jimkruger“Psychological safety at work takes effort. It’s not the norm. But it’s worth the effort,” says Professor Amy Edmondson. She explains how and why a culture of open candor—and the willingness and courage to speak up—is a strategic asset and can be developed in companies of all sizes, in her new book The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.
“These are not things that happen routinely in most organizations, but they are mission critical to doing well in a complex, fast changing world,” she says. In our Q&A we asked her guidance for managers and leaders.
Martha Lagace: What makes a workplace psychologically safe or not?
Amy Edmondson: Individuals feel they can speak up, express their concerns, and be heard. This is not to say that people are “nice.” A psychologically safe workplace is one where people are not full of fear, and not trying to cover their tracks to avoid being embarrassed or punished.
What I am advocating is candor. Being open. And sometimes that might mean being direct to a fault, knowing that you have a right and a responsibility to ask hard questions about the work: “Is this the right decision? Are we collecting the right data? Do we know the impact this might have on others?”
When we are psychologically safe at work we’re willing to accept that we can be ignorant about some things and very smart about others. Psychologically safe employees are more interested in learning, excellence, and genuinely connecting with others than in looking good.
That sounds like what everyone wants, but as human beings we’re hardwired and socialized to care what others think of us. This is not bad or good, it’s just true. And it is sometimes unhelpful in knowledge-intensive work. We may need to override some of our very human instincts, the instinct to look good instead of being truthful, to avoid hurting someone’s feelings instead of truthful. Or the instinct to agree with the boss instead of saying, “Hmm, I’m not sure that’s going to work.”
I care about psychological safety and the impact it can have on business risk and human safety. Without psychological safety, there’s greater risk of cutting corners and people getting hurt, whether employees, customers, or patients. Product launches might fail because we didn’t listen when colleagues asked hard questions about how the product would work. Without psychological safety, if the boss says, ‘You must hit this target’ but the target is impossible, you can end up with cheating and scandal, which obviously nobody wanted.
Lagace: How do organizations help or hurt psychological safety?
Edmondson: Organizations are usually designed in ways that exacerbate rather than ameliorate our natural tendencies for self-protection. Most organizations are hierarchical, but in some more than others employees are acutely aware of status differences. In those organizations, people are overly careful and cautious around those higher up in the hierarchy.
That’s a psychologically unsafe situation and ultimately it is a risky situation for the company. At hospitals and NASA test sites, for example, psychological safety matters for human safety and sometimes even life and death. Well-run, high-risk organizations have nailed this by creating a climate of directness. They make clear that anyone can voice a good observation or idea independent of his or her position in the hierarchy.<p>
Lagace: How can managers create psychological safety among people they lead?
Edmondson: Managers in any role—whether at the top or front line of an organization—can do this. On one level it is so simple. But simple doesn’t mean easy. And simple doesn’t mean it will occur to someone in the moment to do it.
First, set the stage. Create a shared understanding of the nature of the work we do and why everyone’s input matters. If I am a physician running an intensive care unit, for example, I need to frequently set the stage by reminding people what is at stake, how fragile our patients are, and how complex and error-prone our systems are. This is not about calling out potential incompetence. It means acknowledging out loud that by their nature our systems can compound mistakes, and unless we do everything with interpersonal awareness and focus, things can go wrong.
Having set the stage, it’s also important to proactively invite input. Asking is the simplest and best way to get people to offer their ideas. Even if a leader has explained how error-prone the work is, people still have a threshold to overcome in speaking up with concerns or mistakes. To help them, simply ask questions. Questions like: “What do you see in this situation?” Most of us feel awkward not answering a question addressed to us.
Third, respond appreciatively. Having explained the nature of the work and asked for input, if you bite someone’s head off the first time they bring bad news, that will kill the psychological safety pretty quickly. Managers need to say things like, “Thanks for that clear line of sight.” And, “What can we do to help you out?” Responding appreciatively does not mean that you’re thrilled with everything that was said; it means that you recognize the courage it takes to come forward with bad news, or to ask a question when you’re unsure about something.
It’s important to note that psychological safety is a necessary not sufficient condition for organizational learning, innovation, or excellence. Other drivers of success include the willingness to have challenging conversations thoughtfully, the willingness to be wrong, and such things as good experimental design. There are many factors that affect an organization’s success in the 21st century. This is just one of them.
Lagace: You write that psychological safety varies a lot even in one company.
Edmondson: Yes. In most organizations of any size that I’ve studied or that others have studied, we find significant differences across work groups, regions, or branches; a lot of that is because of local leadership: the team leader, the branch manager, or whoever leads the local unit.
Psychological safety also has an important relationship with diversity, inclusion, and belonging. As the experts note, diversity can be directly altered. It is a lever that managers can pull, so to speak, given the power and resources to do so. Specifically, they can decide to design hiring to achieve greater diversity—whether gender, race, geography, or national culture. But simply hiring a diverse talent pool is not enough, of course. Inclusion is the next level, when people of different backgrounds feel that their voice matters and that they are included in the important meetings. Then, belonging can be seen as a higher level still. It’s possible for people to be at important meetings even to be speaking up, and still to not feel that people like them belong there. Belonging means this is a place where I can thrive; I feel that I am truly a member of the community.
As organizations seek to convert diversity into inclusion and belonging, psychological safety is increasingly important. Without psychological safety, diversity does not automatically mean people can bring their full selves to the work.
Eileen Fisher is among those leaders who calls herself a “don’t knower.”1 She began her now-celebrated clothing brand in 1984, at the age of 34, when she did not know how to sew and knew little about either fashion or business. Today, as a leader, Fisher models vulnerability and humility, which unsurprisingly helps to create psychological safety in the workplace. […] She speaks honestly about her struggles and fears. Painfully shy when she was younger, she was afraid to go into Bloomingdale’s with her first clothing designs because she was afraid of being rejected. Inspired by the kimonos she’d seen while working as a graphic designer in Japan and with access to one friend’s booth at the Boutique Show—a kind of arts and crafts fair—and another friend’s skill with a sewing machine, Fisher launched her company by designing first four and then eight pieces of clothing for the borrowed booth. On the first go-around she received orders from buyers for $3,000, and for the second show, she was surprised to find buyers lining up to orders totaling $40,000.2
Today, Eileen Fisher, the company, operates nearly 70 retail stores, which generated between $400 and $500 million in revenue in 2016.3 It’s a supplier to many other clothing retailers and has consistently been recognized as one of the best companies to work for. Unlike the businesses featured in Chapter 3 that faced enormous failures, the company has enjoyed continuous growth and thoughtful, productive change, unblemished by financial, legal, or safety failures.
Its management practices and governance structures have created a showcase for psychological safety.
Humble Listening
Fisher calls herself a natural listener, which helps to make ‘not knowing’ a positive trait. When first setting up her company, she found the combination of these two traits to be an advantage. As she says, ‘When you don’t know and you’re really listening intently, people want to help you. They want to share.”4 Evidently, she’s managed to maintain the vulnerability and receptivity of her original “I don’t know,” even as she’s become a seasoned leader of an enduring brand in the fashion industry. One of the outcomes of managing by not knowing is, as Fisher says, that “people feel safe to explore their own ideas instead of feeling like they just need to do what you tell them to do.”5
Eileen Fisher clothing is structured along simple lines and fluid designs. The same could be said for the way the company conducts its meetings. People sit in a circle, with the intention of de-emphasizing hierarchies and instead encouraging what’s called “a leader in every chair.”6 To create the mindfulness and focus conducive to an environment where everyone collaborates and contributes, meetings begin with a minute of silence. Sometimes an object, such as a gourd, is passed from person to person; the idea is the person is allowed and expected to speak when the object is in hand.7 The point is that Fisher, like the other leaders discussed in this chapter, has institutionalized very specific processes that help create psychological safety. […]
Fisher, again: “My inclination is to ask questions, to get the right people in the conversation and let everyone have a voice. The collective and collaborative process produces a lot of energy—it’s a source of creativity and innovation.”8 Interestingly, Fisher, as a clothing designer, is not looking for “right answers” but for the multiplicity of voices that produce a collaborative process and creative energy. She’s framing success as a certain kind of energy rather than an immediate result.
[…] Ultimately, Fisher’s voice has been widely heard (and seen) in the fashion industry because she was willing to take risks, willing to fail. In any creative industry, failure is a fact of life. Most design ideas never come to fruition. Similarly, most film footage hits the cutting room floor, and many financial bets will fail before you hit a winner. Indeed, more and more people in leading companies around the world are embracing the notion of failing well to succeed sooner. But as appealing and logical as the idea of learning from failure may be, the truth is no one really wants to fail.
Excerpted with permission of the publisher, Wiley, from The Fearless Organization by Amy C. Edmondson. Copyright (c) 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
2 Malcolm, J. “Nobody’s Looking At You: Eileen Fisher and the art of understatement.” The New Yorker. September 23, 2013. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/09/23/nobodys-looking-at-you. Accessed June 12, 2018.
3 Fernandez, C. “Eileen Fisher Makes Strides Towards Circularity with ‘Tiny Factory.’” The Business of Fashion. December 6, 2017. https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/intelligence/eileen-fisher-makes-strides-towards-circularity-with-tiny-factory. Accessed June 8, 2018.
4 Tenney, M. May 15, 2015. op cit.
5 Ibid.
6 According to Janet Malcolm, Fisher subscribes to the philosophy articulated in a 2010 book called The Circle Way: A Leader in Every Chair by Ann Linnea and Christina Baldwin (published by Barret-Koehler), which posits circle leadership as both a paradigm shift for group collaboration and a practice that draws upon the circle ‘lineage’ derived from cultures such as Native American and Aboriginal.
7 Malcolm, J. September 23, 2013. op cit.
8 Dunbar, M.F. “Designer Eileen Fisher on how Finding Purpose Changed Her Company.” Conscious Company Media. July 4, 2015. https://consciouscompanymedia.com/sustainable-business/designer-eileen-fisher-on-how-finding-purpose-changed-her-company/ Accessed June 8, 2018.