Leaders, how the heck do you build safety for teams?
Here are eight ways. #2 — Embrace your purists.
I hear many reasons for not facing change head-on.
But every once in a while there is a bright spot. Out of the blue, someone asks for help in taking a vulnerable step into the unknown. One recent example stands out.
To me, a director said, “We would like to build safety for our teams to feel comfortable raising problems. Can you help us with this?”
In my mind, I thought, “What? Wow! Did you say what I thought you said?” With enthusiasm, I replied, “Yes, I can. When do you want to start?”
I’m sure you have heard how foundational safety is a prerequisite to enable Agile empiricism. Transparency can’t emerge without safety. And without transparency, inspection and adaptation cannot occur.
Transparency enables inspection. Inspection without transparency is misleading and wasteful.
When management realizes the importance of safety, it is a crucial moment. When it hits home their environment is not safe and they request help, it’s time to celebrate. My experience shows this to be a pivotal point where an Agile journey becomes serious.
But attacking the sticky mess of building a safe environment is not straightforward. It takes daily discipline, and you will have many setbacks. In some cases, you may mess up so bad you have to start over.
From my experimentation as an Agile coach, I have found eight ways to help build safety.
Language counts, so be careful what you say.
Your words as a leader set the tone for stepping outside the norm.
When we face embracing an Agile mindset, we are often overwhelmed with the amount of change. Many of us form a crutch to lean on to avoid or stall the change. Here are some common ones I hear:
- “We are different. We will do Agile our way.”
- “We can’t let perfect get in the way of good.”
- “We don’t have time to change. We will change when things calm down.”
All these statements take the wind out of your Agile sails. If as a leader you say statements like this, you are verbalizing change as not important. You are supporting staying in the status quo and not encouraging safe experimentation.
It does not take much to help us crawl into the comfort of the warm blanket of our existing behaviors. There is safety in what we know. We need encouragement to step out.
Instead of stalling change, highlight change as acceptable and desired. Here are some ways this could work:
- “We can’t use our old thinking to solve today’s problems.”
- “We can always get a little bit better.”
- “There will never be a better time to change. We must act now.”
If you embrace change, so will your teams.
Embrace your purists.
I have heard this one so much I am sick of it: “We don’t need purists. We need pragmatists.”
When faced with change, desiring practical solutions is a way we hold to our old patterns. A practical solution does not force us to change. Practical behavior fits within our existing norms, and it is comfortable and safe.
A purist upholds certain values and principles and is not satisfied with less. When pursuing an Agile mindset, do you want a half-hearted attempt from your employees? Or do you want them to strive relentlessly for the new mindset and be discontent with imperfection?
When we label actions as purism and favor non-invasive methods, half-baked Agile results. Change is not encouraged. Teams will not feel safe to step outside the lines.
Instead of criticizing purists, embrace them and celebrate them. Purists are your catalysts for changing behaviors and beliefs.
When celebrated, purists are infectious — they encourage others to change through their enthusiasm.
Lead by example.
If you practice what you preach, you will show the new behaviors and beliefs are safe.
If your teams are practicing Scrum, form a leadership Scrum team to serve the teams. Create a backlog for removing obstacles your teams can’t remove themselves. Show you have skin in the game by practicing everything your teams are practicing.
This demonstrates the changes are real and supported. If experimentation with new ways of working is good enough for you, your teams will feel it is good enough for them.
When both leaders and teams are in the change together, there is safety in numbers.
Set the stage for transparency.
Sometimes, as a leader, you simply have to say you want to know the bad along with the good.
Expecting people to be transparent is not enough. This is especially true if transparency was not commonplace in the past. You have to set the stage.
Ensure your teams understand their purpose and how their input is critical to achieving it. Tell them you don’t want to hear a rosy picture all the time. Explain you want to hear the harsh truth because you can’t solve problems you can’t see.
Tell them you know they have obstacles they can’t solve, but you need their help to see them. You need them to tell you what is in the way. Then, promise to help them remove these obstacles.
When teams feel you approve of them raising issues, they will.
Ask questions.
Questions are magic bullets for building safety.
When teams aren’t used to providing input or raising problems, you may have to encourage them to do so. After years of keeping one’s head down, it can be intimidating to speak up.
“Questions are really powerful in creating safety — they indicate to someone that you actually want to hear their voice.”
— Amy Edmondson
The simplest way to do coax participation is to ask questions to your teams. Some examples are:
- “What would you do to improve this?”
- “What is in your way? No really, what are your obstacles?”
- “If you had a magic wand to make things better, what would you ask for?”
When asked directly about what they would do, teams feel valued and compelled to answer.
Celebrate the “red.”
When the problems start flowing, how you react is critical.
If you tear someone apart for not preventing a problem or try to assess blame, you have lost. And don’t make the mistake of using the cliché, “Bring me solutions, not problems.”
Punitive responses will cause transparency to fall back to zero. And what you get in return is the product watermelon syndrome — green on the outside and red on the inside.
Instead, you have to show appreciation and celebrate when your teams raise problems. Say, “Thank you for showing me the ground truth.” Then follow by saying, “How can I help?”
Celebrating the “red” does not mean you see failure as exciting. Rather, you are ecstatic at the courage shown by the team in raising a problem early. Now you can solve the problem sooner before it becomes bigger.
Finding and fixing problems early is worth celebrating.
Give teams space.
Having a private space gives teams room to try new things and build autonomy.
If teams have no privacy, hiding behavior will increase. This will reduce transparency as described here.
So once teams understand their purpose and know you want them to experiment and raise problems, let them self-manage. If you are using Scrum, treat the Sprint as a veil of privacy around the team. Allow them to manage their work as they see fit.
Attend Sprint Reviews to engage with the team, and ask questions. Healthy transparency will emerge when the teams have space to manage their work. They will ask for help when they need it.
A little space allows the team freedom to learn the art of experimentation.
Remove obstacles with speed.
Nothing kills transparency faster than a lackluster leadership response.
Once you show no urgency to solve the problems your teams ask of you, you have lost the transparency battle. You will hear fewer problems when the team learns they have to endure their plight without help.
Instead, clear your calendar and swarm on problems raised to you by your teams. Your teams will see you care and do everything in your power to help them. This will win their hearts and minds.
When you obliterate barriers, teams trust you more and their transparency will increase.
Closing thought — create safe ways to experiment.
The best way to lessen the blast radius of a problem is to experiment safely.
And the best way to experiment safely is with small experiments:
- Change one thing rather than fifty
- Try something new for a short time
- Apply a change in one team instead of all teams
- Use rough drafts as an entry point into the unknown
Another safety trick is to experiment in private before going public. Rehearsal is a great technique for teams to build confidence:
- Performing a spike to try out new technology before deciding to use it
- Rehearsing with the Product Owner before a Sprint Review
- Using an A/B test on a new feature before releasing it to the public
And, leaders, try out some of my eight suggestions. Everyone’s context is different. See what works for yours.
Safety is a gateway to great teams; we can’t afford to be scared of building it.
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