The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

In 1986, W. Edwards Deming introduced his “14 Points for Management” in the book, Out of the Crisis. Here is number eight.“Whether fear of failure, fear of reprisals or fear of management, fear is unhelpful to the success of your business. Drive out fear by encouraging communication, respect and teamwork at all levels of your business.”That was good advice, but there wasn’t much guidance on how to drive out fear or how your workplace might function when you did. Amy Edmonson’s The Fearless Organization gives you a mental model, so you know what an organization looks like after you follow Dr. Deming’s advice to “Drive out fear.”I’ve read a lot about “psychological safety” in the past several years, including several articles by Dr. Edmondson. Since she coined the term, many other people have used it. I bought this book to go to the source and find out what Dr. Edmondson had to say.She describes her goal for the book in the Introduction. She wants to “equip you with some new ideas and practices to make knowledge-intensive organizations work better.” She defines the fearless organization this way.“The fearless organization is one in which interpersonal fear is minimized so that team and organizational performance can be maximized in a knowledge intensive world.”The Fearless Organization is divided into three parts. Part I is, “the power of psychological safety.” Chapter two is an excellent summary of the research. If you’re interested in going into more depth about psychological safety, this chapter is worth the price of the book. In addition to this chapter on research, Dr. Edmondson includes detailed notes and references at the end of every chapter. Minor these at your pleasure.Part II is “Psychological Safety at Work.” Chapters three and four give you real-world examples of organizations without psychological safety. You’ll recognize most of them. Chapters five and six share examples of organizations with psychological safety. You may be surprised at some of them. You will see a strong contrast between the two groups in terms of organizational life and productivity.Pare III is “Creating a Fearless Organization.” Chapter seven provides a toolkit for leaders. The tools fall into three buckets. They are, setting the stage, inviting participation, and responding productively. If you want to follow Dr. Deming’s advice to drive out fear, here’s how.Chapter eight is titled, “What Next.” It includes an excellent section on the questions Dr. Edmondson is frequently asked about psychological safety.This is an excellent book, whether you’re investigating psychological safety as an intellectual exercise or seeking some help in improving psychological safety where you work. The big insight for me was that psychological safety deals with interpersonal fear and is an emergent property of a group. I had the basic concepts, but now I have deeper insights and language to express them.This is a good, helpful package of important ideas. But they may not seem new to you. You probably know that it’s not a good idea to shoot messengers who bring bad news. You may understand your job as creating an environment where both productivity and morale are high. Don’t pass up this book on that account.First, no matter how much you know, you can learn something here about psychological safety., Just knowing isn’t enough. As my friend Rod Santomassimo likes to say, “Don’t KID yourself, knowing isn’t doing.” This book can be a powerful tool to improve the work and morale of any team. But that won’t happen if all you do is read about psychological safety.In a NutshellThe Fearless Organization demonstrates what psychological safety is, why it’s important, and how to make it happen where you work. If you’re responsible for the performance of the group, put this book on your must-read list.

I ordered this book after learning about Psychological Safety on a LinkedIn learning course. This book honestly reads itself! I finished it in two days. I had so many takeaways to share with my team that I ended up creating a presentation that I presented to our Diversity, inclusion, and belonging employee resource group! ! I made sure to plug the book and encourage others to read it and learn for themselves! I continue to reference this book daily as an HR professional and will look forward to more information coming out from the author in the future as we all crave more information to cultivate psychological safety on our teams!

I very much enjoyed this read. Full disclosure, I liked it more because I identified ways in which my managerial success in my first job leading a sizeable team are attributable to psychological safety. I definitely came away with new ideas, tools, and language to more clearly and conscientiously implement this approach, as well as useful criticisms of my current practices. I have received glowing feedback to my management approach from many colleagues with decades in the company. Though I have thought of my success primarily as allowing myself and my team to bring their whole selves to work and finding purpose in the work, this helped dissect the impact of this stance and the reasons it resonates for so many people.This pairs well with the Dream Jobs episode of the Hidden Brain podcast. Lots of overlap in the area of meaning and associated reward.Knocked one star because about 75% of the way through, there were numerous grammatical errors. It was almost like the editors lost focus at the end or didn't make it there. I hope that's not true, as the end had all the useful tips in it!

Not your book if you like culture/leadership books that are:Easy, obvious, fluffYour book if you like culture/leadership books that:Have substance, will challenge you, actually can help you create a great cultureI work in a combination of school and sports settings as a mental performance coach. I find a lot of schools and coaches are drawn to what's easy when it comes to culture. As a result, they reach for the fluff on bookshelves- makes them feel good but doesn't really do anything. This book is not that. It's well researched and well explained. With some effort, you can draw some really great concepts and tangible ideas to help create and work to maintain a great culture wherever you may work. The stories are well told and connect well with the points made. If I had to pick one negative, the book mentions education several times without providing any specific stories from the education world. That said, the lessons learned can clearly be applied to education. It's one of my favorite books I've read on culture/leadership, and I plan on recommending it to whoever will listen. We need more books like this!

I appreciate the agile combination of research findings, case studies, and reflections this book offers. Professor Edmonson provides clear tips and practices to restore safety in organizations. This thin book explores in depth the benefits of safety and offers sufficient research evidence without being overwhelming for the non-researcher. I mainly found the examples relevant and helped me travel back in time to when I was a leader facing the same difficulties I had then face. I wish I had had the opportunity then to read this book. The elegant "flow" of the book kept me engaged and helped me reflect on the routines, processes, habits of execution, and expectations that set teams to fail. Once again, Professor Edmonson offers a significant contribution to help organization strengthen environments for humans maximize innovation and learning.