Hey folks, this is Ryan with another edition of The Software Engineering Times. I look to enable current technology leadership and help build you into the next generation of software leadership.

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Imagine a team where miscommunication, a lack of trust, and low transparency consistently derail projects, lead to high turnover and make people feel isolated. The problem isn’t the code.

Most problems in Software Engineering teams are people problems. They are rarely technical. A significant portion of those issues can be resolved if there is trust, transparency, collaboration, and safety.

Trust is the nervous system of a high-performing team. You cannot have a high-performing team without having trust as a default. It's often the case where this isn’t true; people are siloed, individuals hog credit and only the highest-paid person’s opinion matters.

Low levels of trust in a team can highlight challenges such as misunderstandings which result in constant conflict and miscommunication masking themselves as external pressures.

I’m not completely jaded, I understand that technical skills and at times processes are critical to performance. It’s the human elements which act as an excelling force in unlocking potential.

Apart from winging it, and learning from just time gone by, how can we apply existing frameworks to build trust in our teams and unlock high performance?

The Window

A window is a fantastic metaphor for visualising trust and openness. Imagine if you and your team could look through a clear, transparent window into each other’s styles, strengths and blind spots. Knowing that information about each other would unlock approaches in working and practice.

The window is a tool that allows us to see more clearly each other’s interactions, perceptions and behaviours.

There is a well-established framework called the Johari Window method that helps teams guide themselves towards self-understanding and more open, transparent communication.

The Johari Window

The Johari Window provides a framework for building transparency and trust by guiding teams through a process of discovery and revealing different aspects of both individual and collective behaviours.

The Johari Window is a 4 quadrant zone, hence the window analogy: open area, blind spot, hidden area, unknown area.

• Open area is what is known to both the individual and to others. In teams, this can be shared information such as project goals and traits which are openly discussed.

• Blind spot is what is known to others but not to the individual. An example could be someone who talks the loudest in meetings.

• Hidden area contains stuff that the individual knows, but keeps hidden and at arms length. Typically this might be project concerns or personal struggles.

• The unknown area has items which neither the team nor the individual are aware of. In my experience, this shows via untapped potential and unexposed strengths.

The goal is to increase the size of the open area. Different teams and people will have grids that don’t match up.

How Do We Put This Into Practice?

To put this into practice you need to dive into each quadrant and analyse potential wins and put practices into place which help build transparency and trust.

Expanding the Open Area

• Failing publicly to improve team transparency. As the team are more open about their challenges, wins, failures, concerns and behaviours the open area grows as transparency grows. When we fail and learn publicly we automatically build trust with that person. Sharing reduces misalignment and under communication.

• Encourage regular knowledge sharing. Things like brown bags, retrospectives and demos provide an opportunity for the team to ensure critical information can be heard by everyone. Importantly, do these on the company’s time, nothing destroys participation in knowledge sharing quite like asking people to do this during their lunch or after work with a free pizza.

Reducing the Blind Spot

• Create a culture of feedback. My observations over 15 years in technology have taught me that when people hear the word feedback, they can become defensive or become anxious. We must understand that encouraging feedback means we share not only constructive but also public and private praise. Constructive usually comes from a place of wanting to better to situation in general. You can encourage deeper peer feedback on code reviews, one-on-ones and retrospectives for a few examples.

Decreasing the Hidden Area

• Encourage vulnerability via psychological safety. This again leans on not being afraid to fail in public, especially for more senior people. A senior developer being open about their concerns on an approach, or deadline will have 2 benefits; it will show others that we are ok to be vulnerable and it will prompt others to lend support which is a direct demonstration of high performance through trust. Build trust through openness and reduce the barriers to people sharing their struggles they are keeping in the hidden area.

• Default to transparency. People working on a software engineering team are too smart to see through facades. Help them understand good detail behind strategic decisions, what the context is behind a company-wide pivot, and perhaps even read into the financials of performance with them if they are concerned. You should always look to share all information unless there is a really good reason not to. Being transparent with others encourages them to be transparent back, and therefore can help unlock the items in the hidden area.

Exploring the Unknown

• Encourage new challenges. The unknown area often contains hidden talents or strengths that go unrecognised. Encouraging people to take on challenges, projects and issues outside of what they have typically been accustomed to not only allows for the fruition of these unknowns but the chance to create from the ground up.

• Hold team-building activities. Hackathons, bug smash weeks, company company-paid days out are all great ways of team-building. Importantly, make sure this is on the company’s dime and during the work day otherwise you are asking people to drop commitments and personal time, which rarely helps to build trust and openness. By building this camaraderie we are encouraging others to help find out unknowns.

Closing Thoughts

You cannot have a high-performing team with trust. You cannot have trust without openness and transparency. That is the foundation of a high-performing software engineering team.

The goal is to use the metaphor of looking through a 4-pane glass window and strive to make it a 1-pane window where the open area takes up the whole piece of glass.

Build your open areas, and decrease your unknowns. Share your insights with your teams and watch as they become more connected.

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