I’ve learned that psychological safety is like a production database: it’s much easier to maintain than it is to restore after a total corruption. In the previous articles, I’ve talked about how I accidentally leak safety through blame or silence.…
I used to think a quiet meeting was a sign of efficiency. I’d finish a presentation or a technical proposal, ask “Any questions?”, and be met with a room of silent, nodding heads. I’d take that silence as a “System…
I’ve realized that I have a dangerous subconscious bias: I tend to trust the person who sounds the most certain. In engineering, where we crave hard data and definitive answers, the person who speaks with total confidence—”This will take exactly…
I used to believe that “Radical Candor” was the silver bullet for engineering performance. I told my team to “be direct,” “don’t sugarcoat it,” and “challenge directly.” I thought I was building a culture of high standards. I was actually…
I used to think a meeting where everyone nodded was a successful one. I took the lack of friction as a sign of high-velocity alignment. I was wrong. I’ve realized that most of those meetings were just Consensus Theater. Consensus Theater…
I’ve realized that my job title is often a silencer. The higher I climb in the org chart, the more my opinions act as a throttle on the ideas around me. I call this The Status Filter. It is the invisible…
I’ve learned that the fastest way to kill my team’s telemetry is to treat a technical failure as a character flaw. When a production incident happens, my human instinct is to find the “who.” I want to know whose hands…
I see it constantly in engineering organizations: I hire high-agency, experienced people and then place them in environments that act as a high-pass filter for reality. There is no “No Dissent” policy. I don’t put a slide in the onboarding…