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Example: Checking In

Software Corp’s app development team consists of Alice, Bob, Charlie, Dave and Eve. They have agreed to start working with psychological safety, in the hopes that it can help their team grow and develop even better apps in the future. They have chosen to adopt the tool “Checking In”, and have decided to conduct it at the start of their morning stand-up.

Alice goes to random.org, and rolls a number between 1 and 7. She rolls a 1. Alice picks statement number 1, and asks the team to rate the statement “If I make a mistake in this team, it is held against me” on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). All the team members anonymously put a number on a post-it note, and puts it in a cup on the middle of the table. Alice takes out the notes once everyone is done, and calculates an average of 4. She tells the team that they scored a 4 on the statement, and asks if anyone has any thoughts about that. Bob says: “Last week I deployed our new login-flow to the app, and accidentally blocked new users from signing up. We laughed about it after fixing it, and Eve told me a funny story of how she once accidentally deleted a customer account”. Eve chimes in: “I remember that time, I will say, I was really terrified that I would get into trouble for that when it happened. I think I was afraid that Charlie would think we were very careless with the customer data.” The conversation continues, as Charlie gives his recount of the events. Finally Dave speaks up and says: “I think, sometimes we can be a bit quick to the jokes, and it can feel a little like mockery. Maybe we should establish a one week grace period, before joking about other people’s mistakes?” The others like Dave’s proposal, and Bob finally adds: “As long as I can still make fun of my own mistakes immediately!” The team laughs it off before going back to work.

The Seven Statements​

  1. If I make a mistake in this team, it is held against me.
  2. Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.
  3. People on this team sometimes reject others for being different.
  4. It is safe to take a risk in this team.
  5. It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help.
  6. No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.
  7. Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.