Better Leadership and Learning with Psychological Safety - ft. Amy Edmondson
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Published 2022-09-27
Amy Edmondson is one of the world's leading researchers of psychological safety. She joins Trevor Ragan to explain what it is, why it matters, and how to build it.
Quick Links:
The Learner Lab: thelearnerlab.com/
Amy Edmondson: amycedmondson.com/
Trevor's TEDx Talk on Fear: • How to 'overcome' fear | Trevor Ragan...
Video Credits:
Amy Edmondson - research: amycedmondson.com/
Daniel Coyle - interview: danielcoyle.com/
Matthew Dicks - script & storytelling consultant: matthewdicks.com/
Alex Belser - animation: bels.works/
Gergo Varga - animation: varrgo.com/
Kevin Shen - studio design: kevinshen.co/
Zsolt Kiss - sound design: monkeyislandstudio.com/
Trevor Ragan - production: thelearnerlab.com/trevor-ragan/
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We’ve all seen or been a part of both good and bad teams. But what creates this gap? What separates bad from good and good from great? How can we build better teams on purpose?
In 2012, Google set out to answer these questions. They rounded up the best researchers, statisticians, organizational psychologists, sociologists, and engineers and launched an internal study called Project Aristotle to figure out the key to great teams. For five years they pored over the literature and analyzed the performance and makeup of nearly 200 groups within the company.
They looked at every variable you could imagine. Personality types, educational background, whether the teams socialized in their off-time, gender balance, and age.
They measured team effectiveness in four different ways:
1. Executive evaluation of the team
2. Team leader evaluation of the team
3. Team member evaluation of the team
4. Sales performance against quarterly quota
And found…nothing.
No matter how they arranged the data, there were no clear patterns.
Some of the best groups they found were composed of members that socialized together, and other top performing groups were made up of members who were virtually strangers. There were seemingly identical groups with huge gaps between their performance and output.
“We had lots of data, but there was nothing showing that a mix of specific personality types or skills or backgrounds made any difference. The ‘‘who’’ part of the equation didn’t seem to matter.”
After years of dead ends the team stumbled into the concept of psychological safety, and everything fell into place.
The researchers realized that it wasn’t about who was on the team, it was about how they worked together. Psychological safety was the most important factor in this process.
Psychological safety is the key to group learning and performance. Amy Edmondson is the one to talk to if you want to understand what it is and how to build it.
A few years ago I had the honor of doing just that.
Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. Her field of study is how human interactions influence success. Specifically, she studies psychological safety and in our interview, she clarified what psychological safety is, why it matters, and how to build psychologically safe workplaces.
All Comments (18)
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I knew the study BUT... the way you tell stories is amazing and made it fresh new. This is truly great.
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Great video! Insane production quality. The editing is so smooth. It's really great for me to get reminded that mistakes are the catalyst for growth.
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wow! this is so well done - informative, captivating, actionable. Love it!
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I cant describe in word how good this is, not many new for me as I got certified in "The Fearless Organization Scan" this spring. But the presentation and pedagogical output is world class. This is the best 15min flyover I ever experienced. Well done and executed, will subscribe! 🤩🤩🤩
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Fantastic video, recap of research and highlight of the importance of vulnerability. Well done!
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What a fantastic video! The content and storyline are well blended into the context and your production, editing are super high level... Netflix level... well done and thank you for bring up such content... made all of us in our team talk about it
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Wonderfully creative presentation.💯♥️🙏🏽
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Great video Trevor! Made me reflect on the first time I came in contact with the study and Dr Edmondson's work. We still have a lot of work to do, and inspired to continue. Thank you for the great video!
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Loving this Trevor, you are energising and keep it on the level. Thank you!
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awesomely put together. I've read the original article.
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Absolutely masterful video. Well done! as always
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Thx for this video!! this is really helpfull!
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Reflecting on the worst emotion - fear and reacting positively on it.
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Love how he bought that original magazine
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Nice video, though I do have to ask - What is the difference between the concept of psychological safety and the idea of trust?
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Great stuff
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I am more than a little worried by the jump in logic by Ms. Edmondson so quickly bought into: "it isn't that the better teams are making more mistakes, it is that they are admitting to their mistakes." There should have been data to prove that. Instead, because the data didn't support Amy's original assumption, she came to a new conclusion which supported her original assumption. This is why "research based decisions" are suspect. Most research is done just to support already assumed positions, even if the research doesn't support those positions. Instead of letting the research guide the learning, we change the conclusions of the research. Maybe better teams just doesn't equal better results? Maybe there are people who suck at teamwork and communication but are great learners and more efficient workers?
