Dr. Amy Edmondson first introduced the idea of psychological safety while conducting research as a Ph.D. candidate at Harvard Business School. Now, businesses across industries strive to build psychological safety on their teams, which is proven to drive innovation and business outcomes as a result.
In this episode of “The Business of Learning,” we spoke with Dr. Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School and author of “The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth,” to learn more about psychological safety as it relates to learning and development.
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The transcript for this episode follows:
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Hello. Welcome to The Business of Learning. I’m Taryn Oesch DeLong, managing editor of digital content at Training Industry.
Sarah Gallo:
I’m Sarah Gallo, an editor at Training Industry. This episode of The Business of Learning is sponsored by Training Industry Research.
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Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Dr. Amy Edmondson first introduced the idea of psychological safety while conducting research at Harvard Business School. Now, businesses across industries strive to build psychological safety on their teams and into their organizations because it’s proven to drive innovation and business outcomes. Today we’re speaking with Dr. Edmondson, who is the Novartis Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School and author of, “The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth.” We’re going to learn more about psychological safety as it relates to learning and development. Dr. Edmondson, thanks so much for speaking with us today.
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
Thank you so much for having me, Taryn and Sarah.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. Well, we are so excited to have you, Dr. Edmondson. Maybe you could start off with a basic definition here for our listeners, who are wondering what psychological safety is.
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
Psychological safety describes a climate where people feel absolutely free to take the interpersonal risks of learning. By that, I mean, speaking up with questions, with concerns, with observations, with mistakes, and so they feel permission for candor.
Sarah Gallo:
Thanks. That’s a great definition. Perfect. Well, now that we’re all on the same page, what tips do you have for learning leaders looking to build psychologically safe learning environments?
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
[The] first thing that comes to mind is, I’ve just defined it. You said, it’s a good definition. It’s a little long-winded. Sometimes I find it’s helpful to say what it isn’t, because as psychological safety has gotten more and more popular and there’s more discussion of it in the business world and in the learning world more generally, there’s lots of misconceptions, right? One of them is that it’s about being nice. It’s not about being nice. I do think it’s about being kind and respectful, but it’s not about being nice, which socially often means not saying what I really think, right? It means saving your face and mind. It’s also not, and this is really important, especially in the workplace. It’s not about dialing it back a little on performance expectations, right? It’s not saying, oh, we want you to be comfortable. It is saying, in fact, the work that we do is challenging, it’s important, it requires lots of teamwork and coordinator, and so it’s really important. If you want to do it well, and we know you do, it’s really important that we understand that it takes a lot of honesty, right? It takes a lot of willingness to come forward. When I address the question of, what can you do to build psychological safety? I think it’s just really important for leaders first to understand that it really matters to excellence in an uncertain environment especially, or in an interdependent environment. That if you don’t have psychological safety and teamwork is required to do good work, you’re really in trouble, right? You’re not going to get the same level of performance that you want. Now, why I think it’s important for leaders to understand that or team leaders, CEOs, it doesn’t matter, is that if they fully appreciate it intellectually and emotionally, then some of the things I will suggest you can do to build it come more naturally. Right? It’s not like you have to, wait, what was it I was supposed to do again? It will be more natural. It will be more spontaneous. Here’s what I would suggest. One, set the stage by clarifying the nature of the work, right? The work is challenging. The work is interdependent. The work is being done in the face of enormous uncertainty. And therefore, anyone’s voice might be mission critical. Setting the stage in that way is essentially about creating a rationale. Why is it not just a line, right? Oh yeah, we’d love to hear from you, but no, we really wouldn’t. It isn’t just a line, it’s sincere because given the world we work in, we need you, we need your observations. We need your eyes and ears. We need your brain. That’s setting the stage. The second thing is so simple but so often forgotten, which is ask good questions. Use inquiry. Be driven, whether it’s a team leader or a team member, by curiosity. I mean, [it’s important to] make yourself care about what others are seeing and thinking and feeling. Because if you actually care, then you don’t have to remind yourself to ask questions. You’ll do it naturally. Right. You’ll just ask questions. When you ask questions, people feel more awkward not reacting than reacting, right? You flip the natural calculus. You make it easy. When you just asked me a question, I felt I had to answer. I didn’t feel that it was an option to sit here quietly. It’s just really powerful. I think the final thing is to respond in a productive way, right? Which means respond with appreciation, with listening, with some acknowledgement of what you hear, and always with a forward looking emphasis. It’s sort of, how can I help? Where can we go from here? What ideas do you have about next steps? Those are sort of the three buckets of things, setting the stage, inviting input, and then responding to what people say in a thoughtful and interested way.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. Dr. Edmondson, you mentioned something that stood out to me that psychological safety doesn’t necessarily mean being nice or holding things back, but it does mean being kind and respectful. Do you have any tips for leaders struggling to get feedback in a way that is kind and respectful without wearing down that culture of psychological safety?
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
There’s classic advice which I think is extremely powerful which is, you’re critiquing the behavior, not the person. That awareness helps you to be as concrete as possible, right? Even though you might be giving criticism or negative feedback to someone, the very act of doing that is an act of caring, of believing the other person is worth helping. Believing the other person has the potential to do things better or differently. Right? As long as your spirit, the constructive mindset, your intention is to be helpful and you focus on concrete, observable behaviors and point out what you observe and what you think the impact of that is and what an alternative might be, that’s incredibly respectful. Right? Ultimately, when I say kind, I don’t mean in a soft and fuzzy way, I mean, in a way that is a genuine kindness. If you do something wrong-headed and I don’t tell you, that’s unkind, in one way of looking at it.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
That’s a great point. Sometimes talking about psychological safety in the context of learning, it makes me think about back to my college classes. I went to school to be a teacher. We talked about creating a safe and nurturing environment for children, otherwise they won’t be able to learn. I’m wondering if you could speak to how that translates to adults, because some people might argue, well, they’re adults, they can deal with whatever.
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
I mean, it’s funny because clearly the exact manifestation of, and actual behaviors related to adult learners, they’re going to be different than those that you would use for very young children or medium aged children or high school aged. We naturally as educators, or even just as people, talk to people of different ages in different ways. The tone you might use with a five year old would be enormously disrespectful to use with a 40 year old. Most of that, we spontaneously adjust. I think the basic advice is right, but the meaning of a nurturing environment is different for an adult learner than for a young child. A nurturing environment for a young child, I’m going to be very attentive to their need for naps. Maybe they’re hungry when they get…But for adults, a nurturing environment means the right degree of challenge and support. That what they’re going to be able to learn is sufficiently challenging, they’re just up to the task. But you have the supports, the structures, the content, the feedback, opportunities that are necessary to reach those challenges. That’s nurturing. Right? But it’s a very different meaning of the same word.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
That makes sense. Then what skills do learning leaders and training professionals need in order to create that kind of environment? What skills do leaders need to create that kind of environment for employees and learners?
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
I think the skills are in two categories. Category one are interpersonal skills, which the way we’ve been talking about already, but interpersonal skills that stem from an ability to connect with others and ability to listen. All of that I think stems from a genuine caring and other orientation. I think if there was a single piece of advice to give people to help them with their interpersonal skills, it would be focus on others. If you get out of your own head and you’re focusing on others, you’re going to, again, naturally do some of the things that help people and help you come across effectively. Like asking questions, like listening thoughtfully and responding in ways that indicate you actually heard what was said. Interpersonal skills, give others your respect and your attention. The other category of skills are what I would call process skills. They’re almost the skills that good scientists learn but applied in a different domain. I mean, these are the skills of pausing to diagnose. What’s happening here? Being systematic about it, being analytical about it. What’s happening here? I’m looking at the data, meaning, the data of let’s say non-verbals or the data of what people are saying and doing. Those are data. Looking at the data and trying to make sense, and then checking your understanding through inquiry and hypothesizing. You’re always hypothesizing that a particular intervention might work now. When you hypothesize, you don’t then just assume you’re right, you do it and you pay close attention to what you see, what happens next. It’s the wonderful book by Don Schon years ago, it’s called “The Reflective Practitioner,” on how really thoughtful, whether educators or architects or physicians. The very effective practitioners were not learning in the classroom and then going and doing their practice. They were learning in action. They were very unusually attentive to what happened as a result of their actions. I think of those as process skills, their science skills, their practitioner’s skills, it’s almost more focused on the content of what you’re doing rather than the people part of what you’re doing.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Let’s say a learning leader is working through that process and they’re at that diagnosis stage and they are seeing an environment that is psychologically unsafe that’s not conducive to learning. What kinds of things might they see? Then what kinds of steps can they take to rectify it?
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
They might see a lot of hesitation. They might see people almost looking like they might want to say something but not saying something. They might see a preponderance of good news or reporting successes only. They might see rosy content. If you’re in any company today and you’re hearing only rosy content, the chances are that’s incomplete because we’re all facing many, many challenges and very high uncertainty. Both of those are nonverbal signals that their people might be holding back. You can often tell, I think more easily in person than online, but that’s, so it goes. Also, analyzing what you hear and if it’s overly positive, the chances are people are holding back on the other stuff. That sends you a signal that there might be a psychological safety issue here.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
What next steps would you recommend to help address that?
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
This is one of those moments where a hypothesis has just been articulated in your head, right? It’s like, something’s going on here. Maybe people do not feel comfortable really speaking up with their work-relevant ideas, concerns, questions, mistakes. I think what you need to do next is raise that as a possibility. Right? Again, state your observation. I’m hearing lots of good news, which is great and I am so curious about the rest of the picture. What isn’t going well? I mean, sometimes that’s all you need, right? That little intervention to start to pull more out. But other times, if you’re still not getting very good information, which is quite often the case, then you stop and say, go sideways and say, as opposed to talking about the content, the work stuff, you talk about process and climate. You say, “I’m sensing and I’d love your thoughts, but I’m sensing that the climate for this team is not as open as I think would be optimal given the work you do. Can we work on this together?” It’s an invitation. It’s not something you can fix, from the edge you were by yourself. It’s something that I think almost necessarily is a joint problem solving opportunity. What things could we do to make it easier for people to raise difficult issues or mistakes or crazy ideas? What ideas do you have? You’re opening it up as something that we can work on together.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. Those are some great points. You mentioned about the challenges that you might face if you don’t have psychological safety and what that looks like. Do you have any insight on what psychologically safe work environments look in a virtual setting?
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
Well, there’s so many different virtual settings, right? Sometimes, you can have an enormous Zoom meeting with half a dozen screens of people, and that’s a performance, right? That’s much more of an audience. You don’t have spontaneous conversation, or you can have a Zoom meeting like the one we’re having right now, which is just the three of us. It’s more like a meeting. It’s not exactly the same as us being around a single table, but it’s more like that because we can see each other nodding, for example. I think the most important thing with virtual work is you need a bit more structure. You need a bit more of a heavy hand. I think you should assume that it’s harder for people to jump in. It’s harder to just read the room and know when there’s an opening, and therefore you should do two different kinds of things. One is to kind of explicitly call on people. [For example,] “Sarah, what are you thinking? Looks like your team has been working on this and we’d love to hear the update, or what have you.” The other thing is just to use the chat, use the polls, use the various things, especially for larger groups to be getting a sense of the pulse. Getting a sense of what people are thinking and feeling.
Sarah Gallo:
Perfect. Well, I think going back to what you said before, Dr. Edmondson, and really one of the signs of an unsafe learning environment is when things do look too positive. Of course, it’s a little bit difficult for some team members to bring up the negative if their leaders aren’t doing that in their leadership. Do you have any tips on how leaders can be vulnerable and really set the tone so that their team members can do the same?
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
It’s a great point. It’s a great question because it implies a part of the answer, which is [that leaders have to] go first, right? If you are hoping others will be vulnerable, and by vulnerable, I don’t mean going out on a limb with enormously personal information, not at all. I mean vulnerable in the very real sense that we are all vulnerable, right? We’re vulnerable to being wrong. We’re vulnerable to having our ideas rejected. We’re vulnerable to important colleagues thinking less of us for something we do or say. That’s just a reality. In a sense, what I’m talking about is getting okay with that. Getting okay with our vulnerability because our vulnerability is a fact. We might as well be okay with facts. If you want other people to be okay with their vulnerability, you must be okay. Especially if you’re in a leadership role, you’ve got to go first. If you want other people to be sharing mistakes, you’ve got to share mistakes. If you think you haven’t made any, think again. We’ve all made them. We’ve all made them. You say, well, I got it wrong in that case, or I really thought that was going to work and we tried it and it was incredibly disappointing. But boy, we learned a lot. Right. Role modeling is such an important part of the learning environment more broadly, right? I mean, whether you’re talking about a specific classroom environment or work environment more broadly, all of us look up to people in positions of authority or power and sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously, we really are influenced by what they do and say. With the leadership role comes a real responsibility to be aware of the fact that you’re having an influence and do your very best to have that be a positive influence.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
Thank you. That’s definitely the best leaders I’ve worked for have, have worked that way. Throughout this conversation, we’ve talked about what the psychologically safe workplace and learning environment looks like. I think we all have a sense of the benefits of that to the people in the room or in Zoom as it happens. I was wondering, before we wrap up, if you could give us a sense of what the benefits are to the business as well.
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
The benefits to the business are in two big categories. One is, let me start with a really positive one, which is innovation. Every company today depends on innovation, especially for the future of the business, right? You might be doing very well today, but you know intellectually you won’t be doing very well five, 10 years from now, unless there’s also innovation happening. To keep developing the new products and services that the customers today and in the future will value. Innovation is enormously dependent on environment and psychological safety, because without psychological safety, it’s hard for people to offer creative ideas. It’s also hard for people to collaborate across expertise zones. It’s easier to stay in your lane and stay in your silo if you don’t feel psychologically safe. That’s necessary. That boundary crossing is a key part of innovation, and finally, experimenting, right? If you’re not experimenting with things that don’t always work, right, you’ve got to have some failures along the way to success in innovation, you’re not going to be innovating. You really need that kind of climate for people to take the risks of innovation. That’s really about the future performance of the company. But even in terms of the present performance, the big opportunity for having a psychologically safe environment is avoiding preventable failures. It’s avoiding making the wrong decision, launching a product, acquiring a company, or even smaller decisions that at least one person, maybe more, kind of already knew was a bad idea but they didn’t feel they could speak up. They didn’t want to rain on the parade of the boss. Those kinds of things happen all the time in psychologically safe workplace. The data were there, the experience was there to say, bad idea, but no one was willing to say it. I wish there were a way to quantify at a societal level just how much waste is created by those kinds of situations. Of course, there’s cartoons about that. The boss is saying, “Great idea, right?” Everybody is like, “Yes, boss, yes, boss.” But the thought bubbles are saying, “No way.” Right? These are cartoons because they’re funny because they’re human nature. We all know it. I think we rarely stop to realize how much waste that represents. In my book, The Fearless Organization, I have a couple of chapters of just stories of preventable failure. Just stories where people inside the organization saw the writing on the wall or knew something was a bad idea but absolutely felt unable to speak up and speak up in hierarchies. You just kind of go, can’t we do something about this?
Sarah Gallo:
Well, hopefully our listeners have something they can use to do something about it, at least in their own roles with that. Dr. Edmondson, thank you so much for speaking with us today on the podcast.
Dr. Amy Edmondson:
You are very welcome. Thanks for having me.
Taryn Oesch DeLong:
To learn more about psychological safety and view the highlights of this episode in animation, check out the show notes at trainingindustry.com/trainingindustrypodcast.
Sarah Gallo:
As always, don’t forget to rate and review us on your favorite podcast app. We’ll see you next time.
