Greg McKeown:
Welcome back. I’m Greg McKeown, your host, and I am here with you on this journey to learn so that we can make a higher contribution personally and professionally.
What is happening to the psychological safety of people at work? Is it going up? Is it going down? What is the primary threat to it today? And is it the same as what we had 20 years ago? Well, to discuss this and other questions, I’ve invited back Dr. Amy Edmondson. She’s a celebrated Harvard professor, and one of the best listeners that I have ever interviewed. She’s present; she’s real. And by the end of this episode, you are going to be more empowered to be able to create psychological safety in a world that sometimes seems to be attacking it. Let’s begin.
If you want to get more out of today’s conversation, go to gregmckeown.com/podcast, and you’ll be able to get exquisite show notes with all the details of these conversations so that you can engage more richly and more deeply and get more out of it.
You said something a moment ago that I don’t want to miss, and that was this idea that, well, the way I read it, and you can correct me, was that you are concerned that there has been this relatively new phenomenon in organizations where people can expect what you described, safe spaces where nothing can be said that would offend me on any series of subjects. And I just want you to just drill into that because I think some advocates for that would be saying, well, this is for psychological safety, but there’s another darker side to it, as far as I can see, because if you go back to that original definition, permission for candor, you must be willing to risk some level of offense in order to be able to have a conversation. And if you can’t have a conversation, well, it’s not only that the team can’t learn, you can’t learn, you can’t even think without being able to do it. So I suppose I’m giving opinion in my question now, but what’s your reaction and thought to this? Am I hearing it wrong?
Amy Edmondson:
100%. And that’s why I don’t want to put this forward as sort of something easy or straightforward to fix. It’s not, and here’s the part that I believe is going to need more emphasis going forward, right? Psychological safety describes a climate. Doing this well, like doing, doing candor well, is highly, and we’ve gotta sort out our expectations. So you’re absolutely right. I mean, you said it, and I’ll underline it, that there is a very obvious clear tension between sort of an environment of psychological safety where we do feel able to speak up, and we’re not just holding back and tiptoeing and this idea that yes, but if anyone says anything that upsets me in any way, that’s unacceptable, and that’s not psychologically safe, that doesn’t work. Right? Because that would presume all-knowingness.
We’ve got to be able to say something. I don’t, I mean, I do not believe in deliberate harm, right? That I go out of my way to try to make you feel bad. Unhelpful unlearning, right? I will make mistakes, or I will be in the dark about something, and I will say something, you know, maybe many times a day that someone else doesn’t find likable, comfortable, whatever. We’ve got to sort of forgive each other and muddle through together. That’s what learning is.
Greg McKeown:
Yes. And what I hear you saying, I think, is that’s not what psychological safety is.
Amy Edmondson:
You know, I wish I could rename it. I think it’s too late for that, but I’d call it permission for candor, or I’d call it low interpersonal risk, which sounds very academic, but you know, environments of low interpersonal risk where we just believe, I mean, the way some engineers are really, most of them, you know, just sort of like, well, here’s the data, right? They don’t sort of candy-coat the data. And that’s kind of what I aspire to for the rest of us.
Greg McKeown:
It almost seems, I remember, that Clayton Christensen had to, or chose to write an article in Harvard Business Review to almost reclaim the idea of disruptive innovation. What I mean by it is this. What I don’t mean is that, and it seems to me that they might be time for that sort of piece from you where you say, this is what it is, this is what it isn’t. Because the very essence and nature of the term itself seems to be almost diametrically opposed to the idea that there are just things you can’t say, are not allowed to say. And I am the judge of that. It’s like, no, that will be a serious learning impediment anywhere that it’s tried. That’s what I hear you saying. And I don’t think I’m putting words in your mouth. I think this is, it’s almost like we need another breakthrough article correcting the impulse. So say, it’s not that.
Amy Edmondson:
I think you’re absolutely right. I think we needed a tiny, not a tiny, actually, a big step toward that article was published in the Financial Times on Sunday, just a beautiful piece by Andrew Hill. He wouldn’t necessarily frame it as that article, but if, if you read it, psychological safety is in the title. It’s so good, right? It’s so nuanced and thoughtful. But it’s, it’s not that long. And I’m, I think you’re absolutely right. I think I might be overdue for a psychological safety article because this is what it is. This is what it isn’t. And then the implication of that, I’d have to go one step further, which is, this is highly skilled, and also it’s about, you know, this is what it’s about. It’s about fallible human beings accepting their own and each other’s fallibility so that we can make progress together and, and make, let’s make progress on all the things we care about.
I mean, let’s make progress on inclusion, which is sort of what we’re inadvertently referring to or indirectly referring to. Let’s make progress on innovation. Let’s make progress on efficiency. Right? But we can only do that if we’re willing to allow each other to be the fallible human beings that we necessarily are.
Greg McKeown:
The article you’re referring to, it’s called Psychological Safety, the Art of Encouraging Teams to be Open. It’s in the Financial Times. He says, “The goal of building a fearless organization where employees are more candid requires constant managerial effort and attention.” He says, “Even its best-known advocate, Harvard Business Schools, Amy Edmondson says she fears her original findings are sometimes being watered down and used to mean anything.”
You know, that speaks to some of what we are describing, but there’s a particular threat to psychological safety from an unexpected direction. It used to be the top-down hierarchical, you know, formality of an industrial age, right? So there was a sort of correction that we were trying to make there, but there’s a threat from the other side of the discussion. Now we want to treat as equal barriers.
Amy Edmondson:
Right? No equal hurdles because, and there, that’s it Again, the goal, that goal is learning, right?
Greg McKeown:
A hundred percent.
Amy Edmondson:
Be human learners so that our teams can learn so that our organizations can learn because that is going to be the only way to continue to sort of survive in a changing world.
Greg McKeown:
When I think about the whole idea of your work on the fearless organization, I think 20 years ago that fear meant a certain thing. And I think unless I’m reading it wrong, it means something different now.
Amy Edmondson:
Right? Exactly. So that’s why sort of, that’s why I got all messy in answering the first time because it’s like, what sort of depends on what definition you’re referring to, but you just said it better, which is, I think it’s accurate that 20 years ago, that fear, this kind of interpersonal fear existed, but meant something slightly different than today.
Today, one of the ways it shows up is in this, Ooh, now there’s all these things that are off the table undiscussable. And so, but that doesn’t mean we stop discussing them; it’s just that we discuss them privately and with people we’re pretty sure will agree with us rather than people who might disagree with us. Which then, of course, that is a very nonlearning dynamic.
Greg McKeown:
A hundred percent. Does it strike you as a serious threat, what we’re describing? Or is it one of many, many threats, no big deal, one thing, or a serious threat?
Amy Edmondson:
You know, my first instinct is to say it strikes me as a serious threat, but I am slightly worried about that because A, it’s unscientific, right? And, and B, I don’t want to get, you know, killed for saying it because then it could sound sort of anti-inclusion or anti-change.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. But if I might say so, that illustrates precisely the point, doesn’t it? Is that the, here you are, a highly respected Harvard professor, years and years in this field, focused entirely on these team learning dynamics, producing candor in the workplace. And yet somehow, even with all of those traditional sources of safety, career safety, and otherwise, the hesitancy that we all feel to be able to even speak about these subjects, I do think it’s telling.
Amy Edmondson:
It is. You know, I had a LinkedIn sort of, you know, pushback is a mild way of saying it. The other day I said something, you know, I posted something that was, you know, used the word boss, and someone said, boss is an old Dutch word for master, so you’re inadvertently talking about slavery. So you’re, you know, just really, you gotta wipe that word out of your vocabulary. And you know, it’s like, well, that’s interesting, right? I mean, that’s, that’s pretty tiptoe.
Greg McKeown:
It’s more than; it’s more than tiptoe, isn’t it? Because what, when I was just passing a bookshop, and there was an entire book written about the use of language and the kind of language that we need to use and can’t use. And there is something under the surface, and I don’t mean the intent of these authors or any particular person’s intent, but there’s something that I sense under the surface. Well, let’s find the right word that’s terrifying about it. That’s how it feels.
It’s terrifying because it’s such a relatively new phenomenon that there would be books written about what I can and can’t say, and what words. We just used to use a dictionary to be able to have a common language so that we could talk about issues. And that doesn’t mean that language can’t evolve or shouldn’t evolve. It obviously does. That’s how we have different languages. That’s how we have, you know, medieval English is not even really English, and we can’t even really read it now. I mean, obviously, language evolves. I mean, that’s the most obvious thing from a linguist to observe. That’s not what this feels like.
Amy Edmondson:
No. Because you know, what if this sort of complexity of language and what we can and cannot say is, in fact, making it harder for us to learn from each other, to connect to each other, to relate to each other, because it, it becomes so fraught, it becomes a new kind of formal, right? It’s not the old formality of the 20th century, but it’s a, it’s a new kind of formality where I’ve got to get the language just right before I open my mouth and I’m, let’s say I’m older or younger, I don’t know how to do that. So I, I hold back.
Greg McKeown:
Well, and here’s the double whammy of it, is that if it was formal, then almost by definition, everyone would know the rules. But there aren’t, in any sense, clear rules about this. And okay, so somebody could push back on what I just said and say, well, there’s all, there’s the book you were just referring to, and this is it. But I see no congruence between the different books and treaties that I’m reading as to what is acceptable and what’s not acceptable. And as soon as one set of language has been established as another, almost literally the next day, and I think, well, how is anybody, literally anybody, to keep up with this? I mean, the term boss is used by so many people. That’s a hugely advocated word.
Amy Edmondson:
And I, it’s a casual term. Absolutely. And ironic, and I’m sure there are many casual terms that some that might be offensive to some people. But, ironically, I looked it up, and I found out that the word boss began to be used in America. It’s an American word, even though it does have the Dutch origin. Because for the very reason that before we had that word, how did we call the boss? We, they were called the master because it’s like if you were a shoemaker, you know, you had apprentices and masters and in old English households, right? Masters and staff or whatever. And so there, there was a deliberate choice made in America. It’s what I read, I’m not an expert, to use the word boss, because the word master had connotations to slavery, right? So it was an explicit, like, we don’t want to use that word in America. In America. We’ll use this word for a regular old boss, right? Anyway, so I thought that was kind of interesting. Because, anyway…
Greg McKeown:
Not anyway. It’s surely this goes something close to the heart of the matter in this period. That if you want fearless organizations, if you want, you have to have conversations. And by definition, you have to be able to choose your words and try to express what you’re saying and have other people try to understand what you mean. Not sit and police and tell you what you’ve said and what it means and why you did it. How can you possibly have a conversation like that?
Imagine if my children and I start to have communication like this. Imagine if I start, no matter what they say, I’m looking for how they’ve said it wrong and how it needs to be said differently. And that is the actual purpose of my dialogue with them. What will happen to their willingness to speak up? What will happen to the deterioration of our relationship?
Amy Edmondson:
They will learn. But what they will learn will be, you know, it is like Pavlovian, right? They’ll learn, don’t do that. Don’t do that. But they won’t be learning to think, to create, to care, right? And that’s what we want.
Greg McKeown:
So that begs a question. What does this, let’s call it something like new dogma, teach people? What are we learning from the over-policing of language?
Amy Edmondson:
That’s such a good question. I mean, it would be really amazing to do actual research on that, right? Because what if it’s teaching people A, I think it is to be more cautious, but what if that means less learning oriented? So what if, ironically, rather than caring more about others who may have different backgrounds than you, you end up caring less because you’re not really connecting in an authentic way? You’re connecting in this formalized, approved of way. That’s interesting.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. I hadn’t thought about this as an answer, but it sort of comes full circle. I wonder whether what people learn is silence, just that you just learn to shut up.
Amy Edmondson:
I think that’s very likely.
Greg McKeown:
That doesn’t seem like a good thing.
Amy Edmondson:
No, it doesn’t. Now let’s, you know, let’s step back.
Greg McKeown:
From a learning orientation. Go ahead, please.
Amy Edmondson:
Right, exactly. Let’s pause to double-underline that. Or at least I personally believe these efforts are coming from truly good intentions and are likely unaware of the irony. This is in a funny way, what, back to Chris Argyris, it’s, it’s, there’s a gap between espoused theories, you know, the inclusion and acceptance and equality. And ironically, that espoused theory, which I believe to be genuine from, you know, for anyone I’ve met, certainly inadvertently creates sort of the, what Chris would call theories in use or practices that end up being something else, right? That end up being sort of fraught and potentially exclusionary and risky and foster silence rather than connection.
Greg McKeown:
But I think all reasonable thinking people can agree on is that we want to hear from people. We want to hear people’s best insights. We want to engage in dialogue. We want to protect this perhaps rapidly disappearing center. I don’t even just mean politically center, although it’s hard to escape that idea now, anywhere we go, but just a space with which to understand.
I sometimes think about it this way, that there’s a lot of people who seem to walk around with the idea. I either have to agree or disagree, and I want to break that down and say, well, there’s a different, I don’t mean just find the middle spot. Well, I kind of agree, and I kind of disagree. No, a different continuum is, let me really understand you, you know, and let’s see if you can really understand me. And let’s actually, again, to come back to the word here, to learn together what we didn’t understand before, right?
Amy Edmondson:
Perspective taking. Right? And I think there’s some nice work on perspective taking that frames it as a sort of active activity, you know, where we have to, we have to try it out and really work at it and understand where each other is coming from as, as best we can. Judgment free.
Greg McKeown:
Yes. I think it’s to do with trying to, you know, that marvelous book that’s been written about the view from nowhere and to try and get something close to that where we shelve our agenda and try to shelve our perspective. And just how is it for you? Where is it for you? But in order for that to be possible, it has to be inter interdependent. It has to go both ways. You need to be able to have conversation. And we have literally no other mechanism for doing it. But words, you know, of course, our actions are communication too. But this is the thing that must, I think, be protected so that people, you know, so that we can learn, so that we can progress, so that people don’t get stifled and silent.
I think this conversation is more than trivial. I mean, like, it’s, there’s clarifying what you mean. That seems like its own article. There’s nothing more to be said here, some actual research. And I should say, for people listening, that the article that you published back in 1999, where you took the 51 teams, and you did both qualitative and quantitative studies and repeatedly. So, I mean, when that was first introduced to me, I remember a professor that was introducing it was saying, this is the gold standard for the design of literally, this is what it was. They said it a gold standard for how you would design a mixed research study. It’s like, this is thorough by the time you’re done with this, you know, something. And it may be time for a similar kind of study, but now looking at this other question that I think is extremely relevant.
Amy Edmondson:
Yeah, that’s first of all that what a, what an incredible thing to hear. But yes, like to, to really kind of explore people where they are rather than, there’s so much right now that’s sort of written about here’s the right way to do it. And as you said earlier, it’s not always in total agreement with itself. But to really understand these dynamics in a kind of compassionate way, there is an opportunity here.
Greg McKeown:
I can think of no one better to do it but you, Amy, I think, and it feels like a, well, you said something before, and now I’m going to be presumptuous, but you said something before, you said this subject chose you or words to that. And I wonder, I’m putting it as a question now, I wonder if this is not like that again? It’s like the same subject, but now from a different current scenario, whether it’s not a whole new ball game. Because it doesn’t matter what the barriers are. Surely the point is the learning, the growth, the truth as far as we can get at it, and our ability to do it.
Amy Edmondson:
Right. And I think, I think it’s worth doing and it would be, I don’t know, it would be fun to do it. I mean, not alone, it’s as a Ph.D. student, you’re sort of almost necessarily doing things alone, but this is rich and complicated, and it would be worth doing. I think in the short term. There’s still room, there’s room for that article too that sort of clarifying but, but also clarifying and raising these challenges, right? That, that you specifically, that thing you said about, you know, 20 years ago, the way interpersonal fear showed up at work had a different flavor than today. I think we have both in a way. I mean, people are still afraid of hierarchies, but they’re also, uh, worried about other, other differences.
Greg McKeown:
Can you share with us, before we’re done here, some practical things people can do? I’m sure you’ve answered this a thousand times, but like, let me ask it this way. What is the skill we need right now to produce the psychological safety, both types of threat to that, that we’ve discussed in this conversation? You know, what would be the skill that would help people to be able to protect that space?
Amy Edmondson:
Yeah, yeah.
Greg McKeown:
Or extend this permission for candor.
Amy Edmondson:
Wow, I think it’s a really good question. And what I want to say is the skill is the skill of learning, but let’s break that down. So I think three skills come to mind that we can all improve upon, you know, and one is inquiry. It’s the skill of asking good questions. You know, the kind of question that really gives someone the space to think and to, and, of course, then the second most necessary skill is listening and listening to learn, listening to understand, not listening to agree or disagree, which is our natural state. Again, not bad or good, just normal. And then, you know, and maybe, maybe this is only the saying the same thing in different words, but maybe a third skill is this skill that we were just playing with a little bit of perspective taking of, you know, can I do it?
Like, can I understand where you’re coming from? But maybe I’ll add one more, which is the sort of, I don’t know if this is a skill or not, but I think it is like the skill of discipline, right? Of being, especially at right of being, of being rigorous in our learning. So that I’m not just, I mean, it’d be great fun to learn with you all day long, but I do have to keep open. I mean, I have to keep an eye on what it is we’re trying to accomplish and where, where we’ve just learned enough or explored enough to actually try something like to test it to go forward. I mean, we have deadlines, and we have data, right? So the the skill, the skill of discipline, which is to sort of capture data, systematically use it to keep ourselves honest and to force ourselves to sort of make progress on the goals, that we share.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. First of all, I like just coming back to what you said a moment ago about just like, yeah, what the goal is learning, you know, let’s remember that the goal is to learn as fast as we possibly can, as deeply as we can by asking great questions, including now, I’m just riffing on what you’re saying here, but including the question, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by that? And just not taking terms for granted.
I think there’s something about corporations; I’m not sure quite what it is that is such a breeding ground for jargon. It’s not the only field. Of course, politics does the same, and so on. Maybe, maybe it’s everywhere. But yeah, that, that there’s the presumption that we mean the same thing. And I’ll tell you, I don’t, let’s maybe not have the time to go into it fully, but my wife and I, Anna and I, who I think, communicate, let’s say, a lot and pretty well after many years of being married, found that what we meant by a very simple normal term, I’ll say it to be in the spirit of vulnerability, it was to do with a financial meeting. And we have held so many financial meetings, and we’ve increased them over time. And somehow, no matter how many we have matter how many, how much progress we make, which has been significant for Anna and I, you know, and she’s so capable, so highly talented, wicked smart, we, well, we’re just not really getting to the financial meetings. And I was like, some ways we’re doing them twice a week, and we’re doing it for hours sometimes. We brought in experts. We got some of the best people we work with now. And you know, it was emotional enough for us back and forth at times that it was like we could never get any progress. And finally, we concluded the what was meant, what she meant by that term was have a very organized system for paying bills. Whereas in, for me, a financial meeting was all of this, you know, strategic complex multiple levels.
And I was like, literally, I said, Anna, are you telling me that all these years you meant this by this term? And she’s like, yes. And I’m like, that is not a hard problem for me to fix. Like, we can sort this, we can build a good system, and I’m on it. And I thought, if it’s possible that for 20 years of a healthy marriage of high levels of communication, that a term like that can mean something different to two different people is not obvious to me. That we mean the same things when we are using this jargon inside of organizations.
Amy Edmondson:
That is spectacular. Yeah. What a great example. Great story.
Greg McKeown:
I’ve started learning languages, and I find that the most important question to learn in another person’s language is, how do you say X in that language?
Amy Edmondson:
Yes. And it will surprise you more often than not, right? It won’t be the direct translation that’s in your brain from English.
Greg McKeown:
And they can teach me. They’re teaching me their language. Of course, they have to be able to speak enough English. English, yeah. So to be able to dialogue, , but I wonder whether it’s not the most important question with each other in our ability to get it.
Amy Edmondson:
Yeah.
Greg McKeown:
More, more. What’s your final reaction, you know, to this conversation, to what just shared?
Amy Edmondson:
Well, you know, I’m, it’s a mix of, of sort of joy and trepidation, right? So the joy is this is just, there’s very little that’s more fun than sort of exchange of meaning, you know, in a thoughtful way. It makes you think, I now have lots more to think about and that I’m excited about. And I want to say that the sort of maybe the biggest takeaway that you and I have discussed is that psychological safety is incredibly challenging, right? Let’s not sort of, let’s, I’m most wary of people using this as, okay, here’s this thing, you gotta get it done, you know, preferably Friday or this quarter at the very latest, no, this is, you know, ties into deep aspects of human nature and socialization. And so we, we’ve got to, we gotta recognize this as a kind of lifelong journey toward clarity, you know, and it’s probably going to best work with compassion and caring. And then my other big sort of, you know, the trepidation part of the take takeaway is what have I said, and what have you said that could end up giving, sending hate mail our way?
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. Well, I understand what you’re saying, and it goes to the very heart of it, you know, we’ll see what, we’ll see what comes of it. I think that I cannot be afraid, and neither can you. And the reason is because you have more positional authority and status in the hierarchy than the average person by a country mile. And let’s say that something similar to that for me too. So in that rarefied air, if we don’t speak up, we’ll be like that person you described earlier who didn’t speak up, and the people that you said, 33% of them who felt like a wimp, something like that, you know, that it’s, it’s not enough to just protect the good things that we have. We need to protect it, so it lasts longer.
We’ve lived our whole careers in essentially a time of pretty great openness. You know, I don’t mean there isn’t room for improved candor, obviously there is, but pretty amazing times where, you know, there’s a sense of openness, collaboration, let’s solve things, and we need to, you know, these things can be lost.
Amy Edmondson:
And that instinct for self-protection is so powerful, but it’s at odds with learning. So you have to sort of embrace the learning.
Greg McKeown:
Well said. Amy Edmondson, what a pleasure to have you with me on this podcast. Thank you.
Amy Edmondson:
You’re welcome. Thank you.
Greg McKeown:
What is one idea that stood out to you today? What is one thing you can do differently in the next 24 to 48 hours? And who is somebody you can invite to be with you on this journey, to listen to the podcast, and to be able to help you in implementing these ideas in your life so that you can live a life that really matters?
Remember to sign up for the One Minute Wednesday newsletter. Just go to gregmckeown.com, and it’s in the top right-hand corner. Join more than 150,000 people who have signed up for this now. If you found value in today’s episode, please write a review on Apple Podcasts. The first five people that do that will receive free access to the Essentialism Academy. Thank you. Really, thank you for listening, and I’ll see you next time.
