Building a Fearless Organization: A Fieldbook for Creating Psychological Safety at Work

Michaela Kerrissey studies how teams and organizations innovate, integrate and perform, with a focus on team climates and psychological safety at work. Her interest in teaming began early in her career, organizing HIV/AIDS programs to get effective treatments to patients in need. "Despite all the technical expertise developing new medications, organizational problems still prevented us from solving the issue at hand: saving lives," she says. A former consulting team leader at The Bridgespan Group, which was launched out of Bain and Company, she reached the conclusion that anchors her research: "Teaming is core to business in almost any area, but it often gets left to intuition and chance."

Kerrissey gives organizations the science instead. Her 4 Ups model (Speak Up, Listen Up, Team Up, Level Up) and her validated scales for measuring psychological safety, process clarity, joint problem-solving and burnout turn teamwork into something leaders can measure, discuss and improve. She is a frequent co-author with Amy Edmondson, including on the forthcoming book Building a Fearless Organization and the Harvard Business Review articles "Leading Through a Sustained Crisis Requires a Different Approach" and "What People Get Wrong About Psychological Safety."