Psychological Unsafety
The single most important factor in team performance
I just recently finished listening to an audible performance of ‘Smarter, Faster, Better’ by Charles Duhigg. While most of the book is focused on personal performance it also touches on achieving things ingroups. Evidently, psychological safety and feeling like one is being heard is one of the biggest predictors of a teams performance (according to the Google data).
The shattered image
I don’t think I’ve ever heard this talked about before but here it is; Being promoted shatters your self image. That’s maybe a bit hyperbolic but, hear me out. When you are a senior engineer chances are you’ve been doing your job and doing it well for some time. You know very well the bounds of expertise and more importantly people expect for you to be excellent in that role. Especially when you’re new to managing you may not have any good idea what your role actually looks like and people are used to you being something else.
Thing is all that uncertainty causes anxiety whether you’re consious of it or not. We are being who crave certainty (just ask a high level poker player). Uncertainty undermines your psychological safety.
I’m not a nice person
In honesty I’m about average. I’ve some social skills that I’ve had to work hard to develop and I’m just as flawed and insecure as the next person maybe, even a little more so. A lack of psychological safety makes me more sensitive. I imagine slights where there’s probably just a mis-understanding in violation of Grey’s Law. I over react to situation with a need to be right and that makes me more argumentative.
So what?
It hasn’t really impacted my team largely because I trust my team, I have psychological safety with them. Outside the immediate team with the larger company (which is also a team) is where I see this happening with myself. Those people are important.
Fix it
I’m going to work on this I don’t have a one size fits all solution for you as yet but, take a moment; Have you been acting “not yourself”? Consider that this might be the cause and do what you need to do to get your self image and psychological safety back.