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Making it Safe to Innovate

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Building Emotional Safety

Making it Safe to Innovate - Building Emotional Safety

GUEST POST from Janet Sernack

When my husband and I became accredited as foster parents for children in need, I thought my skills as a trainer and facilitator would help me navigate the challenges we faced. I quickly discovered that when children arrived at our home late at night, often physically injured and emotionally distraught due to a tragic accident or being separated from their families, their primary need was for emotional safety. This began my long and enlightening quest into what it truly means for someone to develop both emotional and psychological safety. To discover and explore why both emotional and psychological safety are crucial for people to survive, innovate and thrive in the post-pandemic, unstable, and uncertain world.

The whole issue of “safety” is a crucial one. Causing many people, especially those in the change, learning and coaching space, to stop, pause, retreat, and reflect upon how to personalize and contextualize it for ourselves and others we care about and interact with. Yet so few people understand the importance of creating safe environments, especially today when there is so much hatred and violence happening on many of our streets.

We all deserve to, and are entitled to, feel emotionally safe and secure in all aspects of our lives.

What does it mean to be safe?

Because safety: the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury, impacts everyone and everything in our entire world system. It is an essential element required for our survival, growth, and ability to navigate and innovate in the post-pandemic era. Safety is critical in enhancing people’s capacity to connect, belong, and engage in purposeful relationships, build happy families and secure communities, as well as produce creative, inventive, and innovative work that helps make the world a better place.

What is emotional safety?

Emotional safety exists in an environment where individuals feel valued, respected, and heard, regardless of their values, beliefs, or religious or cultural origins. It involves allowing people to feel safe and secure, nurturing vulnerability, and sharing personal thoughts and feelings without fear of having their words judged as “bad” or “wrong.” Without facing punishment, discrimination, persecution, diminishment, blame, shame, hatred, or violence by others.

It’s a space where it’s safe to say “I don’t know” or “I made a mistake” without being labelled as incompetent or “lacking” in some vital way.

  • Improving well-being, engagement and productivity

Emotional safety is a vital element of an emotionally and mentally healthy environment that fosters well-being, boosts engagement, and enhances productivity. In such an environment, individuals feel secure enough to express, explore, and share their thoughts and feelings about themselves, their colleagues, managers, leaders, and even their organization as a whole. People feel respected and trusted to share ideas, establish boundaries, and be accepted for who they are, what they believe in, flaws and all. 

  • Building mutuality

The intention is to build mutuality, defined by the American Psychological Association as:

“The tendency of relationship partners to think of themselves as members of a dyadic relationship rather than as distinct individuals. As close relationships, particularly romantic ones, develop over time, partners display increasing levels of mutuality, which may influence their affect, cognition, and behavior. In interdependence theory, the tendency of partners to depend equally on each other’s behavior for the attainment of desirable outcomes”.

We live in an interdependent, globalized world where developing emotionally safe, positive, and interactive mutual relationships across geographies, technologies, demographics, and functions is more important than ever. Mutuality lays the groundwork for creating a shared understanding that fosters a safe and open space for learning and effective interactions, based on cooperative, co-petitive, and collaborative relationships in the workplace.

  • Becoming attuned

Emotional intelligence, empathy, trust, and effective communication are vital for fostering emotional safety and form the basis for developing effective emotional regulation and management strategies. This enables us to attune to and connect with others with whom we wish to build relationships.

According to Dr. Dan Seigal:

“When we attune with others, we allow our internal state to shift, to come to resonate with the inner world of another. This resonance is at the heart of the important sense of “feeling felt” that emerges in close relationships. Children need attunement to feel secure and to develop well, and throughout our lives we need attunement to feel close and connected.”

As a foster carer, my ability and willingness to attune with them represented the most important gift I could offer the children. It allowed them to feel close and connected to someone who genuinely cared for them by simply providing the most basic essentials. With no judgement or strings attached, and with both detachment and empathy, it also provided them with crucial evidence that this could indeed continue to be possible for them in their future lives.

As a trainer, facilitator, and coach, these are the key ingredients for establishing an emotionally safe and effective learning intervention, particularly about the people side of innovation and in building an organization that fosters a culture of failure. 

Developing a psychologically safe culture

Emotional safety is closely linked to psychological safety, which is the belief that individuals can be themselves at work and share their opinions and ideas without fear of negative repercussions.  According to Dr Timothy Clarke at the Leaderfactor, psychological safety empowers individuals and teams to reach new levels of creativity, collaboration, and innovation by nurturing a culture of inclusion and vulnerability. It is a social condition where people feel accepted and secure enough to learn, contribute, and question the status quo, free from fear of embarrassment, marginalization, or punishment, by creating an environment founded on permission, safety, and trust.

  • Embodying a way of being

Creating this emotional state or culture is much harder than most people think. Most organizations believe it’s something they must achieve through process and system changes, rather than by embodying it as a way of being a manager, leader, trainer, or coach who creates:

  • Sanctuaries of inclusion—a space where individuals feel safe and are encouraged to express their feelings, thoughts, opinions, and ideas, fostering a profound sense of inclusion, connection, and belonging.
  • Safe containers – a space where individuals confidently disrupt conventional or habitual ways of doing things, step outside their comfort zones, and challenge the status quo, allowing dissonance, contradiction, paradox, and conflict as sources of creative tension to disrupt, differ, and deviate from the norm. 
  • Collective holding spaces—where individuals accept responsibility, take ownership, and are trusted to contribute to the entire system. By fostering co-creative, interdependent relationships both internally and externally, we work towards achieving the team’s and organization’s vision, mission, purpose, and collective goals.
  • Incubators and accelerators of innovation—where team members are free to emerge, diverge, and converge possibilities. They are empowered, enabled, and equipped to transform these into creative ideas and opportunities. Individuals and teams feel safe in unlearning, learning, and relearning new ways of being, thinking, and acting. This environment challenges the status quo by encouraging disruptive questions, taking calculated risks, and experimenting with new ideas within an authentic, fail-fast culture that promotes quick learning.

Benefits of emotional and psychological safety

  • Enhances individual, team, and collective engagement, connection, and belonging. It establishes a foundation for harnessing and mobilizing people’s collective intelligence in line with the organization’s vision, mission, and purpose. 
  • Promotes effective team collaboration, where individuals feel at ease sharing their ideas, opinions, and concerns. It cultivates an environment where diverse perspectives can be openly discussed alongside differing views: 
  • Inspires people to be emotionally energetic, agile, and adaptable in the face of uncertainty and chaos, as well as in a rapidly changing business landscape.

AI will continue to disrupt job stability and security.

Developing emotional and psychological safety is a key success factor that underpins a culture of innovation, as it creates the essential space for individuals to think and act differently. This is achieved through experimentation, learning from failures, and exploring new methods that lead to breakthrough ideas and innovative solutions, enabling individuals to survive and thrive in the age of AI.

  • Both job losses and opportunities

Fast Company shares that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has a stark warning for the developed world about job losses resulting from AI. The CEO told Axios that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. This could result in a 10% to 20% rise in the unemployment rate over the next one to five years, Amodei says. The losses could come from tech, finance, law, consulting, and other white-collar professions, with entry-level jobs being hit the hardest.

Just as the children we fostered needed emotional safety, we all require emotional safety when walking our city streets. Similarly, while at work, we all need a psychologically safe working environment rooted in mutuality and trust. This is what allows individuals to attune to each other, feel secure, bonded, and connected, fostering a sense of belonging and unity. This requires investing in the co-creation of emotionally and psychologically safe spaces that attract and retain top talent, enabling individuals to feel valued, as they truly matter, and helping them adapt, innovate, grow, perform and thrive in a post-pandemic, unstable, and uncertain world.

This is an excerpt from our upcoming book, “Anyone Can Learn to Innovate,” scheduled for publication in late 2025.

Please find out about our collective learning products and tools, including The Coach for Innovators, Leaders, and Teams Certified Program, presented by Janet Sernack. It is a collaborative, intimate, and profoundly personalized innovation coaching and learning program supported by a global group of peers over nine weeks. It can be customized as a bespoke corporate learning program.

It is a blended and transformational change and learning program that will give you a deep understanding of the language, principles, and applications of an ecosystem-focused, human-centric approach and emergent structure (Theory U) to innovation. It will also upskill people and teams and develop their future fitness within your unique innovation context. Please find out more about our products and tools.

Image Credit: Pixabay

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Communicating Change Through Emotion and Connection

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Beyond Data

Communicating Change Through Emotion and Connection

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

In the world of innovation and change, we often fall into the trap of believing that the strongest argument is a spreadsheet full of data. We present charts, projections, and ROI models, confident that logic alone will win the day. But what we’re forgetting is a fundamental truth of human-centered leadership: people don’t just act on logic; they act on emotion. To truly drive change, we must learn to communicate not just to the brain, but to the heart.

Change, by its very nature, is a human experience. It is filled with uncertainty, fear of the unknown, and a natural resistance to disruption. A new strategy, a technological rollout, or an organizational restructuring isn’t just a line item on a budget; it’s a profound shift in how people work, feel, and see their future. The sterile, data-driven presentation, while intellectually sound, often fails to address the emotional core of this experience. It can feel impersonal, top-down, and threatening, creating a chasm between leadership’s vision and the workforce’s reality.

Effective communication of change, therefore, requires a strategic shift. We must move beyond the “what” and the “how” and lean into the “why”—and not just the financial “why,” but the human “why.” We need to tell stories that connect with our audience, creating a shared vision that is both compelling and empathetic. This means communicating with authenticity, vulnerability, and a genuine understanding of the human element. It is the difference between simply informing people and truly inspiring them.

The key to this is a communication model built on three pillars: Story, Empathy, and Connection. A Story gives the change a narrative arc, with a clear hero (the organization or the customer) and a compelling challenge. Empathy means acknowledging the difficulties and fears that come with change, validating people’s emotions rather than dismissing them. And Connection is about creating a shared sense of purpose, linking the change to a greater mission that people can believe in and feel a part of. When these three elements are present, change communication becomes a powerful tool for building trust and momentum.

Case Study 1: The Turnaround of a Global Tech Giant

The Challenge: Widespread Cynicism and Resistance to Change

A global technology company, once an industry leader, was facing a period of decline. Years of failed initiatives and top-down mandates had created a culture of deep-seated cynicism. When a new leadership team was brought in to enact a massive turnaround, they were met with immediate resistance. Employees were tired of being told to change without understanding why, and the data-heavy presentations from management only reinforced their feelings of being treated as numbers on a spreadsheet.

The Emotional Communication Approach:

The new CEO recognized that a traditional approach would fail. Instead of leading with a business plan, he began his first major address with a personal story. He spoke about his early days at the company, the pride he felt in its groundbreaking products, and the shared mission that once united everyone. He then moved from this emotional connection to acknowledge the current reality with brutal honesty, validating the employees’ frustration and disappointment. He framed the new strategy not as a directive, but as a collective journey to reclaim their legacy and once again become the company they were all proud to be a part of. The data and business strategy were presented not as a goal in themselves, but as the practical steps to achieve that inspiring vision.

The Results:

The shift in communication style was transformative. By leading with emotion and connection, the CEO broke through the wall of cynicism. Employees began to see the change not as another management fad, but as a genuine effort to rebuild something they all valued. Engagement and morale saw a dramatic improvement, and a culture of trust began to replace one of fear. The company’s turnaround, while still challenging, gained the crucial buy-in from its most important asset: its people. The change was no longer something happening *to* them, but something they were all doing *together*.

Key Insight: Authenticity and vulnerability can be a leader’s most powerful tools for breaking through cynicism and gaining emotional buy-in for a major change initiative.

Case Study 2: The Hospital System and a New Digital Initiative

The Challenge: Fear and Skepticism of New Technology

A large hospital system was preparing to implement a new, highly complex digital patient management system. While the technology promised to streamline processes and improve patient care, the project was met with significant skepticism from the nursing and medical staff. They were worried the new system would be clunky, time-consuming, and a barrier between them and their patients. The initial communication from IT leadership, which focused on technical specifications and efficiency gains, did little to alleviate these fears. It felt cold and disconnected from their daily reality.

The Emotional Communication Approach:

The project leadership changed tack. They stopped presenting the change as a technology project and started framing it as a human-centered one. They gathered a small group of highly respected nurses and doctors and asked them to share their own stories of why they chose to work in healthcare—the moments of connection with patients that mattered most. The leaders then used these stories, and the nurses’ and doctors’ own language, to communicate how the new system would give them back time from administrative tasks so they could focus more on the human connection they cherished. The message became: “This new technology isn’t a barrier; it’s a tool to help you do what you love more effectively.” The communication strategy included testimonials and videos from the pilot teams, sharing their emotional journey from skepticism to advocacy.

The Results:

By connecting the new technology to the emotional core of their work—caring for patients—the project team was able to build a bridge of understanding. The staff began to see the system not as a threat, but as an ally. The initial resistance faded, and early adopters became vocal champions, sharing their positive experiences with colleagues. The implementation was smoother, and the adoption rate was significantly higher than initially projected. The change was successfully communicated not as a technological upgrade, but as a way to honor and improve the most fundamental aspect of their jobs.

Key Insight: To drive change, connect new initiatives to the core values and emotional drivers that give people’s work meaning.

The Road Ahead: Building a Human-Centered Communication Strategy

As leaders of innovation, our job is not to simply implement change, but to guide people through it. The data, the business case, and the technical specifications are all necessary, but they are insufficient. We must be storytellers and empathetic listeners. We must connect the dots between the spreadsheet and the human experience. By doing so, we don’t just overcome resistance; we create a powerful, shared purpose that transforms an organization and unlocks its true potential. The most successful change initiatives will always be built not on the firm ground of logic, but on the enduring foundation of human connection.

Extra Extra: Futurology is not fortune telling. Futurists use a scientific approach to create their deliverables, but a methodology and tools like those in FutureHacking™ can empower anyone to engage in futurology themselves.

Image credit: Pexels

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