Working in the Open
even more about leadership frameworks
I recently wrote about a trio of related frameworks for engagement - from Pink’s autonomy, mastery, and purpose, to Lencioni’s anonymity, irrelevance, and immeasurability, to Laraway’s direction, coaching, and career.
Those ideas matter. They help explain why people thrive or wilt at work. But the longer I lead, the more I’ve realized that the real work happens in the space between those models and the actual people on a team.
That space is where psychological safety, accountability, and transparency live. Those three principles shape what I do as a leader. They make the theories real.
Why These Three
I didn’t choose these principles on purpose. They formed themselves over years of leading teams. I learned them through mistakes, then through practice, and finally through repetition. I know they work because when they’re absent, everything gets worse. When they’re present, teams are engaged, people do their best work, and they enjoy their jobs.
And when I look back at Pink, Lencioni, and Laraway, I see my three principles as the bridge that connects their ideas to daily behavior.
Autonomy doesn’t work without safety. Purpose doesn’t land without transparency. Coaching doesn’t matter without accountability.
None of this is pure theory or philosophy. It’s the mechanics of trust.
Psychological Safety Creates the Conditions for Growth
If safety is missing, autonomy becomes abandonment. People stop taking risks. They don’t ask for help. They stay quiet when they should speak up. Progress stalls, even with extremely smart people in every seat.
Safety is the emotional base layer of every team I’ve ever led. It shows up in simple moments. Someone names a problem early. Someone admits they’re stuck. Someone takes a bold swing without waiting for permission.
When teams feel safe, they try new things, they speak up when they have an idea, and they feel safe learning from their mistakes. That’s the only place where mastery grows.
I’ve seen teams crumble when safety is missing. I’ve seen teams soar when it’s present. It’s not soft. It’s not optional. It’s the foundation of everything else.
Years ago, when “Manager READMEs” were the new thing , I wrote one because I wanted to capture my principles as a leader and share them with the teams I work with - both so they could understand my approach better, and so they could call me out if I didn’t walk the talk. It outlines my leadership principles, but also (pulling from Reid Hoffman’s The Alliance), underscores that my manager-employee relationship works like an alliance. Not a hierarchy. Not a transaction. It’s an agreement to help each other succeed. Safety starts there: with clarity that we’re in this together.
Transparency Turns Purpose into Action
In the absence of information, people assume the worst possible version of the truth.
Michael Lopp
People can’t align with what they can’t see. Transparency fills that gap. Transparency is just honest context, real information, and clear goals. A manager who shows their thinking instead of hiding it.
In my team meetings and 1:1s, I try to be open about why decisions were made and what constraints exist. I’ve found that transparency lowers the temperature of most hard conversations. It removes the guessing. It builds understanding, even when people disagree.
Pink talks about purpose as a motivator. He’s right, but purpose isn’t magic. It needs light to grow. Transparency is that light. It shows people how their work matters and how it connects.
When I lead, I hold frequent meetings with the entire organization. These meetings aren’t presentations or lectures - they’re an open space where I try to let everyone know exactly what’s happening within the organization and outside the organization. It’s a safe place for anyone to ask questions - of me or each other, and it’s an opportunity for me to dispel rumors. On occasion, I’m asked about something I know, but can’t talk about - but even in those cases I’m honest and transparent about why I can’t answer the question. It helps with safety - but it also helps everyone on the team understand how they fit into the larger organizational and company culture. These meetings are always optional, but folks still come because the discussions help them do better work - because it helps them find purpose in their work.
It’s why my teams know they can ask anything. I’d rather over-explain than leave people squinting at half context. When information flows, trust follows right behind it. Transparency also protects autonomy. People make better decisions when they aren’t working in the dark.
Accountability Makes the Work Real
Safety without accountability is comfort. Transparency without accountability is a status update. Accountability is what makes everything real. It’s the balance that works with autonomy.
But accountability isn’t a hammer. Not in a healthy culture. Accountability is shared ownership. It’s clarity, consistency, and follow-through.
My README talks about balancing independence with coaching. That balance only works when people hold themselves and each other to the agreements they’ve made. Accountability is what keeps quality high, goals clear, and teams reliable.
One of my favorite rituals is the post-incident conversation. Not the finger-pointing kind. The kind where we start with “what went well” and “what did we learn.” These questions create accountability without blame, they reward honesty, and they make improvement feel achievable instead of punishing.
People step up when they know mistakes won’t be used against them, and they grow when they know their work matters.
That’s accountability at its best.
Putting it Together
Safety makes people brave. Transparency makes them informed. Accountability makes them responsible.
Together, they create a culture where autonomy has structure, mastery has room, and purpose has meaning. They turn Laraway’s direction, coaching, and career into daily habits instead of quarterly goals.
And they allow teams to stay human. Humans who are honest, humans who grow, humans who feel safe to disagree, and humans who love learning.
This is why the README is written the way it is. It’s not a set of rules. It’s a contract. A shared understanding. A way of saying, “Here’s how I work, and how we can do this together.”
Landing It
I’ve spent significant time studying management frameworks. Some are helpful. Some are nonsense. The ones that stuck are the ones that echo what I’ve learned by leading real people doing real work in real situations.
I’ve learned that people don’t thrive in systems. They thrive in relationships. They thrive when they feel safe enough to try, and when failure turns into learning instead of fear. They need enough information to make great decisions, and that when people are held accountable, they take pride in their work.
Everything else hangs from that.
On my teams, the people leaders own their project management. I ask the managers to predict (and be accountable) for dates when projects will be done. Since predicting the future is impossible, I have them give p50 dates (a date that they have 50% confidence in - something I derived from Hubbard’s book, How To Measure Anything). When they inevitably have to change a completion date, there’s no blame. I simply ask, “what did you learn?”, or “what would you do differently next time?”. They are accountable for learning - not for unforeseen complexity. We discuss these dates in a short weekly leadership meeting - which gives all the managers an opportunity to learn from each other as well. And they do.
I keep coming back to those three principles because they’ve never failed me (I wrote about that a bit here). Every strong team I’ve led had them. Every struggling team needed them. And every time I’ve seen someone grow into a leader, these three were the scaffolding that held them up.
Leadership isn’t mysterious. It’s the steady practice of creating the conditions where people can do great work and feel good doing it.