Over 3 months John recorded over 60 hours of interviews and spoke to some of the most respected people in the industry to produce an audio documentary that attempts to answer the question “What is safety? And why is it important anyway?”

Over 3 months John recorded over 60 hours of interviews and spoke to some of the most respected people in the industry to produce an audio documentary that attempts to answer the question “What is safety? And why is it important anyway?”

This highly interactive talk will present the findings and guide and challenge you through a journey to understanding safety. Including short interactive sessions and role play exercises to cover the following topics:

• What is safety?
• What is a team?
• What is the definition of an effective or high performance team?
• What are the elements that make a team effective?
• Is psychological safety the foundation to team performance?
• What can we all do to help foster psychological safety in our teams?
• What is the relationship between safety, stress and engagement?
• What is the profound impact of a lack of safety and engagement on society?

This talk has grown as John created the new podcast The Agile Path. The first season on this podcast is about safety in teams. John has interviewed world renowned specialists in the field; Christopher Avery, David Marquet, Jerry Weinberg, Esther Derby, Johanna Rothman, Woody Zuill and many more in over 60 hours of audio. This has been a fascinating deep dive learning experience for John and he hopes to explore these insights with the audience.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the definition for psychological safety and explore it’s meaning.
• Understand what a team really is.
• Understand the five facets of an effective team.
• Understand why psychological safety is foundational to team effectiveness.
• Understand some of the key signs of un-safety in teams.
• Understand the relationship between safety, workplace stress and engagement (using the JD-R model)
• Understand the impact of low safety, low engagement workplaces on wider society.

Why Me?

I have now given this almost 20 times at conferences and user groups and it’s been very well received. It’s a highly relevant topic and one not discussed enough at technical conferences. I’m also on the schedule for a further 9 conferences across Europe, US and South Africa.

Full details of past and future dates can be found here: http://wisenoodle.me/talks/swearing-nudity-and-other-vulnerable-positions

This is a topic I’m deeply passionate about and I think is critically relevant to software teams internationally. It’s a serious topic, packaged up into an energetic and interactive session.

The slides can be found here: https://speakerdeck.com/antz29/swearing-nudity-and-other-vulnerable-positions-with-notes Preview Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5f67VqbSlU Full Session: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8qDiVXfatc

Session Breakdown

What safety is - ~20 mins

This is a presentation with a bit of discussion with the audience.

• Introduction, who I am and the background of the subject.
• Introduction to Google’s Aristotle project.
• The 5 facets of psychological safety (the outputs from Project Aristotle)
• Definition of psychological safety

What safety / unsafety feels like ~25 mins

This is the interactive bit, people will be invited to various exercises in their seats and on “stage”.

• Introduction to the foundational ideas of improvisation.
• Warm up exercise, Mirroring, the group work in pairs to mirror one another’s facial expressions and hand / arm movements, without speaking.
• Improvisation exercise to create a safe collaborative environment. This is a highly interactive session based on the improv game “String of Pearls”.
• Discussion of how the session worked and how we might apply this to our teams. - Engagement, autonomy, collaboration, synergy.
• Paying attention; what it means in this context and why (to me) it’s the foundational practice for fostering safety.

Why it really matters - ~15 mins

This is a presentation with a bit of discussion with the audience.

• A discussion of what engagement is, and the recent Gallup results for the US workforce.
• Looking into workplace stress, and the recent Stress in America results from the APA.
• Exploring the relationship between Safety, Engagement and Workplace Stress using the JD-R model from Arnold Bakker.
• Closing