Amy Edmondson identified the concept of psychological safety in work teams in 1999. She has observed that companies with trusting workplaces where employees can give candid feedback and admit mistakes perform better. Edmondson argues this kind of culture is important for learning, innovation and growth in the modern economy. Her new book, The Fearless Organization, discusses how to create psychological safety in workplaces. She provides examples of how a lack of psychological safety led to failures at Wells Fargo, while Pixar's success is attributed to its culture of psychological safety cultivated by Ed Catmull.
David C Winegar Psychological Safety for PerformanceDavid Winegar
Slides from my webinar on wanted.jobs on how to build psychological safety environments to drive higher performance. Includes neuroscience insights that provide insights into how to better connect people and develop a culture of inclusivity, respect and high trust which results in JOY @ Work.
This is a preview of Absolute-North and David C. Winegar's Psychological Safety for Performance Organizational Toolkit available from absolute-north.com beginning in July of 2021.
A Beginner’s Guide to Psychological SafetyMike Arauz
What is it and what can I do?
In 2012, as profiled in this frequently-cited NYTimes article, Google conducted a large company-wide research study to understand why certain teams performed better than others. And what they found was that the most significant differentiating factor among the highest-performing teams was the team’s level of psychological safety.
Psychological safety drives better performance and better business outcomes.
What is psychological safety? Psychological safety is the quality of a team environment where people can speak up and share ideas - even risky or challenging ideas - without fear. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School and advisor at August, is the world’s experts on psychological safety. Edmondson describes psychological safety as the belief that a person will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas questions, concerns, or mistakes.
As a leader, it is important to have a cohesive and productive team. Many leaders overlook the importance of psychological safety within their organization. This can be problematic as psychological safety outlines what it truly means to be a team member.
Psychological Safety in the Time of PandemicJohn Dobbin
Talk | Best Agile Articles Conference -- Sept 28th, 2020
Findings from recent interviews and observations with medium to large size organisations in the Middle East and Asia Pacific region
- Why Psychological Safety is Critical
- Good Practices
- Bad Practices
Growing Interest in Psychological Safety
Definition
Impact on teams
Zones
Fear and Seeking systems of mammalian brains
Impacts of toxic cultures
Mental Health symptoms since COVID-19 outbreak
Pandemic of Uncertainty
Confusing Productivity with Performance
Digital Panopticons
Backbiting
Authentic Communication and Vulnerability Modelling
Wellness Check-ins
Compassionate layoffs
This document discusses psychological safety in the workplace and proposes some methods for achieving it. It suggests democratizing organizational power similar to political systems so employees can vote. It also recommends treating unproductive behaviors like a referee does in soccer, with warnings and then consequences. Finally, it advises that teams should agree to object to misbehaviors respectfully and give final say to the team through voting.
Morgan Ahlström - Psychological Safety – We ContributeAgile Lietuva
Google concluded in project Aristotle that the most important factor when it comes to building high performing teams is the level of psychological safety. But if you don’t aim to be Google, do you still need to care about psychological safety? And if you do care, what can you do about it? We will break the concept of psychological safety down and take a look at how we can contribute and what will happen when we don’t.
David C Winegar Psychological Safety for PerformanceDavid Winegar
Slides from my webinar on wanted.jobs on how to build psychological safety environments to drive higher performance. Includes neuroscience insights that provide insights into how to better connect people and develop a culture of inclusivity, respect and high trust which results in JOY @ Work.
This is a preview of Absolute-North and David C. Winegar's Psychological Safety for Performance Organizational Toolkit available from absolute-north.com beginning in July of 2021.
A Beginner’s Guide to Psychological SafetyMike Arauz
What is it and what can I do?
In 2012, as profiled in this frequently-cited NYTimes article, Google conducted a large company-wide research study to understand why certain teams performed better than others. And what they found was that the most significant differentiating factor among the highest-performing teams was the team’s level of psychological safety.
Psychological safety drives better performance and better business outcomes.
What is psychological safety? Psychological safety is the quality of a team environment where people can speak up and share ideas - even risky or challenging ideas - without fear. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School and advisor at August, is the world’s experts on psychological safety. Edmondson describes psychological safety as the belief that a person will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas questions, concerns, or mistakes.
As a leader, it is important to have a cohesive and productive team. Many leaders overlook the importance of psychological safety within their organization. This can be problematic as psychological safety outlines what it truly means to be a team member.
Psychological Safety in the Time of PandemicJohn Dobbin
Talk | Best Agile Articles Conference -- Sept 28th, 2020
Findings from recent interviews and observations with medium to large size organisations in the Middle East and Asia Pacific region
- Why Psychological Safety is Critical
- Good Practices
- Bad Practices
Growing Interest in Psychological Safety
Definition
Impact on teams
Zones
Fear and Seeking systems of mammalian brains
Impacts of toxic cultures
Mental Health symptoms since COVID-19 outbreak
Pandemic of Uncertainty
Confusing Productivity with Performance
Digital Panopticons
Backbiting
Authentic Communication and Vulnerability Modelling
Wellness Check-ins
Compassionate layoffs
This document discusses psychological safety in the workplace and proposes some methods for achieving it. It suggests democratizing organizational power similar to political systems so employees can vote. It also recommends treating unproductive behaviors like a referee does in soccer, with warnings and then consequences. Finally, it advises that teams should agree to object to misbehaviors respectfully and give final say to the team through voting.
Morgan Ahlström - Psychological Safety – We ContributeAgile Lietuva
Google concluded in project Aristotle that the most important factor when it comes to building high performing teams is the level of psychological safety. But if you don’t aim to be Google, do you still need to care about psychological safety? And if you do care, what can you do about it? We will break the concept of psychological safety down and take a look at how we can contribute and what will happen when we don’t.
How to create Psychological Safety - an overlooked secret to organizational p...Alex Clapson
Psychological safety is an essential foundational component for innovation, divergent thinking, creativity, & risk-taking — but it should not be confused with comfort. There are a number of small behaviours leaders can cultivate to help their teams take more interpersonal risks to increase psychological safety.
Building high performance teams through psychological safetyPeter Cauwelier
Trying to improve team performance ? Discover the concept of Team Psychological Safety and how this allows a team to learn and progress. Action Learning sets have a positive impact, not just on the learning-performance cycle, but also on the level of psychological safety in the team.
In this session we will discuss some current research demonstrating how Psychological Safety is paramount in creating high performing teams.
The lack of psychological safety within teams is a common problem and we will discuss strategies for how to facilitate and foster an environment of safety in the context of difficult work situations.
We will also discuss the physiological basis for psychological safety and review the research backing the importance of this team dynamic.
Our workshops help organizations develop psychological safety and a speak-up culture. The workshops cover understanding psychological safety, diversity and inclusion, leadership behaviors for developing psychologically safe workplaces, and tracking success and business benefits. Research shows diversity alone is not enough - psychological safety is also needed so that individuals feel comfortable speaking up with new ideas, mistakes made, and concerns, leading to better decisions, collaboration, and performance. Psychological safety refers to shared team beliefs that interpersonal risks can be taken.
Every six months, we survey our team to see how we're doing to foster psychological safety. It was the one factor that Google found was common between their highest-performing groups.
This presentation was given to the Ontario Chiefs of Police Zone 2 to provide information about current research and recommendations for psychological health and safety programs. There is an increasing responsibility for senior management to demonstrate a visible commitment to develop and sustain a psychologically healthy workplace in accordance with the new National Psychological Health & Safety Standard released in Canada in January 2013.
This document summarizes the key findings from a world-first study on psychological safety in the Australian workplace conducted by R U OK? and Professor Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School. The study found that only 23% of lower-income frontline employees felt their workplace was psychologically safe, compared to 45% of higher-income employees. Professor Edmondson provides further commentary on several questions from the study related to making mistakes at work, asking for help from colleagues, feeling safe to take risks at work, utilizing unique skills and talents, and accepting differences among colleagues. She emphasizes the importance of psychological safety for innovation, learning, and high performance.
This document discusses the concept of psychological safety in healthcare teams. It begins by outlining some of the challenges facing healthcare, including failures in quality of care. It then defines psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. The document provides examples of how to build psychological safety, such as acknowledging fallibility, framing work as a learning problem, and playing. It also discusses how high-performing teams exhibit characteristics like psychological safety, dependability, and shared purpose. Activities are suggested to help teams reflect on experiences of psychological safety and brainstorm ideas for improving it in their own organizations.
In an increasingly challenging and unpredictable professional landscape, leaders are often being asked to balance an impossibly broad set of responsibilities. A shared leadership model promises a more sustainable path forward – yet many organizations and individuals stumble when they attempt to implement this more collaborative approach.
In this webinar, we discover what research tells us about the behavior patterns that can block shared leadership and potentially reduce leadership effectiveness. Learn how to recognize these risk factors and how you can coach leaders to work through these challenges to support and embrace a shared approach to leadership.
Learn about psychological safety (as defined by Harvard professor Amy C Edmondson), leadership coaching, sustainable behaviour change, and how they fit together.
Growth Mindset & Psychological Safety - High Performing Teams in Software Dev...PALO IT
Software quality, psychological safety and growth mindset might seem to be unrelated at first glance. However, both psychological safety and growth mindset are crucial in high performance teams. Join our upcoming PALO IT BarCamp to understand more about psychological safety and different mindset, learn how these topics affect one another, and get inspired to enable teams to deliver awesomeness to users.
What you will explore
We have always been seeking the secret sauce of high performance teams in the software development industry. Some teams deliver products better than several teams combined. Some others adjust to market change quicker than the change itself. Some others learn from failure and raise the bar by making their product more resilient than ever. Not long ago, Google's Project Aristotle has answered the million dollar question on the successful recipe of building high performance teams with psychological safety cited as the most important factor. In this BarCamp, we will dive into details and find out what it takes to allow individual team members to feel psychologically safe and willing to take calculated risks for learning and improvement.
Through research and case studies, we will explore the following:
> What is psychological safety?
> How mindset affects the perception of psychological safety?
> How to assess mindset and psychological safety in your team?
> How to create an environment that promotes growth mindset and fosters psychological safety?
Audience
> Developers
> Team Leads
> Team Coaches
> Managers
> Business Leaders
> Anyone looking to maximise self and team's ability to grow and improve.
Psychological Safety can make or break a team. To drive culture change people must feel safe to speak up and share their best ideas. Collective trust allows organizational development and accelerates teamwork and leadership.
Good teamwork is the heart of successful business. But what is a good team? Many teams are riven by dysfunctionality, poor leadership, groupthink, and in-fighting. Research across 180 teams and 37,000 employees at Google has identified the core component of high-performance teams - psychological safety. This is a collaborative, customer-focused and civil environment in which creativity, critical thought and cognitive flexibility can flourish. But drop the smallest amount of toxicity into the team and everything can quickly becomes poisonous and low-performance. Informed by years of cutting-edge management research and decades of practical experience in organisational transformation, this Masterclass explains how to deliver a high-performance, psychologically safe environment and how to quickly identify and eliminate the various toxic processes, behaviours and people that destroy the core of a great business.
Peter Cauwelier - Team Psychological Safety – what Google discovered about hi...Certes
» What is team psychological safety and why is it critical for team
performance?
» What impacts team psychological safety and how can you further
develop it?
» What is the impact of Action
Learning on team psychological safety?
The document discusses the SCARF model and its relevance for leaders. It explains that the SCARF model evaluates how our brains respond to social interactions that impact our Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. It provides tips for leaders to be aware of these domains and ensure their team feels safe, informed, empowered, included, and treated fairly to optimize engagement and performance. Leaders should focus on open communication, giving team members choices and credit, building trust and friendliness, and applying standards equitably. Understanding the SCARF model can help leaders strengthen their relationships and culture.
Psychological success factors in an agile delivery teamSimon Carter
A talk discussing the psychological success factors in agile delivery teams.
A brief introduction to how leaders can help their teams to work better together.
Discover in this deck different models for collaboration and have an expanded toolset for better conversations.
Want to attend our next webinar? Become a Shiftup Explorer: https://shiftup.work/product/explorer-agility-innovation-qualification-program/
This document provides reminders for impactful coaching by establishing rapport and a collaborative alliance through listening without judgment and focusing on the present. It emphasizes observing over making judgments, using silence instead of aimless words, asking questions instead of providing answers, and seeing the next question as being right in front of you.
Leadership can take two forms: directing others to achieve goals, and helping others achieve their potential. An effective leader discovers their own leadership traits and uses them to develop safety culture in their job and worksite. Leadership involves influencing a group to work towards common goals like safety, quality and productivity. Leaders must use their power, which is unevenly distributed, effectively and fairly to achieve goals. The pursuit of quality must start with leaders at all levels of an organization.
Safety leadership what does that look like 2011Keith Williams
Safety leadership is important at every level of a project from corporate management to frontline supervisors. Good safety leaders lead by example, coach employees to work safely, and motivate workers to want to be safe. Everyone has a role to play in safety and can demonstrate leadership by being aware of hazards, communicating well, and taking responsibility for themselves and their coworkers.
The document discusses five false assumptions companies often make about crisis management:
1. Having an operational plan is not the same as being prepared for an organizational crisis that violates public trust.
2. One size does not fit all - operational plans cannot contain an organizational crisis in the same way.
3. People are not entirely rational and emotions often overwhelm reason in a crisis.
4. Experienced executives may default to habitual responses that make the crisis worse rather than knowing what to do.
5. Behaviors that led to success in normal times will not necessarily work during a crisis when the rules have changed.
Executive Book Summary of MADE TO STICK Anjali Mehta
The document discusses six principles for making ideas "sticky" or memorable: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotional resonance, and storytelling. It provides examples and explanations for each principle. Simplicity involves stripping ideas down to their core. Unexpectedness grabs attention by breaking patterns. Concreteness means describing ideas through the senses. Credibility can come from personal experiences or testable claims. Emotional resonance associates ideas with what people already care about. And storytelling engages the imagination and burns ideas into memory.
How to create Psychological Safety - an overlooked secret to organizational p...Alex Clapson
Psychological safety is an essential foundational component for innovation, divergent thinking, creativity, & risk-taking — but it should not be confused with comfort. There are a number of small behaviours leaders can cultivate to help their teams take more interpersonal risks to increase psychological safety.
Building high performance teams through psychological safetyPeter Cauwelier
Trying to improve team performance ? Discover the concept of Team Psychological Safety and how this allows a team to learn and progress. Action Learning sets have a positive impact, not just on the learning-performance cycle, but also on the level of psychological safety in the team.
In this session we will discuss some current research demonstrating how Psychological Safety is paramount in creating high performing teams.
The lack of psychological safety within teams is a common problem and we will discuss strategies for how to facilitate and foster an environment of safety in the context of difficult work situations.
We will also discuss the physiological basis for psychological safety and review the research backing the importance of this team dynamic.
Our workshops help organizations develop psychological safety and a speak-up culture. The workshops cover understanding psychological safety, diversity and inclusion, leadership behaviors for developing psychologically safe workplaces, and tracking success and business benefits. Research shows diversity alone is not enough - psychological safety is also needed so that individuals feel comfortable speaking up with new ideas, mistakes made, and concerns, leading to better decisions, collaboration, and performance. Psychological safety refers to shared team beliefs that interpersonal risks can be taken.
Every six months, we survey our team to see how we're doing to foster psychological safety. It was the one factor that Google found was common between their highest-performing groups.
This presentation was given to the Ontario Chiefs of Police Zone 2 to provide information about current research and recommendations for psychological health and safety programs. There is an increasing responsibility for senior management to demonstrate a visible commitment to develop and sustain a psychologically healthy workplace in accordance with the new National Psychological Health & Safety Standard released in Canada in January 2013.
This document summarizes the key findings from a world-first study on psychological safety in the Australian workplace conducted by R U OK? and Professor Amy Edmondson from Harvard Business School. The study found that only 23% of lower-income frontline employees felt their workplace was psychologically safe, compared to 45% of higher-income employees. Professor Edmondson provides further commentary on several questions from the study related to making mistakes at work, asking for help from colleagues, feeling safe to take risks at work, utilizing unique skills and talents, and accepting differences among colleagues. She emphasizes the importance of psychological safety for innovation, learning, and high performance.
This document discusses the concept of psychological safety in healthcare teams. It begins by outlining some of the challenges facing healthcare, including failures in quality of care. It then defines psychological safety as a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. The document provides examples of how to build psychological safety, such as acknowledging fallibility, framing work as a learning problem, and playing. It also discusses how high-performing teams exhibit characteristics like psychological safety, dependability, and shared purpose. Activities are suggested to help teams reflect on experiences of psychological safety and brainstorm ideas for improving it in their own organizations.
In an increasingly challenging and unpredictable professional landscape, leaders are often being asked to balance an impossibly broad set of responsibilities. A shared leadership model promises a more sustainable path forward – yet many organizations and individuals stumble when they attempt to implement this more collaborative approach.
In this webinar, we discover what research tells us about the behavior patterns that can block shared leadership and potentially reduce leadership effectiveness. Learn how to recognize these risk factors and how you can coach leaders to work through these challenges to support and embrace a shared approach to leadership.
Learn about psychological safety (as defined by Harvard professor Amy C Edmondson), leadership coaching, sustainable behaviour change, and how they fit together.
Growth Mindset & Psychological Safety - High Performing Teams in Software Dev...PALO IT
Software quality, psychological safety and growth mindset might seem to be unrelated at first glance. However, both psychological safety and growth mindset are crucial in high performance teams. Join our upcoming PALO IT BarCamp to understand more about psychological safety and different mindset, learn how these topics affect one another, and get inspired to enable teams to deliver awesomeness to users.
What you will explore
We have always been seeking the secret sauce of high performance teams in the software development industry. Some teams deliver products better than several teams combined. Some others adjust to market change quicker than the change itself. Some others learn from failure and raise the bar by making their product more resilient than ever. Not long ago, Google's Project Aristotle has answered the million dollar question on the successful recipe of building high performance teams with psychological safety cited as the most important factor. In this BarCamp, we will dive into details and find out what it takes to allow individual team members to feel psychologically safe and willing to take calculated risks for learning and improvement.
Through research and case studies, we will explore the following:
> What is psychological safety?
> How mindset affects the perception of psychological safety?
> How to assess mindset and psychological safety in your team?
> How to create an environment that promotes growth mindset and fosters psychological safety?
Audience
> Developers
> Team Leads
> Team Coaches
> Managers
> Business Leaders
> Anyone looking to maximise self and team's ability to grow and improve.
Psychological Safety can make or break a team. To drive culture change people must feel safe to speak up and share their best ideas. Collective trust allows organizational development and accelerates teamwork and leadership.
Good teamwork is the heart of successful business. But what is a good team? Many teams are riven by dysfunctionality, poor leadership, groupthink, and in-fighting. Research across 180 teams and 37,000 employees at Google has identified the core component of high-performance teams - psychological safety. This is a collaborative, customer-focused and civil environment in which creativity, critical thought and cognitive flexibility can flourish. But drop the smallest amount of toxicity into the team and everything can quickly becomes poisonous and low-performance. Informed by years of cutting-edge management research and decades of practical experience in organisational transformation, this Masterclass explains how to deliver a high-performance, psychologically safe environment and how to quickly identify and eliminate the various toxic processes, behaviours and people that destroy the core of a great business.
Peter Cauwelier - Team Psychological Safety – what Google discovered about hi...Certes
» What is team psychological safety and why is it critical for team
performance?
» What impacts team psychological safety and how can you further
develop it?
» What is the impact of Action
Learning on team psychological safety?
The document discusses the SCARF model and its relevance for leaders. It explains that the SCARF model evaluates how our brains respond to social interactions that impact our Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness, and Fairness. It provides tips for leaders to be aware of these domains and ensure their team feels safe, informed, empowered, included, and treated fairly to optimize engagement and performance. Leaders should focus on open communication, giving team members choices and credit, building trust and friendliness, and applying standards equitably. Understanding the SCARF model can help leaders strengthen their relationships and culture.
Psychological success factors in an agile delivery teamSimon Carter
A talk discussing the psychological success factors in agile delivery teams.
A brief introduction to how leaders can help their teams to work better together.
Discover in this deck different models for collaboration and have an expanded toolset for better conversations.
Want to attend our next webinar? Become a Shiftup Explorer: https://shiftup.work/product/explorer-agility-innovation-qualification-program/
This document provides reminders for impactful coaching by establishing rapport and a collaborative alliance through listening without judgment and focusing on the present. It emphasizes observing over making judgments, using silence instead of aimless words, asking questions instead of providing answers, and seeing the next question as being right in front of you.
Leadership can take two forms: directing others to achieve goals, and helping others achieve their potential. An effective leader discovers their own leadership traits and uses them to develop safety culture in their job and worksite. Leadership involves influencing a group to work towards common goals like safety, quality and productivity. Leaders must use their power, which is unevenly distributed, effectively and fairly to achieve goals. The pursuit of quality must start with leaders at all levels of an organization.
Safety leadership what does that look like 2011Keith Williams
Safety leadership is important at every level of a project from corporate management to frontline supervisors. Good safety leaders lead by example, coach employees to work safely, and motivate workers to want to be safe. Everyone has a role to play in safety and can demonstrate leadership by being aware of hazards, communicating well, and taking responsibility for themselves and their coworkers.
The document discusses five false assumptions companies often make about crisis management:
1. Having an operational plan is not the same as being prepared for an organizational crisis that violates public trust.
2. One size does not fit all - operational plans cannot contain an organizational crisis in the same way.
3. People are not entirely rational and emotions often overwhelm reason in a crisis.
4. Experienced executives may default to habitual responses that make the crisis worse rather than knowing what to do.
5. Behaviors that led to success in normal times will not necessarily work during a crisis when the rules have changed.
Executive Book Summary of MADE TO STICK Anjali Mehta
The document discusses six principles for making ideas "sticky" or memorable: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotional resonance, and storytelling. It provides examples and explanations for each principle. Simplicity involves stripping ideas down to their core. Unexpectedness grabs attention by breaking patterns. Concreteness means describing ideas through the senses. Credibility can come from personal experiences or testable claims. Emotional resonance associates ideas with what people already care about. And storytelling engages the imagination and burns ideas into memory.
This document contains a collection of over 100 quotes related to advertising, branding, media, ideas, new media, ambition, and more. Some key quotes include:
- "Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience."
- "Adapt the technique to your idea, not your idea to the technique"
- "It used to be that no brand manager at P&G ever got fired for recommending a 30-second TV spot"
Great Quotes To Use & Repeat When You Can’t Find A Better Way Of Saying ItTom Himpe
This document contains a collection of over 100 quotes related to advertising, branding, media, ideas, new media, ambition, and more. Some key quotes include:
- "Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience."
- "Adapt the technique to your idea, not your idea to the technique"
- "It used to be that no brand manager at P&G ever got fired for recommending a 30-second TV spot"
- "Peer production is the most powerful industrial force of our time"
- "It’s quite fun to do the impossible"
All hands on deck for siemens medical solutions western zone leadership retreatJoe Tye
This document provides an overview of building a culture of ownership in an organization. It discusses that only 25% of employees are fully engaged while 60% are not engaged and 15% are disengaged. It emphasizes that culture is shaped by core values and stories, and outlines eight lessons for building a strong, positive culture: 1) Pursue a inspiring mission, 2) Use structure and process, 3) Build on core values, 4) Trust is the glue, 5) Use stories, 6) Invest in character building, 7) Unleash creativity, and 8) Everyone is a volunteer. It argues that cultural transformation requires addressing assumptions, developing an "invisible architecture" based on values, and creating a culture where people feel
Persuasion Equation The Subtle Science of Getting Your Way.docxkarlhennesey
Persuasion Equation: The Subtle Science of Getting Your Way
by Mark Rodgers
AMACOM. (c) 2015. Copying Prohibited.
Reprinted for Personal Account, Purdue University Global
[email protected]
Reprinted with permission as a subscription benefit of Skillport,
All rights reserved. Reproduction and/or distribution in whole or in part in electronic,paper or other forms
without written permission is prohibited.
Chapter 2: Decision Making—The Surprising Reasons People Say Yes and No
Picking his way through the cramped ballroom, with people-filled padded chairs all askew, there was no clear route. Obstacles,
however, were not this man’s primary concern. On his face, you could see his mind racing—searching for what he would say
once he was in front of the crowd. Few people like public speaking, but this situation seemed even more torturous than usual.
He found his standing spot, turned, and faced the crowd.
“I have traveled three hours round-trip every day to attend this session. I’ve driven dangerous roads and in heavy traffic. You
are a talented and knowledgeable group. I have learned from you, and you have learned from me. And I sure could use the
money to help pay for gas. Please, please. Pick me!”
That scene played out in a Calgary persuasion workshop during which I asked three volunteers to vie for a single, crisp $100
bill by convincing the audience to individually award them the money. The idea: Whoever makes the most compelling case,
winning the affections of the crowd, walks away with the cash and the bragging rights.
Participants are allowed to make their case in any way they deem appropriate, with one exception: They can’t share the money
or materially benefit the crowd in any way. (I’ll buy you all drinks!) Adding to the pressure, I give them just four minutes to
develop their case and only 25 seconds to present it.
What would you say if you were in this situation?
This activity mirrors business life today in many ways. You are often in competition with others for the account, the promotion,
the project. You must think on your feet and be able to put together compelling arguments fast, and you might not have much
time to state your case. Sometimes you need to do all this—especially in peer-to-peer persuasion situations—without offering
your target some sort of material gain. Not an easy assignment, to be sure.
The most interesting aspect of this workshop activity, though, is not the people vying for the money—it’s the people deciding
who will earn the money. You may think that people are carefully analyzing participants’ arguments, weighing the pros and the
cons to rationally decide who gets their votes. That’s not what’s happening. At all. The surprising truth is that most people have
no idea why they say yes.
UNEXPECTED TRUTHS ABOUT YOUR THINKING
Nobel Prize–winning economist and author Daniel Kahneman suggests that human beings possess two “systems” for thinking:
one that processes information very quickly, and one that d ...
Plants In Our Daily Life Essay 200 WordsDebbie White
The document provides instructions on how to request and complete an assignment writing request through the HelpWriting.net website. It outlines a 5-step process: 1) Create an account with an email and password. 2) Complete a 10-minute order form with instructions, sources, and deadline. 3) Review bids from writers and choose one based on qualifications. 4) Review the completed paper and authorize payment. 5) Request revisions until satisfied with the work. The process aims to match clients with qualified writers to complete assignments while allowing revisions to ensure quality and satisfaction.
The document discusses the importance of professional image and managing one's personal brand. It notes that 87% of job losses are due to improper work habits and attitudes rather than lack of skills. It emphasizes that people judge others based on appearance and that image is reality. It advises focusing on building a strong, positive brand and managing one's reputation through hard work, consistency, and paying attention to communication styles, dress, and behavior.
This document contains observations and commentary from Tom Peters on leading with compassion during troubled times. Peters emphasizes the importance of focusing on excellence, people, and community now more than ever. He advocates for hiring and promoting based on empathy and a demonstrated track record of putting people first. Peters argues that creating a supportive work environment, especially during difficult circumstances, is how managers earn their pay.
Rational versus emotional – inside the mind of your buyerB2B Marketing
This document discusses how emotion is important in B2B marketing because business people are still people with emotions even at work. It argues that the common assumptions that business decisions are made entirely rationally and through a single logical decision are flawed, as purchasing decisions actually involve many "micro-yesses" that are highly emotive. The document introduces behavioural economics as a framework that combines neuroscience and psychology to understand how people actually think and make decisions using two systems - fast, intuitive thinking and slow, rational thinking. It discusses various cognitive biases and techniques like framing, cognitive ease and implicit/explicit goals that can influence purchasing decisions in emotionally-driven ways.
The document discusses using stories and storytelling as a way to influence people and effect change. It covers three aspects of story - listening, thinking, and telling. It discusses listening for stories, collecting stories, and practicing empathy. It also discusses using stories to think and map other people's perspectives. The document advocates drawing on one's own life experiences and timeline of key events as a way to craft effective stories for telling and influencing others.
The document discusses using stories and storytelling as a way to influence people and effect change. It covers three brain theory which suggests that the unconscious mind controls most behavior. It also discusses listening for stories, thinking with stories, and telling stories to communicate insights and wisdom in a contextual way rather than just presenting facts. The goal is to use stories to help people understand different perspectives and motivate change.
Using Humor And Metaphorical Thinking In Your Workdkaltved
1. This document discusses using humor and metaphors in counseling work. It provides research showing the benefits of humor, such as reducing stress and strengthening relationships.
2. Guidelines are presented for appropriate use of humor, including observing a client's mood, starting slowly, and ensuring the humor is relevant and not a put-down.
3. Metaphors are discussed as a way to help clients understand concepts through familiar comparisons. Examples of career metaphors like describing software development as building a cathedral are provided.
This document discusses the importance of image and impression management. It notes that 87% of people who lose their jobs or fail to get promotions do so due to improper work habits and attitudes rather than lack of skills. It emphasizes that people judge others based on appearance and that image is reality. It provides tips on dressing professionally, maintaining a positive attitude, and managing one's personal brand.
The document provides instructions for using the HelpWriting.net service to request that a writer complete an assignment. It outlines a 5-step process: 1) Create an account with an email and password. 2) Complete a form with assignment details, sources, and deadline. 3) Review bids from writers and select one. 4) Review the completed paper and authorize payment. 5) Request revisions until satisfied with the work. The service uses a bidding system and promises original, high-quality content with refunds for plagiarism.
Steps To Writing A 5 Paragraph Essay. Online assignment writing service.Alyssa Hase
Here are a few key points about the importance of love in literature:
- Love is a universal human experience and powerful emotion that has inspired countless works of literature across genres and time periods. Exploring themes of love, loss, and relationships helps make stories more emotionally resonant for readers.
- Works that feature love as a central theme, like romance novels and plays, allow readers to experience different types of love through compelling characters and narratives. This can provide insight into our own relationships.
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Creating psychological safety in the workplace a. edmondson
1. /
LEADING TEAMS
Creating Psychological Safety in
the Workplace
JANUARY 22, 2019
Amy Edmondson, professor at Harvard Business School, first identified the concept of psychological
safety in work teams in 1999. Since then, she has observed how companies with a trusting
workplace perform better. Psychological safety isn’t about being nice, she says. It’s about giving
candid feedback, openly admitting mistakes, and learning from each other. And she argues that kind
of organizational culture is increasingly important in the modern economy. Edmondson is the
author of the new book The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for
Learning, Innovation, and Growth.
TRANSCRIPT
CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch.
It was the late 1990s. Medical mistakes at hospitals were a big problem. And researcher Amy
Edmondson had a moment of panic.
She had been studying different teams in the same hospital. She wanted to know do better teams
make fewer mistakes?
26:48
2. /
What she found was the opposite of what she expected.
Turns out, the most cohesive hospital teams reported making the most mistakes, not fewer. That
surprised her until she realized: Maybe the better teams weren’t making more mistakes. Maybe they
were more able and willing to talk about their mistakes.
This became Edmondson’ influential 1999 paper, titled “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior
in Work Teams.”
Since then, the research has piled on, showing that psychological safety can make not just teams,
but entire organizations perform better.
It’s been ten years since Amy Edmondson was a guest on the HBR IdeaCast and she’s back on the
show today. She’s a professor at Harvard Business School, and her new book is The Fearless
Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.
Amy, thanks so much for coming on the show.
AMY EDMONDSON: Thank you for having me.
CURT NICKISCH: It’s great to have you here because psychological safety – I can’t tell you the number
of times it has come up in HBR IdeaCast interviews. And it’s fun to talk about it now also with the
hindsight of what you’ve learned over the last couple of decades. Now, this term psychological
safety, you say it’s not the best term. Why not?
AMY EDMONDSON: You know the term implies to people a sense of coziness – you know, “Oh, I’m
just, everything’s going to be great.” You know, that we’re all going to be nice to each other and that’s
not what it’s really about. What it’s about is candor; what it’s about is being direct, taking risks, being
willing to say, “I screwed that up.” Being willing to ask for help when you’re in over your head.
CURT NICKISCH: Why is it that probably more people would say that they don’t feel psychologically
safe at work than others? I mean, it still seems like it’s not the norm.
3. /
AMY EDMONDSON: It is not the norm at all. In fact, I think it’s unusual, which is what makes it
potentially a competitive advantage. The reason why psychological safety is rare has to do with
aspects of human nature, human instinct. You know, for example, it is an instinct to want to look
good in front of others. It’s an instinct to divert blame, you know, it’s an instinct to agree with the
boss. And hierarchies are places where these instincts are even more exaggerated.
We really want to look good and we especially want to look good in a hierarchy. And the
spontaneous way to try to achieve that goal is to kind of be quiet unless I’m sure that what I have to
say will be very well received, especially by the higher-ups.
CURT NICKISCH: And these are like phrases we know in real life too, like, “better to be safe than
sorry,” “don’t rock the boat…”
AMY EDMONDSON: Right, don’t rock the boat, you know, no one ever got fired for silence. And you
know, I think we tend to play not to lose, right? We stay safe. I want to look good. I want to perform
well. Learning is great, but not in front of people. I don’t want to have the part of learning that
involves me to fail along the way.
CURT NICKISCH: I want to learn from when that other person does it.
AMY EDMONDSON: Right, I love vicarious learning. Do I have to learn firsthand that this doesn’t
work and have everybody see my failure? I’d rather not.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. Let’s talk about a disaster two where psychological safety has not been
present and it led to financial ruin or…
AMY EDMONSON: It led to colossal business failure. So one of the best examples recently is Wells
Fargo, which in 2015 was considered one of the world’s most admired companies. It was the shining
star of banking.
CURT NICKISCH: For anybody who doesn’t know it, this is a U.S. bank with a long history.
4. /
AMY EDMONSON: Right, and very much a kind of a customer-oriented, household-oriented bank.
And their strategy — which I think was a good strategy — was to really push on cross-selling. Of
course, once you’ve made a customer relationship, it’s easier to leverage that relationship, sell that
customer more products rather than, you know, the extra cost of building new relationships. So it
made sense to really emphasize cross-selling.
CURT NICKISCH: And by this you mean if somebody has a savings and checking account, they can
get a car loan, then they maybe get a home loan…
AMY EDMONDSON: A home loan and a credit card and in fact, they had a slogan “Going for GR8.”
The idea was that I should be able to sell you eight different financial services products. So nice idea.
And soon this idea runs up against the reality of customers’ limited wallets.
But rather than the executives getting the feedback from those, you know, boots on the ground.
Instead, the message just kept coming top down, “You must do this.” You know, people had the
sense that they’d be fired if they didn’t achieve the targets that they were set. The managers were
very tough and present.
CURT NICKISCH: Stretch goals!
AMY EDMONDSON: Stretch goals. I love stretch goals, right? I’m a big fan of stretch goals, but if you
want to have stretch goals, you better have open ears. So I think of the Wells Fargo story as a recipe
for failure is stretch goals plus closed ears.
So what ultimately happened was, of course, the sales folks started crossing an ethical line. They
started making up fake customers, they lied to customers saying if you buy this product, you also
have to buy this product, right? I mean they did a dozen little things that were just inappropriate and
wrong. And ultimately, as is always the case, this comes to light. The beautiful success of Wells Fargo
proves itself to be an illusion of success.
CURT NICKISCH: Why do you see this as an absence of psychological safety rather than like an
incentives problem or an ethics problem?
5. /
AMY EDMONDSON: Yeah, I mean there is an incentive story here, but I could give you in your job a
poor incentive and you could give me feedback. You could tell me, you know, this actually doesn’t
work. And in fact, if you think about it’s encouraging some behaviors you really don’t want to
encourage.
And then I’d say, “Hey, that’s really interesting. You’re right, let’s tweak it. Let’s talk together about
what would be the best incentive to optimize our performance.” And that’s not what happened. So
it’s a psychological safety story because from what I learned, people really did not feel it was safe to
push back – to say this isn’t working, it can’t be done. It’s a lovely strategy, but the strategy in
execution is discovering some new and important things about the reality of the market.
And in a well-run organization, managers – middle managers, senior managers, executives – would
be quite interested in those data and they would not automatically say, “Oh, these people just aren’t
trying hard enough. Let’s push harder.”
CURT NICKISCH: What about an example of a company that has mastered psychological safety in
the workplace and has gained that competitive advantage that you referenced at the beginning,
AMY EDMONDSON: The one industry that is a very challenging industry to succeed in, and
particularly to succeed in consistently, is the movie industry. Most movie producers, most movie
houses will have an occasional hit and then a few, you know, bombs.
So Pixar is a company that has had 17, in a row, major box office successes that have also been
critically acclaimed. It’s an unheard of success.
CURT NICKISCH: Definitely outsized.
AMY EDMONDSON: It’s outsized, right? It’s way beyond the sort of just pretty good. And Ed Catmull,
cofounder and longtime leader, has gone out of his way and very deliberately to create and keep
creating a psychologically safe environment where candor is expected, possible, you know, critical
feedback.
6. /
And they do this in two fundamental ways. You know, one is behavioral, the other is structural. And
the behavioral is that Catmull will often say things like, you know, he’ll say, “Here’s the mistake I
made,” right? Because leaders have to go first. Leaders have to show that they know that they’re
fallible human beings.
He shows up with humility, with curiosity, with interest, with fallibility. And then the other is
structural, you know, setting up meetings and sessions where they’re designed in thoughtful ways
to make it easier for us to give each other candid feedback or to really critique the movie.
And he’ll say things like “Early on, all of our movies are bad. You know, they’re terrible.” And he says
that not because that’s necessarily good news, but because he wants everyone to know that’s just
part of the journey. There is no way to get to magnificent unless we go through bad and inadequate
and sappy and boring along the way. And we just keep pushing back and we keep making it better.
You know, this film that I’m making is my baby. I don’t want you to criticize my baby, but I have to
kind of realize, no, I do want you to, because I’d much rather get it from you now then get it in the
box office later.
CURT NICKISCH: So let’s talk about how to do this. What do you tell people? If they want to create a
fearless organization, what do they need to do?
AMY EDMONDSON: I say it’s – there’s three sort of temporal steps, you know, three types of
activities that you as a leader have to do, but I want to be clear it’s not one and done. It’s three
activities that you have to just keep doing often. And the first one is setting the stage, the second
one is inviting engagement, and the third one is responding productively.
And setting the stage really means let’s get people on the same page about the nature of the work
we’re doing, you know, the nature of the project we’re on. And the most important variables in the
work we’re doing is how much uncertainty do we face? How much complexity, how much
interdependence? The more the work is uncertain or complex, the more your voice is essential to our
success.
7. /
CURT NICKISCH: This is the confidence thing, right? If people are – it’s easy to speak up when you
know what you say is going to be well-received, especially by the higher-ups. It gets harder if you’re
not sure and in a complex place – exactly what you’re talking about right now – that just means that
confidence levels across the team, across the organization, across the project, whatever it is, are
lower, and you have to increase safety so that people still feel that they could speak up when they’re
not sure.
AMY EDMONDSON: Right. If you think about each one of us is always putting the threshold for
when I’ll speak up and what I’ll speak up about somewhere.
CURT NICKISCH: It’s a scale.
AMY EDMONDSON: It’s a scale, right? It’s like, you know, maybe I’ll speak up if I’m 50 percent
confident this is an okay thing to say. Or maybe someone else it’s 40 percent.
CURT NICKISCH: I’ll do it once a week.
AMY EDMONDSON: Yeah, so what I think leaders need to do is just keep trying to push that
threshold back down to lower than is natural, lower than is instinctive. And by reminding us of
what’s at stake, by reminding us of the uncertainty or complexity, I’m saying, “you know, it really
matters. Your voice might make the difference.” I’m creating the logical case for voice.
CURT NICKISCH: What’s an example of this? Just like a real world-thing, something you’ve heard
somebody say at a company?
AMY EDMONDSON: So Julie Morath, Chief Operating Officer at Children’s Hospital and Clinics in
Minneapolis says healthcare delivery by its nature is a complex error-prone system. What does that
say? It’s sort of saying, you know, this is just more likely to go wrong than right. Speaking up saves
lives.
Because I think our default, our default stance is that the work is like a factory – we’re supposed to
know what to do. We’re supposed to do it. We’re supposed to execute. We’re supposed to hit our
targets.
8. /
And sure, we want people trying as hard as they possibly can to perform well, but when we assume,
a priori, we know what the right metrics are, I think we’re missing something.
CURT NICKISCH: Do managers ever have the – run the risk of appearing too soft when they do that?
AMY EDMONDSON: I think many managers worry about that risk. The risk of this kind of stuff will
appear to soft.
CURT NICKISCH: It’s easier to give the metrics…
AMY EDMONDSON: Right, it’s easier to just give the metrics, that makes me appear hard-nosed. But
it’s also out of touch with reality. The more we’re in new territory – and so many organizations are in
new territory with at least some part of their activities, especially the innovation side – the more,
like Ed Catmull, we’re saying things like, “We need to hear from you. What ideas do you have? We’re
going to you know, let’s test them. Let’s test them quickly.”
Or, Astro Teller at Google X, you know, it’s like, well, this is a Moonshot. It probably won’t be able to
work, but we are going to really give it our all. You know, we’re going to learn fast in doing so. So,
leaders who do this well, they’re anything but soft. You know, they’re driven, they’re passionate,
they’re compelling, but they’re not soft. They do have empathy.
CURT NICKISCH: And curiosity – they’re trying to understand what’s keeping us from getting there?
AMY EDMONDSON: Yeah. And they get human beings, like they know what they’re asking isn’t
necessarily going to be easy. So they have empathy for that. But they’re not going to give up, there’s
too much at stake.
CURT NICKISCH: And that’s why they take the time to set the stage?
AMY EDMONDSON: Yeah.
CURT NICKISCH: So what happens next? Like what’s the next step?
9. /
AMY EDMONDSON: What happens next is realizing that you’ve got to be proactive as a leader.
You’ve got to invite participation. Now that sounds kind of pointy-headed. What I really mean is ask
questions.
Ask people directly, what are you seeing out there? I need to hear from you. What ideas do you have?
What help can I offer? And when I ask a question that’s a real question, you know a genuine
question. And then when I listen carefully to the response, I’m creating a moment – and hopefully
more – of psychological safety. I’m saying I’m genuinely interested and maybe what you have to say
is a little bit threatening and you’re reluctant to say it, but I’m giving you that room to do it.
CURT NICKISCH: It is amazing what you can ask somebody if they really believe that you care, right?
You can ask them anything.
AMY EDMONDSON: You really can. If they believe you care, they will offer it and they will hope to
get something out of it. Right? To learn something or to feel a little better about the situation. And
Julie Morath at Children’s invited, you know actively invited people’s observations and ideas.
CURT NICKISCH: You had an amazing quote in your book from her. The words she used to get
people to admit things could be better. She said something like, what have you seen this week that
could have been safer for our patients?
AMY EDMONDSON: Right. And that’s because they were just resisting. They were – when she said,
“Let’s make this place really safe. You know, as safe as it can be.” People kind of thought, “I think
we’re pretty good already. Like, I don’t hear about anything going wrong.”
CURT NICKISCH: We haven’t been sued lately.
AMY EDMONDSON: We haven’t been sued lately, so Morath didn’t try to push back on that
resistance. Instead, she asked them a question. She essentially asked groups, audiences, full of
employees: “Think about your experience last week with your patients. Was everything as safe as
you would like it to be at? That remarkable question, which by the way, notice she didn’t say, “Did
you see lots of hazards?”
10. /
CURT NICKISCH: Did somebody make a mistake?
AMY EDMONDSON: Did someone make a mistake? She said, “Was everything as safe as you would
like it to be?” It was an “aha moment” and that she said, “My office became a confessional. Like,
people are lining up to come in and say, “No, it isn’t as safe as I’d like it to be.”
Like all of a sudden, they realized she was all ears and she had helped them see their own
experiences in a new way. She helped them see it against the aspiration of, you know, as safe as it
could possibly be rather than against the default, which is yeah, it looks pretty good to me. I mean
it’s the way it always was. It’s fine.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. So what do you do when somebody comes and says, “I saw this or you know,
maybe this wasn’t as safe as it could be?”
AMY EDMONDSON: Let me give us an even harder one. Like someone comes to you and says, “My
project is really delayed, right? It’s really off track.” And make no mistake. This is bad news, right?
I’ve just shared bad news.
Your instinct is to get – you know, be mad, to express profound disappointment and it’s okay to be
disappointed. In fact, you should be disappointed. It’s not okay to get mad. Because the primary
accomplishment of getting mad is that you’re not going to hear from me next time.
So a productive response is: “Thank you for that clear line of sight.” Right? So it’s a – now, what help
do you need? What can we do to get this back on track? Which is after all what we both really care
about.
CURT NICKISCH: What if the person screwed up?
AMY EDMONDSON: That person is a human being and screwing up comes with the territory of
human beings. So I’ll postpone for a moment the issue of if someone is repeatedly screwing up and
I’ll come back to that. But each and every one of us are allowed to screw up now and then. It just
comes with the territory of being human.
11. /
That can’t be something that we just really penalize. Most of us feel bad enough when we screwed
up. We don’t need the boss to tell us, “Hey, this is really bad that you screwed up.” We know that
already. We need help figuring out how to get back on track. Now, if someone is screwing up
repeatedly, we’ve got an obligation, you know, either to really give them some very real help –
coaching, training, what have you so that this doesn’t happen or to free up their future.
CURT NICKISCH: No danger of too much psychological safety, I take it? Do you basically see places
where they could only have more?
AMY EDMONDSON: Yes. I don’t think you can have too much psychological safety. I think you can
have people speaking too much and they need and deserve our feedback, right? Most people want to
be effective. Let’s give them feedback about how effective they’re being, but let’s not try to regulate
voice through fear.
CURT NICKISCH: Does this mean we have to be transparent about everything – like candor? Like
there’s the radical candor thing, right?
AMY EDMONDSON: I think we have to be transparent about the relevant things. I don’t need to tell
you about the fight I had with my teenage son last week. I do need to tell you about the new
information I just got from the customer. W have to be thoughtful and we have to get better and
better at being thoughtful, at determining what’s relevant and what isn’t.
CURT NICKISCH: What about psychological safety in different cultures? Like we’ve been talking
predominantly about U.S. companies here. That’s where you’ve done much of your research. Does
this concept still apply in cultures where organizations are more hierarchical and just the way you
speak to authority is different and the way you work together is different?
AMY EDMONDSON: It’s such an important question because it’s tempting to say, “Oh, this doesn’t
apply to places like say Japan, or countries where power distance really matters. Where hierarchy
really matters.” And tempting as it is, we have to push back and say, “No, it does apply.”
12. /
Because the nature of the work is the same, but if they’re trying to come up with innovative new
products, it’s just as important to be hearing ideas from people. If they’re trying to do quality
improvement on an existing production line, it’s just as important that people tell them when things
aren’t working well.
So what I like to say is psychological safety is just as important for excellence in any organization
around the world. It’s just harder to get there.
CURT NICKISCH: Or you have to devise a system – design ways to get past it.
AMY EDMONDSON: Right and in fact, if you think about the Toyota production system, for example,
they designed this beautiful thing called the Andon cord, which is a physical reminder that not only
is it okay, but we expect and need you to pull that cord when you see something that’s just not quite
right.
Even if you’re not sure, like err on the side of inclusion, they say, and it would be harder, let’s say for
a Japanese associate to raise his hand and say, come – me, me, me. But pulling a cord quietly that
lights up a lantern – that’s not so bad, that I can do so. So they’re putting that nice scaffolding in
place to make it easier.
And having accomplished that, created that kind of psychological safety to speak up about
problems, they created a remarkable competitive advantage.
CURT NICKISCH: What have you learned about psychological safety over the past couple of decades
since you first researched this and the economy has changed quite a bit for many, many people?
What have you learned about psychological safety that you didn’t anticipate and surprised you?
AMY EDMONDSON: One thing that really surprised me was the Google study – Project Aristotle,
which was written up in the New York Times a couple of years ago. The goal of this study was to find
out what distinguishes high performing teams from low performing teams. And of course, they put
all sorts of things in there, you know, where you went to school, gender mix – you know, everything
you would think of in human capital that might predict team performance.
13. /
And nothing worked until they stumbled into the concept of psychological safety and found that it
was just a very powerful predictor. Right, in fact, the most powerful predictor of team performance
at Google. If you had asked me would psychological safety have been the big predictor of team
performance at Google, I would’ve said, I don’t think so.
Like I think all those folks are going to be pretty able to take care of themselves, right? They’ve been
told their whole life that they’re really smart, they’ve done well in school, they’re going to show up
and…
CURT NICKISCH: They were selected carefully.
AMY EDMONDSON: They were selected carefully. They’re going to expect their colleagues to be very
interested in what they have to say.
CURT NICKISCH: But even at Google.
AMY EDMONDSON: Even at Google. So to me, that was quite a powerful and surprising moment.
Even at Google, they would have differences – which really means that leadership matters
enormously. That team leaders, project leaders, even at a place like Google can make this a great
energizing experience, or a kind of unsafe experience where people are holding back and then that
has real consequences for the team.
CURT NICKISCH: And that means that if you’re at a place where you don’t have it, you, by trying to
be this type of leader or this type of manager, you can make a big difference, especially at a place
where it isn’t present.
AMY EDMONDSON: Right, such opportunity. I mean, I think there’s a lot of latent untapped talent
because people are not making it psychologically safe enough to get that talent and put it to good
work.
CURT NICKISCH: Right, you’ve had employees who for a long time have had great independent
thoughts about how to improve things just haven’t said it.
14. /
AMY EDMONSON: Right, right. So that was one surprise. Another, and this isn’t so much of a
surprise, but, over the years, I’m often asked, well, how do you explain the Ubers or the Apples of
this world where it sure doesn’t look psychologically safe and yet their market cap is you know,
enormous.
CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, I thought about that when you mentioned Pixar and I thought about Steve
Jobs. Yeah.
AMY EDMONDSON: And so I always want to explain, you know, there is an observed and quite
robust correlation between psychological safety and learning and performance. That does not mean
that this is, you know, you can’t have high performance without it. You sometimes have high
performance because you’ve just got a great strategy. You know, it’s brilliant, no one else is doing it
or a product that is irresistible.
And what I like to say is you’re getting away with it in a way. And like, what would this company be
like, you know, if they’d had an engaging leader that was better at tapping into the brilliance of
others in the organization rather than only relying on his or her own brilliance.
CURT NICKISCH: Amy, I’m so glad that you were on the show to talk about your research over the
years and also your new book, The Fearless Organization.
AMY EDMONDSON: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It was really a pleasure and I learned
something being here.
CURT NICKISCH: That’s Amy Edmondson. She’s a professor at Harvard Business School. Her new
book is The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning,
Innovation, and Growth.
This episode was produced by Mary Dooe. We get technical help from Rob Eckhardt. Adam Buchholz
is our audio product manager.
Thanks for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. I’m Curt Nickisch.
15. /
Related Topics: Organizational Culture
This article is about LEADING TEAMS
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2 COMMENTS
Nahoko Matsuyama 9 months ago
I’m currently leading a project to implement a new communication platform in our company and this Podcast épisode
provided me hints of how I can change my behavior for the better as I was told the other day that for the business
members my presentations were too hard to understand. I also do have a question. When you’re working on
something new, you often get negative feedback and complaints telling you that this not going to work because it’s
different from what the people are used to. Should these complaints and negative feedback be treated the same way?
How can we get them to really engage and step in to give ideas instead of giving critics and pushing themselves away
from the initiative?
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