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Comment by xutopia | Hacker News Reader

There is a backlash to this ancient mode of thinking. It's called Conscious Leadership and it's predicated on the idea that vulnerability brings better results and that you need a safe environment for the dynamic to flourish. Some of it sounds very new-agey but from what I've read and experienced it has really good fundamentals.

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That's very naive though. Eventually there will be someone around who is politically motivated or otherwise adversarial, and then your safe space is gone and everyone who exposed themselves remains exposed. No matter how much we want the new-agey stuff to work, it just doesn't because it requires everyone to play by its rules, which doesn't happen in reality.

To add to this, I made the huge mistake a few years ago of admitting to an amount of social anxiety at a certain workplace. Within a few weeks that admission of vulnerability was used against me as a reason I wasn't a good fit for a project that I know I would have been great at. I left over it. Never again.

The things that are exposed should still be work-related. Be honest about why deadlines were missed, what failures were in designs, etc, and basically work against just everybody putting on a "Yes everything is great!" facade.

That facade breeds distrust and low morale. Even if things aren't going great, being honest about it keeps motivation up better than the alternative.

Do retrospectives at regular intervals and encourage everyone in the team to bring up (almost) any issues, large or small, in those meetings, and discuss them, with a solution-focused outlook - what can we actually try in order to address this problem?

An essential feature of retrospectives is that upper management, and internal/external customers, are not invited - and do not get to see the raw whiteboard, but only - if they see anything from it - a sanitised summary that's relevant - and diplomatic - for them. This all helps to encourage openness.

Prisoner's dilemma: if everyone shares it's great all around. If everyone shares and you don't, still safe but less benefit for you. If nobody shares and you do, you're hosed. Strategy: always defect.

It seems like this parallels the need for encryption. I don't over-share in meatspace for the same reason that I don't deliberately make myself vulnerable in cyber-space.

I agree, but, I also wonder if some of this 'it is okay to share' is because of social media's influence on what is acceptable to disclose.

No, it's just immature thinking from people who aren't familiar with the workplace and its norms. If it wasn't social media it would be some IRL friends.

Extract all value, then discard.

Special-purpose accounts aren't allowed here. HN is for thoughtful conversation, which takes place between individuals, not abstractions.

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