How to Cultivate an Environment in which Creativity and Innovation Thrive
Software development teams perform better when they feel safe
In my note about how a workplace in which you need excessive courage stifles the creative spirit I wrote about the impacts of psychological safety (or a lack thereof) on software development teams.
Because software is "built by, with, and for human beings" [1], and psychological safety plays a big part in allowing "team members to overcome the anxiety and fear of failure that is often necessary for learning" [4], we should be wary of behaving in ways that limit the creative potential of the people around us.
We know that today's "dynamic and hypercompetitive environments have rendered continuous improvements through learning, change, and innovation imperative to organizational success." [3] and also that "people tend to act in ways that inhibit learning when they face the potential for threat or embarrassment" [2].
Information sharing and learning behaviour have a real impact on team performance, so "psychological safety appears to be an important consideration for organizations attempting to maintain competitiveness." [3]
If we want better outcomes, we should nurture our culture accordingly.
Cultivating psychological safety
"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." [4]
We're more likely to achieve the best results (and have higher job satisfaction!) when:
♥ We work within a culture where we feel free to be ourselves.
♥ We work with people we trust and respect, who inspire and challenge us.
Work in Progress beyond this point c:
Personal antecedents
According to meta-analysis research paper:
Interesting - proactive personalities are less likely than others to perceive a situation as psychologically unsafe. People who are largely unaffected by situational forces and engage consistently anyway! Important to ask what other personalities feel.
Emotional stability & impact of mental illness on team safety. Again, emotionally stable people are less likely to perceive as unsafe because they're secure. Traumatised people struggle with being anxious/hostile already..
Curious, imaginative, preference for novelty = more likely to feel safe taking risks and being vulnerable in any case.
Learning orientation -> focused on increasing competence and developing new skills = more likely to see making mistakes as necessary and important. THIS ONE in particular can affect things at the team level.
So if you have these proactive, stable, curious, growth-minded people - they are the ones to start pushing the culture without feeling the negative backlash as much potentially?
Work design, context, and leadership
Positive Leadership: inclusive and transformational
Work design: autonomy and role clarity
Supportive work context: peer support, org support, trust
References:
[1] What does Compassion have to do with Coding? - April Wensel
[2] Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams - A. Edmondson, Administrative Science Quarterly, vol. 44, 1999
[3] Psychological Safety: A Meta‐Analytic Review and Extension - Frazer et al, Management Faculty Publications, 13, 2017
[4] 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