How to Grow From Your Errors, with Amy Edmondson

**Dave Stachowiak** (0:00)
Many leaders espouse the value of talking about our failures. But failure is a threat to our ego. So it turns out we're better at learning from the failures of others than we are from our own. In this episode, Amy Edmondson returns to show us how to do a better job of growing when we're in the wrong. This is Coaching for Leaders, episode 663
Produced by Innovate Learning. Maximizing Human Potential.
Greetings to you from Orange County, California. This is Coaching for Leaders, and I'm your host, Dave Stachowiak. Leaders aren't born, they're made. And this weekly show helps you discover leadership wisdom through insightful conversations.
Oh, how I wish I was never wrong about anything. But of course, I am, and so many of us are on a regular basis. It's just part of work, it's part of leading, and of course, it's part of being human. The question is not so much, are we wrong? The question is, how do we respond when we are? Today, I am so glad to welcome back a guest to the show who is going to help us to respond in a better way when we're wrong, and more importantly, how do we grow from that? I'm so pleased to welcome back Amy Edmondson. She is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, where she studies people and organizations seeking to make a positive difference in the world through the work they do. She has pioneered the concept of psychological safety for over 20 years and is recognized as number one on the Thinkers 50 Global Ranking of Management Thinkers. She also received that organization's Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019 and Talent Award in 2017
In 2019, she was first on HR Magazine's list of the 20 most influential international thinkers in human resources. Her prior book, The Fearless Organization, explains psychological safety and has been translated into 15 languages. In addition to publishing several books and numerous articles and top academic outlets, Amy has written for, or her work has been covered by, such outlets as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Financial Times, and many others. Her TED Talk on teaming has been viewed more than 3 million times. She is the author of Right Kind of Wrong, The Science of Failing Well. Amy, so glad to have you back on the show.

**Amy Edmondson** (2:33)
But Dave, thank you. Thank you for having me back and thank you for that incredibly gracious introduction.

**Dave Stachowiak** (2:39)
I was sharing with you before we started recording that it is really so impressive to me how the term psychological safety comes up in my conversations with engineers, educators, healthcare practitioners, folks from all different fields. I know so many people are studying psychological safety now, but you really put this on the map. Thank you so much for all the work you have done on behalf of all of us of getting better at really creating environments that work so well for people and for teams.

**Amy Edmondson** (3:10)
Well, thank you. That's very kind of you to say. And I have to admit it has been quite gratifying to see the growth in interest in this topic.
And to me, that really represents a growth in awareness of the inherent uncertainty and interdependence and complexity of the world in which we work. And in that kind of world, it is really important that people believe it's safe to speak up and speak up quickly.

**Dave Stachowiak** (3:39)
Yeah, indeed. And I was struck in reading this new book at the start of the book, how you talk about your own experience with this and the irony of starting to study psychological failure. And you in grad school were studying medical teams, and you had made a hypothesis of what you thought was going to happen. I'm wondering if you could share that moment with us and what came out of that, because I think there comes a lot back to failure and how we respond when we're wrong.

**Amy Edmondson** (4:12)
Absolutely. I mean, it's really ironic because it was a study of failures. It was a study of medication errors that lead to adverse drug events for patients in hospitals. It's a study of failures in, I confronted my own failure to get support for my hypothesis and on and on it goes. So it's really a layered moment. But I was an early stage PhD student. As all PhD students are required to do, I had to get involved in research. And I was quite fortunate, I would say, to be included in a larger project on medical errors. And this was run by some very prominent physician investigators who were trying to assess the rate of adverse events caused by errors in hospitals. And they thought, hey, while we're at it, why don't we see whether, as there is in aviation, there might be a relationship between the quality of teamwork in the patient care units and the error results. And so they invited my advisor, who suggested that I sort of help them out with this project.