Top 5 durable skills to nurture when growing a DevOps culture | By Rachel Wooldridge

Do you want to improve the culture within your team? Check out DevOps culture… it’s not just beneficial for working with techy teams!

Having recently been learning about DevOps for the first time, on my Multiverse Apprenticeship, I have reflected on teams that I’ve worked in over the years and realised that the most successful (and enjoyable!) teams have had several features key to a DevOps culture.

The key aspects of a DevOps approach are summarised by CALMS, which I have mapped out below:

You don’t need to understand DevOps to see how this framework could apply to most projects. But I think the Culture strand is the foundation for it all.

“You can’t directly change culture. But you can change behaviour, and behaviour becomes culture.”
Lloyd Taylor VP Infrastructure, Ngmoco

Culture is built over time, it doesn’t change quickly, however as the quote suggests, if we change our behaviour, we can start to influence culture. And the more people that embrace change, the faster a new culture emerges. 

Here are my top 5 skills that I think have the most impact on healthy, collaborative cultures. I’ve included some links to help you practice and improve your skills. 

1. Clear communication - The effective use of oral, visual, written, and aural modes of communication to convey information.

The key to any successful team is communication! We usually think about speaking and listening first and I believe listening is the most important element of communication. 

Active listening is listening to understand, not just waiting for your turn to speak. Remember you have 2 ears and one mouth so listen twice as much as you talk! Summarising and repeating back to someone what they have said, shows that you are listening as well as being a way to clarify that you have understood them.

Don’t forget about non-verbal and formal communication including body language, presentations and writing emails. It’s important to practise them all whenever you get the chance. I used to hate presentations, I’d get hot, go red and stumble over my words. I made a conscious decision at uni to change that, so I put myself up for as many presenting opportunities as I could. I practised and prepared, making sure I was confident that I knew what I was talking about before each presentation, and it got easier. 

Check out: How to improve communication skills

2. Emotional agility & emotional intelligence - The resources and tools to understand, empathise and collaborate with diverse groups of people in multiple contexts.

Being able to recognise, understand and manage our own emotions is a crucial skill and benefits all types of relationships in our lives. Understanding our own emotions is the first step in developing empathy, the ability to recognise how others are feeling.

These skills help you to understand others and respond in ways that make them feel seen and heard. This is critical to building positive relationships and understanding different perspectives, which is important when working collaboratively.

Check out: 4 Steps To Increasing Your Emotional Agility (And Why You Should)
                  How to improve emotional intelligence in the workplace

3. Being part of a team - Optimally contributing towards the shared goals of a team.

It may be obvious to say that teamwork is essential to a collaborative culture, but it doesn’t come naturally to all of us. Trust, transparency, and good communication are key aspects. Openness and transparency builds trust which is vital in teams. It allows people to feel safe to share their ideas. Plus, knowing who has which skills and when to trust their expertise saves time and boosts morale.

Building teamwork skills takes time and practice. Be open and willing to share your skills, experiences and ideas, and in turn, you will benefit from learning from the skills, experience, knowledge and ideas of others. Seek out opportunities to work with different types of people and in different teams to get the broadest experience.

Check out: 15 Top Tips To Become A Better Team Player At Work

4. Creative thinking - Strategies that allow us to come up with a range of diverse solutions.

Being able to think creatively helps when problem-solving. Those who think creatively often come up with solutions nobody else has thought of. Put a few creative minds together and the sky’s the limit! 

Want to think more creatively? 

• Get out of your comfort zone, 
• Seek out new experiences and opinions, 
• Practice blue-sky thinking… if there were no limits what could we do?

Check out: How to Improve Your Creative Thinking Skills: 7 Ideas to Try

5. Growth mindset - A belief that your abilities and talents are not set but can be developed over time.

Having a growth mindset improves your own outlook as well as team culture. Believing that you are constantly learning and improving leads to increased curiosity which then leads to innovation. 

There is a wealth of information about Growth Mindset on the internet so I’m not sharing a specific link here. 

Examples of a fixed vs growth mindset:

Rachel Wooldridge is an Advanced Data Fellowship apprentice at Multiverse based in Birmingham, UK and is writing for the Apprentice Lens. Here’s more about her:

I'm Rachel, Data Manager at Food for Life which is part of the Soil Association. I'm new to data as a full-time career and want to try blogging as a way of sharing my data journey experiences as well as building some new skills. When I'm not buried in PowerBi or getting excited about Power Automate I  am happiest being creative... usually getting messy and creating something far bigger than I planned!