The Fearless Organisation: Why Talent Isn’t Enough (and Psychological Safety Isn’t a “Nice-to-Have”)
Organisations can be full of talented people - people who are experienced, smart, capable and hard-working - and yet performance stalls. Projects can drift. Risks can go unspoken. Problems surface late. Innovation feels slow. Meetings become theatre. Decisions become safer, not better.
That’s because hiring talent isn’t enough. Talent delivers performance when people can work together — honestly, openly and at speed.
And that requires something many organisations still underestimate: psychological safety.
This is the red thread of 'The Fearless Organization - Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth' by Amy Edmondson. I read it last month, and had to write about it.
The real work isn’t “teamwork”. It’s teaming.
One of the most useful ideas in The Fearless Organization is that modern collaboration isn’t happening in neat, stable teams. Work today is dynamic. Fluid. Constantly shifting.
We collaborate across:
expertise
seniority
departments
time zones
cultures
physical distance
Amy Edmondson calls this 'teaming': the art of communicating and coordinating with people across boundaries.
The truth is simple: if people don’t feel safe to speak, challenge, question, or admit uncertainty…teaming breaks down.
A fearless organisation isn’t one without anxiety.
This is a crucial distinction. A “fearless organisation” is not one where everyone feels comfortable all the time. It’s not a cosy environment. It’s not a workplace without pressure.
It’s an organisation where interpersonal fear is minimised, so performance can be maximised — especially in knowledge-intensive work.
In complex environments, fear doesn’t create excellence. It creates silence.
Most people stay quiet more often than leaders realise
One of Edmondson’s early data points hit me hard: 85% of employees reported at least one time they felt unable to raise a concern with their boss — even when they believed it mattered.
Let that sink in.
That means in most workplaces, people aren’t speaking up not because they don’t care, but because they don’t feel safe enough to do it. Many leaders never see it, because silence looks like agreement.
The “no news = good news” illusion
Many leaders assume: “If something is wrong, someone will tell me.”
That belief however is often based on a hidden privilege: leaders take for granted that their own voices are welcome. They forget that others may experience speaking up as a career risk.
So problems don’t rise early. They rise late — when they’ve become expensive, more entrenched, or more complicated.
Fear is not an effective motivator in knowledge work
Some managers still believe, consciously or unconsciously, in the power of fear:
fear of targets
fear of poor ratings
fear of consequences
fear of looking incompetent
In straightforward work, fear might create compliance. In environments that require learning, judgment, creativity and collaboration; fear kills the very behaviours you need most.
It reduces experimentation. It reduces transparency. It reduces early warning signals. It produces the illusion of progress, not real progress.
Psychological safety drives learning, engagement, and performance
This isn’t “soft stuff”. Edmondson references research showing psychological safety is linked to:
learning behaviours
engagement
performance outcomes
Engagement itself is defined as the extent to which an employee feels passionate about their job and committed to the organisation — essentially a proxy for discretionary effort.
In a VUCA world psychological safety isn’t a perk: it’s infrastructure.
Why capable organisations fail anyway
Some of the most striking examples Edmondson references include:
Volkswagen
Wells Fargo
Nokia
the New York Federal Reserve
These weren’t organisations lacking intelligence or talent. They had expertise. They had ambitious goals. They had capable people. Edmondson set out that these organisations lacked leadership that created the conditions for people to speak truth to power.
Without that, the system can’t self-correct.
Strategy should be treated like a hypothesis
Edmondson frames strategy as 'a hypothesis rather than a plan'. A hypothesis must be tested through action. That means organisations need feedback loops:
from customers
from the frontline
from delivery teams
from “bad news” signals
However, you can’t test hypotheses if people are afraid to report what they’re seeing. Psychological safety is what keeps strategy connected to reality.
Failure isn’t the enemy. Not learning is.
One of the sharpest lines in the book: real failure is trying something, learning it doesn’t work… then continuing anyway.
Failure isn’t one category. It comes in different forms:
preventable failures (process breakdowns)
complex failures (multiple interacting factors)
intelligent failures (well-designed experiments in uncertainty)
The goal isn’t “no failure”. The goal is to reduce preventable failures, manage complex ones intelligently and encourage the kind of intelligent failures that produce learning.
Psychological safety isn’t the same as comfort (or low standards)
This is one of the biggest misunderstandings, and Edmondson is clear: you can’t have too much psychological safety.
What you can have is:
not enough discipline
unclear expectations
weak process
poor accountability
Psychological safety doesn’t remove standards. It removes interpersonal fear — so standards can be met through learning, not hiding.
What leaders can do (starting tomorrow)
Psychological safety isn’t a slogan. It’s built through repeated signals, systems and habits.
Here are a few practical actions I’m taking away:
1) Frame the work clearly
People need context: “This is complex”, “We’re learning”, “We need early warnings”, “Silence is risk.”
2) Reframe what a leader is for
The default assumption is that bosses:
have the answers
give the orders
assess execution
Modern leadership is less about having the answers, and more about setting direction, inviting input and enabling learning.
3) Ask better questions
Good questions:
are asked because you don’t know
don’t limit responses to yes/no
help others share focused thinking
4) Respond productively when people speak up
When someone takes an interpersonal risk, your response matters.
Productive responses include:
appreciation
destigmatising failure
sanctioning clear violations (so safety doesn’t become chaos)
5) Praise effort and strategy, not just outcomes
A learning orientation matters. In uncertain environments, outcomes don’t always reflect process. Rewarding effort, learning, and good judgment builds resilience and experimentation.
A final thought: silence is the default. Voice is the achievement.
There’s a deep asymmetry in organisations: Silence protects the individual - Voice protects the system.
And because hierarchies naturally discourage speaking up, psychological safety doesn’t happen by accident.
It is always the result of deliberate, thoughtful effort.
If you lead a team, ask yourself this:
Do people feel safe enough to tell you the truth early, or only when it’s too late?
Because that difference is often the difference between:
learning and stagnation
innovation and repetition
resilience and crisis
