31: “The Fearless Organization: For More Learning, Innovation & Growth” with Harvard’s Amy Edmonson

Breakthroughs: Smart Strategies for Career/Business Growth

In this episode I interview Amy Edmonson about psychological safety in the workplace, why it matters and how to build it. Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. She teaches and writes on leadership, teams and organizational learning, and is the author of more than 70 academic articles. Her most recent book, “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. Her prior books, Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate and Compete in the Knowledge Economy and Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2012, 2103) and Extreme Teaming (Emerald, 2018) explore teamwork in dynamic, unpredictable work environments. Edmondson has been ranked by the biannual Thinkers50 global list of top management thinkers since 2011 and selected as the #1 most influential thinker in Human Resources by HR Magazine in 2019. Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked on transformational change in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987) clarifies Fuller’s mathematical contributions for a non-technical audience. Edmondson received her PhD in organizational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design, all from Harvard University. There are no perfectly psychologically safe organizations or completely unsafe ones. It happens more with teams then across organizations which implies that every manager has the opportunity to create a psychologically safe environment with passion for the cause, curiosity, empathy and humility. If you want to learn how to create a psychologically safe environment for your employees, one that fosters true “teaming” this episode is for you. Amy’s book is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Fearless-Organization-Psychological-Workplace-Innovation/dp/1119477247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1541340285&sr=8-1&keywords=the+fearless+organization And here’s a link to Amy Edmonson’s outstanding to Ted Talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_edmondson_how_to_turn_a_group_of_strangers_into_a_team/transcript