Psychological Safety to reach the Learning Zone

I consider “No Fear” to be one of my leadership principles. For me this means, not to create personal pressure, not to threaten, not to create the fear of making mistakes.

Later I learned, that this fits into the concept of “psychological safety“.

Smart heads like Edgar Schein and Amy Edmondson found psychological safety as success factor of a learning organization (see some links and references below).

I am convinced that challenging the status quo in order to improve, break patterns and old habits as well as develop new solutions is not possible in an environment of anxiety.

Amy Edmondson is the author of “The Fearless Organization” and I like many of her punch lines, e.g.:

Frame work as a learning problem, not an execution problem.

We need everybody’s brain!

She brings psychological safety and accountability into this simple grit and maybe you can identify in which quadrant your team, your company or you yourself are:

This and more is part of one of her TED Talks and although already a bit of age, the content is timeless:

Your steps on your LeaderTrail:

Create an environment in which mistakes and critical viewpoints are considered learning opportunities, where failure is part of the process.

That requires to put the mistake in the center of the discussion and not the person who made it. It means to openly thank someone for reporting a mistake and be hard on those, who try to cover them up. With all your words and actions you want to invite everyone involved to bring up mistakes or critical feedback. Make your own mistakes public and discuss them openly. Expose yourself to critical feedback and become a facilitator of an open discourse by asking open questions:

• What am I missing?
• What could we have done different?
• Where do you see room for improvement?
• What do you need from me to improve things?

It takes many steps to reach the summit of psychological safety and to reach what Amy Edmondson calls “our most contributing selves“.

Read more:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_safety
• Lisa Gill in conversation with Amy Edmondson about psychological safety and the future of work
• hbr.org: The Anxiety of Learning
• on this blog: Learning as Leadership Principle