Have you seen that meme about being really tired of living through major historical events? Give it a Google if not, it is heartbreakingly spot on for all of us. If anyone sat us down in 2010 or even 2019 and said “Brace yourself – a global pandemic that will bring about millions of deaths and at least two years of lockdowns is coming and once that’s somewhat finished you’ll be looking straight down the barrel of WWIII” we would have never believed it. It sounded like the plot of a B rated movie. It still does.
What of the bracing then? How would we have ever? What would have had us more prepared?
Like I said before, I believe that those of us who had agility inbuilt at DNA level already when all this came about, probably fared a little better when it comes to having shorter refractory periods and being able to roll with the punches due to sheer previous exposure to limit situations and rapidly-modifying circumstances.
This doesn’t mean you had it much easier in any other way and in a sense, knowing you’re the fittest to deal with the speed comes at the cost of raised stakes responsibility-wise and many in the DevOps community demonstrably worked harder to spread education, understanding and reassure the rest of everyone that it is doable. Where “it” is still performing, caring and working from home on a background of extreme fear and monumental risk to life.
Not only had those of us in this community great reserves of obstinate flexibility but we were -or hopefully “are”- very resilient too. And then the courage. And the thirst to be ever better even in the midst of this unimaginable survivalist drill.
So it is this pre-existent sense of flexibility, bravery and resilience that has most helped some of us navigate all this and -hopefully- pull others on the rafts too.
Where I don’t believe we were equipped at all is on the human people work side. The part where we were called to talk feelings. A lot. The “call” wasn’t even evident and many tried to ignore it and may have hidden behind other coping mechanisms such as humour at first – and let’s face it, the DevOps community was already a collection of veritable comedians because they had long been using it to cope with the surreal reality of corporate life- but they soon became insufficient.
When the ambulances sounds never hushed when death tolls raised and new variants were named every week, when we were in a new lockdown yet again and when the workload never seemed to have lessened, on the contrary, that’s when people started to not mask their true feelings anymore and talking about emotions started to happen in teams.
At first tentative, these organic forays into being a true team that is emotionally bonded and invested in each other to the point that they can tell each other anything were the norm for nearly all project or product teams and whether we liked it or not we had to dive straight into the human work. With no training and no tools. And no presumption we can do it because of the “I’m a techie what do I know about this uncomfortable people feelings topic” bias that we denounced many times before.
So all that has happened to all of us. The disbelief, the cognitive dissonance so we can function every day, the need to demonstrate extraordinary resilience and continuous flexibility, the emotional rollercoaster and the incipient burnout. That part is a shared reality over and above what the local on the ground particulars of the tragedy were.
And we all dreamt of “the freedom from Covid Day”, let’s be honest. We knew intellectually it will not be about dancing and hugging in the street, but we somehow hoped it would. That there will be a magical cut-off point where we can relax – breathe in, drop our shoulders, regroup. We knew it wouldn’t be like the movies and no happy ending was possible after what happened, but we thought when “it’s over” we’ll feel it. We’ll get some well-earned respite. The promised resurgence and debauchery optional, we anchored our gaze firmly on the “once this is all done” peace and quiet.
Instead, we got war. Not only were there no street celebrations and confetti but now there’s more death, unfairness, uncertainty and fear.
And for those of us in technology, this war is closer because we are as international and distributed as we are and chances are the people most affected are our friends and colleagues.
When we add to that how no one would be comfortably removed in the event of this escalating and how there is an objective reason to fear for our kids’ lives, it’s a miracle anyone is just carrying and no one is actively panicking.
This is why I think we ought to be thankful for the powerful courage lesson that is coming from the Ukraine like I was saying in this “Zelensky Lesson” piece I wrote earlier this week. Without it, I am not sure we could have survived the bitter and crushing realisation that there is a new type of surreal tragedy that the universe threw at us with no respite.
And that’s why, now more than ever, we need to hold the space for the hard heart-to-hearts.
The uncomfortable emotional chats.
The honest questions of “how do you REALLY feel?”.
The sharing of worries, hopes and most of all, of fears.
It’s why we’re building a play to respond to how we are all perceiving the war and it will be made public next Monday on the “Chasing Psychological Safety” newsletter so head on there and subscribe unless you’re a client case in which you’ll see the play in the Playbook automatically in the next week.
And there is much else to do, outside of physical aid, some of us have software to offer or roaming charges to remove but most of everyone else doesn’t but what we all do have and can freely give is empathy, compassion, an ear, a shoulder, a smile, a concerned frown, maybe even a hug of sorts.
Grab any opportunity to spread those around to your team if you can, they are more needed than ever – hold that space yourself, don’t let impression management or embarrassment and ill-understood social convention veneer stop you from feeling and letting others feel around you and with you. That’s what you can do today. Hang your “We are busy” or “I’m a professional” excuses and your “I’m just a techie” badges and truly connect to your teammates. Listen, ask, probe, be searingly honest and share, invite and show vulnerability and humanity. We all need it.
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The 3 “commandments of Psychological Safety” to build high performing teams are: Understand, Measure and Improve
At PeopleNotTech we make software that measures and improves Psychological Safety in teams. If you care about it- talk to us about a demo at contact@peoplenottech.com
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