Destigmatizing Failure | Curious Now 46

Before we do, I want to put this in the larger context of the work we've been doing, and that is following Amy Edmondson's ideas from her wonderful book, The Fearless Organization, about how do we create psychological safety on the teams we work in.

And we've been using something she calls the leader's tool kit.

And what she argues is if we want to consistently create psychological safety, learning and effectiveness on our teams, we as leaders or followers who are trying to manage up need to do the following things.

So one is we need to set the stage for the work.

And that has to do with clarifying what is the purpose of the work and how framing the work in terms of how do we do it, what are the expectations, and so on.

And when we do that stage setting well, what Amy Edmondson argues is that we can create shared expectations and shared meaning for what we're doing.

The second thing that she talks about is how we invite participation as an effective leader or as a follower trying to influence up.

And one of the big things she emphasizes is demonstrating situational humility, which is how do I, as the leader, project some confidence, yet also invite input with the idea that I only have one perspective and I might be missing someone.

Inviting participation also, she argues, requires practicing really good inquiry.

And how do we invite people to share? What kinds of questions do we use? Open-ended questions.

And also modeling being interested and actually listening.

And then the last piece of inviting participation that she talks about is setting structures for that.

So, for example, we have a really rigid but effective structure often when we are resuscitating a patient.

We want to start chest compressions.

We want to make sure to... breathe for the patient, we want to give certain drugs in a certain order, and then we want to check for a pulse again.

It's a very specific structure.

And yet we expect ourselves constantly to manage complex processes, such as a planning meeting with almost no structure, maybe an agenda that lists some topics, but not how we're going to do it.

So previously on the podcast, we talked about how do you build those structures in so people know how to participate and feel psychologically safe to participate.

And then the last piece that Amy Edmondson talks about in the leader's toolkit for creating psychological safety on our teams is responding productively.

So you've set the stage, you've invited participation, but then when people participate, how do you actually respond? And not surprisingly, often expressing appreciation is a great way to respond if someone takes the risk to speak up.

Listening is a good way to respond.

And so finally, today, we're gonna talk about the last piece of responding productively, which is how do we manage accidents, errors, preventable failure? As we think about de-stigmatizing failure, I think many of us would think in our kind of grounded, resourceful, intellectual selves, like, of course we have to de-stigmatize failure.

Before we do, I want to put this in the larger context of the work we've been doing, and that is following Amy Edmondson's ideas from her wonderful book, The Fearless Organization, about how do we create psychological safety on the teams we work in.

And we've been using something she calls the leader's tool kit.

And what she argues is if we want to consistently create psychological safety, learning and effectiveness on our teams, we as leaders or followers who are trying to manage up need to do the following things.

So one is we need to set the stage for the work.

And that has to do with clarifying what is the purpose of the work and how framing the work in terms of how do we do it, what are the expectations, and so on.

And when we do that stage setting well, what Amy Edmondson argues is that we can create shared expectations and shared meaning for what we're doing.

The second thing that she talks about is how we invite participation as an effective leader or as a follower trying to influence up.

And one of the big things she emphasizes is demonstrating situational humility, which is how do I, as the leader, project some confidence, yet also invite input with the idea that I only have one perspective and I might be missing someone.

Inviting participation also, she argues, requires practicing really good inquiry.

And how do we invite people to share? What kinds of questions do we use? Open-ended questions.

And also modeling being interested and actually listening.

And then the last piece of inviting participation that she talks about is setting structures for that.

So, for example, we have a really rigid but effective structure often when we are resuscitating a patient.

We want to start chest compressions.

We want to make sure to... breathe for the patient, we want to give certain drugs in a certain order, and then we want to check for a pulse again.

It's a very specific structure.

And yet we expect ourselves constantly to manage complex processes, such as a planning meeting with almost no structure, maybe an agenda that lists some topics, but not how we're going to do it.

So previously on the podcast, we talked about how do you build those structures in so people know how to participate and feel psychologically safe to participate.

And then the last piece that Amy Edmondson talks about in the leader's toolkit for creating psychological safety on our teams is responding productively.

So you've set the stage, you've invited participation, but then when people participate, how do you actually respond? And not surprisingly, often expressing appreciation is a great way to respond if someone takes the risk to speak up.

Listening is a good way to respond.

And so finally, today, we're gonna talk about the last piece of responding productively, which is how do we manage accidents, errors, preventable failure? As we think about de-stigmatizing failure, I think many of us would think in our kind of grounded, resourceful, intellectual selves, like, of course we have to de-stigmatize failure.