Chapter 21. Personality and Agile ALM

Top technology professionals often have remarkable analytical and technical skills. However, even the most skilled professionals often have great difficulty dealing with some of the interesting behaviors and personalities of their colleagues. Implementing an agile ALM requires you to be able to work with all of the stakeholders and navigate the frequently thorny people issues inherent in dealing with diverse groups of very intelligent, albeit somewhat idiosyncratic, and often equally opinionated, people.

In order to be effective, you need to understand the corporate culture.

We often assess existing practices and make recommendations for process improvement based on industry standards and frameworks. While implementing our recommendations, many organizations ask us to mediate discussions between teams mired in very counterproductive behaviors. One pattern we often see is the very bright technical guru who has quietly become an expert in a particular niche and carefully maneuvered himself into a position where he is the only trusted resource in this area—essentially, a “keyman risk.” The resulting problems become apparent when the teams get ready to deploy their code.

In most large organizations, there are federal regulatory requirements for maintaining a well-delineated separation of duties. These rules make sense because having the developer turn over his code and build procedures helps to ensure that corporate assets, along with the procedures to build, package, and deploy the code, are safeguarded. In our practice, we often hold working sessions where we have the developer and operations personnel on the same call to iron out the procedures being established to automate the application deployment. This is an essential step in implementing continuous delivery and continuous deployment successfully. Very frequently, however, we feel like we are playing referee in a full-contact rugby game as we make the different teams aware of one another’s perspectives. The biggest issues are often related to communication styles, with culture coming in a close second.

Communication styles vary significantly from one person to another. Some technology professionals find it particularly difficult to communicate with each other. Too often, we see people getting defensive and attempting to shut down the conversation. DevOps strives to increase communication and collaboration so that people who are by nature uncomfortable communicating may begin to contribute more, rather than following their usual pattern of retreating and withdrawing. We also find that cultural norms can impact explanatory and response styles.

International corporations, by definition, include many people from different countries, who each bring along a set of expectations that affect their behaviors and communication styles. Although no one wants to stereotype a cherished colleague, most people realize that one’s culture impacts how they interact with the world. Some cultures can be characterized as relatively passive and conflict-avoidant. We see colleagues who struggle, or just simply refuse, to deliver bad news and say “yes” too much—possibly because they just were not socialized to be assertive and thus lack the ability to turn down a request directly. Others seem to be easily intimidated by managers with significant positional power. Highly effective organizations have cultures that empower all members of the team to speak freely, especially when the news may be bad. Although loyalty is certainly important, failing to share important information out of a misguided reluctance to appear negative may lead to serious problems within the team.

Organizational structures are essential for any large corporation. These entities require management guidelines to operate and function effectively. Good managers instill loyalty in their staff, but there is also a dark side: organizational silos can act as if they are in competition with each other. Interdepartmental rivalry results in behaviors that often resemble a volleyball game, with each side throwing responsibility over the net to the other group. In DevOps, we remind each member of the team that the enemy is not on the same payroll. Teams should be incentivized to work together for the common good. The only way you can make this happen is if you understand the personalities and behaviors of the people on your team.

Savvy managers listen carefully to the way their team members communicate and interact with each other. True leaders exhibit behaviors that encourage positive interactions, including excellent communication and collaboration. The accomplished manager will also understand the cultural norms of the technology experts who are on their teams. The rapid rise in globalization of commerce and social networking means that most employees now find themselves working in a culturally diverse international community. It behooves today’s professional to understand how we can utilize our strengths and abilities to work together in the most effective way possible.

One construct that we find very useful to understand organizational culture is called the collective unconscious.

Later in this chapter, we will discuss how positive psychology can help us understand effective behaviors, including leadership, which are essential for successful organizations. But positive psychology is primarily focused on the individual, and we have learned that understanding the ecosystem of the organization, along with its culture, is also essential for our success.

In our practice, we usually focus on helping teams improve their configuration management best practices, with particular attention to communication-related factors. Often, we are asked to assess existing practices and then form a plan for a long-term process improvement initiative. These initiatives will only succeed if they are aligned with the organizational culture and the overall environment within which the team must operate. This means our approach for a defense contractor may be very different from that of an Internet startup or a large international bank. To succeed, we first must understand the basics and then adapt our approach to the organization’s unique identity.

To the outsider, many organizations may appear to be mired in bureaucracy, impeding any attempt to make things better. It can sometimes seem impossible to overcome resistance to change and get the team moving forward. When things get really bad, catastrophic mistakes occur, and this is frequently when the senior managers of these organizations call for help. You may find yourself in just such a situation, especially when starting a new job—if you are very lucky, this might be exactly the reason that you were hired in the first place. To be successful, you need to understand not just the technical processes and structures within the company, but the organizational culture as well. We encourage you to embrace the opportunity, but to go in fully aware that you need to size up the situation pretty quickly in order to be effective.

We have found from experience that psychotherapist Carl Jung’s construct of a collective unconscious can be very helpful in getting a basic understanding of how and why folks behave the way they do in a particular organizational environment. Dr. Jung believed that we are all products of patterns of behaviors that he called archetypes. Archetypes provide the structure of a collective body of knowledge that defines basic human behavior and situations. Dr. Jung’s view considered many factors, including images, symbols, and public knowledge that everyone in the culture “just seemed to know.”

Our approach is to listen to the “rhythm” of communication within the organization. In one company, we noted that several engineers in different groups all seemed to be afraid to offer their opinions regarding anything outside their direct responsibilities. With a little probing, we found that these colleagues were each intelligent and knowledgeable, just very cautious to speak out of turn.

In other conversations, we found team members who acted as if they were in competition with each other, and they were not motivated to really help each other out. We later learned that promotions were indeed competitive and these employees were actively fighting against one another to attain the next pay grade. Another team in the division had been acquired as part of an organizational merger. Many of their colleagues had been let go during the transition, and they were the “survivors,” left to cope with a distracting mix of feelings, including worry, fear, and guilt.

You may not be able to modify every cultural challenge in the organization. But understanding what you are up against may help you form a strategy that can encourage and promote initiative in even the most stifling organizations. At the very least, you can acknowledge the stress and frustration that team members express.

We believe that most organizations operate based on a type of collective unconscious. If you listen carefully to the “rhythm” of their communications, you may find that you are much more capable of designing effective process improvement strategies, from change control to release management, that are aligned with the corporate culture and thus considerably more likely to be accepted and implemented.

Many professionals, although experts in their technical niche, are sometimes less than perfect at communicating effectively with colleagues from other departments. The end result can be departments that fail to work effectively together, thus resembling silos more than a collaborative and cohesive organization.

Teams sometimes behave in a dysfunctional and self-sabotaging manner. They may compartmentalize information and refuse to collaborate with other members of the organization even when there is a clear need to know. Other members of the organization frequently attribute such behavior to fear and distrust. There have been many studies [1] of what sociologists and psychologists describe as in-group and out-group behavior, where team members typically act more favorably toward members of their own team and may deliberately not cooperate with those outside the group. This tendency to “protect one’s turf” may be especially problematic when trying to implement a complex system requiring cooperation from stakeholders throughout the organization. Covering up mistakes or working to maintain complete control over a function that should be shared between stakeholders is another commonly recurring dysfunctional behavior. It can be helpful to understand some of the personality traits that can be seen in members of the team who act in a way that hampers the success of the team and to understand what traits help facilitate great teamwork and success for the entire organization.

The organization needs to ensure that all of the stakeholders understand the need for transparency, even when there is a requirement for a separation of duties (as is often the case with development and operations). Much has been written about the natural tension between development and operations. Developers are required to produce successive releases of the system with improved functionality and new features on a regular basis. In fact, without new features the organization may not be able to keep up with the competition and could actually cease to exist as a corporate entity. Meanwhile, operations staff members are generally focused on maintaining continuous and uninterrupted services. It is no surprise that some people are drawn to one area of focus or another, and that is also true for those who become quality assurance analysts or information-security specialists. There are also times when groups that must interact are indeed not even part of the same organization; this is especially true with cloud-based development.

Development in the cloud inevitably places a dependency upon support organizations that may be external to the business function. Cloud-based development has many advantages, but one clear disadvantage is sometimes seen when the cloud supplier support organization does not believe that it needs to be transparent with the client-support organization. Service-level agreements (SLAs) can only go so far when communication is hampered by the supplier-client relationship. This is also true when organizations depend for support upon vendors who may not have the same sense of urgency as the business entity that will be directly negatively affected by a service outage.

We often see organizational dynamics that adversely impact the team’s ability to achieve success. This dysfunctional behavior may be observed as a mismatch in organizational power between existing organizational silos. There is a natural tension between development and operations. When this relationship is in balance, each side helps the other. But when there is imbalance, bad things can happen.

Some operations groups have very strong positional power and can actually shut down new approaches, essentially stifling organizational agility. When this happens, operations becomes a bottleneck in the development process, resulting in a loss of productivity and quality. Some operations groups hide behind their existing rules and insist that any deviation will result in significant risk to the firm. By shunning innovation, operations is sometimes responsible for slowing down the deployment process, which itself can result in significant risk to the firm. However, operations is not the only potential bad player.

Development can also yield an excessive amount of power within an organization, often because they are in the best position to know the latest tools and technologies. Unfortunately, they sometimes keep operations in the dark until the very last moment. I have seen development teams use their superior technical knowledge to run rings around the operations team and exhibit significant power to bypass existing IT controls, often with the excuse that operations lacks the technical expertise to support the application themselves. DevOps is supposed to help address these issues, but some developers basically use DevOps as a rationale to usurp the role of operations by deploying their own code direct to production. When this happens, some developers are actually motivated to keep operations in the dark even more so that they can maintain free rein in production.

Personality plays a key role in these situations because individuals tend to fall back on the behaviors they find most comfortable and familiar. Some technology professionals have a strong need to maintain absolute control and will orchestrate the balance of power to ensure that they can maintain their own positional influence. We have observed developers who actually try to bypass their operations colleagues in order to maintain their position of being the only smart person in the room. Likewise, there are operations folks who know that they could be a little more flexible, but they distrust the developers, so they stick with adhering to the letter of the law.

Technology practitioners who engage in turf wars and power grabs are obviously not going to fit well into a high-performance cross-functional DevOps team. Distrust and fear—which are often significant motivators driving individuals to try to maintain their positional power—can sabotage the goals of the team.

Positive psychology teaches us that the best way to combat these dysfunctional behaviors is to model and empower strong leadership and good teamwork. When we see these problems in a group, we help the leadership understand their role in creating a collaborative and positive environment. With top-down support, we can then assist the professionals engaged in the day-to-day work.

DevOps enables groups to find the right level of balance by promoting the creation of cross-functional teams, an organizational structure in which everyone has a shared goal as well as common responsibilities. The DevOps team focuses on sharing knowledge and building trust through a mutual experience. Unfortunately, some team members prefer to remain on their own and actually may not be able to adjust to the demands of a cross-functional team. Although these individual contributors still may be able to provide value to the organization, it is important to ensure that their roles are clear and they do not adversely impact the DevOps transformation.

The balance of power between highly skilled development and operational professionals provides a valuable set of checks and balances that helps the team achieve agility, along with exceptional productivity and quality. Strong leaders ensure that their teams maintain this equilibrium along with the teamwork needed to reach excellence. If you can maintain an appropriate balance, then your organization has a much greater chance of achieving success, while also meeting and exceeding your customers’ expectations.

Psychologists have spent decades researching personality [2] and developed many different models to explain the behaviors that we observe in the people with whom we interact on a daily basis. One of the most well-respected models, based upon many studies, is known as the five-factor model. The five factors—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (OCEAN)—describe essential dimensions of personality. We all express some degree of each of these five factors in our own personality, although the specific range of each factor can certainly vary considerably from one individual to another.

Successful sales professionals are typically high in extraversion, whereas police and law enforcement personnel are often focused on conscientiousness. Folks who have personalities more geared toward being agreeable typically exhibit highly social behaviors and enjoy the company of others, often demonstrating more kindness, empathy, and affection for others than the average person. Sometimes these people come across as “pack animals” that seem to be most comfortable operating within the context of a group. By definition, folks who are agreeable prefer to get along and are more comfortable concurring with others, and that is exactly why problems may arise.

The dysfunctional side of agreeableness manifests itself in extreme conflict avoidance. These are the people who just cannot take a stand and always seem to forgo their own will for the sake of “getting along” with others. In our book on configuration management best practices, we discussed the middle child who is often the peacemaker in the family [3]. This behavior is not always a problem and can come in handy in helping others understand others’ differing views.

Unfortunately, being agreeable becomes dysfunctional when the person just cannot take a stand or will not engage in uncomfortable conversations, including what most of us would regard as necessary negotiation. The overly agreeable person will often avoid letting you know where he or she really stands on the issues and will typically do almost anything to avoid conflict. Agreeableness is nice, to a degree, but someone who habitually goes along with the crowd may reach a breaking point in which he or she just cannot take the disparity between what he or she says and what he or she feels. Sometimes, if tension has been building for a long time, the resulting response may appear unduly extreme, and a usually pleasant and mild-mannered colleague will have a sudden and loud outburst over some seemingly minor difference.

Technology professionals often need to analyze tough problems and collaborate to arrive at a consensus on how best to address and resolve problems. It’s no surprise that smart people don’t always agree on how to fix complex technology problems. When dealing with a systems outage, the situation may be very stressful, and effective technology professionals must be able to calmly express their views and listen to the opinions of others too. In a crisis, tact and diplomacy may be in short supply, and people with a thin skin may find it hard to cope with the stress of feeling that they are under attack.

Some people back off and actually become passive-aggressive, allowing those with either positional power or perhaps just a loud voice to drive the decision making, which may or may not be the optimal choice. Effective leaders create environments where everyone can feel safe expressing their professional views and experience-based opinions.

Dealing with a smart analytical person who tries to steer clear of conflict may require some very strong people skills, and this is exactly where you can emerge as a leader within your group. Creating an environment where everyone’s opinion is expressed and the team collaborates to reach consensus is by far the best problem-solving strategy. The most effective teams frequently consist of diverse personality types and actively promote a common value of respect and consideration for each person.

Most people enjoy the validation of hearing opinions in alignment with their own views. But it is also true that successful technology teams encourage the selection of correct decisions based upon facts, whether they come from the most popular member of the team or the quiet nonconfrontational guy in the corner who just happens to really know how to configure the software to get your system up and running!

Dysfunctional operations teams are often a consequence of a dysfunctional organizational culture that breeds distrust and results in employees who just sit back and allow disasters to occur. What kind of organization do you want to work in and, if you are in a leadership position, what type of environment do you want to foster?

The majority of high-profile systems incidents—from the reliability-challenged www.healthcare.gov to outages affecting numerous trading firms and trading exchanges—have almost all had one thing in common: published reports indicating that technology professionals had warned of issues and problems that could, and did, eventually result in risks and potential systems outages. These warnings were largely ignored, or even overruled, by senior officials who had the positional power to make decisions that ultimately led to disasters. No doubt many of the technology professionals who spoke up and tried to warn of impending danger were frustrated and discouraged seeing that their alarms went unheeded as they watched helplessly while serious incidents threatened their jobs and the very existence of their firm. It is certainly difficult to be optimistic in these circumstances.

Martin Seligman is credited with developing a new branch of psychology that focuses on promoting the type of positive behavior that helps create effective teams and successful results. However, decades prior to his work on positive psychology, Seligman was already quite well known and highly regarded for his work on a phenomenon he termed learned helplessness. In order to really appreciate the importance of positive psychology, we need to first understand learned helplessness.

In early studies on learned helplessness, researchers discovered that dogs subjected to repeated situations in which their actions had no discernible direct effect on whether or not they were shocked soon stopped responding at all. Related studies involving other animals, as well as college student volunteers, yielded similar results, thus providing more support for the assertion that some people (and animals) just stop trying to overcome problems when repeated experience indicates that there is no point in attempting to prevent such incidents from occurring. Related dysfunctional behavior included cognitive learning deficits and depression. To summarize, the results suggest that subjects who have been conditioned to consider themselves helpless essentially give up trying to have any impact, have difficulty learning, and are depressed about their inability to affect their situation.

So how do these frustrating situations manifest in IT and how can we help our teams overcome learned helplessness? Operations teams may find that they do not have the required training, procedures, and knowledge available to be effective at identifying and addressing issues when they occur. Development teams may find that they have to write complex software without well-defined requirements, and testers may feel that they just don’t get enough time in order to really ensure that the software is free from defects.

Published reports indicate that all three of these issues occurred with regard to the much publicized release of the fault-riddled www.healthcare.gov website. Technology professionals involved with this effort have indicated that requirements shifted late in the process, warnings about system reliability went unheeded, and essential security testing was not completed due to insufficient time. When key warnings such as these are ignored, it is no wonder that some professionals become discouraged and resigned to the fact that the system just won’t work as required.

A related problem is management’s frequent dysfunctional reaction to inevitable mistakes. Many organizations severely punish employees for serious mistakes, creating a culture in which employees are afraid to step forward and admit when an error that could potentially impact the systems and the organization has occurred. Successful organizations understand that mistakes can be acceptable (and even beneficial) if people learn from them. Quality guru Joseph Juran referred to mistakes as “gold in the mine” [4], a reference to the value that comes from a lesson learned. You need to create an environment in which employees are willing to step forward and acknowledge when they have made a mistake, confident that the entire team will refrain from finger-pointing and help address the problem.

Successful organizations ensure that their employees believe they can be successful and feel empowered to identify and report risks. Senior management should demonstrate they value their technology professionals’ input and respond to the advice of those who are most knowledgeable and capable of assessing potential issues. If you want your organization to be successful, you need to drive out any aspect of learned helplessness and embrace a positive culture that conveys a can-do attitude!

How you handle an IT postmortem depends on your leadership approach, the culture of your organization, and, of course, your own personal strengths.

We all know that mistakes happen. The important thing is that we learn from our mistakes and try to avoid making the same mistakes again. Unfortunately, technology teams often engage in dysfunctional finger-pointing that results in some team members blaming each other instead of taking an open and honest approach to understanding exactly what went wrong and how similar problems can be prevented in the future.

Why do some people get defensive and others stand up and courageously admit their mistakes? Psychologists note that some people have personalities that predispose them to act in a defensive way, whereas others have the self-esteem to act with confidence and integrity. People who are defensive often find it difficult to have an honest discussion regarding mistakes that occurred and therefore have difficulty improving their own performance. Sometimes people will tell you they had previously tried to do the right thing, only to be punished by the organization. Consequently, they focus on self-preservation, even if it means providing incomplete or misleading information to protect their image and professional reputation.

This dysfunctional behavior can adversely impact the behavior and performance of everyone around them. Successful managers engage in strategies that address these problems, including exhibiting more helpful traits and behaviors themselves. So, what exactly are these desired personality traits that result in the best behaviors, even under stress?

Positive psychology teaches that traits such as humility and modesty, along with self-control, lead to effective behaviors. Employees who do not feel threatened obviously find it much easier to act with humility, modesty, and self-control. Similarly, folks who value fairness and equity along with a strong sense of justice may find it easier to discuss mistakes and how they can be prevented. The priority should always be to figure out what mistakes occurred and how they can be prevented in the future. The truth is that it takes courage to be completely honest when under stress. Where does this courage come from, and how does one ensure that the members of their organization feel comfortable doing the right thing all the time?

Organizational culture often sets the stage for whether employees feel they are safe admitting their own mistakes. W. Edwards Deming focused on this when he advised managers to “drive out fear.” Personality factors, including strong self-esteem, certainly predispose people to exhibit courage and integrity. But, at a practical level, employees who feel safe are more likely to tell the truth about what occurred and to admit their own mistakes. Obviously, those who fear losing their jobs are more likely to engage in dysfunctional behaviors, such as finger-pointing and generally blaming others. Those who genuinely fear losing their jobs may indeed feel justified in lying and deceiving others to protect themselves from what they view as unfair consequences for their mistakes.

Positive psychology teaches us effective tactics for avoiding these problems and turning mistakes into lessons learned. Start by using a more positive approach to incident debriefing, such as an agile retrospective, which focuses more on what went well and what can be improved. Agile retrospectives help teams adapt and improve their efforts with a strong focus on open and effective communication.

If your organization insists on sticking with the postmortem, then at least help the team keep a positive attitude—and, above all, eliminate finger-pointing and the blame game. The best approach is to encourage honesty and integrity in a culture that tolerates human error-based mistakes as long as they are a catalyst for process improvement. If your team can learn from their mistakes, then they will constantly improve and achieve success.

We often come across technology professionals who try to warn their management about risks and the possibility of systems outages that could affect essential services. When conducting configuration management (CM) assessments, we often find ourselves being the voice for validating and communicating these concerns to those who are in a position to take appropriate action. What is troubling, however, is that we have seen many companies in which employees have essentially learned to no longer raise their concerns because no one is willing to listen. Even worse, they may have suffered consequences in the past for being the bearer of bad tidings. We refer to this phenomenon as learned complacency.

Additionally, some people are more passive than others. This may come from a personality trait in which a person feels that getting along with others is more important than blazing a new trail and standing up for one’s convictions. Many people strongly desire to just go along with the crowd. As previously explained, psychologists often refer to this personality trait as agreeableness, one of the primary personality traits in the well-known big five. Usually considered a positive attribute, this personality trait can be problematic in certain situations.

Some people who like to avoid conflict at all costs display a dysfunctional behavior known as passive-aggressiveness. A passive-aggressive person typically refuses to engage in conflict, choosing instead to outwardly go along with the group while inwardly deeply resenting the direction that he feels is being forced upon him. A person with a passive-aggressive personality trait may outwardly appear to be agreeable, but deep down he is usually frustrated and dissatisfied. In fact, he may engage in behaviors that appear to demonstrate acquiescence, yet he actually does nothing or even obstructs progress, albeit in a subtle manner. Some IT professionals who have a passive (or passive-aggressive) personality trait may be less than willing to warn their managers of systems problems that may cause a serious outage.

We have seen folks who simply felt that, although they were close enough to the technology to identify problems, they could not escalate a serious issue to management because it simply was not their job. In some cases, we have come across employees who tried to warn of pending problems, but were counseled by their managers to not be so outspoken. For example, one manager we knew frequently used the phrase “smile and wave” to encourage his staff to tone down their warnings, which no one really wanted to hear anyway. Not surprisingly, that firm has experienced several serious systems outages that affected thousands of customers.

However, not everyone is afraid to stand and be heard; some employees have personality traits that are naturally associated with being a strong leader.

Technology leaders know how to maintain a positive demeanor and focus on teamwork while still having the courage to communicate risks that could potentially impact the firm. The recent rash of serious systems outages certainly demonstrates the need for corporations to heed Deming’s clarion call regarding the need to eliminate fear and instead reward and empower their technical leaders to communicate problems without concern about retribution. There is certainly no greater situation where we need leaders to be fearless than when warning of a potential problem that could have a significant impact upon large-scale production IT systems.

Although some individuals may be predisposed to avoid conflict, it’s an even greater problem when a corporation develops a culture in which all employees become conditioned to maintain silence even when they are aware of potential problems. The IT industry needs leaders who are accountable, knowledgeable, and empowered to create working environments where those who protect the long-term best interests of the firm are rewarded and those who take short-sighted risks are placed in positions where they cannot adversely affect the well-being of the firm. We will see fewer systems outages when each member of the team understands their own role in the organization and feels completely safe and empowered to speak truthfully about risks and potential problems that may impact their firm’s critical systems infrastructure.

There are times when risk taking is appropriate and may result in significant rewards. However, firms that take unnecessary risks endanger not only their own corporation, but they may affect thousands of other people as well. Those firms with thoughtful IT leadership and a strong, truthful and open culture will achieve success while still managing and addressing risk in an appropriate and effective way.

First, a quick overview of the history of personality types is in order. Dr. Meyer Friedman, a cardiologist trained at John Hopkins University, developed a theory that certain behaviors increased the risk of heart attacks [5]. Together with another cardiologist by the name of Dr. Ray Rosenman, he suggested that people who exhibited type A behaviors—including being overly competitive, hard driving, and achievement oriented—were at higher risk for developing coronary artery disease. Fascinating, and not without some controversy in the medical establishment, this research makes one ponder how other members of the team might react to interacting regularly with a type A personality on the team.

Software development is largely a type A endeavor. In fact, many highly effective teams have several members who are very aggressive, intense, and highly competitive. One important mitigating factor is that technology professionals also need to be right. You can exhibit whatever personality traits you want, but the software just won’t work if you didn’t get it right. Additionally, current technology is so complex that few people in today’s global organizations, if any, are able to work entirely on their own, so these type As must interact frequently.

High-performing teams often have specialists who depend upon each other and must collaborate. Even though some degree of competition may be common, continuous collaboration is a daily necessity—it is just not optional. If you have ever been in a meeting with someone who just stuck to their point despite objections from other team members (and seemingly oblivious to any sense of logic), then you probably have experienced this type of obstinate behavior firsthand. Many technology teams often struggle to overcome a fair amount of conflict and drama.

In the midst of a highly confrontational meeting, it might be tempting to consider how much less contentious the workplace would be with the more easy going type B personalities. Harvey Robbins and Michael Finley point out that some teams actually don’t work well when their leaders are unwilling to fight for the team [6]. So, how exactly can one determine what is the right amount of type A versus type B behavior in a DevOps team?

There is a natural tension between the aggressive behavior of highly motivated software developers and the operations professionals who are charged with ensuring that we maintain consistent and continuously available services. Operations often focuses on maintaining the status quo, whereas development presses hard for introducing new features based upon customer demand. It shouldn’t surprise you that both types of behavior are essential for a successful DevOps organization. You need to have aggressive personalities with a strong achievement-focused drive to create new features and improved systems. But you also need to temper this aggressiveness with the more balanced type B behaviors that encourage review and careful analysis. Encouraging and optimizing this balance is exactly what the burgeoning DevOps movement brings to the table.

DevOps brings together the views of those engaged in QA activities, software development, operations, and information security and improves communications between and within teams, requiring the participation of stakeholders with different viewpoints and often very different personalities. Keep in mind that many people are attracted to each of these essential disciplines, in part, due to their personalities, as well as by how these roles fit into the goals and objectives of their respective teams.

Successful cross-functional teams harness this diversity to help ensure that the sum is more robust and efficient than its component parts working independently. The most effective managers understand the basic personalities and communication styles that are often found in cross-functional teams and become adept at developing strategies that utilize these differences productively. With encouragement, competitive type As and more laid-back type Bs can learn to “play nice” so that each of their strengths are incorporated and contribute to overall team success!

Harry Stack Sullivan, an American psychiatrist, noted that paranoia may be associated with suspicion, a tendency to blame others, and a sense that one is being persecuted [7]. Some folks just have a disposition such that they are always expecting the worst from others. Quite often, this tendency may actually result in a self-fulfilling prophecy in which a person’s quirky behavior elicits negative responses from others that actually reinforces this person’s view that everyone is always out to “get” them.

As Dr. Sullivan noted, it is common for the person to then resort to blaming others in an attempt to protect himself or herself in what may seem like a silly turf war. Unfortunately, many of these folks take these incidents seriously and may truly feel that they are being persecuted. These defense mechanisms may be quite destructive to not only the person, but also to everyone with whom he or she interacts.

People who have trust issues often find it difficult to collaborate and cooperate with others. This can make it very tough in a technology organization in which everyone has to rely upon each other for specialized expertise. Sometimes, people with difficult personalities actually focus on being experts in a specific technology area that enables them to feel safe because they have complete control and power due to their specialized—and often extensive—knowledge of institutional history. But consider for a moment that sometimes a little suspiciousness can actually be justifiable and perhaps partially a consequence of a particular situation.

In fact, some organizations just do not foster trust and collaboration. Employees who work in dysfunctional organizations may understandably exhibit counterproductive behavior. If you are the new guy on the block, you may not know all of the organizational history and, consequently, may not fully understand why some employees seem unusually distrustful or have developed other defense mechanisms to defend their turf.

One example is the organization that attempts to “motivate” its employees through a constant threat of layoffs or other forms of termination. Creating a state of fear does not result in productive, effective, and loyal employees. Some managers use their positional power to try to control and motivate others through fear and intimidation. Although respect for authority is important, there are much more effective ways to motivate employees than instilling fear, particularly the fear of losing one’s job and livelihood.

If you find yourself dealing with a person who seems unreasonably distrustful, listen carefully to his or her view and then try to be clear about your position. Conflicts in the workplace are often the result of a misunderstanding or even some institutional history that occurred long before you even joined the organization. You should also consider who else might be able to help you navigate these choppy waters.

Your own manager may be able to fill you in on what factors have led to this state of affairs. Sometimes dysfunctional behaviors are a consequence of corporate politics, but also consider that there may be some other much more benign factors in place. We all go through life stresses. You may be catching someone as they are trying to handle their “day” job while also dealing with a demanding family situation that would make anyone stressed. Another possibility is that the person is taking medication for some medical condition that results in behavioral side effects. Employees obviously have a right to privacy, but sometimes managers are made aware of these issues by HR so that the company can be as supportive as possible.

The best organizations consider the needs of their employees and try to provide a workplace that is conducive to success and productivity. However, even in the best organizations, you may still encounter difficult personalities. Hopefully, you won’t have to deal with too many people who are truly paranoid, but you will probably encounter at least a few colleagues during your career who seem remarkably distrustful, blame others, and seem to believe that they are being persecuted. These situations are never easy, and your best approach is to try to communicate effectively; if possible, you should strive to understand the other individual’s position while explaining your case. When possible, reach out to your own resources such as your manager, and, in extreme cases, to HR.

The workplace must be free of hostile and disruptive behavior from both a legal and business perspective. The best work environments are both productive and respectful of their employees, and, with good communication, you should be able to navigate successfully even when confronted with some difficult personalities.

For instance, first-year medical students are notorious for thinking that they have almost every illness that they learn about in medical school. If you want an effective and healthy organization, then it seems obvious that it is essential to focus on promoting healthy organizational behavior. Psychologists Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have pioneered a new and exciting focus on a positive view of psychology, which suggests very promising techniques.

Technology leaders from CTOs to scrum masters work every day to foster the optimal behaviors that lead to improved productivity and quality. That said, we all know that dealing with difficult people and dysfunctional behaviors can be challenging and sometimes disheartening. Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi wrote that “psychology has become a science largely about healing. Therefore, its concentration on healing largely neglects the fulfilled individual and thriving community” [8]. Instead of concentrating so much energy on remediation, it would be better to empower technology leaders to focus on and encourage positive and effective behaviors in the workplace. Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi note that “the aim of positive psychology is to begin to catalyze a change in the focus of psychology from preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building positive qualities [8].”

Seligman delineates 24 strengths, ranging from curiosity and interest in the world to zest, passion, and enthusiasm, which he suggests are the fundamental traits of a positive and effective individual [9]. Notably, playfulness and humor, along with valor, bravery, and a sense of justice, are also listed among these traits that Seligman describes. So, how do we apply this knowledge to the workplace, and how can we use this information to be more effective managers? The fact is that we all know people whom we admire, and we have all had more than a few employers who seemed less than completely effective.

Effective leaders do indeed exhibit valor, bravery, and a sense of justice in identifying barriers to organizational success. The best leaders are not afraid to deliver a tough message and use their positional power to help teams achieve success. Technology leaders are often particularly motivated by curiosity, interested in the world, and most certainly exhibit enthusiasm and passion for their work.

Other traits observed in strong leaders include kindness and generosity, along with integrity and honesty. Successful leaders also exhibit perseverance and diligence, as well as a love of learning. It hardly comes as a surprise that the positive psychology movement specifies so many of these strengths as beneficial traits. In fact, many of these attributes had been discussed earlier by both Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers in their respective classic texts on humanistic psychology, a discipline that focuses on helping people achieve success and realize their full potential.

Positive psychology is providing a useful framework for understanding the traits that lead to success, both at an organizational level and for each of us individually. Positive psychology can create an environment where each stakeholder feels empowered to do the right thing and speak up when there are problems or barriers to success, thus aligning well with the agile mind-set and methodologies that many organizations are finding to be so beneficial.

Long ago, quality management guru W. Edwards Deming noted the importance of healthy behaviors, such as driving out fear, in order to ensure that your employees are willing to speak up and warn of potential issues. Clearly, positive behaviors lead to highly effective teams and successful organizations.

Positive psychology cannot solve every problem, and there is no doubt that many organizations have cultures and environments that just do not foster success. However, if you are a technical leader (or wish to emerge as a technical leader), then understanding the significance and impact potential of encouraging positive traits is essential for your success. Helping your organization embrace and cultivate positive and effective behaviors will increase the productivity and success of every endeavor.

When people fail in their jobs, it is sometimes due to factors beyond their direct control; perhaps they could not fit into the culture, and the expectations of the organization itself or the organization’s culture made success difficult to attain. What traits might we want to highlight when looking at an organization from a positive psychology perspective?

Organizations that encourage curiosity, interest in the world, and a general love of learning provide an environment that is consistent with what Dr. Seligman had in mind with his first cluster, which he termed wisdom. Technology professionals could understand these traits in terms of organizations that encourage learning new technologies and frameworks and provide opportunities for professionals to constantly improve their skills. Judiciousness, critical thinking, and open-mindedness, along with ingenuity, originality, and practical street smarts, are also attributes found among employees in effective organizations. Social, personal, and emotional intelligence describes organizations that encourage their members to respectfully understand both individual and group differences, including cultural diversity.

Organizations that encourage employees to feel safe when speaking up or taking the initiative can be understood to exhibit valor and bravery, qualities that fall within the cluster that Seligman termed courage. Integrity and honesty, along with perseverance and diligence, are also grouped with these particular positive traits. The degree to which these characteristics and their active expression are valued in an organization will significantly affect that firm’s functioning and results.

Positive organizations encourage their employees to take initiative and ensure that employees feel safe, even when reporting a potential problem or issue. Dysfunctional organizations punish the whistle-blower, whereas effective organizations not only recognize the importance of being able to evaluate the risks or problems that have been brought to their attention, they proactively solicit such self-monitoring efforts.

The cluster of humanity and love consists of kindness, generosity, and a strong commitment to social interactions and developing solid relationships. An intrinsic sense of justice broadens the perspective to include how one relates to larger groups such as one’s community and nation. This cluster includes many virtues such as duty, teamwork, loyalty, and fairness. Organizations that encourage a genuine sense of delivering value to customers and the idea of giving back to their community model these behaviors and are more likely to see employees living these values on a daily basis. Of paramount importance are good citizenship and teamwork, as well as a strong culture of leadership. Although many organizations may have individuals who exhibit these strengths, highly effective organizations make these values a cultural norm, which, in turn, becomes the personality of the organization itself.

The cluster of temperance includes self-control, humility, and modesty, all of which can be understood in terms of delivering quality to all stakeholders, including ensuring real value to stockholders rather than “fluffy” advertising and marketing hype. Gratitude is a fundamental trait of many successful organizations; this involves modeling positive behaviors and actively participating in helping the communities that support them. These are often the same organizations that have a strong sense of hope and optimism and are mindful of the future; again all traits found in Seligman’s view of positive psychology. Some organizations have a culture that exhibits spirituality, faith, and even religiousness, which aligns with their personality. Most importantly, playfulness and humor, along with passion and enthusiasm, all make for a corporate environment that fosters successful and loyal employees.

Over the years, many organizations have unfortunately become associated with greed and dysfunctional behavior. However, the study of positive psychology provides an effective, comprehensive, and attainable model to understand those companies that exhibit cultures that encourage and nurture the positive behaviors that research indicates lead to success and profitability.

So, how do you effectively motivate employees to be the best and do the most even under difficult circumstances? Effective leaders motivate others through their own behaviors and create an environment where each team member has multiple opportunities and reasons to be successful.

Psychologist Abraham Maslow proposed a theory of motivation that is based upon a hierarchy of needs and drives. It begins with physiological needs, including basic necessities such as food and water, progresses to less concrete requirements such as safety, and then reaches for more conceptual ideals such as a sense of love and belonging. Self-esteem and self-actualization sit at the highest levels of Maslow’s hierarchy, which remains one of the most widely respected models in use.

Maslow’s work is easy to operationalize and very compelling due to the simple fact that most people intuitively “get” the progression. The bottom line is that the majority of employees are indeed motivated by the need for pay and benefits such as medical insurance and paid time off. Once these basic needs are satisfied, many then seek a comfortable work-life balance, which is aided by a flexible work environment. Many technology professionals also value technical training and projects that allow them to learn new technologies and feel that they are continuously growing and improving.

Autonomy is one of the most cherished factors in job satisfaction, and many employees are highly motivated to demonstrate their abilities in exchange for flexible work arrangements that carry with them significant autonomy. Many successful companies are learning that providing flexible environments that accommodate working moms or dads who are highly skilled but desire a personalized work-life balance helps the organization attract and retain valuable employees. Positive psychology is taking motivation much further by focusing on providing opportunities to bring out positive behaviors through various reward and recognition programs.

Some technology firms go as far as providing time off for employees to work on side projects. For example, hackathons (also known as codefests) provide opportunities for employees to work on special projects in a highly competitive environment. These approaches combine technology innovation with a sense of friendly competition and the promise of recognition by peers, which can also be motivating.

Successful managers look for opportunities to elicit and motivate positive behaviors. One example of this phenomenon is the open-source industry, in which many accomplished technology professionals work long hours to produce high-quality software and then give it away for free. Maslow would point out that many software engineers who help with open-source projects have a day job that satisfies their basic physiological and maintenance needs. Participation in volunteer activities provides a sense of belonging, self-esteem, and, ultimately, self-actualization as their peers recognize them as industry leaders.

Positive psychology focuses on the factors that lead technology experts to exhibit positive behaviors. Moving beyond the individual, it is essential for organizational culture to support positive behaviors. Successful managers create environments where employees feel empowered to exhibit positive behaviors. This should include setting clear, achievable goals that can be measured and understood by key stakeholders. Some organizations add a sense of competition to the ecosystem by identifying outside competitive forces that threaten the success of the firm. Employees who perceive these outside forces to be legitimate may indeed be highly motivated. Although managers who try to motivate solely via fear may find themselves losing their best talent, challenges that are perceived to be legitimate may be quite motivating for some individuals.

Teams can also be highly motivated by positive environments that are fun and rewarding. Organizations that value learning and creativity and understand the importance of work-life balance and autonomy encourage the type of culture the positive psychology movement has proven will usually bring out the best in employees.

Positive psychology teaches us that most people want to cultivate what is best within themselves and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play. The trick is to guide your employees into exhibiting appropriate behaviors to accomplish these goals. Otherwise, you may find very dysfunctional behaviors, such as hiding mistakes, denial, and even blaming others, which obviously disrupt the workforce and can adversely affect the business in many ways. Many organizations have silo infrastructures and cultures that further detract from the organization’s goal of addressing mistakes and resolving problems in the most efficient way possible. DevOps principles and practices can help by encouraging teams to work in a collaborative, cross-functional way, which is essential in addressing mistakes. Highly effective teams really need to embrace much more efficient ways of dealing with a wide variety of challenges—including human error.

Positive psychology focuses on positive emotions, positive individual traits, and positive institutions. This approach is a refreshing change from many schools of psychology, which focus more on analyzing the reasons for antisocial and other problematic personality types that often result in dysfunctional behavior. No doubt some folks do indeed have personality problems that predispose them to managing problems—such as handling their own mistakes—in ways that are not very constructive. But it is equally true that focusing on positive individual traits helps us to see and appreciate the strengths and virtues, such as personal integrity, self-knowledge, self-control, courage, and wisdom, that come from experience and being nourished in a positive environment.

The individual is very important in this context, but it is equally important to consider the organization as a holistic being. Understanding positive behaviors within the company itself entails the study of the strengths that empower team members to address challenges in an effective and creative way. Some examples of issues that should be discussed are social responsibility, civility, tolerance, diversity, work ethic, leadership, and honesty.

Obviously, the best leaders actually exhibit these behaviors themselves and lead by example, which brings us back to how specific individuals handle mistakes. When mistakes occur, does your organization foster a safe, open environment where people can feel that their best course of action is to admit what they did wrong? Do team members assume that their colleagues will drop what they are doing to help out in resolving any problems? Does the team avoid pointing fingers and the blame game to focus instead on problem resolution?

One manager mentioned that he did not focus so much on the unavoidable reality that mistakes will occur. Instead, he focused on encouraging his employees to acknowledge errors freely and then rated the entire team on its ability to work together and address problems productively, regardless of who may have been involved. Positive psychology gives us an effective framework for actually following through on Deming’s directive to “drive out fear.” The most successful organizations take mistakes and make them constructive learning experiences, leading to employees who feel a renewed sense of loyalty and commitment to achieving excellence.

Mistakes happen. Your challenge is to ensure that rather than demoralizing or paralyzing people, these missteps instead empower your team to be more effective and successful!

We all come to work with the sum of our own experiences and personalities, which, by definition, means we are predisposed to having specific viewpoints—and maybe even more than a few biases. Many professionals come into meetings with their own agendas based upon their prior experiences. When conducting an assessment, we are typically asking participants to explain what they believe works well in their organization and what can be improved. In practice, getting people comfortable results in better and more useful information. When we bring developers into a room to talk about their work experiences, we often get a very different view than when we speak with their counterparts in operations or other departments, including QA and testing. The stories we hear initially sometimes sound like a bad marriage that cannot be saved. Fortunately, our experience is that there is also a great deal of potential synergy in bringing different viewpoints together. The key is to get the salient issues on the table and facilitate clear and effective communication.

Developers are often pressured to create new and exciting product features, using technology that itself is changing at a breathtaking rate. The QA and testing professionals are charged with ensuring that applications are defect free and often have to work under considerable pressure, including ever-shrinking timelines. The operations group must ensure that systems are reliable and available on a consistent basis. Each of these stakeholders has a very different set of goals and objectives. Developers want to roll out changes constantly, delivering new and exciting features, while operations and QA may find themselves challenged to keep up with the demand for new releases. What we hear is the somewhat biased perception from each side of the table.

Developers are highly skilled and often much more technically knowledgeable than their counterparts in QA and operations. This makes for some challenging dynamics in terms of mutual respect and collaboration. The operations and QA professionals often feel that developers are the immature children who lack discipline and constantly try to bypass established IT controls. This clashing of views and values is often a source of conflict within the organization, with decisions being made based on positional power by senior executives who may not be completely aware of all of the details of each challenge. The fact is that this conflict can be very constructive and lead to high performance if managed effectively.

By focusing on developing desirable behaviors, positive psychology moves from just identifying behavioral dysfunction to promoting effective and high-performance behaviors. The first area to focus on is honest and open communication. Seligman uses the term bravery to describe the ability to speak up or take the initiative, a key aspect of courage, which is often called for in the workplace. Integrity and honesty, along with perseverance and diligence, are also desirable traits that need to be modeled and encouraged in positive organizations. Successful organizations value and encourage these characteristics and their active expression.

We typically meet with each stakeholder separately and document their views, including frustrations and challenges. We then put together a report incorporating these observations that synthesizes all of our findings and suggests areas and methods for improvements. Although dysfunctional and distracting behavior must first be identified and understood, the next step of bringing all stakeholders to the table to look together for solutions and positive ideas for making improvements is the more essential intervention. Sometimes, this feels a little like horse trading. For example, one group may be convinced that only open-source tools are appropriate for use, whereas another team may be very interested in the features and support that come from commercial products. We often facilitate the evaluation and selection of the right tools and processes with appropriate transparency, collaboration, and communication. By staying focused on the positive proactive behaviors, we help stakeholders throughout the organization develop new communication patterns that foster more creative and productive collaborations.

Positive psychology focuses on proactively promoting the types of behaviors research has identified as being closely correlated with achievement, productivity, and positive interpersonal skills—three qualities essential for individuals on a high-performance team. Obviously, any improvement effort should begin with understanding the existing views and experiences of those involved. But bringing the stakeholders to the table and getting their management to support, reward, and model collaborative behavior are key steps along the path that leads to high-performance cross-functional teams and a more successful organization.

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[3] Aiello, Bob and Leslie Sachs (2011). Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley Professional.

[4] Juran, Joseph M. (1962). Quality Control Handbook (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.

[5] Friedman, Meyer (1996). Type A Behavior: Its Diagnosis and Treatment (Prevention in Practice Library). New York, NY: Plenum Press.

[6] Robbins, Harvey and Michael Finley (1995). Why Teams Don’t Work—What Went Wrong and How to Make It Right. Princeton, NJ: Peterson’s Pacesetter Books.

[7] Sullivan, Harry Stack (1972). Personal Psychopathology: Early Formulations. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

[8] Seligman, Martin and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (2000). “Positive Psychology: An Introduction.” American Psychologist, 55, 5–14.

[9] Seligman, Martin (2002). Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment. Free Press, New York.

Appelo, Jurgen (2011). Management 3.0: Leading Agile Developers, Developing Agile Leaders. New York, NY: Addison-Wesley Signature Series.

Deming, W. Edwards (1986). Out of the Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Friedman, Meyer (1984). Treating Type A Behavior—And Your Heart. New York, NY: Knopf.