Amy Edmondson
Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School; ranked #3 most influential management thinker by Thinkers50
to me recently to say, ‘Wow, psyMANY PEOPLE HAVE REACHED OUT chological safety must be at an all-time low right now because of the pandemic’. My response is, not so fast; it’s actually not that straightforward. A lack of psychological safety in a workplace is subtle and hidden, because moments of silence are invisible. You never know for sure whether someone just held back on something that could have been mission critical. The holding back is experienced alone, and the primary concern is usually about what others will think — especially those higher up in the hierarchy. Not surprisingly, a lack of psychological safety inhibits innovation.
On the other hand, the widespread fear related to COVID-19 is obvious and explicit. We have no real hesitancy in talking about it. It’s a shared experience — albeit with many different flavours in terms of what it means for people. The primary concern with this fear is around what we can do — to alleviate suffering, to find new ways to operate safely, to discover vaccines and treatments and so forth. This is the kind of fear that actually promotes innovation.
We all feel a sense of urgency right now, and there is a very interesting relationship between urgency and psychological safety. If your psychological safety is high and there is no urgency in your environment, that is what I call a comfort zone. The zone I worry much more about is what I call the interpersonal anxiety zone. This is where you feel a sense of urgency, but you don’t have any psychological safety on your team. In these scenarios, people know what is at stake, but they are unable to ask for help or to report something that is not working. This is a very risky zone for people to be in. There is a third zone where both urgency and psychological safety are high, and I call it the problem-solving zone. This is where we need to be if we’re going to make progress through these challenging times.
Amidst all the uncertainty, one thing is clear: Reimagining the future calls for cross-sector teaming. One of my favourite quotes comes from Paul Polman, the former CEO of Unilever, who once said that the issues we are facing today are so challenging that none of us can go it alone — by which he means any single company, industry, or sector. There is a certain humility to this mindset that I love, and a recognition that we need to invite others in.
Many people would say this pandemic is the biggest wicked problem we have faced in our lifetimes. But I would argue that it is simply the most urgent wicked problem right now, in terms of capturing our attention and activity. Climate change is actually a much bigger, more chronic and overwhelming challenge. As we all begin to reimagine the future, my hope is that we will use this pandemic as a trigger to step back and think about our responsibilities more generally and more long-term.