Looking down, Kentaro quietly said, “Amazing, that's great to hear.” He was visibly impressed. Akiko smiled. It was nice to be acknowledged by the head of the department. I winced. This was exactly what I had hoped would not happen – praise. Kentaro had praised Akiko for revealing a weakness she wanted to overcome, and that was the last thing we needed right now. I sat quietly, just observing. I never praised people in a situation like this. To me, there was something much

“A shared belief that it is safe to take an interpersonal risk.” This is the definition of psychological safety by Amy Edmondson. In Japan, where I work, this definition needs a 2nd belief: an individual belief that it’s okay to take interpersonal risks without permission (self-permission). Without it, safety remains a lever controlled from above. The hierarchy is unchanged. It’s just less aggressive. Kind-hearted leaders diligently direct traffic while everyone waits for per

Leaders genuinely want to know how. Unfortunately, I think the question itself gets us into trouble. Inspire them, share your own success story, give them advice. These are all logically defensible—and occasionally help. But they also keep us busy imagining how we can change someone else. Sometimes we get sneaky about it. Drop a hint. Tell a carefully selected story about a past struggle. Tidy it up, maybe invent a few details, so the lesson lands. We aren’t sharing it becaus

I remember the irony of realizing that I didn’t feel safe openly questioning psychological safety. The looks I got from workshop facilitators and other participants made it clear my kind of questions were unwelcome. Sometimes I shut my mouth, other times I didn’t. When I did speak, it felt like attempting an Olympic dive that ended in a glorious belly-flop. All zeros from the judges. Not a clap in sight. To be fair, some of my objections were poorly articulated and unnecess

I used to be really good at making people feel safe in training. Then I saw how my “safety” was backfiring. It was actually the lowest point of my professional career, where I lost confidence in who I was and what I was doing. A participant who I had a great relationship with and was “transformed” through our sessions – affectionately called Dr. Giggles by the group – turned out to be completely unchanged in his real world meetings. Unchanged meaning “He still doesn’t speak

"This has been the hardest week of my life." Tom was physically drained, hadn't slept in days, and although normally quite a mentally strong man, there were a few moments when he had to hold back tears. His reputation had taken a serious hit, and his current team now looked at him skeptically, as if he might betray them at any moment. But his eight-month ordeal was finally over. He had successfully proved to HR that the house was indeed burning down by sitting in the burning

That there is only one kind of psychological safety. Actually, there are two. This makes most people blink twice. "Uh, did you say 'two types'"? Fear is not something that exists as an invisible miasma in the atmosphere. Fear exists in a person's mind. You and I could be in the same meeting, experiencing totally different fears. So who manages your fear? Who manages mine? If someone else removes our fears for us, that is externally provided safety. If we handle our fears on o

We know there can be serious costs when people don't speak up, especially when the stakes are high. Imagine a nurse who thinks the wrong medication is about to be given. A false alarm might waste thirty seconds. A missed alarm might kill someone. And usually, the question can be settled quickly. Check the medication. Check the chart. Check the dosage. Either the nurse was right or not, and everyone can move on. It's the logic of a smoke detector. We tolerate it going off when

And that skill takes just 2 seconds to execute. And it doesn’t have to be done well to work. This is not clickbait. This is the distillation of 25 years of experience working in Japan. I don’t know of any research that has tested this specific claim, so I want to be clear: this is a professional judgment formed over 25 years of working in Japan. I have no desire to “change” or westernize people. I only work with Japanese business people in global companies, where survival dep

The concept came from Amy Edmondson, a Harvard professor. She was looking at hospital teams, and wondering why high performance teams reported more errors (not less). Long story short, she found that teams where reporting errors carried less interpersonal risk were more willing to report and discuss problems, increasing their ability to learn together. Although not explicitly stated, my interpretation is that psychological safety was mostly about creating an environment where

“How can I motivate other people?” This is probably the most common question I hear, in different forms, from a lot of people in training. Since my work is with Japanese members of global teams, it sounds roughly like, “How can I motivate my team to speak up more?” or “How can I motivate my team to push back more in meetings?” or “How can I motivate my team to share their thoughts during the meeting (not after)?” This discussion can get complicated really quickly. Or it can b

ROI for human development work? It’s almost as silly as me saying the kite I flew this morning caused the Typhoon creeping towards our shore tomorrow. Yet ROI for development work persists, and some folks take it seriously. So, let’s put this to rest with a simple thought experiment. What is the most important moment in human development, and can you measure that directly or indirectly? The most important moment is a private moment — neurons firing in the brain — when someone

How often do we work with reality vs a version of reality acting as a stand-in? So much of modern work is dealing with proxies instead of the real things our work is for. A customer is a real thing. An HR needs hearing is a proxy. It’s been filtered by someone else’s thinking. A survey is a proxy. A report is a proxy. A theory from Harvard about communication is a proxy, too – real communication never feels so clean, simple, with guaranteed effectiveness. Proxies are not “bad

Neither do mine, though. This issue became obvious during a coaching session. I could see that the woman I was talking to was misunderstanding what my framework was for: "What are the rules I'm supposed to follow?" I realized she didn't quite understand what a framework was for. Then I realized I hadn't thought about it accurately either. She was struggling with prioritization. Almost everything ended up in her “top priority” column. She already had a prioritization framework

“I have a question for you … what do you think about my opinion?” Wait, is that your question?? I saw this many times as a corporate trainer. After explaining some fancy Harvard Business theory, someone would raise their hand and say, “I have a question,” then launch into their own opinion. Then came the awkward pause: no question had appeared. Realizing they forgot the question, they would often blurt out, “What do you think?” It is easy to laugh at this, but I think most of

A meeting goes quiet. The facilitator waits a few seconds, feels the pressure rising, then steps in. “Taro, what do you think?” Taro answers, someone else follows, and the discussion starts moving again. The facilitator thinks, Good. That worked. And maybe it did. But there is another question worth asking: who actually got the meeting moving? I have seen this pattern many times, including in meetings I was leading. A question is asked and nobody answers. The silence becomes

A single word can change the way people think, feel and act surprisingly quickly. In business, one of the most powerful may be “expert.” I heard an interesting story years ago from someone working at a large global pharmaceutical company. The company had brought in a man to lead an innovation team. On paper, he was an obvious choice. He had successfully led two genuinely innovative projects at his previous company and had built quite a reputation. He was borderline famous. He

Learning and development can start with two different ends in mind: get people to do more of a particular behavior, or get better at deciding for themselves what to do. The dividing line is simple: if the task is black-and-white, adopting new, specific behaviors is a reasonable end. When tasks enter the grey zone, you want people to get better at deciding for themselves what to do. The program design for these two ends in mind is as different as night and day. If your end

I always assumed having a vision was an obvious necessity for business. Lately, I wonder whether the need for a strong vision sometimes tells us that something in the work design is off. At least one thing a vision does is bring someone’s interpretation of external reality to people who may have far less opportunity to experience that reality themselves. Or they may have little opportunity to compare what they are seeing with people who touch very different parts. A vision cr

“Start with the end in mind. The end should always be measurable behavior.” Some clients feel reassured when they hear this. I wince. I already know what many of the quieter members are thinking when a “speak up” initiative is announced: “Leadership wants us to talk more. Even if it’s nonsense.” Frustrated leaders get wind of this resistance and tell me, “That’s not what we meant.” What the leaders want is for people to voice concerns, questions, ideas sooner rather than late