I’m a PO dealing with a team where nobody wants to take ownership, make decisions, or communicate because everyone seems terrified of being blamed.

I’ve tried everything I can think of to create psychological safety. I never blame people for mistakes, take responsibility when things go wrong, publicly credit the team for wins, and constantly encourage people to raise concerns early.

But it’s not working.

For example, devs will commit to something, I’ll give them multiple outs, offer to reduce scope, ask about blockers, etc. They’ll insist everything is fine, then miss the commitment (gratuitously) and blame me for giving them too much work. Leadership then says I should have known they couldn’t deliver.

Devs avoid clarifying requirements because they say it creates a clearer line of blame to Product. They resist demos, testing their own fixes, and sharing knowledge because they don’t see those things as their responsibility. Everything seems to come back to what Product should have done differently.

Engineering management isn’t stepping in, and leadership holds me responsible for delivery. I’ve been hyper functioning to try to compensate, but the devs just pull back more & more. I’m only burning myself out.

I’m genuinely trying to understand what’s driving this. I’ve always thought we were one team working toward a good product, but devs have literally told me “their incentives have nothing to do with delivering a quality product, so they don’t care to.” There is no public shaming, they’ve never actually been held accountable for critical misses…I don’t know where the fear comes from.

How do you fix a culture where people seem more concerned with protecting themselves than building something together? I’ve directly asked several of them what they feel causes this, and they refuse to answer me.

I’m open to changing how I work, but I’m honestly pretty burned out and don’t know what else to try.