create good stuff and
to be able to have that kind of high performance.
We need all the Brains. We can get exactly and and to be
able to get those brains like to contribute and get all these
things that's when we need to safety.
Yeah. That's how you become effective
in what you're doing. Basically also targeting the
right things, as you should, or trying things out failing along
the way in the learning from that, right?
Because you're not going to nail it the first time, I think very
few do Social Learning Journey. Exactly.
Yeah. And I mean, there's a lot of
research going on now. Amy Edmondson is still be
searching. This topic.
Yeah, had a new had a book come out a few years ago about the
learning organization. Yeah, and it's still doing
research in this as far as I ceased it, okay?
I would say she's the only research that I'm aware of that
really focuses on this area. Plus he's a very good
communicator now. So like she has a tedx talk
which is really good. She did an extra wondering
Corona like what do we need to be extra?
Aware of now that we're working from home.
Yeah. And there's stuff going on here
and there. And how can we do this?
How can we introduce this? Yeah.
And my experience is that it's a lot of hard work.
So what it is but it's worth it. Both from a human perspective,
but also again because the world is changing so fast.
We need to learn fast, we need to try out things.
And the only way to do this is by using all our brain power.
Yeah. By making other people also
happy right, happy in their environment that they can
Thrive. It's not going to be as
comfortable in some scenarios. Right?
Some scenarios should be uncomfortable.
That's probably also how you learn from it, but at least you
can open up the conversation own up to it, and then find a path
forward, right? Because you always want to go
forward, you know, want to be stuck with in your ways in a
certain degree. But you are a mean.
The first research that I found is actually from learning, it's
from 1965 by Business and I forgot the other researcher but
what they were looking into what's the best learning
environment and it is if you are little bit uncomfortable but
safe. Yeah, so yeah, I really like
that. And it also said, we need to go
out of our comfort zone but not so far that we Panic.
Yeah. And I think that's very
essential to when we are working with these things.
Is that? That that's the place we want to
rage. Yeah.
And we need to be aware that we are all part of creating this
because I think that's another thing.
Thing that we sometimes forget. So when I do workshops on this,
one of the things I ask people is, like, when did you feel
safe? When did you feel unsafe?
But also, what do you do to contribute to safety?
Or what do you do? That might contribute to other
people feeling unsafe. Yeah, because even if we have
really good intentions, we can still do stuff.
That makes other people feel very unsafe.
Yeah, for instance, I'm very When I will speak my opinion,
I'll do it in a kind way. But some people feel unsafe by
getting clear feedback if it's negative or when I talk about
deadlines with people to make sure that they have enough time
to do these things. Some people hear it as.
Can you do this as fast as possible?
Yeah. We're what I'm really asking is,
can you do what is a realistic time for you to do this?
Yeah, but that's something I realized later that me talking
about deadlines is something that people make people feel
unsafe, okay. And talking about accountability
can make people feel very unsafe.
Yeah. And I think that's because we
accountability has been abused in my opinion.
So as I must talk about, we have The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
accountability. Yeah.
So the good accountability is where we have an agreement.
You and I agreed today, at to, we meet, we have a, we have a
podcast and then we hold each other accountable.
Like, if you didn't show up or I didn't show up, we'll go like,
hey, you know what? We talked about this?
Yeah. So we have an agreement about
this accountability. Then we have the bad
accountability, which is kind of go.
You have this role now, your account.
For this and if something happens you get punished.
Yeah, yeah you own it it's yours.
And we like we talked about it. Some of the Scrambler people
talk about oh the product owner is the single ring herbal neck.
Yeah. And I'm kind of, we shouldn't
have any variable next. Exactly.
It's not like, we want to go around and kill people.
Exactly. And then we have the ugly which
is why you don't tell people that they have this
accountability but you punish them anyway, if you don't live
up to it. And I think the ladder to the
forced accountability Well, it's not about having an agreement.
I think that's why people get so scared when we talk about
accountability. So we don't want to take that
responsibility that accountability because we are
afraid to be punished. Yeah, exactly.
But we need that. We need to be able to hold each
other to account. We need to know that if somebody
says they're going to do something, they're going to do
it. Yeah, but that also again
requires work to, first of all, we need to set expectations.
Ins? Yeah, and I mean in our case is
quite simple, like you, okay. We're going to do a podcast.
So I'm not going to tell you Patrick.
I expect you to be present in the podcast.
Yeah. So you can ask me questions.
I'm not going to say that to you, but for instance, talking
to people, About like some of the people I'm a manager.
If I was say, I expect you to make mistakes.
Yeah. Because if you are not making
mistakes either, the work is too easy.
And that means, we need to find something more challenging for
you to do. Yeah.
Or you're not feeling safe and then we need to work with the
safety of that. Yeah.
But setting that clear expectations and the same.
When we talk about accountability that will allow
the other person to say, oh, I want you to be accountable for
these things and you can say, you know what?
No, that's not really what I had in mind.
Yes, I'll be in the studio. I'll make sure to send the
podcast out, but I won't be the one.
Riding 10,000 blog post about this for exactly.
If that was an expectation. So having clear expectations and
discussing that accountability, can help people feel safe if you
do it in a right way. But if you just talked about
accountability, it can also make other people feel very, very
nervous about these things. Yeah.
And that means they're not going to speak up.
I really can get behind that. Because I'm kind of similar in
that. I can be very direct but I can
ask hard questions with the best intention.
But the way you do it can make someone feel uncomfortable or
unsafe, right? It's either going to be both or
it's going to be one or the other basically.
But how did you come to that realization.
That you also have that within your communication that you can
make people feel unsafe in that way?
What's the first? There was actually someone who
told me hmm which I think is why important feedback is so
important. Yeah.
So one of my the people I was
working with who was an agile coach, you just started out in
one of our conversations. They told me I don't dare speak
up when you were in the room, okay?
Because, you know so much and what if I say something wrong?
Yeah. And I was like, oh shit because
I was signal speak up. No, no, that's not what I want.
I want them to go and also in agile and in many other things
there's not Like one golden solution that is right for
everything and even if there was I want us to be able to have
this discussion. Yeah.
So that was kind of when I realized it and I think that
Realizing it with myself, help me see it with others.
So when we started, I'm have been doing some workshops
together with Morgan olds time and one of the things we worked
on was like, showing how we make mistakes.
Yeah. What are the things that we
make? But other people do and say,
because some people don't think about that, like a very senior
developer doing a code that you going.
Oh, I see you don't know this at all.
You should just do this. Yeah, even that, which is trying
to help the person can be making the the Um, developer go like,
okay, I don't know anything. I'm not going to speak up
anymore. Yeah.
Whereas if they went, oh cool. I see that you.
You started attacking this problem.
Can I can I just show you what I would have done to make it even
more bad, even better. And if you talk about it this
way, it becomes that learning a opportunity.
I think we need to be aware also that if we have a power
position, like I said, like you said, Isn't that deep you like
that? I said, both manager and leader.
Yeah, and in many cases, we have a power position like right now,
I'm a manager, which means that even though I am a very coaching
and leading manager, I still have people who were, I have to
go into a system and approve their paycheck every month.
Yeah, so I have a power over them.
Yeah. It's an innate hierarchy.
It's a hierarchy if I am. I'm also one who speaks up and
by having the power of my voice, I also have a power because
people listen to me. Yeah, by being a consultant.
As I used to be, I am d expert from the outside.
Yeah, because I'm older some almost 50.
I am the second oldest person in the company.
Yeah, I have some power in that because I have experience.
Yeah, until I get so old that people go like, oh, she's old
too just now. Anything.
So we have a lot of power that we don't always think about and
being becoming more aware that we have this power and That when
we have power, you need to yield it nicely.
Yeah, I love to fuck people. Longstocking with from one of
the books that says, if you are very strong, you have to be very
nice. Yeah, which means that when you
have this power, when people do listen to you, when you have the
power of your voice or age or hierarchical be aware of this,
be aware of how you are speaking be aware of how you're treating
people. Yeah, because first of all, you
are role model but But second of all you can make people feel
safe or you can make people feel very unsafe.
Exactly. It's still that with great power
comes with great responsibility, right?
But its exact very interesting to me that the person that gave
you that feedback, right. When you speak up in either a
meeting or in a setting, I don't dare speak back or go against
it, but they did feel safe enough to give you that feedback
so you could do something about it.
Yeah, yeah. We had a one-on-one but we were
talking about this thing. And I was helping them grow as
an agile coach because they just started out.
I've been doing it for a while. So was born, we had a series of
conversations about what help me.
What did I need to stop doing or start doing what were trainings?
I attempted stuff like that and, and we build our relationship in
that. So in that setting, they felt
perfectly safe to to tell me these things.
But as soon as we were among a bunch of people, yeah, they
would be a Afraid that people look like, oh there's good as
he's the senior, there's this person they just started so
probably what they are saying is wrong.
Yeah, and I think we have this feel.
We want to, we want to be liked, we want to be heard.
We want to know that people take us seriously and sometimes we
are afraid. To speak up because of that.
Yeah, I think we want to be perfect to a certain degree but
I don't know where that comes from, right?
If every time you do something you make some mistake, you get
punished for it, then you do want to be perfect.
So you're going to pretend to be right?
But humans are not perfect. There's always going to be flaws
in there. There is, but I think it's part
of what we've been conditioned to do very much.
I think, in the western Society especially we praise people for
what we do, you know, the first thing we Most people when we
meet someone new. Oh, so, what do you work with?
Hmm. Or we go, oh, you have a really
nice voice that folks really well and podcast.
Yeah, I like the way that you prepare before the workshop, so
the podcast. So we talk about things that you
do all the time and because we get praised for things we do and
not who we are. Yeah, we seek to do those things
and we keep going for the praise and at my building Our
self-confidence but who we are and building that that
self-worth. We're not that good at that.
But that also means that we think we only worth something.
If we do something. Yeah, just thing.
So one of the things I say to people a lot is what you are, is
always okay. Yeah.
But you do might not be exact. So our behaviors our words might
not be okay, but who we are, is always okay.
Yeah, I love that. That there's a difference
between who you are and what you do, right?
You're not going to act the same way because you are who you are,
your actions can change based on the environment, the people even
how safe you feel, because either you can design things.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. We can learn behaviors.
And sometimes yes, we have reactions where something
happens and we react instinctively.
Yeah. But we can also learn to change
our behaviors. We can learn to change our
language so that we can Help people, and whatever that means,
if that means creating a safe environment, or you can also
sometimes mean that if I say things in a specific way, people
are not going to listen to me. Yeah.
Even though I say the right things, they're not going to
hear it. Exactly.
I work with a developer want to was always very negative and
that meant that no matter what they said, we did not hear the
words. We heard Knack.
Knack. Knack.
Knack Knack. Yeah.
So So, the good things that also came out.
We didn't hear that. Yeah, because it was always
nagging. So, And that doesn't mean that
he wasn't okay because he was. Okay.
Yeah. But needed to change the way
they were speaking. Yeah the way they're
communicating. Yeah, that's interesting.
You triggered me earlier in the way that you were explaining how
you can have power right, either innate hierarchy, it can even be
your age. The position you have the title,
the responsibilities and the accountability that comes with
it. But for me, then the purple that
the people that are very early on in career.
They don't usually have that they don't come in with any
sorts of power. They come from their educational
journey and then they come within the or they join an
organization and they join the workforce.
Basically, that's the word I was looking for.
I think they might be experiencing a lack of
psychological safety. The most out of anyone, maybe in
that organization, by default of having no power people that say
well favors either good or wrong.
And if the I meant then is bad. It's definitely a bad place to
start it. It is it could be a bad place to
start him. Yeah.
But they also have the advantage that they are not supposed to
know. Hmm, when I work with this, the
first time, one of the things that really surprised me and
Morgan was that we had quite senior developers who are afraid
to ask for help. Yeah.
Because they felt like if I'm supposed to know this, so if I
don't ask for help, or if I ask for help, people are going to
know that. I'm not as good as they think I
am. Yeah, so I'm going to lose my
status. So they can be advantages to
being a beginner and being able to ask all those stupid
questions. Yeah.
Which are usually not stupid. They actually really good
questions that helps us trigger and challenge what we've been
doing for a while. Yeah.
But I do think when people start in a company, whether it is
coming directly from University or be coming from a different
organization. I think we that's when we start
the working with the psychological safety that we
need to help them understand that if we have a safe
environment that this is a place where it's okay to ask
questions, this is a place where it's okay to do experiments and
also talk to them about. This is what we expect of you.
Yeah. The first week is onboarding, we
don't expect you to produce anything.
Having clear expectations like that, I think is quite
essential. Yeah, it really helps them
basically Yeah, trust the water is a bit lightly instead of just
being thrown into the ocean of the adult workspace.
So interesting because personally, coming from
University, I still didn't know what I wanted to do, right?
So I joined operations, quite broad, I thought, and I said to
myself, I'm going to be a wild card, but in a good way, right?
I'm not going to say, I don't, I know everything because I don't
like it. So I'm going to ask those kind
of ignorant questions. They might not be ignorant to
everyone but that's how I felt right.
I'm gonna Speak my mind. I'm going to speak the truth.
I'm going to ask those questions if I get, get, let go because of
it. It's not an environment.
I want to be in in the first place.
No. Right.
If you do it in a good way and with intent with the right
intent, I think no harm can overcome you.
Other than learning the environment you're in, is not
the right one for you, but that's also very Confident to
have that that you know, if this happens it's not an environment
for me. Yeah.
Because I think that problem with that with I think that's
great that you felt this way but a lot of people will be like if
this happens there's something wrong with me.
Hmm. We don't always consider that
there's something wrong with the environment.
Yeah, I saw someone write a blog post once about how
psychological safety is only for Meteo crack developers.
Yeah. Because the good Developers Just
leave em but when you're caught in a place where it's not safe,
that also tears down on your on your confidence which means that
you can be the best developer in the world.
But if somebody is tormenting, you or whatever you call it in,
making it very unsafe to you, you might actually think that.
Well, I'm just lucky. I'm here.
Yeah, at least I could feed my kids now or maybe I You know, if
I if I do this, nobody's going to like me, I'm not going to get
a job. I would have to be my house
whereas the reality is that that person could probably go out and
get a job within a month. Yeah.
But they don't see that because they feel unsafe it really feeds
into kind of the Imposter syndrome in that way, right?
Where you are skilled enough for your position and the
responsibilities and the accountability that you have,
but because the environment is not safe, you kind of doubt
yourself and And your self-confidence kind of takes a
hit or a few. Yeah, no.
And the interesting part by The Imposter syndrome is it can be
the safest environment and you can still have it.
Yeah, I read that up to 70% of the best and population will
have impostor syndrome at some point in their life.
Yeah, some will have it all the time, like doubt themselves all
the time. Some people will have it.
Like it just pops up and go like oh shit.
What if when what if they found out that I'm not real like I get
Is I do a lot of talks and still once in a while.
I get this. What if they found out that I'm
not a real speaker. Yeah, which is totally.
Not logical because I am a real speaker.
I gave tons of talks and I have a little bit now that I'm a
manager. I'm like what happens if they
find out? I'm not a real manager.
Yeah I don't have any education and being a manager.
I haven't tried it before. I'm coaching people the way I
did as an agile coach. What if they found out that I'm
not really a manager. Hmm.
And it's not logical but I think a lot of us suffer from this
even in the safest environment such lie.
Yeah the weird part is right you're always going to make
mistakes and you're going to learn from that so even if you
don't know manager you can still get there, right?
Yeah. It's weird that you might not
feel like you are a manager but probably, if you ask the people
around, you are going to be like while get is the best manager
I've had in a while, right? Because she creates this safe
environment. We That one on ones where I can
feel safe to speak up and she does the right things at least I
think so. So those conversations that you
can have with other people, can we just boost your confidence
right back up where it should be or where you want it to be?
Basically? Yeah, and I mean, I did get good
feedback and also good negative feedback.
So to say where people are, like, I would like to see you
more present in the organization and not just to your now
one-on-ones. Yeah.
Which is awesome feedback and makes Me happy that people feel
safe enough to tell me. Yeah.
Instead of just thinking it absolutely those are to an
individual I think are essential right?
Those are valuable. Those are setting the
expectations for yourself and the other people have set them
basically. And it's up to you to take
action if you want to. Yeah.
Or basically manage the expectation of the other people
and say, well, not now or whatever, I can be a b or c.
Yeah. And I can't do that if they
don't talk to me. Exactly.
You already touched upon and as kind of a final question.
I want to talk about the remote culture that we're in now,
right? You know he said there's a lot
of work involved in creating those safe environments where
people can speak up. Make mistakes fail, fail fail
and learn from them. But I think in a remote setting
it's even harder for an individual to either reach out
and say, well, I think this is the way you're making me feel.
I think they very much. Hold it hold their cards closer.
Now because they're also either in isolation.
Basically, working remote. What can we do either as
facilitators or even members in a team, right?
Let's say he has an engineer. How can I make that safe
environment? We already touched upon talking
about it but I think it's harder now that we remote it is and
also be. So I was just in a workforce job
but my friend about communication.
Yeah. And so much of our communication
is intonation or body language. Yeah.
And we have removing those two when we first discussed stuff in
a chat on slack or whatever tool we use.
Yeah so basically people are more prone to misunderstanding
each other so we need to be a lot more aware of this.
We need to be a lot clearer in our expectations.
We need to maybe read read it. And next the time before we send
this message and I think as facilitators, one of the things
we can do for instance is if we have a meeting And some people
go like, when we have a meeting, I want everyone to have two
cameras on so we can see each other.
Yeah, but one of the things we've seen during Corona is that
People might not want to show their home.
Yeah. If they don't have an office
because they don't they think that private life and work life,
should not be mixed. Yeah and now I think most of the
tools we use have can make you put in a background.
Yeah, well, we did in the beginning and some people also
don't like to be on camera, don't like to see themselves.
So having that discussion about is this essential for us.
So one team, I worked with for instance, they were like When we
have our dailies in the morning, everyone puts their camera on.
Yeah. When we were working together
during the day, it's fine not to have it on.
Hmm. Another one would be riding like
I'm going to lunch now or I'm leaving the computer.
Yeah. And to go get coffee something
so that, you know, there was no one at the other end well
otherwise you might write something and it takes half an
hour and you go like okay so they don't have the time to help
me right now but small things like that.
And I think And we we need to build that Serendipity as well.
We need to like maybe have coffee breaks together once in a
while. Yeah, but it's also really hard.
Like, when Corona was at its highest, I was like, I don't
want to have a coffee break. I don't want to have another
meeting in front of a screen. Yeah, while my brain logically
knows that it's really good for me and having this social
interaction and not just do work work work.
Exactly. I was just so tired of it, I
didn't want to do it. So I think we need to be careful
about this and we need to go in. And I mean, even before Corona,
there were people working with these things, there are the
remote coaches in South Africa, who have been working a lot
remote even before Corona. Yeah, who has a nice handbook
talking about what can we do in remote environments?
How can we make this work? What's his name?
Kick be a kill. The I forgot his first name
Kilby, wrote a book about also working remotely.
So, So we do have resources books, people have been doing
this before who might be able to help us as well.
Yeah, but a lot of it is about communication and becoming aware
of how we react. And then speaking up about it, I
think, yeah, that kind of leads me into the outer.
I really want to thank you for sharing that knowledge, right?
Because I think knowledge makes you aware and that in turn
increases your accountability and that leads you to kind of
Act with intent, right? Even if it's sending a message
saying, something the intent behind it can mean a lot or you
can just reflect and ask feedback and see if it's still
lands the way you intended. Yeah as long as you do it with
the best intentions and learn from the things that you're
doing, I think very naturally creates that safe environment
around you or at least dense and also react if people say ho way
that was not, okay then instead of saying but I meant well you
say Oh I'm sorry about that. Can and maybe if you say thank
you for the feedback and if you are still, you need to think
about it. Go away and come back later but
otherwise just ask, you know. That's not what I meant.
What I meant was this, can you help me how I can get that
message across without hurting you so.
So again being vulnerable and admitting that we made a mistake
and not making like a non-apology yeah, which is like,
oh, I'm sorry. That you felt bad.
Exactly those. I hate.
Yeah. Because it's not a real apology
is more like, yeah, I did the right thing and I'm sorry you
feel bad about that whereas I'm sorry that I hurt you exactly.
Is that? It's a totally different
apology. Yeah.
Are you completely agree. Thank you again, for coming on
Gator. I had a lot of fun and I learned
a lot which I love you for having me and it was very
enjoyable. Cool.
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