A Workplace in which you need Excessive Courage Stifles the Creative Spirit
Creating software is a team activity.
It's people working together, with all the mess and complexity that that entails.
Software may be built on machines, but it's built by, with, and for human beings. [3]
Every part of the process involves listening and communicating, and I'm convinved that the trickier problems we grapple with (like building the right thing, or collaborating effectively at scale) hinge on people and communication, rather than technology. To quote Jerry Weinberg: "No matter how it looks at first, it's always a people problem".
Communicating, collaborating, getting stuck, finding our way again, making mistakes, reflecting, adjusting, learning, together.
Making mistakes openly is integral to a team's learning process.
It's more than just making mistakes though, it's about admitting to them without repercussion. Continually and openly making mistakes and, crucially, feeling safe in doing so. It can take courage to be vulnerable and admit to our own mistakes even in a safe space!
[...] people tend to act in ways that inhibit learning when they face the potential for threat or embarrassment [...] those in a position to initiate learning behavior may believe they are placing themselves at risk; for example, by admitting an error or asking for help, an individual may appear incompetent and thus suffer a blow to his or her image. In addition, such individuals may incur more tangible costs if their actions create unfavorable impressions on people who influence decisions about promotions, raises, or project assignments. [1]
When we don't feel safe in a team, learning is inhibited.
If our environment feels hostile, unsafe, or exclusionary, our willingness to engage drops significantly. In fact, "the impact that psychological safety has on the learning process is “at the very core of why the construct has maintained the high level of research attention over the years”" [7]
Here are some examples of learning behaviours that are limited in such an atmosphere:
✏ Seeking feedback
✏ Sharing information
✏ Asking for help
✏ Talking about mistakes
✏ Experimentation
[...] psychological safety creates the environmental conditions for team learning to occur, allowing team members to overcome the anxiety and fear of failure that is often necessary for learning and thus enabling the team to focus on improvement rather than being concerned about how others will react to their actions [2]
What is Psychological safety?
Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for intrapersonal risk-taking. It is about trust, and respect.
Psychological safety describes the belief that team members will respond positively when one exposes one’s thoughts, such as by asking questions, seeking feedback, reporting a mistake, or proposing new ideas. It enables team members to bring forth concerns and issues that in turn provide the team with valuable information. It facilitates a climate of productive discussion, allowing team members to relax their guard and engage openly in behaviors underlying learning and improvement, which creates opportunities to enhance team performance. [2]
The term is meant to suggest neither a careless sense of permissiveness, nor an unrelentingly positive affect but, rather, a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up. This confidence stems from mutual respect and trust among team members. [1]
Team psychological safety is not the same as group cohesiveness, as research has shown that cohesiveness can reduce willingness to disagree and challenge others' views, such as in the phenomenon of groupthink. [1]
Psychological Safety is not about being nice. It is not about holding back to comfort your teammates [...] It is quite the opposite; it is about creating an atmosphere in which candor and openness is the default and not the exception. [5]
Continuous learning and adaptation are critical for organisational success.
Agile software development teams in particular greatly benefit from effective team learning.
Today’s dynamic and hypercompetitive environments have rendered continuous improvements through learning, change, and innovation imperative to organizational success. These processes develop across multiple levels of the organization as individuals and groups engage in behaviors such as speaking up, collaborating, and experimenting [7]
Teams are more willing to engage in exactly these behaviours - speaking up, collaborating, and experimenting - when they feel psychologically safe!
[...] the need for learning in work teams is likely to become increasingly critical as organizational change and complexity intensify. Fast-paced work environments require learning behavior to make sense of what is happening as well as to take action. With the promise of more uncertainty, more change, and less job security in future organizations, teams are in a position to provide an important source of psychological safety for individuals at work. The need to ask questions, seek help, and tolerate mistakes in the face of uncertainty-while team members and other colleagues watch-is probably more prevalent in companies today [1]
And for companies wishing to stay competitive:
one of the most relevant findings of [Fazer et al's] study is the strong relationship that psychological safety demonstrated with information sharing and learning behavior. [...] fostering perceptions of psychological safety appears to be an important consideration for organizations attempting to maintain competitiveness. [7]
Psychological safety enables better team reflection.
Reflection can be an important part of learning behaviour in teams:
When teams engage in reflection, they develop a better sense of what is done, why, and how, and can adjust their behaviors and actions accordingly. However, the process of openly reflecting on and adjusting the teams’ strategies and processes might be perceived as risky, potentially evoking uncertainty and anxiety in team members. [...] psychological safety can create good conditions for reflection in the team because it removes barriers to learning, risk-taking, and openness during interactions. [2]
Interestingly, spending more time on reflection only improves team performance when certain other conditions are met (see these findings from a study investigating whether reflective software development teams perform better). Context is important! In fact, some teams and projects may not really benefit from effective learning behaviour at all (for example, those with highly constrained routine tasks and low interdependence). However:
a team with few inherent task constraints and uncertain criteria for success, such as a cross-functional product development team designing a new product [have] ample opportunity for the team's output to benefit from new information and feedback. [1]
Psychological safety is a key success factor for software development teams.
Agile software development is founded on continuous adaptation, and when teams feel psychologically safe, they are more likely to engage in the learning behaviours that enable the team to adapt to change more quickly, thus increasing opportunities to improve team performance.
Agile software development is founded on continuous adaptation, which relies on iterative processes with frequent testing, feedback, and adjustment. To be successful in an agile environment and able to handle uncertainty and deal with changes, teams must engage in close collaborative relationships with frequent and open communication among team members. Open and honest communication is necessary to keep team members in sync, both with the iterative cycle of product development and with the work and progress of other team members [2]
A team with a high degree of psychological safety will be more capable of achieving:
✓ Greater collective understanding (e.g. of the domain)
✓ Faster detection of changes (e.g. in environment and customer requirements)
✓ Faster adaption to change
How can we cultivate psychological safety?
See How to Cultivate an Environment in which Creativity and Innovation Thrive.
References:
[1] Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams - A. Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 44, 1999
[2] Psychological Safety in Agile Software Development Teams: Work Design Antecedents and Performance Consequences - M. Buvik & A. Tkalich, 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2022
[3] What does Compassion have to do with Coding? - April Wensel
[4] On Empathy & Pull Requests - Duretti Hirpa & Mark Christian
[5] Yes, Type Safety is awesome, but have you tried psychological safety? - Roman Sachse
[6] Do Reflexive Software Development Teams Perform Better? - Kakar & A. Kumar, Business & Information Systems Engineering, vol. 59, 2017
[7] Psychological Safety: A Meta‐Analytic Review and Extension - Frazer et al, Management Faculty Publications, 13, 2017