Why Innovation Depends on Intellectual Honesty
Fostering psychological safety isn’t enough if managers don’t pay particular attention to creating conditions for healthy debate.
Jon Krause/theispot.com
Innovation flourishes when people on a team openly debate and disagree. The question is how to get them to speak their minds, particularly when it means challenging their leaders or acknowledged experts. Some management experts argue that the best way to get people to speak up is to create psychological safety — an atmosphere described by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson as one in which “people feel accepted and comfortable sharing concerns and mistakes without fear of embarrassment or retribution.”1
But research also indicates that feeling that it’s safe to dissent isn’t the only important factor for ensuring healthy debate. In our studies of innovators and their teams, we’ve found there can be a tension that few people recognize between psychological safety and intellectual honesty: that is, a culture in which team members will proactively voice their ideas and disagreements in a rational and constructive way (like the Star Trek character Mr. Spock, but with acknowledgment of their human emotions and biases).2 Intellectual honesty significantly increases a team’s ability to innovate — particularly to create breakthrough innovations — because it unleashes the knowledge of team members.
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We found that many teams prioritize psychological safety without realizing that the social cohesion it promotes, though beneficial to learning, can sometimes undermine intellectual honesty rather than encourage it. However, when people are brutally honest (Steve Jobs would tell people at Apple that they were “full of s – – – ”), they can undermine others’ feelings of acceptance and respect — which are the cornerstones of feeling secure to challenge one’s colleagues.
If leaders can balance psychological safety and intellectual honesty, they gain the benefits of both. Consider the debate over whether to greenlight the Amazon Kindle in the mid-2000s.
References
1. A. Edmondson, “The Fearless Organization” (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2019), xvi.
2. M. Chamberlin, D.W. Newton, and J.A. Lepine, “A Meta-Analysis of Voice and Its Promotive and Prohibitive Forms: Identification of Key Associations, Distinctions, and Future Directions,” Personnel Psychology 70, no. 1 (spring 2017): 11-71.
3. J.H. Dyer, N. Furr, and C. Lefrandt, “Innovation Capital: How to Compete — and Win — Like the World’s Most Innovative Leaders” (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2019).
4. T.O. Vuori and Q.N. Huy, “Distributed Attention and Shared Emotions in the Innovation Process: How Nokia Lost the Smartphone Battle,” Administrative Science Quarterly 61, no. 1 (January 2016): 9-51.
5. A. Lashinksy, “Insights on the Writing of Steve Jobs,” Fortune, Dec. 27, 2011, www.fortune.com.
6. K.A. Jehn and E.A. Mannix, “The Dynamic Nature of Conflict: A Longitudinal Study of Intragroup Conflict and Group Performance,” Academy of Management Journal 44, no. 2 (April 2001): 238-251.
7. R. Feloni, “Ray Dalio Explains Why 25% of Bridgewater Employees Don’t Last More Than 18 Months at the Hedge Fund Giant,” Business Insider, March 23, 2016, www.businessinsider.com.
8. C. Assis, “Is Tesla’s Executive Turnover Really High? This Analyst Sets Out to Find the Answer,” MarketWatch, Aug. 14, 2019, www.marketwatch.com.
9. H. Deng, K. Leung, C.K. Lam, et al., “Slacking Off in Comfort: A Dual-Pathway Model for Psychological Safety Climate,” Journal of Management 45, no. 3 (March 2019): 1114-1144.
10. A. Edmondson, “Psychological Safety, Trust, and Learning in Organizations: A Group-Level Lens,” in “Trust and Distrust in Organizations: Dilemmas and Approaches,” ed. R.M. Kramer and K.S. Cook (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), 239-272.
11. N. Furr and S.H. Furr, “The Upside of Uncertainty: A Guide to Finding Possibility in the Unknown” (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2022).
12. D. Orr, “Working With and Making Decisions With Great People,” lecture 6 in “Transferring Big Company Culture to Startups,” Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders lecture series, Stanford University, Stanford, California, Oct. 17, 2007, https://cosmolearning.org.
13. Chamberlin, Newton, and Lepine, “A Meta-Analysis of Voice,” 11-71.
14. “Leadership Principles,” Company Culture, Alan SA, accessed Oct. 11, 2022, https://alan.com.
15. Chamberlin, Newton, and Lepine, “A Meta-Analysis of Voice,” 11-71.
16. H. Li and J. Li, “Top Management Team Conflict and Entrepreneurial Strategy Making in China,” Asia Pacific Journal of Management 26, no. 2 (June 2009): 263-283; G. Chen, C. Liu, and D. Tjosvold, “Conflict Management for Effective Top Management Teams and Innovation in China,” Journal of Management Studies 42, no. 2 (March 2005): 277-300; and A. Schotter and P.W. Beamish, “Performance Effects of MNC Headquarters-Subsidiary Conflict and the Role of Boundary Spanners: The Case of Headquarter Initiative Rejection,” Journal of International Management 17, no. 3 (September 2011): 243-259.
17. Chamberlin, Newton, and Lepine, “A Meta-Analysis of Voice,” 11-71.
18. S. Anderson, interview with authors, June 27, 2019.
19. K.M. Eisenhardt, J.L. Kahwajy, and L.J. Bourgeois III, “Conflict and Strategic Choice: How Top Management Teams Disagree,” California Management Review 39, no. 2 (spring 1997): 42-62.
i. A. Edmondson, “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior on Work Teams,” Administrative Science Quarterly 44, no. 2 (June 1999): 350-383.
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Stuart Roehrl