High Performing Tech Teams do less 'Low Trust' Work

I’ve led tech teams in delivering multiple global and Australian innovation ‘firsts’ and want to talk about the critical relationship between trust and psychological safety for high performing tech teams. It supports deeply technical goals, is fantastic for motivating and retaining staff, and does not require any additional funding. Why wouldn’t more leaders focus on this?

Supporting a continuous learning culture
People who don't feel safe to admit personal mistakes can be motivated to look for other reasons for failure. This method of avoiding personal blame can create unnecessary work for the entire team, significantly impact the pace of progress overall and prevent others from learning how to avoid a similar mistake.

Exceptional internal collaboration
Large teams with high trust can achieve much stronger outcomes and deliver change faster for a variety of reasons. High trust teams spend more time on their highest priority work and this allows them to achieve goals more quickly.

Set the bar higher in terms of seeking excellence for ourselves and each other
Communicating strategic priorities and platform architecture goals at scale sets a strong foundation for enabling empowered team members to proactively anticipate change needed in the context of their work. With high trust teams, maturity models can be used to proactively indicate change needed and allow teams to schedule in a way that suits them, allowing increased compliance and reduction in governance work.