Effective collaboration requires an environment where everyone feels safe to be vulnerable. Even by proposing an idea you're opening yourself up to criticism,

Effective collaboration requires an environment where everyone feels safe to be vulnerable. Even by proposing an idea you're opening yourself up to criticism, not just of the idea, but of your competence or even personal attacks. Just read through some HN threads to see the kinds of responses that are common. Or admitting when you've made a mistake that broke production, or wasted the team's time for a few days. These make you vulnerable. Admitting you don't know something might lead to questions about your competency in a toxic environment. Being open like this is necessary for teams to ensure ideas are critiqued and improved with the best of everyone's input, as well as learn and improve from things that go wrong. Imagine the opposite. A senior member of the team states an idea that others in the team can see will fail, but won't speak up because they fear a snide shutdown from said person. Or a flawed system that makes it easy to damage production data, never fixed because when it happens no-one feels safe to admit that it has happened. Creating an environment where people feel safe to be vulnerable in this way is therefore important. One way to promote this environment is to be vulnerable yourself. Admit publicly when you're wrong. Ask questions even when you think you ought to know the answer. Bring your whole self to work etc