SAFETY FIRST

Let’s talk about safety. Not the seatbelt kind. Not the antivirus software kind either. I mean real, human safety. The kind you feel when you’re in a room where your ideas won’t be shot down, your questions won’t be ridiculed, and your silence doesn’t make people uncomfortable. Psychological safety. Emotional safety. That invisible but powerful shield that lets people relax just enough to do really, really good work.

It might sound soft, but it’s everything. Because when people don’t feel safe, they play small. They overthink, stay quiet, stick to what they know. Their creativity shuts down. Their energy goes toward self-preservation, not contribution. And that’s the quiet killer of progress.

So yeah, safety first.

This all goes way back, by the way. Like mammoth-hunting, cave-drawing, drinking-water-from-rocks kind of back. In prehistoric times, our ancestors had to be on high alert constantly. Predators, rival tribes, infections, hunger, the dark, everything was a potential threat. And if your brain wasn’t wired to react quickly, you didn’t live long enough to pass on your genes. The amygdala, our little almond-shaped threat detector, evolved to light up like a Christmas tree at the first sign of danger. Fast forward a few hundred thousand years and that same wiring still kicks in when your manager raises an eyebrow during your presentation.

Here’s the trick though. The ancient brain didn’t just survive by being fast. It survived by being social.

Living in groups gave us an edge. You didn’t need to do everything yourself anymore. While one person hunted, another kept watch. While one gathered berries, someone else built the shelter. Groups allowed specialization. Specialization created time. And time gave us room to imagine, create, improve. Societies flourished not just because people were smart, but because they were safe enough to focus on more than just survival.

That logic hasn’t changed. The workplace today may not be crawling with saber-toothed tigers, but our nervous systems still respond to stress the same way. If we feel unsafe, emotionally, intellectually, socially, we go into survival mode. We withdraw. We avoid risk. And we certainly don’t take the kinds of creative or collaborative leaps that drive actual progress.

Here’s where leadership comes in.

Leaders draw the circle. They’re the ones who set the tone, who define what’s okay and what’s not, who send the signal: “You belong here. You’re safe to speak up. Safe to experiment. Safe to not have the answer right away.” That circle of safety isn’t just about team-building exercises or nice words in a Slack channel. It’s about creating a culture where people stop looking over their shoulders and start looking ahead.

And it’s not some fluffy, feel-good idea. There’s science behind it. Amy Edmondson, a professor at Harvard Business School, coined the term psychological safety after studying what made teams effective. She found that the best-performing teams weren’t the ones with the smartest people. They were the ones where people felt safe to share half-baked ideas, admit mistakes, and ask questions without fear of looking stupid.

That fear of looking stupid? It’s real. And it’s expensive.

In a team where people don’t feel safe, you’ll see endless meetings where no one says what they really think. You’ll see status reports that hide the bad news. You’ll see innovation grind to a halt because nobody wants to risk being the one who tried something new and failed. Fear wastes time. Wastes energy. Wastes talent.

But when people feel safe? It’s like flipping a switch.

They speak up. They ask better questions. They listen better. They challenge ideas without attacking people. They move faster because they’re not wasting mental energy on second-guessing or office politics. And that creates momentum. Culture becomes self-reinforcing. Progress becomes the default.

Creating that kind of space doesn’t require magic. It takes attention. Intention. And the ability to remember that every team is, at its core, just a group of slightly anxious mammals trying to do their best while making sure they won’t be kicked out of the group.

So how do you do it?

You start with behavior. Not slogans. As a leader, people don’t remember what you say nearly as much as how you act. When someone shares a risky idea, do you react with curiosity or critique? When someone admits a mistake, do you blame or do you ask what they’ve learned? When someone’s quiet in a meeting, do you invite them in, or just move on? These tiny moments are the culture.

Think about it like app design. Every user interface sends signals about what’s possible. Big “Submit” buttons, gray “Cancel” links, hidden settings, they shape behavior. Leadership does the same thing. It’s UX for humans. The more you make safety visible and accessible, the more people will interact with it. The more they’ll trust it.

And yes, safety doesn’t mean comfort all the time. That’s a common mix-up. Great leaders don’t just keep people comfortable. They keep people secure enough to handle discomfort. To stretch. To grow. To be challenged in ways that make them better, not smaller. It’s the difference between pushing someone off a cliff and guiding them across a rope bridge with a harness. One creates trauma. The other builds confidence.

I once worked in a team that had the opportunity to do anything we wanted every Friday. Future Fridays — and we did.

We created anything we could think of, learn all the ins and outs of our tech stack and tried new ones just because we could. And then we shared our results. The good and the bad. The things that worked and the things that didn’t.

And we celebrated them both. Genuinely. No sarcasm. No sting. Just, “Cool, you tried something. What’d we learn?”

It took time away from ‘real’ work, but it paid off. People admitted problems earlier, offering suggestions faster and created things that could be used to improve our day to day operations. We felt safe. So we got braver.

And that’s the heart of it. Safety enables bravery. It’s not the absence of fear. It’s the presence of trust. When you know the group has your back, you can stop guarding your front. You can focus on the mission, not the politics. You can build. Risk. Collaborate. And that’s when real magic happens.

So yes, we stay in bad jobs sometimes because they feel secure. That’s our evolutionary wiring. But leaders have the power and frankly, the responsibility, to create something better. Not just for productivity’s sake, but for humanity’s. Because when we stop spending our mental energy protecting ourselves, we start using it to improve the world around us.

A team that feels safe will always outperform a team that feels watched. A culture built on trust moves faster than one built on fear. And a leader who draws a strong circle of safety doesn’t just protect their people. They free them.

So if you’re leading a team, ask yourself: What am I signaling? What am I rewarding? What kind of circle am I drawing? Because at the end of the day, it’s not about making people feel good. It’s about helping people do great work. And that always starts with safety. First.