Software quality, psychological safety and growth mindset might seem to be unrelated at first glance. However, both psychological safety and growth mindset are crucial in high performance teams. Join our upcoming PALO IT BarCamp to understand more about psychological safety and different mindset, learn how these topics affect one another, and get inspired to enable teams to deliver awesomeness to users. What you will explore We have always been seeking the secret sauce of high performance teams in the software development industry. Some teams deliver products better than several teams combined. Some others adjust to market change quicker than the change itself. Some others learn from failure and raise the bar by making their product more resilient than ever. Not long ago, Google's Project Aristotle has answered the million dollar question on the successful recipe of building high performance teams with psychological safety cited as the most important factor. In this BarCamp, we will dive into details and find out what it takes to allow individual team members to feel psychologically safe and willing to take calculated risks for learning and improvement. Through research and case studies, we will explore the following: > What is psychological safety? > How mindset affects the perception of psychological safety? > How to assess mindset and psychological safety in your team? > How to create an environment that promotes growth mindset and fosters psychological safety? Audience > Developers > Team Leads > Team Coaches > Managers > Business Leaders > Anyone looking to maximise self and team's ability to grow and improve.

1. HIGH PERFORMING TEAMS IN
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
Growth Mindset & Psychological Safety
BARCAMP - 13 September 2018
Awesome Palowans
Beda Tse & Ivy Chan

2. 1 WHO WE ARE
2 HIGH PERFORMING TEAM IN SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT
3 PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
4 FIXED & GROWTH MINDSETS
5 INTERACTION IN BETWEEN
6 CLIMATE FOR MINDSETS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
7 TRAPFALL
8 PRACTICAL TAKEAWAYS AND REFERENCES
9 Q&A
CONTENT

3. 1 HIGH PERFORMING TEAM IN
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

4. Photo by RicOrnelProductions - CC BY-ND 2.0

5. PROJECT ARISTOTLE
What really mattered was less about
who is on the team, and more about
how the team worked together.
Psychological Safety
Dependability
Structure and Clarity
Impact
Meaning
“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” - Aristotle

6. Culture eats strategy for
breakfast.
Peter Drucker

7. 2 PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

8. Psychological safety eats
culture for lunch.
OWLS
(Organizational Wellness and Learning Systems)

9. Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be
punished or humiliated for speaking up with
ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes.
Amy Edmondson (2017)

10. IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
In order not to look...
Ignorant Intrusive Incompetent Negative
Stop asking
question
Stop offering idea,
avoid conflict
Avoid / don’t
admit weakness
or mistakes
Don’t critique
status quo
Strategy

11. IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
Questions Offering Ideas
Weakness and
Mistakes
Critique status
quo
Alignment and
shared
understanding
Innovative and
creative, engage in
constructive conflict
Openness, honesty
and chance to
reflect and learn
Seeking for
improvement
Benefits

12. PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY
Psychological
Safety
Learning &
Collaboration
Behaviour
Team
Performance

13. 3 FIXED AND GROWTH
MINDSET

14. WHAT CONTRIBUTES TO
PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

15. “In a fixed mindset, people
believe their basic abilities,
their intelligence, their
talents, are just fixed traits.”
FIXED MINDSET GROWTH MINDSET
“In a growth mindset, people
understand that their
talents and abilities can be
developed through effort,
good teaching and
persistence.”
Carol Dweck - “Mindset”

16. ● Basic qualities, like intelligence or talent, are innate.
● Desired to look smart.
● Avoid challenges.
● In face of obstacle, they get defensive or give up easily.
● Talent creates success, without effort.
● Effort is fruitless.
● React negatively to criticism.
● Feel threatened by the success of others.
FIXED MINDSET (ENTITY THEORY)

17. ● Basic qualities, like intelligence or talent, are malleable, fluid and changeable.
● Desired to learn and improve.
● Embrace challenges.
● In face of setbacks, they persist with effort or come up with new strategy.
● Talent is just the starting point.
● Effort is the path to mastery.
● Learn from criticism.
● Find lessons and inspiration in the success of others.
GROWTH MINDSET (INCREMENTAL THEORY)

18. GROWTH MINDSETS
Growth
Mindset
Team
Performance
Team
Engagement
Learning
Behaviour

19. WHAT ARE THE THOUGHT AND
BEHAVIOR TRAITS?

20. 4 INTERACTION IN BETWEEN

21. ● Focus on talent.
● Believes some people is more superior than others.
● Seek and hire talents and people who know-how.
● Aim at personal greatness.
● Be judgemental to people.
● Fear of disapprovals and feedbacks.
● Do not like to hear bad news.
● Feel threatened by the most competent subordinate.
FIXED MINDSET MANAGEMENT
Fixed mindset management reduces psychological safety.

22. ● Compete against each other to prove they are better.
● Strive for personal status.
● Worry about being judged.
● Use strength to achieve quick, dramatic results at the expense of developing new skills.
● Believe their organisation less likely to support reasonable risk-taking.
● Hide information and keep secret from others.
● Take shortcuts and cut corners.
FIXED MINDSET TEAM
Fixed mindset team does not perceive psychological safety.

23. ● Focus on development and growth.
● Believes competency and leadership can be developed.
● Nurture people and allow learning to happen.
● Aim at growth.
● Provide guidance to people.
● Seek feedback and improvement opportunities.
● Foster productivity thru mentoring, not terror.
● See potentials in people.
GROWTH MINDSET LEADER
Growth mindset leaders foster psychological safety.

24. ● Help each other to develop and growth.
● Strive for continuous improvement.
● Look for feedback and react positively to criticism.
● Work together as a team.
● Believe the company will support them even when they fail.
● Be transparent.
● Have a strong sense of ownership and commit to the future of the company.
● Work with passion and a desire to get things done.
GROWTH MINDSET TEAM
Growth mindset team amplifies psychological safety.

25. Team and Leader Mindset
PsychologicalSafety
STICK WITH THE
WORKING WAYS
FEELING
UNSUPPORTED /
TORMENTED BY
CONSTRAINT
GROWTH-SEEKING /
LEARNING ORIENTED
FOLLOW ORDERS /
RISK AVERSIVE
(FIXED) (GROWTH)
(LOW)
(HIGH)

26. Collaboration, creativity and entrepreneurship
– these are at the heart of everything we do

27. ● Growth mindset free you from risk aversive behavior and allow you to learn from failure.
● With growth mindset, you know the knowledge gap and alignment gap will be bridged up
one day with persistence and effort.
● Psychological Safety provides the climate for honest and direct communication as the
basis of alignment, trust and collaboration.
● With psychological safety, you trust your team and leaders will understand your good
intention even when you fail or commit mistakes.
FLOWING BACK TO SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

28. Failure is inevitable. Embrace failure, learn from
failure, be resilience to failure.

29. Team
Performance
Psychological
Safety
Growth Mindset
+
+
++
Learning
behaviour
Safety for
communication
and failure
Trusting your
team potential
Judgement is
not around

30. TRIANGLE? SO SIMPLE, I THINK
WE ARE ALIGNED.

31. OOPS… WE CANNOT EVEN GET A
TRIANGLE CORRECT...

32. WE ARE NOT ALIGNED YET, BUT
WE CAN GET ALIGNED.

33. 5
CLIMATE FOR GROWTH
MINDSET AND
PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

34. Don’t be judgemental, always looks for
improvement. Your mind is not set.

35. We are not aligned yet, it does not mean
either of us is wrong.

36. Admit and accept we are all a combination
of fixed and growth mindset.

37. Focus on growth and learning, not just
achievement.

38. Replace blame with curiosity.

39. The benefits of a safety net will only be in
effect when people see how it works.

40. Learning will only happen when you have
psychological safety and physical safety.

41. Be conscious about the triggers.

42. 6 TRAPFALL

43. PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY CAN ALSO INCUBATE BAD
BEHAVIOUR
Will it ever become too comfortable?
Psychological
Safety
Motivation Accountability
Software
Craftsmanship

44. Beware of false growth mindset

45. Growth mindset is more than just being open and flexible.
It is also about the dedication to
personal development and growth.

46. Growth mindset is more than only about efforts.
It is also about process, strategies,
focus, perseverance and getting
feedbacks.

47. Growth mindset is not being able to do anything.
It is more about gaining skills and
finding resources to make progress
toward their goals.

48. Cultivating growth mindset is more than focus on just the improvement of process.
It is more important to relate the
process improvement with the
outcome.

49. The path to a growth mindset is a journey,
not a proclamation.

50. 7 TAKEAWAYS

51. TAKEAWAY
Create an environment that promotes growth mindset and fosters psychological safety?
Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4 Step 5
Good physical
condition and free
up your mind
Gain awareness Be conscious Create the norm Use of tools and
techniques.
Sleep well, eat well.
Free up your mind.
Introduce psychological
safety and mindsets to
people around you.
Acknowledge and
visualise triggers.
Set up strategies and
information radiators to
mitigate fixed mindset
and improve
psychological safety.
No judgement, stay on
the improvement track.
Frame the work as a
learning problem.
Model curiosity, make
speaking up the norm.
Be humble, acknowledge
our own fallibility.
Improve
communication
technique, such as
nonviolent comm.
Visualise discussion to
focus on the subject
matter, not individuals.

52. THANK YOU
Any questions? Feel free to ask!