The book ‘The Fearless Organization’ by Amy C. Edmondson has been on my ‘Books to Read’ list for quite some time. The book has been crucial in highlighting the importance of psychological safety in organizations. We hear the term ‘psychological safety’ used a lot in IT and software delivery, and increasingly it seems that psychological safety is an essential factor in creating effective and successful teams. When Google ran their Project Aristotle research to determine what was the most important aspect determining high performance in their teams, they uncovered the surprising truth that it is in fact - you guessed it! - psychological safety. how psychologically safe a person feels strongly shapes the propensity to engage in learning behaviors, such as information sharing, asking for help, or experimenting. It also affects employee satisfaction (14) For knowledge work to flourish, the workplace must be one where people feel able to share their knowledge! This means sharing concerns, questions, mistakes, and half-formed ideas.”

The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in

Join one of our open online workshops, or find out about our training and consultancy for teams and organisations. The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent―but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind? The traditional culture of "fitting in" and "going along" spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, ridicule or intimidate. Not every idea is good, and yes there are stupid questions, and yes dissent can slow things down, but talking through these things is an essential part of the creative process. People must be allowed to voice half-finished thoughts, ask questions from left field, and brainstorm out loud; it creates a culture in which a minor flub or momentary lapse is no big deal, and where actual mistakes are owned and corrected, and where the next left-field idea could be the next big thing.Thanks to Romy for creating this Spotify playlist for the Psychological Safety meetup! It Includes The Safety Dance by Men Without Hats, and Safe And Sound by Capital Cities 😀https://www.youtube.com/embed/2IN7g2ETa7M?feature=oembed I’m a big fan of David Marquet. His book “ Turn The Ship Around” is an excellent example of not just great leadership, but also how to write a leadership book that’s actually useful and actionable. Part II is “Psychological Safety at Work.” Chapters three and four give you real-world examples of organizations without psychological safety. You’ll recognize most of them. Chapters five and six share examples of organizations with psychological safety. You may be surprised at some of them. You will see a strong contrast between the two groups in terms of organizational life and productivity. In framing silence as an unethical choice, Dalio is taking a more extreme stance than I have adopted. But it's worth reflecting on this idea, which to me implies that you owe your colleagues the expression of your opinion or ideas; in a sense, those ideas belong to the collective enterprise, and you therefore don't have the right to hoard them.”

The Fearless Organization - MVCC The Fearless Organization - MVCC

Fear inhibits learning. Research in neuroscience shows that fear consumes physiological resources, diverting them from parts of the brain that manage working memory and process new information. This impairs analytic thinking, creative insight, and problem solving. I am a self-confessed software delivery and DevOps enthusiast, and I’m sure it won’t be a surprise to anyone who knows me that I regard psychological safety as being an essential part of many DevOps and agile practices. As Edmondson puts it, it’s the “extra ingredient” that enables other success factors. Practices such as blameless post-mortems which can only work when people feel safe to make themselves vulnerable - to talk about problems and mistakes, and where failure is generally regarded as being a Good Thing because it enables us to reflect and learn and improve. 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. Edmondson is regarded by many as being the leading expert on the topic of psychological safety. She is Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, and is the author of many articles and books on organizational behaviour and learning, teams, and psychological safety. ‘The Fearless Organization’Another word for trust. Whilst they have a lot in common they’re not the same. You might trust one person and not another, but to have a psychologically safe environment, it must be felt across a group. As Edmondson observes, psychological safety cannot be regarded as a perk or a ‘nice-to-have’ for any organization engaged in the business of knowledge work - software delivery, for example - that is striving to succeed in our fast-moving and complex world. To succeed in such a world (which is often described using the acronym ‘VUCA’ - volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) organizations need their employees’ ideas and voices to be heard. 6 - Psychological safety is not a happy accident Low levels of psychological safety can create a culture of silence. They can also create a Cassandra culture – an environment in which speaking up is belittled and warnings go unheeded.” The “performance standards” shown in this mustincludea clear vision, mission, or strategy. Essentially, the team must know what their purpose is, and what it means to be part of the team. early information about shortcomings can nearly always mitigate the size and impact of future, large - scale failure (71)

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

What did I like? There are good & relevant examples, there's clear clarification what's the difference between fearless & over-protective (I can't recall the exactly wording here), there's a nice answer to the question about visible successes of some companies ruled in typically hierarchical, high-stress manner. You can also find here psychological aspects of fear & how it impacts (on a psychosomatic level) our capabilities. There's also a nice chapter about Candor - nothing you could find in "Radical Candor", but it's good enough to fit the context here. What did I like? There are good & relevant examples, there's clear clarification what's the difference between fearless & over-protective (I can't reca 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.Responding productively which encompasses expressing appreciation, destigmatizing failure, and sanctioning clear violations which, in turn, should achieve company-wide orientation toward continuous learning. As I've written in prior books and articles, more and more of that teamwork is dynamic – occurring in constantly shifting configurations of people rather than in formal, clearly-bounded teams.4 This dynamic collaboration is called teaming.5 Teaming is the art of communicating and coordinating with people across boundaries of all kinds – expertise, status, and distance, to name the most important. But whether you're teaming with new colleagues all the time or working in a stable team, effective teamwork happens best in a psychologically safe workplace.” Leaders who are willing to say I don't know play a surprisingly powerful role in engaging the hearts and minds of employees (124) TL;DR A great intro book that scratches the surface of this concept, but deems it necessary to explore the cited materials, because it fails to go into depth itself.