Psychological safety is essential for learning, innovation, and high-performing teams. Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School, explains why creating psychologically safe environments enables teams to embrace both success and failure. In this episode, Amy shares strategies for leaders to foster learning cultures where "red updates"—mistakes, problems, and risks—become opportunities for growth.

If your team only reports green—good news, progress, and wins—you're likely missing critical insights. Amy highlights why leaders must actively encourage the "red" to unlock real learning, smarter experimentation, and sustainable growth.

Psychological Safety = Performance

Amy breaks down why psychological safety is one of the strongest predictors of team performance. Teams perform best when people feel safe to speak up, challenge assumptions, and share dissenting views. Without psychological safety, critical issues remain hidden until they escalate.

Smart Failures as Feedback

Not all failures are equal:

• Preventable failures: Mistakes that should be avoided through vigilance, training, and established processes.

• Intelligent failures: Unexpected results from thoughtful risks and experimentation in new territory.

The most successful individuals and organisations don't avoid failure—they fail more often, but in smart, productive ways. Psychological safety allows teams to treat failures as feedback rather than fear.

Creating a Culture That Learns

Amy shares actionable strategies for leaders to build learning cultures:

• Make sharing "red" insights a positive experience.

• Encourage teams to run hypotheses by colleagues before acting.

• Celebrate learning from failure while distinguishing preventable mistakes from intelligent experiments.

Your Action Plan

• Audit your team environment: Are you only hearing "green" updates?

• Encourage reporting of "red"—problems, mistakes, and risks.

• Respond positively to "red," making it safe to share.

• Differentiate between preventable and intelligent failures.

• Integrate thoughtful experimentation into daily work to drive innovation.

ABOUT AMY EDMONDSON:

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. She studies how human interactions drive successful enterprises and has authored seven books and over 60 scholarly papers. Amy is a sought-after keynote speaker with a global following, helping leaders and organisations embrace learning, psychological safety, and innovation.

CONNECT WITH AMY: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycedmondson/ Books: The Fearless Organization, Teaming, Right Kind of Wrong, and more

SCALEX AND SIMPLE SCALING:

Book: Simple Scaling: 10 Proven Principles to 10x Your Business ScaleX Elevate: https://simplescaling.com/scalex-elevate (for businesses under £2M revenue) ScaleX Accelerator: https://simplescaling.com/scalex-accelerator-programme(for businesses over £2M revenue) Website: https://simplescaling.com Email: [email protected] LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/simple-scaling Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simplescaling

ScaleX Insider is a 12-month journey for ambitious SME leaders combining strategy, mindset work, and peer support to break through revenue plateaus.

Podcast Host: Brendan McGurgan, Co-Founder Simple Scaling

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