[HN Gopher] Psychological safety vs. high standards: A misunders...
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Psychological safety vs. high standards: A misunderstood dynamic
Author : sherilm
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-10-28 15:18 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.leadingsapiens.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.leadingsapiens.com)
| schneems wrote:
| I love this. I watched The Bear (a show about an aspiring chef)
| and I've been struggling to find the words about how I related
| that to my own workplace ambitions. I think this post is a good
| start.
|
| Not to ruin anyhing: It seems the characters in the show know
| there's something out there besides verbal abuse for achieving
| performance but struggle to find the balance between high
| standards and safety.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| In my experience, both what I've been through and what I see
| from other people, it does seem like negative reinforcement
| works better than positive reinforcement for getting people to
| actually internalize lessons
|
| I don't even mean negative reinforcement in an abusive way,
| although it often is. People just tend to remember when others
| were angry at them a lot more than when others were encouraging
|
| I guess my observation is that people tend to internalize
| negative interactions much more freely than they internalize
| positive interactions. Therefore if there is a lesson alongside
| the negative interaction, they remember that lesson
|
| I also think people tend to question positive interactions a
| lot more than they question negative interactions. Maybe I just
| interact with a lot of people with low self esteem though
|
| I'm not saying that negative reinforcement is _good_ or the
| right way we should do things. Just observing that it seems
| more effective at reaching people
| lesuorac wrote:
| I think that stems from it's very obvious you did something
| wrong with negative reinforcement.
|
| Like if you cook potatoes and eggs and somebody congratulates
| you on the eggs does that mean the potatoes were bad?
|
| ---
|
| But also don't go berating people. Stick to "Critical
| Criticism" and point out the potatoes wren't cooked long
| enough or w/e.
| schneems wrote:
| > it does seem like negative reinforcement works better than
| positive reinforcement
|
| It 100% seems that way, but perhaps not for the reason you
| might think.
|
| In "thinking fast and slow" they highlight that fighter
| pilots seemed to do better after being criticized rather than
| praised. They eventually figured out that it's due to
| regression to the mean rather than due to the
| praise/criticism.
|
| Effectively: on average you'll perform at your baseline. If
| you do something worth of praise the next likely thing to
| happen is that you'll perform at baseline again (so it looks
| like praise didn't work). Versus if someone is critiquing a
| poor performance your next thing will likely be better (but
| still baseline). This gives the impression that criticisms
| works better than praise. But it's really just regression to
| the mean/baseline.
|
| It's over generalizing to say that's the cause 100% of the
| time, but I bring it up because not intuitive yet makes total
| sense. I choose to take this and believe that in the long
| term praise has more upside than punishment (assuming the
| recipient has high standards and wants to perform well).
| whynotminot wrote:
| Hmm was this for very experienced pilots?
|
| For newer pilots going through training, it seems like the
| baseline should move progressively higher with training,
| and so you'd want good data to know what kind of feedback
| accelerates that baseline improvement.
|
| For experienced pilots who've sort of maxed out their
| inherent talent/capability, it would make sense to me that
| over and under performance would be somewhat random.
|
| Anecdotally, I've never found feedback to be a one size
| fits all kind of thing. Everyone responds differently and
| needs something a little different from you.
| schneems wrote:
| Really what people need is an accurate sense of their
| performance (where they are at), an alignment with a goal
| (where they want to be), and a concrete action plan on
| how to make up that delta (how to get better).
|
| I think instead of asking "does criticism or praise
| produce better outcomes on average over the duration of
| training" (my interpretation of your comment) I would ask
| "how can we ensure our assessments of student performance
| are accurate and how can we make sure it is translated to
| the most effective feedback per individual student."
|
| If you HAD to generalize to only positive/negative
| feedback, my guess would be that people need both, so an
| ideal value would be a ratio rather than binary. Say: 2
| positives to every 1 negative (for example). But as a
| sometimes educator it's really hard to keep track of that
| ratio for each student (unless it's written or formalized
| in some kind of way).
| solarmist wrote:
| I would agree with you if there was a way to ensure
| feedback isn't interpreted as a personal attack or a
| shortcoming.
|
| So, this assumes you can separate feedback from
| motivation too. Authentic praise (as opposed to generic
| praise) is more effective in the long run because it
| reinforces motivation and allows time, experience, and in
| ideal situations, achievable high standards to take care
| of negative feedback.
| dockd wrote:
| The thing I don't get about regression-to-the-mean is
| whether there is an implication that your baseline is
| fixed.
|
| That is, can a fighter pilot move up from being a level 4
| in a dogfight to a level 7 with training, or will they
| forever be a level 4 because it's their baseline? Did
| Michael Jordan have the same ability as a basketball player
| after 2 seasons as he did after 8?
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| i've been the arsehole who demands high standards and then
| lambasts folks when they don't achieve it.
|
| i've also been the lovey dovey safe space hippie-esque person who
| just wants everyone to be happy and comfortable, saying yes to
| everyone and everything. no discomfort anywhere.
|
| yeah, both of those are absolutely rubbish for getting high
| quality stuff done.
|
| but yeah, this definitely tracks with my experience and nice to
| see i'm kind of working on moving toward the right path now,
| albeit after getting quite lost along the way (and being a bit of
| an arsehole).
| hangonhn wrote:
| +1 to this.
|
| I'm currently almost 6 years into my dream job (20+ years
| career). My manager maintains a culture/atmosphere where
| belittling people, yelling, or any sort of overly negative
| actions towards someone, especially in public, is not allowed.
| This may seem very lovey-dovey but it does also mean newer
| engineers or more junior ones aren't afraid to ask questions or
| even question existing ideas. Asshole behaviors are often used
| to maintain the status quo and stop people from ever
| questioning how things are done.
|
| In addition, she encourages frequent, timely feedback that are
| objective, not personal, and, above all, she is actually rather
| quick to fire under-performers.
|
| This is easily the most productive engineering team I have ever
| been on. A team can have both high standards and have high
| psychological safety. I think that's just good professional
| behavior -- there is never a good reason to get personal or
| publicly humiliate someone.
| throw627004 wrote:
| How does feeling psychologically safe work when the boss is
| quick to fire "underperformers"?
|
| That's totally a real question because I have trouble
| imagining this.
|
| Is it the kind of situation where everyone involved,
| including the person in question, knows they're not up to the
| task?
| hangonhn wrote:
| That's exactly it. She (and other managers on our
| engineering team) doesn't fire arbitrarily or on a whim.
| That's not what I meant by quick. The management culture is
| to always give frequent and timely feedback so that the
| person knows how they are performing -- be it good or bad.
| By the time they are fired, it's pretty obvious to them
| (and likely everyone else) that they're underperforming. It
| should never be a surprise to that person when it happens
| (or when the opposite happens such as when someone is
| promoted)
|
| I think your question is a really good one and really gets
| to the nuances of having both a high performing team and
| psychologically safe place. It's much easier said than done
| and requires good, consistent management habits.
| parpfish wrote:
| i fell into a managerial position once, and i was the lovey-
| dovey wanting everybody to be happy type. i was bad at it, but
| there were two major factors that lead me down that path:
|
| 1) I didn't want to be a manager and it was the path of least
| resistance
|
| 2) the company that was large and stable enough where getting
| peak-performance out of everybody wasn't necessary to keep
| things going smoothly 2b) the company had so
| many layers of beureaucracy, that actually getting peak
| performance wouldn't have actually improved anything
| asgr wrote:
| Results speak for themselves. If Musks style is inferior, why are
| his companies doing so incredibly well?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| There's a sibling comment that says the following: "i've been
| the arsehole who demands high standards and then lambasts folks
| when they don't achieve it."
|
| Then goes on to say that this is a bad way to get anything done
|
| That seems obvious
|
| I think what Musk does isn't this. I think Musk has high
| standards, then _gets rid of_ people who don 't meet them. Then
| tries to find and hire people who do meet them
|
| If you can actually find people who do live up to incredibly
| high standards then you will very likely have a successful
| company
| Eumenes wrote:
| This is HR speak and from my experience, "technical" people
| talking about these topics tend to be overcompensating for lack
| of competency, or interest, in their domain. Its objectively
| easier to talk about this stuff all day vs coding or being knee
| deep in the guts of systems. My last job was big on this and
| many engineers with high "EQ" were rapidly promoted into middle
| management roles. Lets just say, the promotions were short
| lived because a "reduction in force" followed. This isn't an
| excuse to be a jerk, but the industry has over indexed on
| HR/psychology talk and real hardcore technologists don't give a
| shit. Fortunately many of these firms are super upfront about
| these things, like on their career page, or if you feel
| inclined, look at their leaders/manages on linkedin - they put
| this stuff on blast all over their profiles. A little research
| goes a long way.
| sherilm wrote:
| I wrote a piece on this exact point and how much you should
| actually worry about EQ:
|
| Technical and cognitive skills are clearly "threshold
| factors" that cannot be ignored-- they get you in the game
| and let you keep playing it. While they might not be
| sufficient, they sure are a necessary condition for success
| in most domains.
|
| In order to stand out on your EQ skills you have to be first
| competitive on your technical/cognitive skills. It will be
| tough to compete just on your social skillset.
|
| EQ is probably not a differentiator at lower levels and early
| stages of your career. Technical chops, cognitive skills and
| execution will probably help you stand out more. It's only
| when you move on to the managerial and executive ranks that
| EI/EQ starts becoming a differentiator, what Goleman calls a
| "discriminating competency".
|
| Even at higher levels, EQ is not a given. Where it can
| probably make the most impact is in avoiding pitfalls once
| you get there, what researchers call "leadership derailment",
| rather than being an active mechanism in reaching there.
|
| More here: "Misled and Oversold on Emotional Intelligence"
| https://www.leadingsapiens.com/ei-vs-iq-misperceptions/
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Just because a person lacks social skills does not mean
| social skills magically become unimportant. For all
| technologists like to brag about their world being black-and-
| white and that technical chops are the be-all and end-all,
| this is only true in very specific roles. For everything
| else, you have to deal with actual human beings, and in this
| case "this is the way I am, get over it" is generally a very
| poor strategy.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Despite & not because of?
| lapcat wrote:
| The article discusses Twitter specifically. By practically all
| measures, Twitter (now X) is doing worse than before Musk
| acquired it. Indeed, Musk's creditors have downgraded the value
| of the investment multiple times. Financially, the acquisition
| has been a bust. It's been pure self-destruction.
|
| Another thing about Twitter/X that most people don't realize is
| how little it has changed. Superficially it's changed,
| including a new domain name, but the actual code and operation
| seem to be more or less the same as before. And in fact some of
| the new features that shipped after the acquisition were
| already in the works before the acquisition. Years ago I wrote
| a Twitter-specific web browser extension, and aside from the
| change in domain name, the extension continues to work almost
| perfectly. In a way, it's shocking how little has changed.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| There's a relative power dynamic at play here - if the head of a
| corporation or institution is free from consequences for making
| rather poor decisions (eg, Cybertruck production), then it's easy
| to be fearless. If you're a mid-level grunt who yolos something
| and it's a disaster, you risk losing your job.
|
| Overall incentives do matter, however. SpaceX appears to be led
| by the engineering division, not the financial derivatives
| division, which is a big difference. If your metric of success is
| engineering a large bonus for your boss by making drastic cuts to
| the R & D division (see Boeing), versus successfully re-
| engineering a rocket engine to reduce maintenance and fuel
| costs...?
|
| The fundamental problem in the USA economy is that shareholder
| conglomerates like Blackrock and their pet executives at places
| like Boeing do not have to face the conseqeuences of their poor
| decision-making since the government (which is run by the pet
| politicians and bureaucrats of these financial conglomerates)
| always steps in to provide bailouts and relief, while never
| demanding any serious restructuring that might hurt the financial
| position of said conglomerates and executives.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > If you're a mid-level grunt who yolos something and it's a
| disaster, you risk losing your job.
|
| This plays into concepts like privilege as well. If you are a
| trust fund kid with very high financial security, or have a
| spouse willing to let you become unemployed who can pay the
| bills, or a family willing to take you back home if you run out
| of money, or any number of other safety nets, then you can
| afford to be a middle manager yoloing decisions that fail once
| in a while in the effort to fast track your career
|
| Having safety nets that do not rely on yourself to be
| successful is a huge component of Psychological Safety that
| lets people take risks
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think I'd like to be in the apathy position right now. The
| anxiety quadrant is brutal. But I also don't see my company
| creating psychological safety in any position.
| jp57 wrote:
| Only as an adult pushing into middle age was I able to recognize
| just how good my parents, especially my Dad, were at holding us
| (the kids) to high standards while maintaining psychological
| safety. He was a college professor and expected us all to excel
| at school, and yet there was never any sense that he would
| withhold his love if we failed. No yelling or getting angry.
| Maybe some disappointment, but accompanied by a plan to help us
| get back on track. My mom (also an academic) was sometimes more
| stern, but I never had any doubt that she loved me.
|
| My older siblings modeled their behavior on my parents, and thus
| I had four supportive older people in my life. It's clear to me
| now that this environment shaped my priors on psychological
| safety, such that my default is to feel psychologically safe and
| it takes quite a lot to shake me from that position.
|
| But that's the thing: psychological safety is not only a property
| of a particular situation, it is also colored by each
| individual's priors, so that one person might struggle in a
| situation where another feels perfectly safe.
|
| It's interesting to consider what are the obligations of a boss
| or other authority figure to support adults with very low priors
| for psychological safety in a workplace or some similar adult
| space? The current trends seem to be to say that everyone must be
| supported no matter what, but supporting outliers rarely comes
| without costs. It doesn't make sense for a whole group to become
| risk averse to avoid triggering one person who comes in with a
| default "unsafe" prior.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| >It doesn't make sense for a whole group to become risk averse
| to avoid triggering one person who comes in with a default
| "unsafe" prior.
|
| Sometimes people just need therapy, which is not something
| management is equipped to provide.
| fs_software wrote:
| > Amy Edmondson of Harvard, the leading researcher in
| psychological safety, defines it as the belief that you won't be
| punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions,
| concerns, or mistakes. It encourages intelligent risk-taking by
| reducing interpersonal anxiety.
|
| I've found that many tech workplaces seem to favor _always_ being
| complimentary over "psychological safety" per the definition
| above.
|
| For example, there have been too many situations to count where
| folks don't feel safe enough to speak up if another coworker
| produces sub-par work.
|
| Toxic positivity seems to destroy psychological safety.
| solarmist wrote:
| Unconditional positivity destroys moral, but I think the effect
| on psychological safety is more nuanced.
|
| Your example is certainly a lack of psychological safety, but
| only you can speak to the causes of that.
|
| A common reason would be a lack of accountability, which led to
| unconditional positivity as a veneer over the lack of
| constructive feedback.
| Xcelerate wrote:
| I think by adulthood, most personality traits are relatively set
| and unchangeable (there's always exceptions). If someone is a
| hard worker, apathetic worker, self-driven, praise-driven,
| exhibits or causes learned helplessness, etc. -- you're certainly
| not going to change these traits as a manager.
|
| The goal of a small company that aims to do well then is to hire
| the right people from the very start. Unfortunately, as a
| company's success grows, the "wrong people" are going to want
| into it. Keeping these people out is a much more challenging
| problem than finding a decent group of people to start a company
| with, because the wrong people are motivated in all the wrong
| ways to destroy what already exists (or extract what value they
| can from it) rather than to create something great which does not
| yet exist, arguably a much riskier and more complicated endeavor.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| There is the possibility of making punishments much harsher, to
| adjust for the reduced probability of catching wrongdoing.
|
| But the benefits will likely also have to be increased, to
| still make it an attractive place to work for those with the
| desired personality traits.
| mattxxx wrote:
| A+ article. This was excellently worded, and provides a cogent
| breakdown of both _how_ people misinterpret these topics and
| _why_ people need some education on their differentiation.
|
| As someone who has been a high-performing IC, a low-performing
| IC, and a manager, I think so much about performance comes down
| to whether the organization understands that many things come
| down to _bets_. So some amount of failure has to happen, if you
| 're going to be making truly useful things.
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