Building Psychological Safety in Engineering

Let me ask you something uncomfortable: when was the last time someone on your team told you they had made a mistake before you found out about it yourself? If you have to think hard about that, or if the honest answer is "I am not sure that has ever happened," you probably have a psychological safety problem. Not a people problem. Not a talent problem. A culture problem, and one that sits squarely in your lap as the person responsible for setting the conditions under which your team operates. Psychological safety is one of those concepts that gets talked about in engineering leadership circles to the point where it starts to feel like a buzzword. But the research behind it is solid, and the practical reality is straightforward: engineers on teams where they feel safe to take risks, speak up, and make mistakes without fear of punishment consistently outperform engineers on teams where they do not. Google's Project Aristotle found it was the single biggest predictor of team effectivenes