A few days ago, I led a corporate workshop on CONFIDENCE. We were talking about how a “growth mindset,” focusing on learning, can help boost our confidence.
A participant raised her hand and bravely said,
“There’s no such thing as failure.
Only learning.”
Wow. Love this!
I’d bet money that YOU have a growth mindset. Otherwise, why would you be working on your communication skills and reading this coaching newsletter?
In the past we’ve talked about growth mindsets, and the work of Professor Carol Dweck, author of Mindset.
This week, I’m excited to share the work of another academic who’s focused on optimizing our mindset, Harvard Professor Amy Edmondson.
Years ago, I had the privilege of taking Amy’s doctoral course called “Field Research Methods.” Amy is considered a pioneer in the concept of psychological safety. She also studies failure, and she just published a book called Right Kind of Wrong.
As you’ll hear in my conversation with Amy, this all relates to having a growth mindset!
In this week’s podcast, Talk About Talk ep. 175, Amy and I discussed communication and how our mindset makes an impact on us as leaders and communicators.
3 Things to Talk About This Week
- A growth mindset at the team level
- The importance of accountability
- Three types of failure: “Houston, we have a problem!”
1️⃣ “A growth mindset at the team level”
Psychological safety is a big deal. Research over the decades has consistently demonstrated that psychological safety is a key factor associated with high-performing teams.
What exactly is psychological safety?
At the beginning of my conversation with Amy, I asked her if it’s ok to summarize psychological safety as “a team culture where it’s safe to take risks.” (Fingers crossed, because that’s what I tell my clients!)
She said yes. (Phew!)
Later in our conversation, we discussed growth mindsets and she highlighted how psychological safety is like a growth mindset at the team level.
She also noted that many folks feel helpless when their team is not psychologically safe. Building a psychologically safe space at work is difficult, but not impossible.
If you’re interested in creating a psychologically safe culture in the team you lead, I encourage you to listen to Talk About Talk podcast ep.104, where I outline the mindsets, the behaviors and even the words you can use. It’s available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
2️⃣ The importance of accountability
Psychological safety is not about being comfortable and laissez-faire.
It’s not about rejecting feedback.
It’s not about weaponizing a woke excuse for performance.
In fact, as Amy reminds us, performance is the whole point.
In the podcast episode, you’ll hear Amy’s story of how this topic of performance came up in class one day and she drew this 2×2 matrix on the board:
When psychological safety and accountability are both low, you have apathy and detachment. No one wants to be there!
When you have high psychological safety and low accountability, things are comfortable and relaxed, but nothing gets done.
When you have low psychological safety and high accountability, you get anxiety and burn-out.
When you have both psychological safety and accountability, suddenly you’re productive and you’re learning!
Which quadrant is your team operating in?
3️⃣ Three types of failure: “Houston, we have a problem!”
Do you remember the movie Apollo 13?
(Context: Astronauts, bound for the moon, experience a massive system failure and appear to be stranded in space with low fuel, no way to conduct external repairs, and a rapidly closing window for successful re-entry.)
This is a classic example of what Amy Edmondson would call a complex failure.
In her book, Right Kind of Wrong, Amy encourages us to be careful of our vocabulary when it comes to mistakes and failures.
- A MISTAKE is an unintended deviation from a known practice or process. This is when you do something you should not have.
- A FAILURE is an undesired outcome.
There are 3 kinds of failures: basic, complex, and intelligent. I bet you can guess which one of these is good!
A complex failure, like a spaceship system failure, has many contributing factors. It’s messy, and yes, complex.
A basic failure has a single cause. That cause is typically a mistake. You do something you shouldn’t have, and there’s a bad outcome. You text and drive and get into an accident. That’s a basic failure.
Intelligent failure is the undesired results of experiments. Think of a scientific experiment:
hypothesis ➡ action ➡ undesired result ➡ learning
Amy highlights that as humans we all fail and we all make mistakes. (Yes, even Amy!) But if we consciously focus on taking smart risks, we can label our failures as intelligent failure and move on to learning.
There you go – 3 things to Talk About this week:
- A growth mindset at the team level
- The importance of accountability
- Three types of failure: “Houston, we have a problem!”
As you can probably tell, I loved reconnecting with Amy. At the end of the interview, you’ll hear me thank Amy for her impactful work, and for helping people be happier and more successful.
If you want to learn more from Professor Amy Edmondson, I recommend her two most recent books, The Fearless Organization and Right Kind of Wrong.
You can also listen to the full Talk About Talk podcast ep. 175 on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Have a great week.
Talk soon,
Dr. Andrea Wojnicki
executive communication coach