The Power of Psychological Safety in Agile Teams | Bernie Maloney

Bernie Maloney: The Power of Psychological Safety in Agile Teams

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

Bernie shares a powerful story about learning what psychological safety truly means through both success and failure. Working in a high-pressure division with tight timelines and margins, Bernie discovered the transformative power of the mantra "always make a new mistake." When he made a significant error and was met with understanding rather than punishment, he experienced firsthand how psychological safety enables teams to thrive.

Later, facing a different challenge where mistrust existed between management and teams, Bernie had to navigate the delicate balance of maintaining psychological safety while addressing management's desire for transparency. His solution was innovative: conduct retrospectives with the team first, then invite managers in at the end with anonymized contributions. Bernie's approach of framing changes as experiments helped people embrace newness, knowing it would be time-bound and reversible.

In this episode we refer to Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP).

Self-reflection Question: How might your current approach to mistakes and experimentation be either fostering or undermining psychological safety within your team?

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About Bernie Maloney

Bernie Maloney has helped teams grow businesses to beyond $4B / year, delivering products from consumer electronics to network infrastructure to services & payments. He helps clients achieve performance breakthroughs with their teams, organizations and themselves, and believes that leads both to outrageous effectiveness, and a whole lot more fun.

You can link with Bernie Maloney on LinkedIn, and visit Bernie’s website and YouTube Channel.