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The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth Hardcover – November 20, 2018
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Conquer the most essential adaptation to the knowledge economy
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent―but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind? The traditional culture of "fitting in" and "going along" spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, ridicule or intimidate. Not every idea is good, and yes there are stupid questions, and yes dissent can slow things down, but talking through these things is an essential part of the creative process. People must be allowed to voice half-finished thoughts, ask questions from left field, and brainstorm out loud; it creates a culture in which a minor flub or momentary lapse is no big deal, and where actual mistakes are owned and corrected, and where the next left-field idea could be the next big thing.
This book explores this culture of psychological safety, and provides a blueprint for bringing it to life. The road is sometimes bumpy, but succinct and informative scenario-based explanations provide a clear path forward to constant learning and healthy innovation.
- Explore the link between psychological safety and high performance
- Create a culture where it’s “safe” to express ideas, ask questions, and admit mistakes
- Nurture the level of engagement and candor required in today’s knowledge economy
- Follow a step-by-step framework for establishing psychological safety in your team or organization
Shed the "yes-men" approach and step into real performance. Fertilize creativity, clarify goals, achieve accountability, redefine leadership, and much more. The Fearless Organization helps you bring about this most critical transformation.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWiley
- Publication dateNovember 20, 2018
- Dimensions6.3 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches
- ISBN-101119477247
- ISBN-13978-1119477242
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From the Inside Flap
Written for leaders and teams, The Fearless Organization is a practical guide for creating cultures where knowledge and innovation flourish because people feel safe to contribute their ideas.
While many companies are investing in talent to compete in today's knowledge economy, the best talent is wasted if people are not able to speak up. The human instinct to "fit in" and "go along" works against the continuous flow of new ideas, new solutions, and critical thought necessary for companies to stay innovative. While not every idea will hit a home run, an organization's culture must not suppress, silence, ridicule or intimidate. Based on Amy Edmondson's 20 years of research, this invaluable book helps companies tackle the people side of the innovation equation to create workplaces that are safe, fearless and empowered to win with unbridled ideas.
The Fearless Organization offers a step-by-step framework for establishing psychological safety within a team and an organization. It is filled with illustrative scenario-based examples and provides a clear path forward for implementing a culture that thrives on the free expression of ideas and nurturing engagement.
The Fearless Organization can give leaders the confidence they need to unleash individual and collective talent and create the type of work environments that helps everyone succeed and their organizations to thrive.
From the Back Cover
Praise for the fearless organization
"The Fearless Organization is a modern masterpiece ― useful, timeless, and a delight to read. Amy Edmondson's weave of studies, stories, and insights from her decades of research shows why psychological safety is the key ingredient for creating high-performing, humane, and resilient workplaces. This gem is packed with steps that leaders can take so people feel compelled to share mistakes and concerns ― confident they won't be humiliated, ignored, or blamed for speaking up."
―Robert Sutton, Stanford Professor and author of national bestsellers including Good Boss, Bad Boss and (with Huggy Rao) Scaling Up Excellence
"Organizations today depend on talent, but there are many reasons that talent alone is not enough. The only way human capacities can truly flourish is in an atmosphere free of fear. Amy Edmondson has devoted 20 years to understanding psychological safety in organizations ― and in this timely, important book she shares what she's learned. She identifies the ways fear can stifle creativity and teamwork ― and then offers smart, practical advice for overcoming these obstacles and building an organization free of fear. This is a book that every leader should read and heed."
―Daniel H. Pink, author of WHEN and DRIVE
"Before Google discovered it, and before the idea became a mainstream meme, Amy Edmondson discovered something really important about high performing teams: the people in them felt that they could raise difficult, risky, or controversial ideas without the fear of being shut down or punished. She called it 'psychological safety,' and pioneered approaches to making it a reality in hundreds of teams. It is an idea whose time has triumphantly arrived. Edmondson's new book is your guide to it."
―Rita McGrath, Professor, Columbia University, bestselling author, The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business
"The overwhelming message of Amy's book is this: leadership calls us to create workplaces where people feel safe to share ideas and mistakes are embraced as opportunities to learn. Build an organization free of fear and watch remarkable things happen. Not only is it the right thing to do, it's the ultimate competitive advantage!"
―Bob Chapman, CEO of Barry-Wehmiller and author of Everybody Matters: The Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family
"The importance of psychological safety in organizational life has been known for a long time, but only now do we have a roadmap of how to get there through this book's thorough analysis of how to build organizations that actually create psychological safety for all employees at all levels, and, thereby, insure higher quality performance, more safety, and, most importantly, more learning. Psychological safety will not only be desirable but absolutely necessary as organizations become more complex and more dependent on the commitment of all their members. This book makes the case through a thorough review of relevant research and illustrates all of its main points through powerful stories from a broad variety of organizations."
―Edgar H. Schein, Professor Emeritus, MIT Sloan School of Management and author with Peter Schein of Humble Leadership: The Power of Relationships, Openness and Trust
About the Author
AMY C. EDMONDSON is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Edmondson, recognized by the biannual Thinkers 50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, teaches and writes on leadership, teams and organizational learning. Her articles have been published in Harvard Business Review and California Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, and the Academy of Management Journal. She is the author of Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate and Compete in the Knowledge Economy and Teaming to Innovate from Jossey-Bass.
Product details
- Publisher : Wiley; 1st edition (November 20, 2018)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1119477247
- ISBN-13 : 978-1119477242
- Item Weight : 15.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 6.3 x 1.2 x 9.1 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #8,004 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13 in Human Resources & Personnel Management (Books)
- #115 in Business Management (Books)
- #167 in Leadership & Motivation
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her work explores teaming – the dynamic forms of collaboration needed in environments characterized by uncertainty and ambiguity. She has also studied the role of psychological safety in teamwork and innovation. Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked with founder and CEO Larry Wilson to design change programs in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and innovation in the built environment remains an area of enduring interest and passion.
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“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 Nutshell
The 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.
One refreshing aspect of Edmondson’s framework is that it is backed by 20 years of research in multiple industries. This research shows the importance of psychological safety in the workplace: when employees do not feel enabled or encouraged to speak up with their questions or concerns, it can breed a culture of silence which may go beyond business failure and affect people’s physical and mental health. The book does a good job of highlighting the fact that a lack of psychological safety is not just attributed to poorly performing companies with overly assertive and intimidating managers, but can affect well performing businesses with proven track records and family-oriented cultures. In my own experience, which is paralleled in the book, this lack of psychological safety is derived from a false belief system that management is so good at what they do that employees don't challenge them, resulting in a dangerous silence.
Edmondson offers several useful tools in this book. The first is a survey managers can administer to gauge how psychologically safe their teams feel. Edmondson also includes all of her research references at the end of each chapter, which are helpful for those wanting to learn more about psychological safety and related concepts. The leader’s toolkit and self-assessment can be applied by managers to any interaction with their employees.
If Edmondson’s goal, as she states, is to provide readers with “new ideas and practices to make knowledge-intensive organizations work better,” this book is best poised for the new manager as an introduction to the concepts of psychological safety. One can take away a sense of their own psychological environments and have the tools to ensure a safer workplace. It is probably not enough, however, for someone to merely apply the leader’s toolkit in working with their teams. Managers must build rapport and trust, which takes time, effort and practice. My overall advice to new managers when it comes to psychological safety: read this book as an introduction, use the leadership self-assessment and tool-kit often, and design creative “braintrust-like” activities suitable for team feedback and collaboration. My advice to Edmondson: pull the meat from this book to create an abbreviated handbook that includes the psychological safety survey, leader’s toolkit, and leadership self-assessment, and you’ll have a best-seller.
Top reviews from other countries
Her insight sparks me to be brave to speak up and more intentionally listen - go down - to others.
Thank you for this book.








