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Building Compassionate Software

Ash Furrow
December 12, 2016

Building Compassionate Software

Ash Furrow

December 12, 2016
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  1. Ash Furrow
    Artsy Auctions
    Compassionate
    Building
    Software

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  2. Psychological Safety

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  3. Agenda
    1. Feelings matter.
    2. Teams with psychological safety perform better.
    3. Implementing psychological safety on your team.

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  4. Feelings Matter

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  5. Science Says So

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  6. Empathy
    • Seeing the world as others see it.
    • Recognizing and understanding another’s feelings.
    • Staying non-judgemental.
    • Communicating that you understand.

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  7. Teams with Psychological Safety
    Perform Better

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  8. The belief that one will not be punished or
    humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions,
    concerns, or mistakes.
    Psychological Safety:

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  9. Project Aristotle
    • Five-year study of team dynamics at Google.
    • Goal: find predictor of high-performing teams.
    • Conclusion: psychological safety correlates with performance.

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  10. Think Back.

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  11. Psychological Safety
    • Important that developers feel able to ask questions, raise concerns.
    • Especially necessary in small, resource-constrained teams.

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  12. Psychological Safety at Artsy

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  13. Measuring
    • Psychological safety is observed in groups as two behaviours:
    • Conversational turn-taking.
    • Average emotional sensitivity.

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  14. Benefits
    • Higher team performance.
    • Makes team members feel more welcome.

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  15. Implementing Psychological
    Safety on Your Team

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  17. Role Modelling
    • Admit fallibility.
    • Frame all work as learning experiences.
    • Model curiosity.

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  18. Everybody Struggles

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  19. Framing Work as
    Learning Experiences

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  20. Model Curiosity

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  21. Other Good Ideas
    • Small talk at the beginning of meetings.
    • Watch out for people getting interrupted in meetings.
    • Don’t push for immediate feedback.
    • Allow space to revisit discussions.
    • Practice empathy: reflect on meetings, focus on peers’ feelings.

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  23. Boring Good Ideas
    • Schedule recurring appointments to review your week.
    • Block off time immediately following meetings to reflect.

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  24. Opportunities
    • Retrospectives and/or post-mortems.
    • Peer and performance reviews.
    • Hiring process.

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  25. Wrap Up
    1. Feelings matter, science says so.
    2. High psychological safety correlates with performance.
    3. Operationalizing psychological safety is hard but worth it.

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  26. Sleep on it

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