This book explores this culture of psychological safety, and provides a blueprint for bringing it to life. The road is sometimes bumpy, but succinct and informative scenario-based explanations provide a clear path forward to constant learning and healthy innovation. Hierarchy (or, more specifically, the fear it creates when not handled well) reduces psychological safety." Psychological safety describes a climate where people feel safe enough to take interpersonal risks by speaking up and sharing concerns, questions and ideas.” What is The Fearless Organization all about ?

The Fearless Organization - Amy Edmondson - Mind Tools The Fearless Organization - Amy Edmondson - Mind Tools

Free personal scan: get a gauge on how you perceive your personal level of psychological safety in your current organization. Free forever, but no context or benchmarks against your colleagues. Paid surveysAnd here’s another great team canvas from Design A Better Business. This one looks a lot more fun, though might not suit all teams! In 2012, Google’s project Aristotle set out to answer the question ‘What makes a Google team effective’? Their research found that psychological safety was by far the most important factor in creating effective teams.

fearless organizations succeed - Strategy+business How fearless organizations succeed - Strategy+business

A productive response is concerned with future impact. Punishment sends a powerful message, and an appropriate one if boundaries were clear in advance. Indeed, it is vital to send messages that reinforce values the company holds dear. However, it is equally vital not to inadvertently send a message that says, “diverse opinions simply won’t be tolerated here,” or “one strike and you’re out.” Such messages reduce psychological safety and ultimately erode the quality of the work. In contrast, a message that reinforces the values and practices of a learning organization is, “it’s okay to make a mistake, and it’s okay to hold an opinion that others don’t like, so long as you are willing to learn from the consequences.” The most important goal is figuring out a way to help the organization learn from what happened. And so, if there is ambiguity about public self-expression related to company policies, then a productive response is one that engages people in a learning dialogue to better understand and improve how the company functions. We’ve recently been reading ‘The Fearless Organization’ by Amy C. Edmondson, and Sophie Weston, Principal at Conflux, has put together some key takeaways from the book in this article. About lowering standards. It’s not about being comfortable. Psychological safety is about being more honest, challenging and collaborative. 2. It’s where learning and high performance happens The fearless organization was written by professor Amy C. Edmondson of Harvard Business School. The book, based on almost 30 years of research, is all about psychological safety in the workplace.This book reminded me of what the Anna Karenina-principle. Successful organisations are often alike one another, whereas every failed organisation (usually) has an interesting story to tell. However, avoiding mistakes will only get you so far (as the author does point out), so doing things right takes gut and effort. Hierarchy (or, more specifically, the fear it creates when not handled well) reduces psychological safety.” Most of this I knew...I'm starting to think I know more about psychological safety than most. Anyway if you're not up on it this book will make sure you are now! The first half just talks about the research and the baseline. The second half was almost case studies -intriguing. In the final part of the book, Edmondson sets out a ‘leader’s toolkit’ for creating a ‘fearless organization’. It is straightforward (at least on paper - no doubt it is harder to actually put into practice!) with just three steps. Setting the Stage Achieving high performance requires having the confidence to take risks, especially in a knowledge-intensive world. When an organization minimizes the fear people feel on the job, performance — at both the organizational and the team level — is maximized. But how do you make your organization fearless in a way that builds its capability?