The Importance of Trust and Communication with Tim Ottinger

On today's episode of Programming Leadership, we dive into what is needed to establish safety in your own organization. Trust is just one of the key pieces that make up the structure of safety in a work environment, along with actual physical measures, active communication, and regular feedback. The people who make up your organization are an integral part of the safety structure. An exchange of ideas and criticisms between subordinates and superiors should be shared, but boundaries must be in place and commonly known in order for these exchanges to occur safely and effectively. Utilizing all of these components, managers can provide a safe environment for their employees to help limit catastrophes from occurring whether in the workplace or in the actual work itself. 

Show Notes

• Safety is defined by the measures put in place to prevent small problems from turning into big ones, but those are not limited to merely physical measures.
• A feeling of safety in the work environment is just as important and necessary to an end product as a software test suite.
• Communication involves listening without assumption and questioning with intent so that decisions can be made with the correct desired outcome.
• Good intentions and taking risks can be seen as good or bad, depending on who's calling the shots. The reality is - there is no universal safety net.
• Trust can be broken, but it's also negotiable. Be willing to admit when too much is too much, and ask for help when you need it rather than take on more than you can handle and risk losing trust altogether.
• Learn to recognize a person's limits, and learn to recognize when those limits need to be challenged or reassessed and raised.
• Jobs evolve just like people. Evaluating a person’s performance shouldn’t be just about how well someone does in the job they were hired to do. You have to look at how a person has adapted to their work environment and how they have changed it, for better or worse.

Resources and Links:

• Gitprime.com
• @Tottinge
• Agileotter.blogspot.com
• Industriallogic.com 
• Modernagile.org