Fearless Outperformance: Creating Conditions for the Very Best Teams to Excel with Amy Edmondson

OutsideVoices with Mark Bidwell

In this episode, we are joined by Amy C. Edmondson to discuss her latest book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. Amy is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School and is the world expert on psychological safety, a topic recently made famous by the findings of Google’s Project Aristotle, the quest to build the perfect team.

What Was Covered

• How leaders can create psychologically safe environments in the workplace, in service of innovation and profitable growth.
• The ‘fearless’ organization, and why fear-based leadership strategies are a recipe for failure.
• How leaders leverage approaches from indigenous cultures to deal with some of the worlds more pressing VUCA challenges

Key Takeaways and Learnings

• Psychological safety: why workplaces should be safe spaces for employees to explore, experiment and solve problems.
• Uncertainty and interdependence: why human and interpersonal fears create unsafe work environments.
• Silence: why keeping quiet can be dangerous and result in enormous mistakes and value destruction, as well as lost market opportunities.

Links and Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• Get in touch with Amy via Twitter or LinkedIn
• Amy's page at Harvard Business School
• The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth, a book by Amy Edmondson
• What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team, HBS case by Charles Duhigg
• Cynthia Carroll at Anglo American, an article by Gautam Mukunda, Lisa Mazzanti and Aldo Sesia
• The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women, a book by Kate Moore
• Questions Are the Answer: A Breakthrough Approach to Your Most Vexing Problems at Work and in Life, a book by Hal Gregersen
• Other mentions: Thinkers50, Bridgewater, Eilleen Fisher fashion Company, Pixar, Volkswagen, Wells Fargo
• Human Innovation, Smart Machines with Ed Hess, OutsideVoices Podcast
• Inventing The Future with Business Model Innovation with Alex Osterwalder, OutsideVoices Podcast

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