PDF Summary:The Fearless Organization, by Amy C. Edmondson

In The Fearless Organization, Amy C. Edmondson argues that for organizations to thrive in the complex knowledge economy, leaders must cultivate psychologically safe cultures where workers can ask questions, raise concerns, and make mistakes without fear of reprisal. But many companies rely on a fear-driven management approach that silences workers’ voices. They do so at their peril, stifling innovation and putting themselves in harm’s way.

Edmondson, a professor of leadership and management, stumbled upon the concept of psychological safety while studying the relationship between teamwork and error rates in hospitals. She realized that groups that openly discussed failure without fear of repercussions warded off problems before they happened and took risks that fostered innovation.

In this guide, we examine what psychological safety is, why it’s important, the detrimental effects of fear-driven work cultures, and ways leaders can cultivate psychologically safe environments to drive success. We also compare and contrast Edmondson’s work with the perspectives and work of experts in leadership and other fields.

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(Shortform note: Experts say that a key to cultivating work cultures that make all employees feel safe to speak up is focusing on diversity in organizations and organizational leadership. They say that leaders must bring issues of inclusion into conversations about company strategies and practices and that managers should be encouraged, trained, and empowered to employ flexible, inclusive practices. Additionally, it helps if senior leaders are themselves diverse in visible and invisible ways.)

Example: Anglo American Engaged Employees by Building Trust

Cynthia Carroll was appointed the first female CEO of the South African mining company Anglo American in 2007. In the earliest days of her tenure, and in response to the 200 worker deaths in the five years prior to her arrival, Carroll announced a policy dedicated to ensuring zero worker fatalities or serious injuries. Edmondson explains that as a first step, Carroll shut down one of the company’s most dangerous mines to show she was serious. Her second step—an effort to reach out to workers to better understand challenges they faced in the mines—failed because workers distrusted the managers attempting to engage them.

Carroll’s third step was to build workers’ trust—a key feature of psychological safety. It paid off: The company collaborated with union leaders and set up culturally attuned conversations with workers modeled after local village assemblies, and workers and executives signed off on a contract specifying steps the company would take to maximize safety in the mine. Anglo American showed the highest operating profits in its history during Carroll’s tenure, between 2008 and 2011.

Build Culturally Attuned Trust

In The Culture Map, Erin Meyer argues that business relationships are rooted in two types of cultural trust: task-based trust and relationship-based trust. Understanding what each one is and how it works can help leaders build trust among different cultural constituencies, as Carroll figured out how to do with the miners at Anglo American.

Meyer says that in cognitive cultures, such as the US and UK, trust is built through workers’ behavior (in other words, when they prove their competence and ability to follow through on tasks). Cognitive cultures draw a clear boundary between personal and professional relationships, which some argue makes those cultures superficial—because you can know someone you work with for years without actually knowing anything about who they are as a person.

In contrast, trust in relationship-based cultures is built when workers trust the people they work with in the same way they might their friends or family. In these cultures, trust is built slowly, over time, and relationships that began as business may continue on for years after business dealings are done. Some argue that it’s inefficient to spend so much time building personal relationships in business. However, Meyer argues that building trust is particularly important in emerging markets, where knowing the character of people you’re doing business with serves as a protective factor because people you trust are unlikely to engage in shady behavior that will harm your company and work.

Though Edmondson doesn’t specify the nature of Carroll’s trust relationship with the miners, we can intuit that her first, failed attempt to engage them was based on a cognitive culture model, because workers clearly felt they couldn’t trust the company. It appears that her subsequent, successful effort to engage workers took a relationship-based trust approach, since the company worked to develop a rapport with miners by a) collaborating with trusted union leaders and b) setting up culturally attuned meetings aimed at garnering workers’ trust and feedback.

Edmondson says that leaders can further reshape company-wide beliefs by redefining and setting clear expectations and common goals for workers in key areas such as the purpose of their work and their relationships with teammates.

Redefine Employees’ Understanding of the Purpose and Stakes of Their Work

According to Edmondson, communicating to employees how and why their work is meaningful and who it’s important to a) gives them a sense of purpose and b) helps them see their role as members of a broader team working to achieve organizational goals. Attuning them to the stakes of their work helps them understand the importance of speaking up in different situations they confront—whether that means speaking up to avoid mistakes when the stakes are high or taking creative risks when the stakes are low.

For example, the manager of a gym might remind trainers of their critical role in keeping clients safe, a high-stakes objective that supports the gym’s goal of bolstering members’ health. This reminder can both encourage and trigger a trainer to report a suspected problem to her supervisor before it turns into a crisis—for example, if she notices that an exercise machine is not working properly and could lead to injury.

Similarly, organizations can benefit from reminding employees that the stakes are low, as when a film director encourages his actors to take creative risks such as going off script and ad-libbing. Nobody’s going to die if the actors try various lines that don’t work, but the reward could be high if they come up with a great, unexpected line that audiences remember for life.

(Shortform note: Whether the stakes are high or low, experts note that it’s important for employees to feel that their roles make a difference to the organization, their lives, and the world. Another concrete way to help workers understand the importance and meaning of their role is to create job descriptions that clearly show how their position relates to the company’s mission. As a leader, you can further support their feeling that their job has meaning by working with them, when possible, to help define their job responsibilities and their approach to carrying them out.)

Redefine Employees’ Relationships to Their Teammates

According to Edmondson, reminding workers on different teams of their interdependence with one another—that their tasks are related to and reliant upon other teams’ tasks for success—encourages idea-sharing and communication about the impact of one team’s work on another. This, in turn, builds a culture in which employees feel more comfortable taking risks and speaking up without fear of others judging their ideas as silly or stupid.

(Shortform note: Not only does promoting inter-team collaboration encourage idea sharing, promote positive risk-taking, and increase feelings of safety, but experts also say it can reduce feelings of isolation, which is more important than ever in a pandemic-altered world of work defined by separation. Structured, purposeful collaboration—even virtually—can make colleagues feel more connected to one another and give them a sense of belonging, leading to greater feelings of satisfaction, higher engagement, and improved retention.)

Practice 2: Redefine Failure

Redefining the purpose and value of failure can help employees view mistakes that they and others make not as problems to avoid at all costs and sweep under the rug, but as opportunities to improve their work and support their company in achieving its goals. Leaders can encourage employees to identify, address, and speak openly about mistakes and failure by redefining failure in the following ways:

1) Failure is a natural and valuable part of the learning process so long as you identify and analyze it after the fact to understand why things didn’t work, where they went wrong, and ways you can prevent the same problem from happening again.

2) Failure is a required part of experimental, investigatory, and exploratory processes that allow you to quickly move forward and figure out what solution works best.

(Shortform note: In Think Like a Rocket Scientist, Ozan Varol argues that rocket scientists have a complicated relationship with failure because while there’s little room for it when lives are at stake, taking scientific risks is a normal part of daily life in all other scenarios. He says that rocket scientists value “intelligent failure” (failure they can learn from) and approach failure with a genuine, disinterested curiosity.)

3) Failure is a warning sign that can avert preventable problems and disasters. (Shortform note: Experts agree that failing to create a safe space for employees to speak up about failure can lead to disaster, arguing that it’s time to retire the phrase, “Come to me with solutions, not problems.” But many managers stick with this line because a) they believe it empowers and helps employees “manage up” and b) they fear fostering a culture of whining.)

Example: Google X Celebrates Failure

Edmondson writes that Google X, an innovation lab parented by Alphabet, celebrates failure as part of the natural path to success. X CEO, Astro Teller, says the company believes that people have to fail to take big risks that lead to big innovations, and the faster that teams fail, the more quickly innovation can begin. To reflect this belief, the company established a set of now culturally-embedded practices that make failing safe, such as awarding promotions and bonuses to teams when they fail and holding an annual memorial service for failed projects to allow employees to say final, parting words to prototypes that didn’t make it.

(Shortform note: Some experts argue that the culture of celebrating failure has gone too far—to the point that companies are fetishizing it by default. They argue that while failure is unavoidable in some situations, it shouldn't be glorified. Instead, we should fetishize learning that comes out of the process of innovating and taking risks. And while Edmondson highlights X’s celebration of failure, Teller is also averse to failure for failure’s sake: He has clarified that he expects about half of employees’ moon-shot ideas to work.)

Respond Appropriately to Undesirable Failure

While there’s value in destigmatizing failure, Edmondson says there are cases where employees fail in undesirable ways, such as making preventable mistakes or breaching company policies. She argues that when this happens, leaders must address the failure head on, and that doing so actually fosters a culture of psychological safety: Clarifying and enforcing company policies and expectations makes clear to staff that inappropriate behavior and actions that compromise the organization won’t be tolerated.

(In Crucial Accountability, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, et al. provide strategies to have accountability conversations that directly and humanely address problems while preserving reputations and relationships and achieving larger goals. After identifying the key problem you want to address, determine whether your motives for bringing up the problem are valid and if the issue is worth raising. As you prepare to enter the conversation, consider the other person’s point of view to ensure you don’t have an unnecessary bias that could taint your discussion. Finally, convey that you respect and share the same goals as the person you’re talking with to create a safe environment so they can open up and you can have a productive conversation.)

Edmondson points to a number of ways leaders can appropriately respond to undesirable failure scenarios:

1) If an employee makes a preventable mistake, increase training and improve systems to prevent the same mistake from happening again. (Shortform note: Experts recommend that when you provide training to employees in response to preventable mistakes, you should: a) explain how changes you’re asking them to make will result in improving their skill levels and success in the company; b) reinforce the company’s values by communicating how doing things properly saves the organization money and keeps customers happy; and c) congratulate them on helping the company meet its goals.)

2) If an employee repeatedly fails to adhere to, or actively violates, company protocols designed to prevent failures, fine, sanction, or fire that employee. This communicates to employees that harming the company’s mission, goals, and outcomes is unacceptable, and it demonstrates your company’s commitment to its values and policies—which reinforces a culture of psychological safety. (Shortform note: Experts say that some managers find it difficult to hold employees accountable because they fear being disliked and don’t like confrontation. This can be particularly true for managers who are extroverts with a naturally high drive for social acceptance or managers with low dominance, who have a natural drive for harmony.)

3) If an employee makes a mistake in an area where the company has failed to outline clear protocols or procedures, examine organizational practices that led to the failure and remediate those conditions. (Shortform note: Experts say if you’ve determined you need to implement a new policy to fill a gap that led to a failure, and you know what that policy is, you should do three things to ensure its implementation is successful: a) Garner support from stakeholders charged with implementing the policy; b) share information with employees about the policy—including why you’re implementing it—and encourage them to ask questions about it; and c) revise and update the policy as necessary.)

Practice 3: Encourage Employees to Speak Up

Edmondson says that leaders must create a safe space for employees to ask questions, engage in debate, and learn from one another. Building psychologically safe work cultures enables workers to tap into their creativity and innovate, which in turn improves their engagement and performance.

As a leader, you can encourage employees to speak up by modeling curiosity and humility, asking thoughtful questions, and putting structures in place that support your efforts to engage employees. This will bring workers into the fold, inspire them to replicate behavior you want to embed in your organizational culture, and foster employees’ belief that what they have to say is important.

(Shortform note: Experts say that creating a safe space isn’t the only thing you have to do to foster creativity and innovation. You must also provide basic support, direction, and parameters to keep employees from going off the rails; avoid micromanaging so you don’t stifle ideas; and level the idea-generation playing field for introverts and extroverts by encouraging workers to take time to themselves to identify new ideas.)

Model Curiosity and Humility

According to Edmondson, acknowledging that you don’t know the answer to everything, admitting your failures and when you’re wrong, and asking for help shows others that you have the confidence and strength to be vulnerable. By demonstrating that nobody is all-knowing or perfect, you create a safe space for others to be vulnerable, take risks, speak up, share their knowledge, and make mistakes—which supports workers’ ability to realize their fullest potential and realize company goals.

(Shortform note: In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown argues that facing your flaws and failures openly is at the core of brave leadership. Contrary to what some believe, practicing vulnerability doesn’t mean you have to spill the beans on every challenge you’ve ever faced. It simply means talking candidly about uncertainty or risk, discussing your feelings about those things, and encouraging employees to discuss those things if they want to. She cautions leaders against faking vulnerability or manipulatively oversharing vulnerable information to garner sympathy for selfish purposes, which doesn’t advance the cause of helping workers realize their fullest potential and company goals.)

Employ a Thoughtful Inquiry Process

Asking employees questions can help you learn more about situations and challenges you need to understand to run your organization effectively. To ask thoughtful questions:

1) Ask open-ended questions that provoke deeper thought and further discussion (as opposed to yes/no questions, which tend to shut conversations down).

2) Phrase questions in a way that encourages respondents to give specific answers. For example, if you want a broader understanding of a situation, you might ask: “What aren’t we seeing in this situation?” or “Who has another way of thinking about this?” Or if you want to understand a situation more deeply, you might ask, “Why do you think that?” or “What are some examples of what you’re saying?”

(Shortform note: Experts say that employee-centered management strategies, like asking workers for ideas and feedback, are more important now than ever. In a world of work defined by quick and disruptive change, 21st-century managers must operate as coaches who provide support and solicit information from workers to channel their energy and creativity, not command-and-control bosses who dole out instructions and answers. In this coaching role, they should embrace “situational coaching,” which balances drawing on workers’ insights and providing direction to help them resolve challenges they face.)

Edmondson says you can also elicit information from employees by creating structures designed to get them to speak up rather than stay silent. For example, schedule regular focus groups to solicit employee input. Alternatively, establish peer-to-peer, inter-team teaching and learning groups to foster inquiry and build knowledge—a structure that comes with the added benefit of increasing trust and decreasing employees’ fear of judgment from members of teams they don’t know.

(Shortform note: Other structures you can create to solicit employee feedback include formal channels that protect and promote workers’ voices, like an ombuds office, where employees can bring forward concerns and file formal reports about issues they’re worried about, such as bullying or mismanagement. Companies can also create anonymous reporting channels for workers, such as hotlines, web bots, and phone apps that enable employees to share information without fear of retaliation.)

Respond Thoughtfully When Employees Engage

Edmondson claims that positively reinforcing employees when they engage and speak up encourages them to continue speaking up. This is particularly important in workplaces defined by uncertainty, where workers may encounter negative outcomes even when they do everything right. For example, school teachers may use identical methods to teach two students in the same class, but they may have mixed results due to factors beyond their control, such as the students being in different places developmentally.

(Shorform note: Experts say that if you want to encourage employees to continue speaking up, you should positively frame your messaging around the practice. For example, to encourage the general practice of speaking up, frame silence as “everyone’s problem,” which communicates that speaking up is a common goal and that everyone is “in it together.” Or, to encourage people to report bullying, harassment or discrimination, frame reporting these issues as “showing compassion” or “supporting others” to convey that those who report will be treated with empathy.)

To positively reinforce employees for speaking up, listen carefully when they ask questions and share concerns, thank them for their contributions, offer ongoing support, and normalize failure to reduce fears around making and discussing mistakes. Edmondson says that even if you don’t like or agree with workers’ feedback, you should continue to encourage them to speak up, which you can do by saying: “I appreciate you bringing this to my attention.” Your goal is not to love everything they share with you, but to consistently communicate that a) you welcome their voices and b) learning is an ongoing process that’s vital to their and the company’s success.

(Shortform note: In Radical Candor, Kim Scott argues that leaders should employ two types of listening skills: quiet and loud. In quiet listening, you insert silence in conversations so the person you’re speaking to can elaborate on what they’re thinking. Because silence can make people uncomfortable, balance it with asking questions to help the other person open up. Loud listening centers on directly stating your thoughts about a situation to compel the person you’re talking with to react. This is a good way to quickly communicate where you stand on an issue, but it can intimidate people. So, to keep the discussion flowing, upon making your statement, ask the other person what they think and if there are any flaws in your logic.)

Example: Pixar Fosters Trust and Openness to Yield Strong Results

Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull says the company has been successful because it has created a high level of openness to dissenting opinions at all organizational levels—key features of psychological safety. Pixar formed a “braintrust” group that meets regularly to provide feedback about the company’s films. Rules for giving feedback include that you have to a) be honest, constructive, and target the product, not the person who created it; b) offer suggestions, not mandates; and c) come from a place of genuine empathy, not snarkiness or hostility. The rules for receiving feedback are that you can’t dismiss it, get defensive, or take it personally.

(Shortform note: Though many tout the positive results of the Pixar braintrust’s psychologically safe culture and feedback process, the process doesn’t translate for everyone who tries it: Game company King tried and failed to implement its own braintrust. King’s meetings with executives, studio heads, and game directors turned into “dog and pony” shows where a) presenters pitched project ideas not to get feedback, but to acquire resources, and b) braintrust members were incentivized to see presenters’ projects fail so they could snatch up those resources. King’s failure appears to stem from multiple factors, including that they lacked the level of trust, respect, and expertise that Pixar has.)

Part 3: Building Safety From the Bottom Up

You’ve learned how leaders can cultivate psychologically safe work cultures, but what if you’re an employee and don’t have the power to change the climate of your organization from the top down?

Edmondson says that even if you’re not the boss, you can be a leader by creating psychologically safe spaces for your coworkers by:

1. Asking colleagues questions from a place of curiosity and actively listening to their responses. Asking coworkers about challenges they face or ways you can help them lets them know that they can share ideas and concerns—and be themselves—with you.
2. Showing your vulnerability when you make mistakes or don’t know something, apologizing when you’re wrong, and asking others for help—which gives others permission to do the same.
3. Acknowledging shared challenges or moments of uncertainty that you and your team confront. Recognizing a shared experience where answers are unknown strengthens your bond and communicates that it’s okay not to know everything.

Edmondson also recommends these strategies if you find yourself working with a manager who is unwilling or unable to change. Although you can’t force them (or anyone) to change, you may be able to influence their behavior and buy yourself some goodwill by modeling genuine curiosity about their experience, showing compassion for challenges they face, and demonstrating your dedication to your work.

How to Be a Leader

In The Leadership Challenge, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner argue that anyone can be an effective leader because leaders are made, not born. They say that leadership is both a relationship and a developable skill that anyone can learn if they simply practice it. Around the world, people most commonly identify leaders as people who are:

• Honest

• Competent

• Inspiring

• Forward-thinking

In other words, people want to follow others whom they trust and who know what they’re doing, are positive, and have a strong sense of direction.

Further, people often identify leadership role models as local figures—their teacher, religious leader, or a family member—not stars or distant figureheads whom they don’t personally know. So even if you work in an organization where psychological safety doesn’t exist and you’re not empowered to build that culture across the company, there’s a good chance that colleagues will see you as a leader if you create pockets of psychological safety for them.

To practice being a leader:

• Be clear about, share, and model your values. For example, choose language that emphasizes a belief in the importance of collaboration by using words like “colleagues” and “team members,” not “boss” or “line workers.”

• Bring people on board with your vision. Talk about the things you’re passionate about and why they’re meaningful, and solicit teammates’ ideas and thoughts about them.

• Don’t accept the status quo as a fixed condition. Question ideas and systems that you think don’t work to create space for learning and growth.

• Empower and recognize others. Build colleagues’ sense of confidence and competence by highlighting and celebrating their strengths and victories.