Something to readWorking with others
The Fearless Organization
A Harvard researcher's book on psychological safety, and how teams build a climate for candor
Why it’s worth your time
The Fearless Organization explains why capable people stay quiet at work, and what the people around them can change so they speak. Its framework is aimed at leaders and built on Amy C. Edmondson's research since the 1990s, and it can also help anyone work out what a team's silence is saying.
Making it easier for people to speak up
The book · About 5 hours of reading · Buy or borrow
How to get it
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- Read for the habits she suggests.
Watch for the habits she offers leaders for building psychological safety, and for the stories of what goes wrong without it.
- Ask one quiet person a real question.
In your next meeting, or just before it, pick someone who tends to hold back and ask them something you don't know the answer to: what worries them about the plan, or what they'd do differently. Thank them for whatever they say, and act on one piece if you can.
Good moments for this: before a project kickoffafter a meeting where nobody pushed backwhen you take over a team
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Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
You don't need to run the team to ask a quiet colleague what they think, or to thank someone who points out your mistake, and peers shape a team's climate too.
What might make this harder
Ask something narrower, like which part of the plan they'd most like to see tested, and offer to hear back from them later in writing.
Questions people ask
What is The Fearless Organization about?
Amy C. Edmondson's 2018 book on psychological safety, the shared belief that you can speak up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes without being punished or humiliated. It draws on her research to show what goes wrong without it and how leaders can build it.
Did Amy Edmondson coin the term psychological safety?
The idea has roots in organizational research from the 1960s, but her 1999 study of work teams made it something researchers could measure, and Google later used her measure in its study of what makes teams work.
Can I build psychological safety if I'm not the manager?
Partly. Edmondson writes mostly for leaders, but the habits that need no authority, like admitting what you don't know or asking a question you really want answered, are open to anyone.
What it says, and how it holds up
When Google's Project Aristotle looked for what set its strongest teams apart, it used Amy C. Edmondson's measure, and psychological safety came out on top, which carried the idea well beyond academia. That popularity can blur it. Edmondson has said the most important misconception is that it's about being nice, which is close to the opposite of the candor she means.
Nobody got fired for silence, Edmondson has said, which is why silence so often wins. Holding back can feel like the safe choice for each person in a meeting, even when it costs the team. Whether people speak up, on her reading, depends less on their courage than on a climate the people around them build or wear down. She first saw it by accident, studying medication errors in hospital units, where the climate for reporting mistakes differed sharply even within one hospital, and the better units turned out to report more errors, not fewer.
The book pairs safety with standards. On her grid, a team that feels safe but isn't stretched sits in a comfort zone; one that's stretched without safety sits in an anxiety zone, where problems go underground; a team high on both is where learning happens. The habits she recommends for leaders include framing the work as a learning problem, admitting what they don't know, and asking questions they really want answered.
A team can be safe to speak in and still stuck. If people already argue freely and nothing gets decided, the trouble is more likely who has the final say, and settling who decides tends to help more than building candor.
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Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.