A lot has been written about how psychological safety leads to high performing teams.
A related characteristic I haven’t seen as much written about is trust. In fact, faith may be a better word than trust.
This is when you have absolute faith that a team member will handle a problem or problem area such that you don’t have to worry about it.
A key characteristic of high performing teams I’ve seen is when everyone has faith in the competence and ability of their peers.
It’s a great feeling.
@carnage4life Absolutely. An example of this: I can leave minor feedback on someone's merge request and then approve it, knowing that they'll 1) fix the things I pointed out before merging, 2) do it well, and 3) let me know if they disagree, rather than just ignoring me. Think of how much slower we'd have to work if I had to come back to re-approve before they could merge!
And similarly, I know that I can give feedback without people getting pissed off and defensive, so the code ends up in better shape. And vice versa, of course—I think people know that I'm not going to bite them for pointing out a mistake I made or suggesting a better solution, or even just asking for clarification. There's sufficient humility on all sides.
I've only once had a coworker who got defensive and ghosted me when I suggested that something wasn't secure. It sucked. And yet I sometimes hear from people who work on entire teams that are like that! 😱
I think I'd still call it trust, not faith, but whatever you call it... it's critically important.
Dare Obasanjo
varx/tech