The Fearless Organization

Today's employees, at all levels, spend 50% more time collaborating than they did 20 years ago.3 Hiring

Fisher, as a clothing designer, is not looking for “right answers” but for the multiplicity of voices that produce a collaborative process and creative energy.

Three interrelated practices help create psychological safety – setting the stage, inviting participation, and responding productively.

A culture of silence can thus be understood as a culture in which the prevailing winds favor going along rather than offering one's concerns.

In contrast, psychological safety is about candor and willingness to engage in productive conflict so as to learn from different points of view.

Psychological safety enables people on different sides of a conflict to speak candidly about what's bothering them.

One of the outcomes of managing by not knowing is, as Fisher says, that “people feel safe to explore their own ideas instead of feeling like they just need to do what you tell them to do.”

called Crew Resource Management). Both programs teach ways of thinking and decision-making. CRM – a program that, among other skills, instructs aviation crews to speak up to their captain when they feel something is wrong and likewise instructs captains to listen to crew concerns – is especially well suited to creating environments of psychological

But in a psychologically safe workplace, people are not hindered by interpersonal fear. They feel willing and able to take the inherent interpersonal risks of candor. They fear holding back their full participation more than they fear sharing a potentially sensitive, threatening, or wrong idea. The fearless organization is one in which interpersona