6 ms·

Cultivating Psychological Safety for Engineering Teams

20 points by burnout1540 11y ago

alexandercrohde 11y ago
I'm curious about this advice. Does "Ask tough questions" really make engineers feel psychologically safe? Unfortunately for the me, the reader, I have know way of knowing whether this article is signal (distilled information from an experienced manager) or noise (somebody who isn't good at their job posting opinions because they think blogging builds their online identity).
- cmpaul 11y ago
  This feels a little like a troll, but I'll bite. :) I'm new to management so I'll be the first to admit that I'm not great at it. I do wish I'd had someone to tell me some of these things when I first started, so you could think of this as advice to my younger self. YMMV. As for whether asking tough questions makes people feel safe, I'd say, "... maybe?" I can think of hard questions that would certainly make me feel less safe. Two things: 1. Asking the question I lead with got me some great info, so I'm going to continue trying this; 2. I'd want to encourage people on my team to feel able to do the same, so I look at this as leading by example.
mwcampbell 11y ago
> Celebrate effort, not just results. This is a common parenting tip but it’s applicable to team members of all ages. What if the reverse advice (acknowledge only results, not mere effort) were given to parents and teachers instead? Then perhaps the next generation wouldn't need their managers to celebrate effort in addition to results. Edit: And why is this desirable? Because the market itself only rewards results, not effort.
- jaytaylor 11y ago
  Celebrating effort alone goes directly against the Netflix and other ROE philosophies. I've seen both play out many times in real life and personally I prefer sticking to celebrating results. Why celebrate hard work just for the sake of work? shudder
  - optimiz3 11y ago
    One of my best managers always said "the only thing you can judge are results". Everything else is talk.
  - cmpaul 11y ago
    > Why celebrate hard work just for the sake of work? Why do hard work at all? My answer would be to risk building something great. I doubt anyone wants to do hard work for the sake of it. Building a culture that rewards honest effort would encourage the same hard work in the future despite risks of failure -- though admittedly it's easy to go overboard in either direction! Use your best judgement here.
- erentz 11y ago
  Having experienced working at a company where appearence of effort was rewarded over effort and results: It was terrible. I suggest dumping celebrations and simply reward results first, effort second, and be skeptical of all appearances.
- cmpaul 11y ago
  Author here. In an attempt at being pithy, this might have been worded poorly. My experience is that rewarding success is the standard approach in most industries, but teams that become accustomed to only being rewarded when they succeed can develop an aversion to failure (and therefore taking risks). I realize it might also be easy to extrapolate this out to always rewarding a team, no matter what, and I don't want to suggest that in all circumstances... you know if your team put forth an honest effort and should be rewarded despite building something that fails. Definitely don't mean for this to be a hard and fast rule, but more of a tip for encouraging a smart, hard-working team to feel safer taking risks.
orthoganol 11y ago
> “What would convince you to leave for a job somewhere else?" > Imagine my surprise when I got more constructive feedback from this this one question than I had in my entire first year of managing the engineering team It feels like a cop-out not sharing the answers he received, since his article is premised on those answers and how constructive they allegedly were. Would have made things less abstract too.
- cmpaul 11y ago
  Author here. The answers were beside the point. The thought I was attempting (perhaps poorly) to convey was that I asked something that felt risky and was rewarded. This was encouraging. What if the rest of my team felt as open to ask questions in which the answer might raise some eyebrows or incur flat out ridicule or judgement from teammates?
  - orthoganol 11y ago
    I understand, but writing 101 is "show don't tell"... It would have been better to show us what happened then to just tell us some high level points. It would make things less abstract.

20 points by burnout1540 11y ago

I'm curious about this advice. Does "Ask tough questions" really make engineers feel psychologically safe? Unfortunately for the me, the reader, I have know way of knowing whether this article is signal (distilled information from an experienced manager) or noise (somebody who isn't good at their job posting opinions because they think blogging builds their online identity).

cmpaul 11y ago
This feels a little like a troll, but I'll bite. :) I'm new to management so I'll be the first to admit that I'm not great at it. I do wish I'd had someone to tell me some of these things when I first started, so you could think of this as advice to my younger self. YMMV. As for whether asking tough questions makes people feel safe, I'd say, "... maybe?" I can think of hard questions that would certainly make me feel less safe. Two things: 1. Asking the question I lead with got me some great info, so I'm going to continue trying this; 2. I'd want to encourage people on my team to feel able to do the same, so I look at this as leading by example.

mwcampbell 11y ago

> Celebrate effort, not just results. This is a common parenting tip but it’s applicable to team members of all ages. What if the reverse advice (acknowledge only results, not mere effort) were given to parents and teachers instead? Then perhaps the next generation wouldn't need their managers to celebrate effort in addition to results. Edit: And why is this desirable? Because the market itself only rewards results, not effort.

jaytaylor 11y ago
Celebrating effort alone goes directly against the Netflix and other ROE philosophies. I've seen both play out many times in real life and personally I prefer sticking to celebrating results. Why celebrate hard work just for the sake of work? shudder
- optimiz3 11y ago
  One of my best managers always said "the only thing you can judge are results". Everything else is talk.
- cmpaul 11y ago
  > Why celebrate hard work just for the sake of work? Why do hard work at all? My answer would be to risk building something great. I doubt anyone wants to do hard work for the sake of it. Building a culture that rewards honest effort would encourage the same hard work in the future despite risks of failure -- though admittedly it's easy to go overboard in either direction! Use your best judgement here.
erentz 11y ago
Having experienced working at a company where appearence of effort was rewarded over effort and results: It was terrible. I suggest dumping celebrations and simply reward results first, effort second, and be skeptical of all appearances.
cmpaul 11y ago
Author here. In an attempt at being pithy, this might have been worded poorly. My experience is that rewarding success is the standard approach in most industries, but teams that become accustomed to only being rewarded when they succeed can develop an aversion to failure (and therefore taking risks). I realize it might also be easy to extrapolate this out to always rewarding a team, no matter what, and I don't want to suggest that in all circumstances... you know if your team put forth an honest effort and should be rewarded despite building something that fails. Definitely don't mean for this to be a hard and fast rule, but more of a tip for encouraging a smart, hard-working team to feel safer taking risks.

orthoganol 11y ago

> “What would convince you to leave for a job somewhere else?" > Imagine my surprise when I got more constructive feedback from this this one question than I had in my entire first year of managing the engineering team It feels like a cop-out not sharing the answers he received, since his article is premised on those answers and how constructive they allegedly were. Would have made things less abstract too.

cmpaul 11y ago
Author here. The answers were beside the point. The thought I was attempting (perhaps poorly) to convey was that I asked something that felt risky and was rewarded. This was encouraging. What if the rest of my team felt as open to ask questions in which the answer might raise some eyebrows or incur flat out ridicule or judgement from teammates?
- orthoganol 11y ago
  I understand, but writing 101 is "show don't tell"... It would have been better to show us what happened then to just tell us some high level points. It would make things less abstract.