[Music] there was research last year that was written up in the New York Times at Google saying that Google did a massive four-year study to find out what differentiated great teams from not-so-great teams and bottom line they found that the biggest differentiator by far of excellent teams at Google and not-so-good teams with psychological safety and that was stunning news to me I mean it was it was music to my ears of course but the reason why I think that's very important news for people in any organization is that I at least had a tendency to think of Google as full of unbelievably smart people which I think this is is absolutely the case but people who wouldn't necessarily have a problem sharing what they're thinking you know that there would be just uniformly a high level of confidence that I can say what I'm thinking but it turns out no even at Google it varied greatly from team to team and that made all the difference we live more and more in a knowledge economy that is it is the knowledge the ideas that people have that people bring that organizations bring that really add value in the marketplace so it stands to reason that we need to hear from people and yet the research the data are overwhelming that many people feel they can't speak up at work in many companies it might be as many as half the employees are reporting that it really doesn't feel safe to speak up that means we're losing enormous value and so if we aren't hearing from people we may be missing out on a game-changing idea you know that could come in become part of a new product or a new service or we might miss an early warning of a threat in the market that someone saw but felt unable to bring the bad news to to their boss it can be very powerful when a leader apologizes for not having made it safe in the past when a leader takes responsibility and acknowledges I can see that there were things that I did that made it difficult for you to come to me rather than I think there's a spontaneous tendency to say well why didn't you come to me rather than stopping to think I wonder what I did that made it difficult for you to come to me because I will assume that you are well-intentioned right I also assume that you're smart so if if it didn't work out if there wasn't psychological safety there it's on me and I think it's always on the leader to go first and to do what he or she can to create psychological safety the ability for people to come to work and speak up about what they know what they don't know what they see what they're worried about is absolutely mission critical to success in a knowledge economy [Music] you