Reading Notes for Day 14 of 201
Special Topic: Psychological Safety
Read the New York Times Article What Google Learned From Its Research Into Teams
I really thought the research that Google did here was fascinating, since this is a topic that so strongly affects all of us in the workplace. I think their conclusions feel really true, since feeling safe is definitely a factor in wanting to be at work, let alone contribute fully to a team.
I’m not really sure exactly what else to say on this subject. As an older student starting a second career, I feel like I will occupy an odd space in my eventual workplace, because I won’t have the experience as a coder that my age will tend to imply to my co-workers, but I do have a wealth of knowledge from my work in other spaces that I want to be able to use to contribute. So this topic is very germane to the concerns I have about how to norm as I move into a new career.
Things I want to know more about
I’d love to see if there is any additional information post study, or ideas Google is implementing to help increase the psychological safety of the workplace. There are some ways in which I could see trying to put rules around this area backfiring and I wonder what Google’s eventual use of this research looks like, if anything.