Lessons from Google's Latest Psychological Safety Crisis

In yesterday’s article, we outlined the very clear and basic fact that Psychological Safety can never be a “once and done” topic. No people-topic ever is, but in PS’s case, it is even more fragile and more likely to be lost as soon as one gets their eye off the ball.

The latest example of this - is Googles’ SRE Borg team and how it made news when it found itself in a bind when they were shown to have slowly moved very far away from the ideals of the company and had had employees being mistreated and even potentially borderline-abused by their manager.

In today’s video, contrary to our usual Tuesdays’ habit, we do not have a lot in the way of exact practical advice beyond “do not delay the human work and don’t be hoping it will ever be a tick-box exercise” but we do outline the importance of giving this episode the attention it needs.

It would be tremendously easy to jump on the accusatory band waggon and simply point fingers but would that truly be helpful to anyone? Instead, we propose a different stance:

• It would be tremendously easy to jump on the accusatory band waggon and simply point fingers but would that truly be helpful to anyone? Instead, we propose a different stance:
• It is BECAUSE they had enough Psychological Safety in that team at some point and BECAUSE they had done copious amounts of the people-work that they got this far. How far?
• EQ - Note the way they all frame the problem when they are being asked in interviews, notice the words and notions they use and how much sensitivity to the team dynamic they demonstrate;
• Extreme sensitivity to loss of Psychological Safety - they knew unequivocally and early that they are slipping on this, the number one topic that they knew keeps their work as a team performant;

It is BECAUSE they had enough Psychological Safety in that team at some point and BECAUSE they had done copious amounts of the people-work that they got this far. How far?