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. In high performing teams, get a click card, don't forget to like And subscribe if you're on YouTube and follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Enjoy Welcome to Beyond coding, a dive into the world of successful people in IIT from your sponsors Z, Bia, creating digital leaders.
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. 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. Get the click on everyone. Digital leaders.