This session explored the following questions:
1. What courage can we expect from each other?
2. Since no environment is 100% safe, what is the responsibility of the environment and those who create it? What is the responsibility of the individual?
3. What are practices teams can use to promote risk-taking and the vulnerability that goes with it?
Here are notes on highlights from the discussion:
- "Courage" as a term to describe an expectation of team members is problematic.
In some environments (e.g. the military) it might work perfectly well, but when there are differentials in power/privilege then "be courageous" creates pressure and decreases the overall psych safety of the environment.The opposite of "courage" may be "cowardice" so there's a heavy moral judgement that goes with it.
"Courage" has different meanings for different people: not being afraid, being afraid but acting anyway. It would be challenging and perhaps not useful to shift those definitions.
- A more useful approach is to find better language to communicate the expectation of "courage". "You must have courage" is different from "you must share/speak up." "Do not be afraid to fail" may be more useful than "be courageous." Another way to reposition "courage" is as "a willingness to make mistakes."
Practices around how making the environment more conducive to vulnerability or risk-taking.
- It's powerful for leaders to model vulnerable and risk-taking behavior.
- The "ouch/oops" technique: when someone feels hurt/attacked in a meeting by something another team member says, they can say "ouch". The person who spoke then says "oops" to acknowledge that they recognize the impact of their words.
- The "how fascinating" technique. When someone in a meeting makes a mistake, the others raise their hands and exclaim "how fascinating!". The followup question for the person who made the mistake is "what did you learn?"
- Approach defects in the spirit of "That's a great bug! Now we can learn more about it and what caused it."
- Etsy has a "three-armed sweater" award for the biggest engineering mistake of the year: it's an opportunity for learning and celebration.
- What makes mistakes scary is the risk of being expelled from the tribe. This is baggage from our evolutionary past. In a collaborative tech environment mistakes actually put the tribe at less risk by revealing collective weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a shift from "any mistake puts the tribe at risk" to "your mistake makes the tribe better in the future."
Joseph H Anderson Consulting, LLC
(206) 351-5607
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