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.
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.
Explore the link between psychological safety and high performance
Create a culture where it’s “safe” to express ideas, ask questions, and admit mistakes
Nurture the level of engagement and candor required in today’s knowledge economy
Follow a step-by-step framework for establishing psychological safety in your team or organization
Shed the "yes-men" approach and step into real performance. Fertilize creativity, clarify goals, achieve accountability, redefine leadership, and much more. The Fearless Organization helps you bring about this most critical transformation.
Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her work explores teaming – the dynamic forms of collaboration needed in environments characterized by uncertainty and ambiguity. She has also studied the role of psychological safety in teamwork and innovation. Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked with founder and CEO Larry Wilson to design change programs in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and innovation in the built environment remains an area of enduring interest and passion.
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Praise for the fearless organization
"The Fearless Organization is a modern masterpiece ― useful, timeless, and a delight to read. Amy Edmondson's weave of studies, stories, and insights from her decades of research shows why psychological safety is the key ingredient for creating high-performing, humane, and resilient workplaces. This gem is packed with steps that leaders can take so people feel compelled to share mistakes and concerns ― confident they won't be humiliated, ignored, or blamed for speaking up."
―Robert Sutton, Stanford Professor and author of national bestsellers including Good Boss, Bad Boss and (with Huggy Rao) Scaling Up Excellence
"Organizations today depend on talent, but there are many reasons that talent alone is not enough. The only way human capacities can truly flourish is in an atmosphere free of fear. Amy Edmondson has devoted 20 years to understanding psychological safety in organizations ― and in this timely, important book she shares what she's learned. She identifies the ways fear can stifle creativity and teamwork ― and then offers smart, practical advice for overcoming these obstacles and building an organization free of fear. This is a book that every leader should read and heed."
―Daniel H. Pink, author of WHEN and DRIVE
"Before Google discovered it, and before the idea became a mainstream meme, Amy Edmondson discovered something really important about high performing teams: the people in them felt that they could raise difficult, risky, or controversial ideas without the fear of being shut down or punished. She called it 'psychological safety,' and pioneered approaches to making it a reality in hundreds of teams. It is an idea whose time has triumphantly arrived. Edmondson's new book is your guide to it."
―Rita McGrath, Professor, Columbia University, bestselling author, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business
"The overwhelming message of Amy's book is this: leadership calls us to create workplaces where people feel safe to share ideas and mistakes are embraced as opportunities to learn. Build an organization free of fear and watch remarkable things happen. Not only is it the right thing to do, it's the ultimate competitive advantage!"
―Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller and author of Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family
"The importance of psychological safety in organizational life has been known for a long time, but only now do we have a roadmap of how to get there through this book's thorough analysis of how to build organizations that actually create psychological safety for all employees at all levels, and, thereby, insure higher quality performance, more safety, and, most importantly, more learning. Psychological safety will not only be desirable but absolutely necessary as organizations become more complex and more dependent on the commitment of all their members. This book makes the case through a thorough review of relevant research and illustrates all of its main points through powerful stories from a broad variety of organizations."
―Edgar H. Schein, Professor Emeritus, MIT Sloan School of Management and author with Peter Schein of Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness and Trust
