The fact that I am losing followers on this newsletter every time I go on a people-related rant is in fact, good news. It’s very freeing, it means the ones of you who stayed aren’t looking for a certain narrative to “share internally” and aren’t afraid of the reality of the human work. In fact, I’d wager anyone reading this is aware of their Human Debt and is trying to keep it in mind and at least not create more if not lower it which is a lot more than can be said about some other functions and job titles in the enterprise.
You already know that on here all you’ll “hear” is how your CI/CD pipe is worthless if there is no people work continuous improvement to speak of. You expect my demands and my pleas to help your people because no one else will. You’re aware I believe you’re their only hope not to be actively disengaged and unhappy while burning out and living with dread and fears.
I wrote a thing in the other newsletter this Monday and unsurprisingly, as they don’t have the same resilience and goodwill, it ruffled some feathers. I was calling out the abuse that many enterprises inflict on their own people. Of course, nobody wants to own up and identify with that. No one wants to admit they are indeed the cause of heartache to other humans. It’s not a nice feeling, we’re not those people. We’re not devious, bad, uncaring. So we’re in denial. But really, seeing how abuse doesn’t have to be manifest to still inflict damage and the subtle kinds where we turn a blind eye or simply hold back can hurt too, we’re all guilty of it to one extent or another and said denial won’t help anyone.
We all have moments when we’re neglectful in our human relationships and our work ones are no exception. They aren’t as evident as willingly ignoring someone or intentionally discarding their feelings but they are there. They are the times when:
- We lose sight of the bigger picture and the true value of it all and we lose contact with that place in our mind and our heart where we hold it important.
- We don’t fight for it. Whatever “it” is. An idea, a change, a suggestion, an ask – anything that we knew would make our lives or the team’s life better which we drove for a while and then dropped likely from our own need of self-preservation’.
- We stay silent. Silence of any kind is bad news. When you know you should have said something but lacked the courage, when you couldn’t take the risk even when you didn’t add something you would have wanted to but stopped yourself or even when you mince your words or are overly careful. Whether it is in the team setting or -more often than not- with management where command and control have us under this need of being ever reverent, cowering and afraid of “the boss”. Any silence. Any time.
- When we don’t offer suggestions; when we don’t bring our authentic self; when we ration our openness with the people we work with; when we never have the bravery to disagree, contradict or engage in productive conflict.
- When we pretend we don’t know about the HumanDebt and how much people work we need to do.
These are all microaggressions and not the major times when one may abuse power or wrong someone but they all hurt the team dynamic eventually. In a sense, every instance of impression management when we don’t properly communicate because we fear a loss of status is essentially a microaggression against the team as it is liable to add to the climate of fear and non-joy we have to contend ourselves with.
Where should we start if we want to get serious about the people work and stop the abuse cycle?
As ever, start with the team and with honing in on their psychological safety and in that exploration, start with the most basal of behaviours that exist in teams that do well – whether they are “all in” emotionally with each other.
To do that, we need to renew the contract on what we believe “engagement” to mean. We have to dissect and redefine it because what we are working with is antiquated and not fit for purpose. When we redefine we must make sure it is not only far away from annual surveys and NPS scores but also intensely and personally applicable and meaningful. We have to wonder what it means TO OUR TEAM, anyone else’s definition would be at a minimum insufficient, and in fact possibly even harmful to lift and adopt indiscriminately.
So first we have to arrive at that – the importance of the emotional bond -because I am willing to bet the farm when you truly look at engagement as a combination of purpose, passion, joy, flow, pride, belonging, authenticity and care you’ll know it is a measurement of how emotionally invested we are in each other and the goal of what we’re building.
Once we do, we’ll have to go a step further and wonder how does productivity or performance -or any other word we want to attach to doing good work that you can be proud of- fit into it all and how does it add or subtract from the collective psyche of the team? Then we have to wonder what organisational permissions we need and go get those and whether we’re doing this exploration both at a self and at a team level, whether we removed enough blockers to give ourselves the space or tools to tackle these new tickets on the backlog.
So here are the new tickets as if you didn’t already have enough between the big epics of “Lower the HumanDebt and don’t acquire any new one”; “Get the permission, support and tool autonomous teams need” and “Create a happy and high performing team through increasing Psychological Safety”:
- To catch ourselves (and each other) if we start getting “abusive” be it by neglect or silence
- To discuss “engagement” and redefine it as a team
When is the last time you as a leader have set an hour aside to do some of the people work? When you spent time thinking and considering the team’s dynamic. Do they seem like they are psychologically safe? Do they always speak up? Do they seem engaged in the definition that makes the most sense to the team? Do they seem to care? Have fun? Be fully open and into it all? What about with them, when have you had those gut-wrenchingly open conversations last as a group?
What about if you’re not a team leader reading this – have you done it? Have you spent time thinking of your teammates and how you interact with each other and set yourself the intention to emotionally fully “show up” better/more authentically or more often?
One day this newsletter will be nothing but joyful stories of places devoid of HumanDebt that are hybrid, have navigated the GreatResignation without losing their best people, have huge amounts of Psychological Safety and are ecstatically happy while winning from all points of view and delivering outcomes their clients love at speed. Today is not that day, we’re a long way from there and we may never arrive unless we keep moving these tickets.
Happy sprint planning!
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To order the “People Before Tech: The Importance of Psychological Safety and Teamwork in the Digital Age” book go to this Amazon link
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