Jan. 28, 2020

#9 Amy Edmondson: Building teams where people feel safe

Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, and is recognized as one of the top 10 thinkers on business and management in the world, specializing in the areas of psychological safety, teams, and organizational learning. A globally sought after thinker and speaker, Amy is the author of six books including her 2019 award-winning work, "The Fearless Organization," which we go deep on in this conversation and which I *highly* recommend you get a copy of if you are interested in this conversation.

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Show notes

  • "You don't belong to you, you belong to the universe.", Buckminster Fuller [0:03:00]
  • "You might not be in the best position to know why you're special. It's not up to you to decide if you're good enough to be here. You are." [0:05:16]
  • Amy's first day working for Buckminster Fuller [0:06:38]
  • "Work is a place where you learn and grow"... [0:11:07]
  • Guidance for dealing with anxiety [0:14:06]
  • "I think sometimes a feeling of connectedness is THE most important thing you can have in the workplace." [0:15:30]
  • "It's so much more fun to be curious about someone else and what they bring than to be tense about being found out." [0:16:36]
  • Why did "The Fearless Organization" strike such a chord in the world right now? [0:16:58]
  • Why psychological safety is peaking right now [0:17:40]
  • What is psychological safety, and what is it not? [0:19:19]
  • Psychological safety is a sense of felt permission for candor [0:19:42]
  • Psychological safety is NOT about being nice [0:20:18]
  • "Being nice is code for, 'I'm not going to tell you what I really think.'" [0:20:33]
  • Psychological safety is NOT the goal [0:21:31]
  • What's the relationship between psychological safety & courage? [0:24:37]
  • Psychological safety vs culture fit / belonging [0:27:02]
  • "The job is to deliberately reframe reality so we can be more learning oriented." [0:30:11]
  • What are cognitive frames? [0:30:22]
  • How does Amy create psychological safety in the classroom? [0:31:45]
  • What is a "good" question? [0:32:33]
  • The leaders toolkit for psych safety [0:36:43]
  • How psych safety helped turn around Ford between 2006-2009 [0:37:55]
  • Concern: won't psych safety take too long? [0:43:46]
  • Why is psych safety worth it? What's the ROI? [0:45:07]
  • Parallels to self-compassion [0:47:11]
  • Psych safety & Flow [0:49:26]
  • How do we implement a psychological safety initiative? [0:50:30]
  • Using the work itself as the laboratory for culture change [0:53:02]
  • Common failure patterns? [0:54:03]
  • "A culture of nice can often mask a culture of fear"... [0:55:08]
  • How do you measure psych safety & tell if you have a problem? [0:57:34]
  • How to pulse check if your team has psych safety [0:59:12]
  • Does psych safety differ across intra/extraversion, or personality types? [1:01:59]
  • How does psych safety affect hiring processes? [1:04:52]
  • Everyone is different: how adapt building psych safety to this variety? [1:07:58]
  • What is work for, to you? [1:09:54]
  • What ONE thing would Amy have a leader do to build more psych safety? [1:12:37]
  • What happens when leaders apologize for safety violations? [1:13:37]
  • CONTEXT MATTERS [1:16:05]
  • I'm not the boss, what can I do? [1:25:30]

People, books, companies, resources etc mentioned in episode

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