The Fearless Organization

Creating psychological safety in the workplace for learning,

innovation and growth

By Amy C. Edmondson

THE BOOK IN A NUTSHELL

Psychological safety is the key to organisational learning. Organisations need to
be agile through continuous learning and cultivating a fearless environment that encourages
people to speak up and contribute ideas. The trouble is psychological safety is fragile and needs
continual renewal. Driving ‘fear out of an organisation’ will be a constant journey.

The three key ways to help build psychological safety at work are:
1) De-stigmatize failure
2) As a leader, demonstrate fallibility and humility (you do not know all the answers)
3) Respond productively (listen intently, thank everyone for their contribution and act upon some
of their suggestions)

Paul Arnold Consulting

PLANNING - FACILITATION - TRAINING
07768 775988 paul_arnold@me.com
 THE BOOK
THE PROBLEM

“No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers … as fear” - Edmund Burke

With the increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world we live in, it’s even
more important to fully utilise the latent potential of the workforce (to find solutions to increasingly
challenging problems). We need teamwork where knowledge is freely shared across the
organization. If the culture makes people afraid to share ideas/thoughts/challenges/concerns/
questions/mistakes/knowledge, then everyone loses. Our workplace is moving much more in
collaboration (both inside an organisation, across geographical boundaries as well as with external
organisations - 50% more time is spent collaborating than 20 years ago). Nearly every decision in
an organization these days is made from seeking multiple perspectives from others. The greater an
issue is analysed, then it is more likely the organization will make a better decision. So if we work
in an environment that unconsciously suppresses expression, then we are more likely to make
sub-optimal (and potentially catastrophic) decisions.

It’s an old truism that bad news does not travel up the hierarchy. The trouble is in today’s hectic
workplace, there is little time or desire to entertain ‘blocks or challenges’. It steals time and energy.
Managers MUST deliver! Furthermore, certain metrics (like faults) are closely monitored so these
numbers can get ‘massaged’. So unconsciously even when raised managers will tend to nod and
then squash or ignore.

Sadly research also suggests psychological safety is in short supply in many organisations these
days. There appears to be an epidemic of silence, where people are afraid of the consequences of
speaking up and out - even when they recognise what they wanted to say would be of importance
for the organisation (and this can sometimes lead to stress and personal regret).

When quizzed people say they did not want to be seen in a bad light or damage relationships
whilst others expressed the perceived futility of speaking up (i.e. high risk, low reward). Typical
areas they wanted to comment on were poor performance of a manager, harassment, or
suggested improvements for work processes.

In one piece of research, 85% of respondents reported that on at least one occasion at work they
did not feel they could raise an important concern with their boss. Even senior people can still feel
the pressure not to comment or challenge.

Research highlighted some of the ‘taboo’ transgressions you do not commit:

Don’t criticise the boss on something s/he was involved in creating
Don’t speak unless you have solid data
Don’t speak if your boss’s boss is present
Don’t speak up in a group which could make your boss lose face

The reality is, keeping quiet is usually always the safer option and consequently is the default
setting (no-one gets fired for silence) - whilst speaking up has high perceived risk. The trouble is
because people do not speak up its impact is hidden from research. We do not know the real
impact of silence.
Paul Arnold Consulting
PLANNING - FACILITATION - TRAINING
07768 775988 paul_arnold@me.com
Sadly, many managers still believe ruling through fear is an effective way to maximise
performance. Yet research has clearly demonstrated that fear inhibits learning and co-operation.
Fear diverts resources to manage this perceived threat, including reducing working memory. This
impairs analytical thinking, creativity and problem solving abilities.

‘Workarounds’ is a term defined by Anita Tucker when she observed nurses. She noticed that
rather than challenge the bosses, they found ways around the problem. Workarounds are often
less efficient and essentially hide the underlying problem. Teams with low psychological safety tend
to indulge more in walkarounds. Research has shown projects with greater psychological safety
were more successful overall than ones with low psychological safety. This in turn led to greater
financial return.

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

The fearless organization is one where interpersonal fear is minimised, allowing a freer flow of
knowledge. It’s an environment where a person feels able to express their views on something
openly and honestly without fear of recrimination, abuse, putdown or humiliation.

Julia Rovovsky led a major, multi-year study of team effectiveness at Google (Project Aristotle).
They analysed many different factors they thought may explain why some teams were more
successful than others (these included education, hobbies, personality traits, backgrounds etc).
They found no correlating features. What they eventually found was psychological safety was the
key factor that led to high performing teams. This was supported by four other features:
1) Clear goals
2) Dependable colleagues
3) Personally meaningful work
4) Belief that the work has impact

Psychological safety is not about being nice. It’s about being able to speak the truth. And it’s okay
to disagree. Nor is psychological safety about lowering standards. It is actually the opposite. It’s
about creating an environment that allows people to be more honest: to challenge, make
improvement suggestions - that critically gets acted upon.

Psychological safety appears to live at the group/team level. In any organisation you will find
pockets of both high and low psychological safety (often linked to the leader in that area).

Psychological safety starts at the top (but everyone’s also responsible for it).

Paul Arnold Consulting

PLANNING - FACILITATION - TRAINING
07768 775988 paul_arnold@me.com
BENEFITS

The benefits of psychological safety are huge and widespread.

Research has shown psychological safety helps boost engagement/fulfilment/greater meaning,

and so helps unleash the talent of the workforce. It increases personal growth, team building,
learning/new insights, error reporting, knowledge sharing, and creativity. It also helps reduce work
stress, sick days, turnover, and helps overcome interpersonal challenges (such as geographic
dispersement, conflict as well as embracing ethnic diversity). Ultimately, it leads to increased
project effectiveness, innovation, in market competitiveness and financial return.

REAL LIFE EXAMPLES

There have been many reported cases of people failing to challenge authority, leading to major
mistakes (be it on planes, in companies, in hospitals etc). Unreachable targets matched with
command and control management structures seems to be at the heart of other corporate
disasters such as VW and Wells Fargo (to name but two).

VW - In the VW emissions scandal over 50 people were found to be knowingly involved

in a deliberate conspiracy to defraud the USA Environmental Protection Agency. 11m
diesel cars around the world had the software that meant when tested, it would record a
significantly lower level of Nitrous Oxide. It all started to go wrong with the highly
ambitious CARB (California Air Resources Board). Such was the pressure both in the
public arena and inside the organisation, that the NOx levels had to be hit - no question.
The CEO, Martin Winterkorn was known to be a tough, impatient, arrogant man with an
obsessive focus of detail and perfectionism. If one presented bad news to him, he would
shout and demean the individual in front of others. We find such behaviours often deeply
engrained in an organisation’s history. Winterkorn, for example, was a protege of the
previous boss, Ferdinand Piech. Piech instigated a reign of terror and a culture driven
by fear and intimidation. Motivation through fear is effective at driving short term
performance but not long term (as it disempowers the workforce’s latent potential).

WELLS FARGO - Wells Fargo was regarded as one of the most valuable banks in the
USA, servicing over a third of the US population. With the incessant pressure to grow, it
decided it could gain a competitive advantage by becoming a one stop shop for all its
customers’ financial needs. In the early 2000s, they adopted a cross selling strategy
they called ‘Going for Gr-Eight’ (i.e. to take the average number of financial products
held by an individual up from 6 to 8). Very aggressive targets were set for everyone.
Each branch had to report their sales four times a day. If they did not hit their targets
they were fired. One area president told his people to “do whatever it takes to sell”. This
pressure of targets and fear of dismissal led to over two million fake accounts being
created, as well as lying to customers to say that certain products were only available if
purchased with others. By September 2016, they were found guilty of widespread
misconduct, and were fined $185m.

Both companies were filled with talented people. But lack of psychological safety stopped
them from facing the realities of the environment they were in. The seeds of failure were
sown many years before by the culture of the organization. If the truth can’t be told (or not

Paul Arnold Consulting

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heard) then eventually the senior management will start making fatal decisions based on
false information.

Dangerous Silence - examples of how lack of psychological safety has caused major issues:

COLUMBIA - On Feb 1 2003, Columbia suffered a catastrophic re-entry into the earth’s
atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts. Two weeks earlier, at the launch, one of the
engineers, Rodney Rocha, thought he saw a chunk of insulating foam fall off the tank
and strike the left wing. Rocha wanted to get satellite footage to check damage but this
request was denied. He did not challenge it. Later on when asked why not, he said he
was too low down in the organisation and the person who denied the request was “way
up here”

CANARY ISLAND PLANE CRASH - In March 1977 two Boeing 747 collided with each
other on a runway in the Canary Isles, killing 583 people. The runway was covered in
fog so neither plane could see each other. Even with their own lives at risk, the first
officer and chief engineer did not feel able to continue to challenge their dogmatic and
impatient captain, Jacob Van Zanten.

CHALLENGER - The 1986 Challenger explosion, Roger Boisjoly, an engineer at

contractor Morton-Thiokol, raised his concern the night before launch that the O-rings
could be a faulty design. Due to the pressure to launch, his concerns were squashed.

UBER - In April 2017, Susan Fowler wrote a 3000 word blog about her own harassment
from a male colleague at work. Uber at the time tried to squash it, saying it was this
man’s first ever offence and he would be given a stern talking to (as he was a high
performer). Uber’s cultural value of ‘super-pumpedness’ did not support psychological
safety. It took until June 2017 for the issue to snowball before the CEO stepped down.

The fearless workplace - real examples of psychological safety at work:

PIXAR - Pixar became one of the most successful studios because it put
psychological safety at the core of its processes. Co-founder Ed Catmull said candour
was critical to ensure high production standards were maintained. During the
development period of a film, a group (The Braintrust) get together to review the
progress of the film. These people are encouraged not to hold back but speak their
mind. There are some clear rules of The Braintrust to ensure it stays on track:

-Feedback must be constructive

-The filmmaker cannot be defensive or take comments personally
-The comments are suggestions not mandates
-Feedback is not a ‘Gotcha’ but to come from a place of empathy and positive
intent for the film. It is because they respect and trust in each other that this can
work. Thus praise is also given out in equal measure.

Failure is another key ingredient for Pixar’s success. They embrace - even celebrate
it. They see it as an essential ingredient for creativity. They claim creativity is a bit like
riding a bike; you never get it right first time. Failure is key way we learn and grow.
Thus people must be given the freedom to fail. If they are not, then people will tend
not to take risks and continue what was done before, so will not explore new territories
(not doing what’s done in the past is a key concept in creativity). With a fear driven/risk
minimising culture all work would be derivative not innovative. Catmull therefore tries
to decouple failure from fear.
Paul Arnold Consulting
PLANNING - FACILITATION - TRAINING
07768 775988 paul_arnold@me.com
EILEEN FISHER - Eileen Fisher, owner of the eponymous clothes retailer practices “I
don’t know” (Likewise, Anne Mulcahy, CEO at Xerox ). It’s too easy to be sucked in by
the aura of being the ‘all knowing, all powerful boss’. She believes she needs to
demonstrate that even the person at the top of a company does not have all the
answers (thus exposing her fallibility and hence vulnerability). You must demonstrate
humility and vulnerability to open the doors for other people’s contribution. She instead
practices active listening. These two traits encourages others in the organisation to
come forward with ideas.

GOOGLE X - Google set up Google X, an innovations lab, to develop ‘Moonshot

technologies that would make the world a better place’. They positively reward (with
bonuses and promotions) the closing down of projects so they do not waste resource
pursuing dud projects (allowing them instead to invest in projects with greater
potential).

Rapid Evaluation - GoogleX operates through a process of ‘disciplined

experimentation’. Just as scientists must try to disprove their hypotheses (in order to
validate them), so does Google X. They actively seek to test their ideas to destruction.
The team first starts with Stage1: a ‘Pre-Mortem’ - a brainstorm to try to define as
many reasons why the project could fail. Then a project moves into Stage 2: Rapid
Evaluation.This stage involves making quick and simple prototypes. If it passes this
stage then Step 3 is The Foundry - where a team challenges the need of the product
(Should the solution exist? Will people actually use it?). Since 2016, the company
have held an annual convention where they showcase their failures.

MINING - Cynthia Carroll was the first female CEO appointed to run an international
mining company. When she took over, one of her key objectives was to reduce
fatalities/serious injuries to zero from an average of 40 per year (an almost impossible
task bearing in mind the inherent danger of mining). To demonstrate her intent, she
immediately shut down one of the most dangerous mines (costing the company $8m a
day). She wanted to hear from the miners herself what the problems were and how to
resolve them. Due to past culture, miners were reluctant to speak up, so she
instigated a traditional South African tradition of lekgotla (village meetings). Everyone
sits in a circle and has the chance to speak without being criticised or interrupted.
They shifted the key question away from safety to “What do we need to do to create
an environment of care and respect?’. This led to a wide range of incremental
improvements that generated increased trust between workers and the management.
Both sides then signed a contract outlining what both management and workers would
do to create this improved environment. 30,000 workers were re-trained. Regular
safety reviews were conducted. Safety metrics were institutionalised. Fatalities did not
reach zero but did drop to 17 (with each death fully honoured). Although production
and revenues fell following the mine’s closure, by 2011 the company had achieved the
highest operating profits in its long history. Moving to a place of mutual trust had not
just saved lives but increased productivity.

P&G - In his book, The Game Changer, AF Laffley, ex-CEO of P&G, lists his 11 most
expensive failures, citing these as excellent examples of corporate learnings.

Paul Arnold Consulting

PLANNING - FACILITATION - TRAINING
07768 775988 paul_arnold@me.com
WAYS TO IMPROVE PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY

You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions - Naguib Mahfouz

Psychological safety is built from trust and respect across an organisation. There are three key
actions a leader needs to undertake to initiate the shift in culture:

1) De-stigmatise failure - The leader needs to state up-front that failure is acceptable (Catmull at
Pixar reminds people at the start of a new film that it always starts out bad before coming
good).

In a piece of research, the authors asked ‘What percentage of work that goes wrong is
blameworthy?’ The answers tend to be in the low single digits. But when asked, ‘What
percentage of failures ARE treated as blameworthy?’ - the response is usually between
70-90%. This mis-apportion of blame (blame-skating) leads people to be defensive and not
admit to personal mistakes (as the history of the company has shown such admissions can be
personally costly). Clearly breaches of standards/morals must be swiftly reprimanded, but
these have been shown to increase psychological safety rather then decrease it.

They also need to emphasise the purpose of the organisation and what is at stake. Subtle
shifts in language can help play a key role e.g. replacing ‘error’ with ‘accident’.

2) Demonstrate fallibility and humility - It is key for the leader to demonstrate humility - to admit
they do not know all the answers (and instead invite the team to make suggestions - especially
those with hands-on experience). Otherwise people will be resistant to proffer ideas if the boss
appears to project an aura of ‘knowing it all’. They need to actively invite others to contribute.
They also need to develop the art of good questioning and even more importantly, the skill of
active listening.

3) Respond productively - To build trust one must do more than just listen. How you respond is
critical. For example, simply thanking them (genuinely) for their contribution helps encourage
future contributions. You need to also act - e.g. by doing some of the suggestions, celebrating
failure (and stopping activities that destroy psychological safety).

But it is not just the leaders who can help build and maintain a psychologically safe environment.
Studies have revealed where there is a lot of communication across co-workers in a team, it
increases trust, friendship and hence psychological safety.

Perhaps the easiest way to develop psychological safety is to act as if it already exists. Every
person in an organisation is able to influence and direct psychological safety.

Furthermore, little snipes and gestures can easily erode the atmosphere of trust. And these can be
commented upon by anyone in the organisation. Frances Frei from Harvard suggests saying,
“Wow that felt super-inappropriate. Can we have a do-over?”

Paul Arnold Consulting

PLANNING - FACILITATION - TRAINING
07768 775988 paul_arnold@me.com
 CRITIQUE

This book is a pretty dry read. Whilst the case histories are compulsive reading, they are a bit too
far removed from the experience of most of us in our everyday worlds.

It’s also quite an academic book, referencing many other pieces of research to help support their
own conclusions.

Furthermore, it is a bit rambly. As often is the case with these business books, it’s one key theme
over-written to pad out 200+ pages.

The biggest issue I have with the book is its heavy on the issue but far too light on the practical
answers to this deeply embedded problem.

Finally a word of caution. Psychological safety is not the magic elixir that will solve all the
organisation’s issues. You still need all the other leadership tools such as objective setting, metrics
etc.

Paul Arnold Consulting

PLANNING - FACILITATION - TRAINING
07768 775988 paul_arnold@me.com
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