Leaders, let’s get uncomfortable

Last week I wrote about how comfort and psychological safety differ, and how safe spaces and cultures are not always comfortable.I’ve been reflecting on Veronica Reed’s restack of that last post, including this comment:

“… I’m not “nice,” I don’t do the fake harmony thing and I like to have honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversations… So I was labelled negative for seeing and calling out the patterns everybody else was quite happy blissfully ignoring cause they were “nice”. I think Leaders have a responsibility to get comfortable with discomfort and to invite rather than avoid difficult conversations (otherwise, in my mind, you’re not a leader. You’re just somebody who plays the politics in a dysfunctional system).”

This version of niceness has never felt very nice to me.

The conversation on Substack around comfort over the last few months has made me think a lot more about both comfort and safety and what it means to have safe spaces. Safety is required for genuine comfort, but comfort is not required for safety. They are different, and should be treated differently.

According to what we see on social media, self-care is full of surface level comforts. Buy a luxury face mask, a scented candle, a fluffy blanket, and a fancy cupcake and you’re set. I love all of these things, and do find comfort in them. But they mean nothing if you’re eating that cupcake and lighting that candle in a space where you don’t feel safe. Comfort doesn’t create safety.

Read the full article at The Trauma-informed Leader on Substack.

The Trauma-informed Leader on Substack