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@grimalkina Great thread, but I especially want to +1 this point.

A lot of my success in running software teams comes from being very mindful about keeping people's psychological defense systems from kicking in.

As soon as people get on the defensive, they are no longer working together to find the objectively best engineering solution -- you are fighting over semantic territory. We're hard-wired for it, when egos are threatened they will fight to win.

But threatened minds are not open or curious. They aren't taking in new data, they are defending what they already know. Listening stops, synthesis stops, creativity stops. And team dynamics go to shit, too.

It's not easy to get folks to engage and debate without feeling threatened, but it can be done. Takes a good amount of finesse at first, but if you can get it established as a cultural norm it can make magic happen.