A young researcher expected the best hospital teams to make the fewest mistakes. Her data said the opposite. What an observer found on those wards changed how we think about leading people: why a quiet team should worry you, and one small way to make bad news reach you early.
Takeaways
- In a study of hospital wards in the early 1990s, the better-led wards recorded more medication errors, not fewer; an observer found they were the ones where people felt free to talk about mistakes.
- Psychological safety is a shared belief that you can speak up without being embarrassed or punished. It is not niceness, and it is not lower standards.
- This week: ask your team one question that invites bad news, admit one thing you might miss, and thank the first person who brings you a problem.
Chapters
- The study that went wrong0:17
- The observer who didn't know2:02
- Safe is not soft3:32
- Two quiet rooms6:35
- Hear it done8:11
- Build yours9:29
- The answer11:18
References
- Edmondson, A. C. — Learning from mistakes is easier said than done: Group and organizational influences on the detection and correction of human error(1996)
- Edmondson, A. C. — Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams(1999)
- Nembhard, I. M., & Edmondson, A. C. — Making it safe: The effects of leader inclusiveness and professional status on psychological safety and improvement efforts in health care teams(2006)
- Frazier, M. L., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R. L., Pezeshkan, A., & Vracheva, V. — Psychological safety: A meta-analytic review and extension(2017)
- Eldor, L., Hodor, M., & Cappelli, P. — The limits of psychological safety: Nonlinear relationships with performance(2023)
- Rozovsky, J. (Google re:Work) — The five keys to a successful Google team(2015)
- Edmondson, A. C. — The intelligent failure that led to the discovery of psychological safety (excerpt from Right Kind of Wrong)(2023)
- Edmondson, A. C. — Building a psychologically safe workplace (TEDxHGSE)(2014)
- AAMC News — Amy Edmondson: Psychological safety is critically important in medicine