We discount the value of psychological safety too. Nobody wants to look stupid, especially in front of others, and if you punish people for mistakes then they either stop interacting with you or all of your interactions are engineered to avoid those situations. At this point candor has gone out the window, and your impression of what's really going on becomes progressively more inaccurate.
I have a couple coworkers who say, "I haven't heard of any of this," as if it's a statement that a problem doesn't exist, instead of a realization that they're in the dark on something important. It's because one feeds you optimism, and the other is grouchy and writes exhaustingly byzantine code and then doesn't understand why people don't think he's brilliant (I think this is the root of most of the grouchiness).
I have a couple coworkers who say, "I haven't heard of any of this," as if it's a statement that a problem doesn't exist, instead of a realization that they're in the dark on something important. It's because one feeds you optimism, and the other is grouchy and writes exhaustingly byzantine code and then doesn't understand why people don't think he's brilliant (I think this is the root of most of the grouchiness).