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 don’t more leaders focus on this?

Supporting a continuous learning culture Example: Incredibly high volumes of data about car, driver, track conditions, etc. If driver doesn’t feel safe to admit to their team that they made a mistake, would that be a catalyst to cause them to criticize the car or performance analytics instead? What impact would that have on innovation progress? Does it speed up or create new 'low trust' work?

Exceptional internal collaboration Large teams with high trust can achieve much stronger outcomes and deliver change faster because they don’t have to do as much ‘low trust’ work. E.g. When a high trust team gives a squad an outcome and provides the necessary info required to start that work, they might ask for an estimate of when the work is likely to be done, but also probably won’t request a detailed plan, and won’t micromanage progress. The higher trust relationship implies that teams will proactively connect as needed for questions or progress updates, meaning that both parties can focus on their highest priority work.

Set the bar higher in terms of seeking excellence for ourselves and each other Communicating strategic priorities and platform architecture goals at scale. Change options available from a technical ways of working perspective that could significantly increase both the quality and pace of innovation. When teams have shared clarity of each other's goals at scale, they can operate at pace and skip some of the additional documentation needed to enforce low trust relationships.