The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth

Not your book if you like culture/leadership books that are:Easy, obvious, fluffYour book if you like culture/leadership books that:Have substance, will challenge you, actually can help you create a great cultureI work in a combination of school and sports settings as a mental performance coach. I find a lot of schools and coaches are drawn to what's easy when it comes to culture. As a result, they reach for the fluff on bookshelves- makes them feel good but doesn't really do anything. This book is not that. It's well researched and well explained. With some effort, you can draw some really great concepts and tangible ideas to help create and work to maintain a great culture wherever you may work. The stories are well told and connect well with the points made. If I had to pick one negative, the book mentions education several times without providing any specific stories from the education world. That said, the lessons learned can clearly be applied to education. It's one of my favorite books I've read on culture/leadership, and I plan on recommending it to whoever will listen. We need more books like this!

I appreciate the agile combination of research findings, case studies, and reflections this book offers. Professor Edmonson provides clear tips and practices to restore safety in organizations. This thin book explores in depth the benefits of safety and offers sufficient research evidence without being overwhelming for the non-researcher. I mainly found the examples relevant and helped me travel back in time to when I was a leader facing the same difficulties I had then face. I wish I had had the opportunity then to read this book. The elegant "flow" of the book kept me engaged and helped me reflect on the routines, processes, habits of execution, and expectations that set teams to fail. Once again, Professor Edmonson offers a significant contribution to help organization strengthen environments for humans maximize innovation and learning.

Great ideas on inclusiveness and presents examples of real world corporate struggles solved however I kept thinking these are not our typical leaders and how they operate. Will it help you? Those leaders who will benifit have to have humility and confidence to implement them. This I have found to be exceptionally rare. And let's just face reality here... Most upper management and executives did not get into business or climb as far as they have by checking their egos at the door. Most know they are in charge because of their own brilliance and that they already have the answers that they need because they are the smartest person in the room. Why would they waste their time getting others opinions??? That would be a fools errand and waste of productvity. My corporations leaders went to an all day seminar where this was presented and that unfortunately was as far as it got. But again, it's not the information, which I have used successfully for 20 years, but the typical people who go into high end leadership seem to have personalities who either don't believe in this approach or perhaps feel threatened by it. Maybe both.

I agree with the other reviews that say that the book was a bit of a stretch. The concept is valid but the content was repetitive. She spent a better part of the book buttressing the importance of psychology safety. I believe you are better off doing a search on google or watching her TED talk as some other reviewers advise. The book basically has no depth....

I am a big fan of Amy's work over the years. This work provides a research-based way to think about how fear inhibits productivity and what leaders and HR professionals can do to make change. Personally, I found the research side stronger than some of the examples used, but that may be due to my familiarity with those examples. I highly recommend the book. If you had to put together a top 10 list of things leaders need to do to get terrific performance and especially to ensure all employees are comfortable sharing critical information, driving fear out would be on my list.

Very good but if you already know of the concept you might not get as much out of the book as you might have hoped. Most of the vital information was already available in the form of the authors HBR articles, other’s articles on psychological safety, and the author’s ted talk. Again, the book is quality and especially excellent for those new to the concepts.

Edmondson is excellent. She has achieved what many before her have not -- an explanation of the root cause of safety vel non, and most importantly, how to create it. I have read numerous books on safety, but none as well presented and clearly explained. I refer to The Fearless Organization on a regular basis, and recommend that you do the same.

Edmondson does nice job sharing her research, anecdotes from companies she has studied, and providing specific guidance to leaders who want to create Psychological Safety in their organization. The only critical comment I have is the author gets a bit too simplistic when talking about violations and sanctions on page 178; would have been more helpful for readers new to human & organizational performance if just culture, trade-offs and context of work were explained.Would be a very good book for FLDP, as well as any leader at Biogen.

Superficial 200-word ‘cases’, with no depth or insider perspective, cobbled together around quite general pointers. Exceptionally important topic but content could be condensed into a blog post with little or no loss of meaning.Deep familiarity with a few of the cases suggests a substantial misreading of what was really going on, with trends that often reversed themselves within a few years.Overall impression is that author uncritically reproduces executive talking points on what they did, without (ironically) investigating other stakeholders’ experiences.

This book is absolutely outstanding. Time after time, the examples give deep insight into the perils of fear-based, command and control cultures that can bring down an organisation. But this isn't just a list of examples good and bad. The author builds a model and a toolkit guide - explaining how to implement a culture of psychological safety in which people speak up. If you ever worry whether people are telling you what's really going on - this is the help you need. I would give it 6 stars if allowed.

I work in an organisation that thinks it values everyone, and aims to have an open and honest culture, but there's variability in how that gets implemented and there are still knee-jerk threats made about "if anyone does that again, they'll be..." So even in a relatively mature organisation with a generally good safety culture, and good intentions, there is still lots for each individual to understand about the impacts and implications of what they say and do.I'm lucky in that at least my organisation and industry know where they ought to be heading, there are others where the philosophy in this book will be completely eye-opening. Read it, use it and share it.

I am an owner of a company, and school principal, and wanted to learn more about organisational psychology, and to understand HR better than I do. It's an easily read book, and the author develops and maintains interest is through reference to real life examples of workplace and corporate practice in the vein of 'The Innovator's Dilemma''. It's not one of those 'Can't put down' books (which, along with being a little repetitive, is why I gave it 4 stars not 5), but for a layperson, not formally read in psychology, and interested in either making your company work, or understanding the toxic environment you may be working in (read bullying), then this is certainly a very worthwhile read.

A great book on organisational psychology that is laid out in 2 parts.The first part is all about the problems that can surface if people feel unable to speak up in organisations.The second part describes some solutions that can be put in place to overcome these problems. And this creates what the author describes as a ‘fearless organisation’I really enjoyed this and will use some of the learnings in my own work