#9 Amy Edmondson: Building teams where people feel safe

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

• Amy Edmondson (@AmyCEdmondson)
  • The Fearless Organization - @WorkFearlessly
  • Amy's HBS faculty page
  • Amy's books: The Fearless Organization & Teaming (Amy's prior book)
• Buckminster Fuller - his moment of great despair in his early thirties and his moment of insight: "you belong to the universe"
  • Geodesic domes
• VUCA
• Ford, Alan Mulally & Mark Fields
• Kristin Neff & Self-Compassion
• Growth mindset
• Flow & Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Steven Kotler
• Kim Scott
• Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - associated with self-focused metacognitive evaluation
• Simon Wardley - value chain mapping overview talk & writing
• Stanford - Designing Your Life
• Nilofer Merchant - Onlyness
• Process Knowledge Spectrum
• Jerry Colonna - Reboot
• Books
  • The Fearless Organization
  • Teaming (Amy's prior book)
  • Leadership and Self-Deception
  • Radical Candor
  • Flow
  • Stealing Fire (group flow)
  • Mindset
  • Self-Compassion
  • Designing Your Life
  • Reboot

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