Be comfortable with sharing drops in KPIs
Here's a test of the strong relationship between a leader and their team.
See how comfortable for you and the team is to share information about a product's incident (e.g., a screenshot of the dashboard, which shows a few-hours drop in stability).
Teams with a weak relationship are reluctant to share it publicly (e.g., during all-hands meetings) as they are afraid of being blamed.
Teams with a solid relationship are not afraid to discuss spikes and drops in their KPIs. By that, they present they keep their systems under control.
They work with data and facts.
They know what happened and when.
They can assess failure in the context of the product value/loss.
They use their learnings to strengthen their system in the future.
But it all starts with the trust. Leaders must build a safe environment where failure is not the reason to blame but to learn. System failure is not a team's failure. System failure is a fact that requires deep understanding, prioritization, and assessment.
We repeatedly overuse the sentence: "A leader takes the blame".
Yet often, it should be more like: "A leader takes the blame and fear out of the team".
See also
Mirosław Stanek