I'm Maura Erin Smealy, and this is The Anxious Achiever.

We look at stories from business leaders who've dealt with anxiety, depression, or other mental health challenges, how they fell down, how they pick themselves up, and how they hope work can change in the future.

We're wrapping up season five of the show today, and I want to look at a concept I've long been a fan of, psychological safety. It's an idea pioneered by the Harvard Business

School professor Amy Edmondson, my first guest today. Psychological safety, it's not about

being nice. It's the idea that you aren't going to be embarrassed, shamed, or even punished

for speaking up with your questions, concerns, or mistakes on the job.

It's really important in today's workforce, says Amy Edmondson, and psychologically safe

teams get things done and move big ideas forward.

Later in the show, we'll hear from Christopher Yates, chief talent officer at Ford Motor Company,

on why psychological safety is important in his organization and how he helps create teams

that feel more psychologically safe.

But first, here's my conversation with Amy Edmondson.

You. Edmondson. You write, I had long been interested in the idea of learning from mistakes for achieving

excellence.

And this was when you were a doctoral student.

And I'm curious, why were you interested in this as a young person?

Well, I had read a lot of books on this topic.

I mean, there's a fundamental truth, which is to err as human.

We will make mistakes, like it or not.

Now, we can all do our very best to minimize certain kinds of mistakes and to prevent certain kinds of mistakes, but we have to learn how to be comfortable with ourselves in terms of our fallibility.

We are fallible human beings.

That's a given. The only question is,

...