High Performing Teams Playbook

Welcome to another episode of the Testing Peers podcast. In this episode, Simon, David, Chris and returning host, Dan Ashby explore what makes a high-performing team and how leaders can intentionally create the right environment for teams to thrive. The conversation builds on both shared experience and real-world examples of navigating complex team dynamics.

Topics Discussed

• Psychological safety
How teams understand it, how fragile it can be and the different forms it takes, including inclusion, learning, contributor and challenger safety.

• Purpose and direction
Why clarity of mission anchors decision making and helps individuals see their contribution to collective outcomes.

• Skills, proficiency and growth
Understanding a team’s starting point, enabling learning opportunities and how building capability strengthens trust and accountability. Dan also introduces his High-Performing Teams Framework, which provides a structured model for these elements:
https://evolvingleadership.uk/the-hpt-framework/

• Trust and ownership
The importance of follow-through, transparency and what Chris refers to as decisive humility when leading in uncertain or inherited contexts.

• Joy and community
How internal communities, shared testing sessions, social connection and small rituals can support morale and cohesion, especially in remote environments.

• Real-world leadership experiences
Chris shares an example of challenging expectations from leadership by gathering context, sense-checking with peers and approaching difficult conversations with evidence and respect.

Also in this episode

Burnout, remote working dynamics, and the role of workplace friendships in supporting sustainable performance.

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Transcript

 Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Testing Peers podcast. I'm Simon, and tonight I'm joined by David. Hello, Chris. Hey, and Mr. Dan Ashby. Hey, tonight we're gonna be talking about high performing teams. Before we pass over to Dan for the banter, here's a message from our sponsors. Nfo are a UK based software testing company.

They've been supporting businesses for 24 years by providing services that include burst resource, accelerated test automation, performance testing, and fully managed testing services. In 2021, they launched a test automation academy to create amazing testers. And they've now created jobs for lots of people in our industry.

If you want to find out more about nfo, go to nfo.co uk or info@nfo.co uk to find out more. Dan, over to you. Great. 

So my banter question for you three is what was your favorite song in your teenage years? That, that one song that you used to listen to all the time when you were a teenager, 

teenage years kind of break down into like two parts though, right?

'cause you've got the bits when you as sort of the second I say, I say older teens, bit older. Older teens older. That's so for me, that's probably when we got to the, the kind of the, the, the beginnings of the. More so, um, more well spread new metal vibes in the world. And I would say probably crawling in the dark by Huba stank was a big favorite.

Nice. Very cool. So mine was that 2000, 2001, 2002 era. I think it was probably, I'm gonna say girl, all the bad guys want by bowling for soup. I was obsessed with them. I really was listened to him all the time. I still listen to him occasionally now, but yeah, that was definitely a song I had on repeat. 

So for me, early eighties or late eighties, early nineties, mine was a song by Blue Pearl, take Me Dancing.

Naked In the Rain, had that on CD and yeah, played it a lot. 

Gosh, CDs. 

Remember them? Oh, yeah. On my say cio. Um, yeah. CD player. 

I'm not sure I even could, could recognize that song. So, I mean, that's an interesting, I'm not gonna try singing it. Yeah, yeah. I 

wasn't gonna ask you. Well, the te the, the testing PI karaoke episodes are separate.

Special patron only. We, we need, we need Dan's, Dan's favorite song as a teenager as well. 

Oh, uh, I didn't realize I had to give mine. Um, so I was. I did so much music back then. That was the time when I was getting into the band, and I did some DJing as well, but I'd say maybe one song that I listened to maybe more than others, I was a big Red Hot Chili Peppers fan, but maybe, oh yeah.

That's good. Yeah. I go with the offspring though, like. I used to listen to the offspring all the time, so maybe, I don't know, like a song like Self-Esteem, something like that, something off that album, that entire album is good. 

Anything that was on the Crazy Taxi soundtrack I would've listened to quite a lot.

You see, you are saying Red Hot Shade of Purpose. That was, that was quite a lot later in my life, which I was definitely into, 

but uh, yeah. Interesting. There was loads of good bands back then. There were, I mean, a lot of 'em are still going, but 

yeah, they're all, they're all doing reunion tours now. Make you feel old.

Yeah. Muse was another one that was really, oh, can't 

they? Brilliant. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Let's suck off the rest of the cup. Let's just talk up music. Yeah. Let's, 

yeah.

Awesome. So the topic tonight we decided to talk about was high performing teams, and Dan suggested this. So Dan, do you wanna lead us into the conversation? 

Yeah, so it's something that I've been thinking about. For a long time, actually a but more recently while I was, uh, between jobs, let's see. It was, uh, and a lot of interviews and for the nature of the roles I was going for in engineering leadership, that a lot of questions came up around how do you build high performing teams.

So thinking a lot about that topic. And the way that my brain kinda works with trying to piece puzzles together with this kinda stuff. Uh, and I did, with the sort of growth framework that I built, I tried to formulate what a high performing team would consist of. Um, so there's different parts that I thought of, like psychological safety.

Uh, a high performance team typically has psychological safety, but also having that sense of purpose and the team's mission. Um. Having a sort of increased and additional learning mechanisms around improving competency and proficiency for a high performing team. So from a skills, knowledge and experience perspective, but then coupled with that, um, that proficiency level also builds trust and accountability and ownership.

So there's a bit of a cycle there. And then finally. One of the things that like, that felt, I always felt like there was something missing as well. And then thinking deep, much deeper about it. And more recently I've thought about that gap being joy in the workplace. So how do you high performing teams typically have a, a more joyful workspace work environment, which breeds.

Uh, deeper connections and transparency across the work as well. So thinking about it from that sort of formula perspective, it then got me thinking about is it possible to think about this in terms of building high performing teams as a playbook or a runbook? Um, what would that look like? So how would you design the environments or model the behaviors, uh, enable experimentation around all these sort of.

Categories, groups of things that would be in that formula. 

I think it's really interesting, you know, you need to have a balance in them, for them, for them all to succeed. For a high performance team, which do you think is the most difficult to achieve from experience? 

That's a good question. I think, um, each, so in my head, each of these different sort of categories, I'm, I'm gonna call 'em categories, right?

They have, they have their own challenges, but they all have different, every team has a different starting point across each of these. So you could look at things in terms of the initial challenge being, where's the starting point, how, how mature is the team with psychological safety, for example? Or how are they in terms of being open to.

Growing their, uh, proficiency and skills. You know, uh, do we even have those skills mapped anywhere so that we can see where the starting point is? So I think it would be actually quite a challenge walking into a brand new team to say, where are you on these categories? And I'd hazard a guess that. Many teams probably don't even understand what some of this stuff actually means.

When I say psychological safety. They might have all completely different understandings of what that means. We have our cameras on and our mics on during video calls, so therefore we are safe. It's not, you know, it is not really, there's different levels of that understanding as well, and awareness of these topics.

So that, that would be an initial challenge. You've all been involved in building high performing teams as well. 

Yeah, I think the biggest thing it, I think it depends. As you say, where you come from, but I think that the trust element is for me that the big people have to trust you first in order for to elicit change or to, or whoever it, I'm not talking about me.

You know? They need to trust each other, and I think that that is one of, and linked to that is the psychological safety that that allows people to actually talk with that. I think potentially the easiest ones are purpose. Because that's, that's sort of a group thing, and you can, you can discuss that and, and bring that forward buying into it as well as part of a team.

And then the sort of increasing, increasing the skills, knowledge and, and experience and, and the joy, again, it depends on the makeup of the team. The appetite for those two things may be very different in a team of. People my age in their mid fifties compared to a group of 20 year olds that write at the beginning of their career.

And so making sure that actually you have a balance of all those things and, and, and actually thinking about that, you know, thinking about that dynamics with, you know, 50 year olds. Also, psychological safety, again, the understanding of what psychological safety is. But, you know, 50 year olds have been burnt a lot may have been burned a lot of times.

Through not having psychological safety. Whereas 20 year olds may well be a little more slapdash and much more open with what they're doing because they've been less tarnished of that. So experience and the group, the context for Chris's word of the, the detail of the, of the people within the team absolutely changes the dynamics of how, what's most important 

within the team.

It's a really complex mix to try and get right. I think it depends on the people you have in the team to start with. I think, and I may, it may be slightly controversial here, but I've, I used to think that building high performance teams meant bringing in lots of superstars. And actually I've learned that actually.

It's about, as you say, as you say, David, it's, it's. Finding that vision, finding that purpose, and collaboratively working and building on what that team wants to build and work together. And if you're all fighting for the same purpose, you all understand the, the, the need for the skills to, to grow. And as a, as a sort of a knock on effect of that, you get the psychological safety, you get the other bits and pieces as well, but it also reflects on you as a leader.

How you lead that, how you drive that. Are you collaborative? Are you a decision maker that goes and does all the decisions on your own? Are you somebody that's open to, guys, we need to do this. Let's all get together in a room and whiteboard out some alternative, some options, and then we'll decide which one's the best one to go for.

If you are that collaborative kind of leader, that can really help that, that high performance. 'cause everyone feels empowered to help make the decisions, they all then feel empowered to do their own work. So I think it really depends on where you're starting from as far as the team dynamics, the people, the growth mindset compared to the fixed mindset.

The, the, have there been cultural issues previously? Have they had micromanagement previously? Are they in a place where they need to start again almost, or are they already on that journey? It, it all has an impact on, on where you start, on that, that, that sort of scale for building that team up. 

That makes it sound as if, if the starting point is a challenge, like if it's a real underperforming team.

They have maybe come from the, a previous manager that was micromanaging, for example. It, it feels as if that, I don't wanna say that that's a lost cause. Like you can always turn it around. Right. So maybe coming back to that sort of formula, I always kind of feel like if we move the needle on this stuff, the team can reach that high performance.

Right. 

Yeah, exactly. It might just 

take a bit longer to get there, but at the same time, if there's a lot of pushback, probably it's because there's a lack of trust or, uh, a lack of understanding in what the topic is that we're trying to push for, you know? So how do you move the needle on increasing awareness and, uh, proficiency and understanding that topic while also increasing the, the, the trust?

It's almost cyclical, right? If you improve. The, um, the competency and proficiency and someone being able to do something. So improving the skills, the knowledge, their experience in doing something, and you put that sense of purpose onto them using those skills and, and growing their experience purposefully, right?

So that sense of impact that they're making and then make that transparent. And transparency through the connections that they're building across the different teams and across the company as well, and up to leadership and that sort of safe environment that offers a bit of joy through community perhaps right.

That should grow, trust and grow more. Trust should then grant more opportunities and ability to then become more proficient and reach mastery level further. So it's cyclical in that sense, right? But then from that perspective, maybe it's a little bit too, uh, simplified in that sense. 'cause it's not that easy.

Right. Has grown some skills shown your work, what's the hidden parts in between? Right? How, how do you, maybe it's to do with opportunities actually. Like how do you find the learning mechanisms to grow that and, and the opportunity to do that's kinda somewhat dictated by the business perhaps so. Maybe that's as leaders or our biggest challenges in trying to get, 

it's a combination of things that I think influence the way that we go around this though, because ultimately we're all the product of our past, our experiences, the goods, the bads, things that we've, we've learned from discussing with other folks like we're doing now, and I dunno about you, but sometimes we overcorrect.

On things when we go, we don't get things right. And I think one thing that I always find hard to do, but I think we need to do is to lead with what I like to call decisive humility. Because we've gotta do something, we've gotta uncover context, we've gotta do a whole bunch of other things, measuring, sharing, but we need to sort of lead with that first part going, I don't know.

Everything yet, but together, you know, we can, we can uncover these things. We can define these things. Like you can't come in and go, I know everything right now. Let's just follow my like step-by-step playbook. There are things that I've gleaned, things that I've learned, heuristics that I can, I can bring along the way, but all people are different people.

And. Or contexts, however similar they look, are gonna be different. Measures of success are different in different places. What feels like optimization here doesn't feel like it over there. It's almost like how I ask a question. Even if I want the exact same outcome, it's gonna be different everywhere I go.

And that on paper can feel really frustrating. Actually, if you're decisive with your humility and you are, you kind of own that vein. Go, look, I don't know these things. I know what I might do, what I might do, but bite my tongue a little bit. Uncover things, working with people can build that trust you spoke about and hopefully that enables you to work together rather than just one person leading.

I dunno if that makes sense. 

It does. It does. It's really deep thinking there. Chris, I'm sorry. I think, and I totally, I get what you're saying, but it brings into that dynamic of, as an individual, your performance as an individual versus as a collective team. Right? 'cause when we're talking about high performance teams, it's usually in relation to.

Uh, an outcome that the team achieves through a range of different activities that each individual actions is, is the goal. Yeah. 

I, I was thinking about it more case of if I'm a leader in this, or at least a presumed leader in this situation, how do I operate in order that we can then define and drive those?

Ah, right. Okay. Because what you were saying also applies to the individuals and the teams as well, and they have to take their own like accountability and responsibility for, for. Their, their growth, their skills, um, their communication. For example, 

I was gonna say similar thing actually, that the role or the goal is to have a high performing team, but the team itself is.

Has a group of individuals in it and you know the things you described. Okay, purpose is a team goal and everyone can buy into it. But then there is that individuality of increasing skills and experience and stuff. Everyone will have had their own experience of that. So it's then galvanizing what the skills are needed for each individual to fulfill the purpose of the team.

So there is that, that juggling act of both. The end goal of the high performing team and the needs of every individual in order to achieve that particular goal. 

Yeah, and it may be that to get to that high performing team, there may be casualties on the way. It may be that the setup you have currently is not the setup you end up with at the end.

There may be people that are part of that initial. Performing of this high performing team that don't make it to the end. And it's about understanding that acceptance that there will be changes along the way. It may be a course, course direction redirection based on the people you have in that group, but in, and I think the biggest thing for this is it regardless of frameworks or anything else, it comes down to the people you have in that.

Team and people aren't binary. People have the ability to do random things that you don't expect or behave in a random way when you think they're gonna do something and they do something very different. People that you think are gonna be the real growth mindset to the ones that end up digging their heels in and saying they don't want to change, and it's working in navigating the complexities, knowing that that.

Vision is still in sight that you're aiming for and continuously relentlessly fighting towards getting to that, that end goal and that that's a skill that the leader needs to be, it needs to be relentless. It's, it's, it might be that you're setting up a culture of psychological safety and collaboration, but someone needs to be driving it relentlessly to get to that end goal.

Yeah, interesting 

point. It made me also think about the impact of morale as well. As part of that from an individual perspective. 'cause I've been in scenarios where the team, like, I don't know a good space, but maybe one person is affecting that morale. And actually I wouldn't have many teams out there have high morale in spite of problems rather than no problems causing high morale.

Right. That's probably the case where there's always going to be problems and challenges in the team, but they might have a really good collaborative and social environment that's spiking the morale, whereas everything else is pretty poor under the, under the seams. So it's, uh. Yes. There's too many dynamics to this.

It's, well, it's, it, that's, that's the thing in, in our industry though, isn't it? Everything's always filled with so many different balances, and the thing really is to be aware of changes. And like you say, the psychological safety, the open comes, they all really, really help in a position where if you're in a trusted space, you're gonna learn things sooner.

You are gonna act on things, you know. One of the most important things I think in achieving high performance is following through on stuff you say you're gonna do. Not, not, I, I hate the word committing, so I'm not gonna use it. But not saying you're gonna do something and then never doing it all, and, and those sort of things following through on these things.

What's the point in this valuable deep conversation about something if the outcome is nothing changes. And what's the point in asking for feedback? If we do nothing with feedback, what's the point in reviewing some, some documentation, some processes, some strategies. If it doesn't change anything. And you know, you talked about morale quite a lot there, and people you know only have so much to invest in a day.

And if they're investing theirselves in things that they don't see the value in, then 

what is the point? And that's, that's a really good point actually. People, like you say, people only have so much time to invest and I think I've, I've been burnt in the past where I've gone in so collaboratively minded that I want to, everything needs to be a group decision.

Everything needs to be a collaborative decision. And actually people get. Almost fatigue from being involved in the decision making. And I think sometimes it comes down to finding that balance for you as a leader and for the team as to what the right process is to make them move, to help them move forward.

And it may be there me to be decisions that you make as a, as a leader on your own. And there may be other things that it's the right thing to bring 'em together. Setting the vision might be a really good thing to bring in the rest of the team and collaboratively do it together. And that helps everyone get invested to move forward.

But there may be other things around direction of automation or direction of, you know, how we're gonna engineer a solution that you don't need 50 people in the room to work that out. You can do that as a much smaller group or a, a couple of people bouncing ideas on a white off on a whiteboard. And that ca plays a key part into that psychological safety as well, because you need to have the right balance between decision making and overloading the team.

And, and if they don't feel safe enough to say, you know what? I don't need to be in this decision. You guys can do it without, then you're not helping that environment grow. You're not helping the people feel that they're empowered. And then ultimately it comes down to the, to the bigger picture.

Yeah, that's a strong point. And I guess it also goes both ways as well. Like as a leader, you're coming from that perspective of you don't have to be making that decision, right? But the team could also be saying that upwards as well. So still that comes back to that having that sense of purpose. Right.

And it's the same as what you were saying, Chris, as well. Having that sense of purpose really ties people to that. I think, 

I think it highlights a good point actually, Simon, that again, it's the trust element as well for me, is that if, if they have a purpose and there is that psychological safety, then people trust the dynamics of the group to come up with the right decision.

Because there might be times in that collaboration session where they're not able to make it, but if they feel that the overall group has the right. You know, um, idea as to what the, the purpose and the direction of the group is, then actually you don't necessarily need to be there as that critical friend or voice or whatever in order to do it.

But also picking that upon Chris's point is that in order to make sure that, that in workshops we don't just discuss things talking about psychological safety. It's all very well, but actually putting things in place so that people can feel psychological, safe, just safety, just because they know that in certain situations they don't feel psychologically safe.

Therefore, we need to make sure that they can feel psychologically safe in in every situation or in most situations. And just by. Just by talking about it in a workshop doesn't mean to say that it's gonna be any better. You need, you need to actually do something, and we've mentioned it before, action. I think psychological safety is one of the most difficult ones, I think.

To enable because it isn't obvious, you know, a purpose. You can have a meeting and you can come up with a purpose, but psychological safety is completely the group's, um, dynamics basically. 

And it's subjective per person as well. Yeah. Everybody's has a different view of what psychological safety means to them.

Yeah. 

And that makes it a real challenge to be able to define something based on the team feeling psychologically safe. So it's a real, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a worthwhile. Journey. But it can be a real challenging one because everyone can have different perspective and it's not something you can just go, right, we're psychologically safe now.

'cause it only takes one comment, and this is the challenge of psychological safety. You can spend months and months building up the cultures that everyone feels safe, and then someone makes an ignorant comment or someone makes a mistake in how they communicate and you can lose all of it. And it's a real, it's a real continuous battle to get it right.

For me, I think one of the key things with psycho psychological safety as a leader is to show that you are, you are human. That you are on the side of the people you can have and, and we've shared it before on our podcast, you know, that we suffer from imposter syndrome. We, you know, we have the same feelings as the people with line manage and, and showing that that.

Humanity, I think goes a long way that actually we can say things to people and be honest and that can then bring back honesty back. Generally, 

there's a respect piece as well. I think because back, back to my, I dunno, my catchphrase of the day, the decisive humility is I'm not gonna get everything right.

And so you, you, you know, you, you mentioned that one person might say something wrong. There might be something that offends people, the wrong choice of language. You might have called a group of people, guys and people don't like that. You might have entered into other semantic debates and things that people don't, don't appreciate.

And you know, the respect comes from being also humble enough to accept challenge. And change and listening to people and, and doing those things. Um, I think that that's a, that that's a, a demonstrable way of going. Like, we're not gonna be perfect in this, but we can adapt and change based on that sort of feedback.

And, you know, that that is part of a trusted relationship. You know, I work with a lot of people who've got names that I couldn't pronounce easily, but you take the time to learn how to say them. People tell you their. Preferred pronouns. You learn those things. You apologize if you get them wrong. You challenge other people.

Be a good ally where you get the opportunity. Those things help to build trust and safety in that place as well. But they also don demonstrate, hopefully if you can then do the upwards where perhaps there's an external misunderstanding of what we're trying to do or or assumptions that are made. If you can then.

Advocate to the wider organization, the leadership teams, whoever, and go, actually that language doesn't help us actually, that isn't a useful request. Those sorts of things. And sort of demonstrating that because a leadership position is a position of privilege as well as, uh, quite a chore at times, but to be able to demonstrate fighting those battles, speaking that language, bringing those things to life, that is a really powerful privilege to have.

Chris, you have touched on three types of psychological safety in there as well, because obviously when you're talking about like that sort of terminology that's used as that inclusion, safety aspect, right? Um, but then making those mistakes and learning from them, there's a learning safety aspect there as well.

So, for example, saying something and I'm being hounded by people that are on the defense, and you want people to defend, right? But. It has to be safe for people to learn in that context as well. And then when you're talking about feeding that up, there's a sort of challenger aspect to safety as well. I'm gonna challenge what leaders are saying.

Um, there's actually a fourth, which is, uh, contributor safety as well. So people being able to contribute with ideas, for example, which can be equally as challenging as the other three. But yeah, that's a nice, that's a nice set of examples. To cover it. 

We could give actual real lived examples as well.

'cause we've talked a lot about theory right now, and I think sometimes we can all be a bit guilty of leaning too hard into the theory of what we've done and, and maybe not going a bit deeper diving. So I'm in, in my sort of decisive humility, perhaps I'll give an example of something that I've had to do just to sort of lean into real life examples.

So I've got, I've got one where I worked with a, a leadership team who had some very different experiences to that, which I had, but also weren't really willing to shift their expectations, their wants, their usages, regardless of what. I felt was right. What I felt was right for my team, what my team felt was right.

I pride myself in taking the time to get to know people, context, uncover these sorts of things as, as par of the course with what I do. Um, and yet there were a lot of requests that mentally I knew were wrong, but I had to find a way to challenge those things. And I wasn't the only person, however, I was the, the, the leader and I didn't.

Do what my gut wanted me to do first, which was to, to bite back immediately, which is what I want to do. I hear something that's, that's wrong. I don't think it's correct, but I was representing a new team, a new context. So I took what I heard. I did that little sort of, let me, let me get back to you friend.

They sent a couple of chasers 'cause they like to do that. I might not have used the word friend and I went and I. Found folks that I felt like were people that I already had a bit of a connection with, a bit of an understanding with sort of early adopters, if you like, in the building of our quality culture in the company.

And, and I spoke to them about what I'd heard, what the requests were and what my initial thoughts were. But before really anchoring, anchoring them too much on what I felt I wanted to hear what. They thought how they felt this had been. Has there been any precedent? How had they dealt with these things before?

How had other people encountered these things? I needed to know all of these things first before I then clapped back. If you will, because, and a without context, or without data or without informed approach, was going to carry a lot less weight. And I wanted to ensure that I was better representing the needs of my team and also trying to drive something that would earn the respect of the people above so that we could actually build towards something tangible and useful going forward.

And. That might take a couple of hours. You might have to mute your teams for a short while, while somebody's chasing you for exact answers. But taking that time, uncovering that context, sanity checking with another human or two or three rubber ducking if you will, really, really helps get clarity of thought, backing yourself up with your ideas.

'cause your gut often isn't wrong as a tester, but qualifying it. Always helps if you have the opportunity to do so. Then presenting that back with 1 1, 2, 3 opportunities and go, I hear what you've said. This is what I've understood from our current context. This is what I believe will be useful. This would be my preferred option.

Let's have a conversation about it. Trying to meet somebody, not disrespect to them, not saying you don't know nothing, mate. This is all different, but approaching a conversation in a very respectful way and qualifying it with actual. Data really, really helped me in building trust, both with my team and with leadership in a very awkward time when I knew I was dealing with requests that were totally unhelpful and I I early doors.

When you are new in a company, you can find yourself really worried about what is the precedent that I'm setting? How are people perceiving my work? What, what's this first step in my legacy going to be? And you can, you can really worry and overthink it. So playing back to other people, sanity, checking things and making sure that you are really, really sure that you are doing the right thing by your whole team is a good way of demonstrating leadership.

I think communication and safety and trying to do the right things In terms of representing yourself, I, I noted that one of the things that Jay Humphrey on his High Performance podcast says is really important is that. Integrity piece. People want to feel like there's a purpose to what they're doing, and they're, they're true to themselves.

And I think that's the way I have approached this in more than one team. Um, and it does take more time, and it does annoy people when they're waiting for a response. But I don't want to set a bad precedent representing people incorrectly with those things. 

Love that example. I wonder if I can ask a question though.

Chris was psychologically was psychological. Leading your behavior intentionally or was it more of an outcome of you doing that because you, your story, you're speaking about communication skills, you're speaking about influence skills, you're speaking about being data driven with decisions on, on what to prioritize, what to push back on, right?

So there's lots of stuff in there. Were you intentionally doing that stuff? Using psychological safety as a guiding policy in that, or was it more that that was an outcome of you doing that stuff? 

It was more than one reason that was doing it. There was a reason of I've, like I said before, product of bad environments, before bad environments that have led to burnout.

Not just for myself, but o other people and, and sort of, you know, big piles of crap that have gone on, on, on for, on and on and, and have been very unrecoverable, but also because the more you look into, the more you read, the more you understand these things, the more you think I need to be more. Aware of other things, and even if being aware of other people and other things doesn't come naturally, I think in leadership you have to be proactive in the way that you look at those things and maybe not do, like I said, that instinctive thing for me, which was to clap back straight away, but to bite my tongue and actually take that time first because I know that I'm not just representing myself, I'm representing other people in this conversation, um, as well.

But more recently on, on the, the burnout topic. This is a tiny segue and I do apologize, but there was a, I, I just recently watched it, um, some old episodes of Shetland. Which is a, a lovely detective show on, on the BBCI say lovely. It's always quite grim and dark, but makes certainly look beautiful, but many murders.

Um, but one of the characters goes through some, some physical abuse and it's quite terrible and, and awful, and it's kind of a running theme quite early on. And she goes through therapy as part of it. But it's a theme that that comes back through several times. And there's a, there's a quote that I believe is quite relevant in terms of how people deal with.

Burnout. And I think burnout is relevant to this conversation because a lot of us get very frustrated and don't know what to do with it. And that can really weigh us down at, at home in a way. And, and she goes back to therapy after a short while. And I, and I've got a quote, and this is, it's been a while since Chris has read something story time with Chris in the podcast, but I think it's relevant to, to hear, hear.

'cause I think it qualifies some of what I was talking about, um, in terms of trying to, uh, there's a bit of me, but a bit of us. And, and what she says when she goes back to the therapy. She says, you said to come back if I was struggling, but I'm not struggling. I'm coping really well, and I know that because I watch myself all the time to be sure that I'm not letting what happened to me change my behavior or or to my choices or define me 24 7.

I'm keeping it together and it's exhausting.

There's a lot of things, baggage that people carry with them and even people who are looking fine, strongest of strongest of leaders, people that we respect could well be looking great, but could be absolutely sad and exhausted, and I think that's social empathetic. Leadership awareness thing can be very, very tiring and we don't know what everyone else is going through, even the ones who are pissing us off more than anybody else's business.

I think that's a really good answer and yeah, thank you for, thank you for story time. It's always good to have Chris's story time. You highlight a good point. Actually, you know, I don't think we've touched on it. It's the joy aspect you've mentioned there about people's struggles and I know we're running outta time, but.

Could you give, could anyone give any real world examples where they have sort of, uh, brought joy or there has joy been brought within the teams that have helped with that high performing team? 

I think my example there would be looking back to creating that internal community. Having the, what we used to call the test parties on a Friday afternoon where we'd exploratory test as a group, parts of the system or getting external speakers in to come and talk to us, or inviting even the C-suite to come and test with us to learn about how we test and get in the comments of, wow, I didn't realize you guys did so much that brought kudos.

It bought morale boosts. Um, and, and that really helped with the sense of joy. From a leadership perspective, the challenge came when they wanted more and more of that. But then I was getting the whispers of, well, you're just having too much fun. You need to get on with your work. And it was trying to get that balance right.

Well, well we are, we are doing our work, but we're having fun while we're doing it, but also trying to get there. So yeah, I, the community side, if you get it right, can be a real, real win for the, for the joy. But obviously you need to find a way to, to help that. Nine to five rather than just a one hour on a Friday afternoon.

Yeah. 

Um, if possible. 

I think another thing that that's always helped is humor. Having humor and a laugh. And, you know, it does, the thing with joy is it doesn't have to cost a lot. It can just be simple things that people are able to, had a bit, have a bit of enlightenment during the, the workday because time pressures and things can really.

Bring people down. So, and I think that that joy is something that is lacking sometimes in the drudgery of the day and the work that needs to be done and, and concentrating on the output. Whereas actually, yeah, concentrating on, on a little bit of joy and certainly goes a long way. 

Yeah. For me there's also something to be said about friendships at work.

So like onboarding into like, okay, my last company was fully remote. Um, I've joined another company that's fully remote and that scenario of onboarding into a company, it's very much, uh, meet people, but talk about work, right? So one of the things that I've been trying to do, especially in my last company, was.

How do people actually make friendships? If you're in an office, you have coffee breaks, you have kitchen chat, and you get to know people from that sort of small talk and find commonalities and build some friendships over time, how do you do that in a remote setting? So I think Simon, what you were saying about communities is really important in that aspect.

Yeah. Even not even just us, so. Get together and learn together context, but actually like Slack channels, having a gaming Slack channel, for example, and just, or music Slack channel and just chatting and finding commonalities. And there's tools for Omo teams like Donut where you can have. Random coffee chats with people.

Just don't talk about work. If you're using them, just get to know them and in that way, building the friendships as well. And if you can have that within a team. So have the social events with the team. Uh, have space on a Friday to play games together and get to know each other. Have lunch together or whatnot.

Um, even if it is remotely with a monitor, with your camera on, uh, just getting to know people to build a friendship brings a bit of joy there as well. Working with people that you'd consider your friends, you know. 

Actually, you really highlight a point there. I remember working with Chris and despite traveling to work with Chris, we then chose to have elevens and three t uh, in the afternoon and then drove home again.

So we actually had 15 minutes in, uh, two points during the actual working day just to catch up. Despite having had an hour in the carb both directions, but it really added to the workday, it gave us structure and allowed us to. To really connect, uh, much more it, something to look 

forward to in the day.

Sometimes that's, that's nice. And you're right, you're right. And in, in the remote times, it, it's not as easy. Um, we have to learn how to. Be human behind a camera and interacting in, in different ways with ways that we, we maybe don't quite so easily get to do in person. But I think that's probably a really good place to, to end up.

We could talk about this for a long time. We can talked about the music for a long time. But, um, thank you very much, Dan, for joining us. I think it's the fourth episode you're appearing on, so thank you very much. You've gotta gotta climb that league table a little bit. 

Oh, I'm trying, man. It's a pleasure being on here, to be honest.

So too much fun. 

And Dino, you, like we said, your, your, um, podcast with Mr. Jan away was, was a big inspiration for us, so thank you for that. Um, 

that, that actually started in a similar sort of vein to what you were saying there, David, like me and Steve used to work together and. We'd go to the public lunchtime for, and we'd have these epic conversations, you know, over building the friendship.

So just decided to start recording. It's been so long now. 

It was, it was, it's really good that we appreciate it. And, um, if you like a bit more, Dan Ashby in your life. Dan is on our program committee with our co-program chairs, Simon and David, and we'll be at testing peers. Conference peers gone 26 on March 12th.

Tickets are still available. We would love to see you there. Anyway, friends, we want to see you at the conference. That's the most important part. If you can't afford it, we will have scholarship tickets. We will find a way to get you to come and join us in Nottingham on the 12th of March in 2026. We'd love to see you there.

Thanks again to our lovely sponsors and focus who also sponsored the conference before, and we will. See you slash you all hear us next time. Thank you very much. 

For now it's goodbye from the testing peers. Goodbye.