Morning Brew - 🐉 Game of Blames

Time-saving tools and products we’re really into rn.

Plan the vacation of your life and never miss a beat with this travel planner, because if you’re organized from the start, you can chill the rest of the trip.

First comes love, then comes…a prenup? Sort out your paperwork ahead of the wedding day with HelloPrenup, which helps you and your partner negotiate terms quicker and cheaper than a traditional attorney.

‍‍We hate to say it, but going into the office does have some benefits. Read this New York Times article, which details the lessons we can learn from our work besties.

When something goes wrong at work, it’s easy to play the blame game. But if team members are consistently pointing fingers at one another, there’s a good chance it’s because they’re lacking a critical element of success: psychological safety.

Psychological safety is a term that was popularized by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson. It’s an aspect of workplace culture that encourages smart risks, doesn’t unfairly punish mistakes, and produces stronger outcomes from professional dissent. When psychological safety exists, teams are able to innovate, accept stretch goals, and own their mistakes as learning opportunities.

Here are three ways to begin building psychological safety on your team:

Don’t avoid (healthy) conflict. Remember that conflict can be a good thing. It encourages teams to see multiple perspectives and think critically about important issues.

In a psychologically safe space, people understand that conflict can be respectful and productive. As a leader, you should call out conflict when you see it. You might say something like, “I sense some disagreement. Let’s explore each standpoint.”

Dissect failure like a scientist. Don’t worry: no lab coats necessary. Instead, make after-action reviews and project debriefs part of the process. When a team becomes accustomed to an open-minded dissection of failures, they begin to see the power of learning from missteps. Ask simple and direct questions such as: What might we have done differently? What are we thinking caused this less than satisfactory outcome? How is the situation different from what we expected?

Encourage all voices. Finally, and perhaps most simply, invite all voices to the discussion on a consistent basis. Not everyone communicates the same way. Some of us are outspoken; others are more reserved. When working collaboratively, pay close attention to who is sitting back and invite them to participate. Make it clear that the team is stronger when everyone brings their perspectives and points of view to the discussion, especially when the stakes are high and the path forward is uncertain.

Psychological safety is a team superpower that defeats the blame game to support stronger connections and better results.

Tech tips and tricks.

Is your computer giving you an error message that says your image file type isn’t supported? No worries, it’s easier than you think to change the file extension: Open the original file and click File > Export. Change the file name, select where you’ll save it, and click the drop down menu in Format. Select the file extension you want to use and Save!

You can do this on Windows systems as well by opening the image in Microsoft Paint and clicking File. Select Save As from the drop down menu and click on the box next to Save As Type. Select the new file format and press Save.—SS

Burning questions of our time.

We regret to inform you that you’ve been LARPing the majority of your day away. LARP stands for live action role play and it’s usually associated with adults dressing up in period costumes and hitting each other with foam swords. But if you’ve ever reached the end of what felt like a perfectly normal workday only to realize you have nothing tangible to show for your efforts, it’s likely you spent those hours taking part in an elaborate “performance” of corporate culture.

In a 2019 newsletter post, author Anne Helen Peterson argued that corporate LARPing is all about prioritizing the most visible parts of your job: responding in every Slack chat room, leaving your camera on during meetings in which you’re not otherwise contributing, sending out emails before the workday starts, etc. For those of us who spent most of our adult life dutifully clocking 40 in-person hours at the office, this kind of presenteeism often feels like the only way to prove your value in a remote world.

So has LARPing your way through work become a necessary evil if you want your career accomplishments to be noticed? Or should the work you produce simply speak for itself? Share your thoughts by replying to this email! —MW

And now, your thoughts on family life on display at work:

“I think it’s super important that we really monitor what is shared with our coworkers even via video call. It’s super easy to blur a background or mute yourself; there’s no need for your coworkers to hear personal noises or see the inside of your closet. I certainly don’t need anyone other than my husband seeing my closet; it’s truly a mysterious cavern of horrors! Honestly, is there anything worse than having a coworker comment on something happening behind you that you aren’t particularly proud of?”—Whitney

“How about we flip the question: is it OK to bring work life into your home? If my desk is going to take up physical space in my home that would otherwise be a yoga floor, the dog’s extra large corner, or where my kid makes his science experiments, you better believe when they need me, work can move over. Are we living to work or working to live?”—Sydney

Your punch list for when you punch out.

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