Steven Limmer argues that modern Agile often breeds mistrust, showing how psychological safety is essential to reverse failure and rebuild high-performing teams.
Psychological safety is the missing link that separates thriving agile teams from those stuck in mistrust. Steven Limmer draws on his experience as an Agile Coach to illustrate how the original promise of agile-empowering teams-has been warped into rigid processes that punish failure and silence dissent. He points to real-world examples where teams stopped experimenting because the cost of a mistake was too high, and how that erosion of safety directly hurts delivery speed and quality.
The presentation walks through concrete steps to restore safety: give people permission to speak up, make failure a learning signal, and redesign ceremonies so they focus on outcomes, not compliance. Limmer also critiques the superficial adoption of agile jargon that masks deeper cultural problems, and he shows how leaders can model vulnerability to break the cycle of blame. By the end, viewers understand why trust matters as much as any technical practice.
Technical leaders can use these insights to audit their own teams, spot the tell-tale signs of a safety deficit, and apply simple interventions-like transparent post-mortems and rotating facilitation roles-to rebuild a culture where engineers feel safe to propose bold ideas. The result is faster learning, higher morale, and more reliable delivery.
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