Stefan, why are you still with AWS after already being there for so long - currently 8 years?

Stefan, why are you still with AWS after already being there for so long - currently 8 years?

I get this question constantly, in countless variations. My honest answer is always the same: it’s the people around me who hold a high bar while continuously creating opportunities for me to grow and learn.

Last week provided another perfect example of this. During one of our account team meetings my colleague Cameron brought a lightning talk on the topic of high-performing teams, which is another indication of how we constantly strive to improve the way we work. The outstanding point in the talk was psychological safety ranking as the most important characteristic of a high-performance team in the research Cameron drew on. Psychological safety, that same body of research argues, is fundamental to creating a workplace that fosters inclusion, learning, and innovation.

There are several psychological safety misconceptions the talk called out: It’s not about being nice. It’s not about blindly agreeing with each other. It’s not correlated with introversion/extroversion. It doesn’t mean “anything goes.” It’s not about lowering performance standards.

Being here for a long time, I rarely feel unsafe to raise my voice, but I have been in those situations many times in my career. Working in distributed teams, where some of us are rarely able to meet in person, I totally can see how psychological safety can be a challenge. Especially in an environment where high bars and high standards are held and can, in my observation, lead to people suffering from imposter syndrome.

Definitely something to be very cautious about. Cameron based his talk on a lot of material out there and also opened up access to internal material available to help teams. Pure gold, and I’m looking forward to diving deeper into this! Good to understand that high performance standards and psychological safety can coexist.

What about you and your teams? Which mechanisms are you applying to ensure that everyone on the team feels psychologically safe?

#HighPerformingTeams #PschologicalSafety #AWSomeVoices

• Leadership
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