
Cultivating Psychological Safety for Engineering Teams - burnout1540
https://hakuna-automata.com/5-tips-for-cultivating-psychological-safety-fa4f0b599a23
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mwcampbell
> 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.

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jaytaylor
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
One of my best managers always said "the only thing you can judge are
results". Everything else is talk.

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orthoganol
> “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
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?

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orthoganol
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.

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alexandercrohde
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
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.

