safety through risk reps instead of risk reduction

If you want a muscle to be strong, flexible, and reliable, you have to tear it. Not the traumatic tear of injury – the micro-tear of training and recovery. The strength comes from repetitions over time, repetitions of gradually ascending difficulty. This is a metaphor for building up skill and confidence and feedback appetite on your team, too. 

A good-hearted desire to make people feel safe can lead to reductive moves that freeze or sap people’s strengths. You try to achieve safety for them by reducing the risk of negative feelings. You don’t put people on the spot, on the stage, or up for (earnest, pro-social) public critique. You shield them from risk instead of exposing them to it.

The teams where I’ve seen the most consistent growth approach this very differently. They promote repetitions of the risk instead of reductions of it. Around here, people speak to the whole team all the time. Around here, we ship rough drafts and embrace the direct critiques of those drafts. Around here, we pitch an idea and workshop it on the spot. Around here, we move in a circle and give each other a piece of criticism and praise in 30 seconds. 

When you do this, you’re not asking everyone on the team to become a charismatic salesperson. You’re insisting that they build, ship, and revise like a good leader: with a focus on outcome more than appearance.

-eric