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Thomascountz / thepseudocode

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001/reading-assignment/ #3

Open utterances-bot opened 4 years ago

utterances-bot commented 4 years ago

Reading Assignment - The Pseudocode

https://thepseudocode.com/001/reading-assignment/

Thomascountz commented 4 years ago

a. A Guide to Distributed Teams

There will always be differences in the team members’ experiences: People in HQ get snacks, but remote folks don’t have to deal with commutes or pants. —A Guide to Distributed Teams

Although I agree that there will necessarily be differences, after having worked a year on a hybrid team (half remote, half onsite), I have also found success in establishing remote-first rituals as the default.

For team meetings, both onsite and remote team members would join via video call. This helped to create the most equitable environment for everyone when it came to the matter of team-specific work and helped assuage stigma against having to accommodate remote employees.

b. Psychological safety first: building trust among teams

The issue of psychological safety reared its head recently on a team I was working with: a team member noticed a trend of using accusatory language when speaking about decisions that others were making.

We spent some time together talking about the importance of language, of intention versus interpretation, and also the importance of rigor and objections:

Psychological safety is about candor, about making it possible for productive disagreement and free exchange of ideas. —What is psychological safety?

I’ve been guilty of trying to create encouraging environments by being overly “nice,” and less critical—as it turns out, this behavior can be antithetical to developing trust and productivity within a team.