Safety and trust in leadership

Few things hold an organisation back as much as a sense of mistrust and insecurity. It undermines collaboration and drains energy. But it also costs money, in absenteeism, in turnover, in indecision. It rarely shows up on the balance sheet, but every HR manager recognises it.

Safety and trust are often mentioned in the same breath, yet they are two fundamentally different things. If you think you are building trust while you are actually only setting boundaries, you are missing something essential. And if you confuse safety with being liked, you lose your credibility.

But where do you start if you want to address this? Almost always with leadership.

What do we mean by safety?

Safety is, first and foremost, a feeling. It has everything to do with the nervous system. With regulation. With whether you can fully relax.

Our nervous system constantly scans the environment: is it safe here? Can I be myself? Am I allowed to make a mistake without being punished for it? That scan happens in an instant, largely outside our awareness. A sense of safety determines whether people are open to collaboration.
This response is often shaped by a person's history. Those who have known a safe place, physically and emotionally, can usually tolerate more. Those who have not are more alert.

This means that safety in an organisation is never separate from the people who work there and what they bring with them. You can build the safest work environment imaginable, yet every person will filter that environment through their own history.

Example: An employee experienced in a previous job that openness was punished. It affected him deeply. Now, in a new organisation with a manager who welcomes feedback, he still says little in meetings. I had the privilege of working with him. What we discovered went further back than that previous job. The pattern of keeping himself small, of first sensing what was needed before speaking up, had a longer history. Simply seeing it was enough to create space.

Reflection question: What does your body do when you walk into a meeting where the atmosphere is tense?

What do we mean by trust?

Trust is a feeling, just like safety. You either feel it or you don't. But unlike safety, trust is primarily fed by behaviour by whether words and actions align, and whether body language and energy confirm this. We call this congruence.

You cannot ask for trust. You cannot force it with a team-building day or an inspiring speech. Trust grows slowly through repetition, through doing what you say, through being honest even when it is uncomfortable.

From a systemic perspective, trust is always coloured by what someone has experienced before. If trust has been damaged, in a team, with a manager, or perhaps in a previous work environment, it can continue to operate beneath the surface.

Example: A manager announced in a team meeting that they would communicate more transparently about decisions going forward. The first time a reorganisation came around, the team heard about it through the grapevine. Not from her. The atmosphere changed. People started talking. One moment of incongruence had carried more weight than months of good leadership. Trust is built slowly and lost in an instant.

Reflection question: When did you last say something you did not follow through on and what did that do to your team?

Where does the confusion lie?

Where safety feels abstract, you cannot measure it, trust seems more tangible. You can link it to behaviour.

As a result, trust is often used as a solution to a safety problem. A team is not functioning well? Let us work on team trust. Plan a team day, do a trust exercise, make agreements. But if the underlying insecurity is not addressed, the fear of being held accountable, the lack of clarity about roles, the tension that is not named, then building trust only helps to a limited extent.

The relationship between the two is more nuanced than a strict sequence. Safety is the foundation on which trust grows most easily. But they also reinforce each other, trust can in turn create safety. It is a dynamic interplay: a positive spiral when things are going well, a negative one when they get stuck.

What safety and trust are not

Safety is not the same as comfort. A safe environment is not one without tension, conflict or difficult conversations. On the contrary it is precisely in a safe environment that those conversations can take place. People dare to say what they think, even when it is uncomfortable.

Trust is not the same as being liked. If as a leader you always say yes, never confront and primarily maintain harmony, you may be appreciated but not necessarily trusted. Trust requires honesty. It requires the willingness to have an uncomfortable conversation.

And safety is certainly not something you only give to others. It starts with yourself.

The physical body of the leader

This is the most underestimated layer in leadership and at the same time the most determining one.

When you as a leader do not feel safe, you unconsciously create an environment that reflects that. Your nervous system sets the tone. What you as a leader can tolerate becomes the norm. What you cannot contain is avoided by you and by your team.

When you are under pressure, what does your body do? Does your throat tighten? Do you speak faster or louder? Do you make yourself smaller or larger? Do you become quickly unreasonable or do you shut down? Those signals tell you more about your own sense of safety than any 360-degree feedback ever could.

Example: I worked with a leader who described himself as calm and stable. His team experienced him differently as distant and hard to read. His door was always open. But he had never checked whether his team members actually felt safe crossing that threshold. Through the coaching process he discovered that under pressure he would hold his breath and withdraw. In a constellation, it became visible where that movement came from. It had once been the safest option. Now it was keeping him at a distance from his team. Feeling was new to him. He became aware not only of his own body, but also began to read his team members better. He clearly started to enjoy it. And the threshold gradually became lower for his team.

Reflection question: What do you prefer to avoid and how do you notice that?

My personal experience

I recognise this in myself. When things got complicated in the past, in a conflict, for example, I would often shut down. That was what I had learned to do; it felt like the safest option. It frequently led to migraine. As if my body saw that as the only way out.

In my own systemic exploration I came into contact with my own story. With the origin of my alertness and what it had once protected. With support, I was able to make space for what I was holding on to and what I was avoiding.

These days I can stand my ground in most situations without difficulty, and speak up when it feels necessary, even when tension is present. And the greatest gift: the migraine has stopped.

Safety lives in the system, not only in the leader

This is often overlooked. Safety and trust are not just about individuals. They live in the system, in the group, in the unwritten rules of a team, in the loyalties that operate and in the history of an organisation.

What you often see is that after reorganisations, after the departure of beloved or narcissistic leaders, or after periods of high pressure or internal conflict, something lingers in the system. A kind of alertness. A collective memory of insecurity that does not disappear with a new structure or a team day.

In those cases, more is needed. The first step is to see what is there. To acknowledge what has been. Only then can safety begin to emerge.

Bèta's, engineers & intercultural coaching

An organisation is not a family, but it is human work

An organisation has a task structure, with a focus on a shared goal. That is fundamentally different from a family system, where love is the binding force.

But it is people who carry out those tasks. Because of the goal-oriented nature of organisations, this human dimension is sometimes overlooked. There is an agenda. But when this aspect is consistently undervalued, it will sooner or later result in absenteeism, conflict or teams that get stuck.

Looking at organisations systemically does not mean treating the organisation like a family. It means being aware of what people bring with them, simply because it has a fundamental influence on achieving success.

Where do you start?

Safety does not begin with your team, it begins with yourself.

The most effective intervention a leader can make is to examine what is happening within themselves. What can you tolerate under pressure? What do you avoid and why? Where does your body close down when things get uncomfortable?

Learn to know your nervous system as an ally rather than something to be managed. Because only when you know how you react can you make conscious choices. Coaching can help you see what you cannot see yourself.

Be congruent. Let your words and actions align, even when that is uncomfortable. Create space for mistakes by being the first to admit when you have made one. Name tension rather than ignoring it.
And verify your assumptions. What you experience as safe may not be what the other person feels. Ask further. 'How is this for you?' is one of the most powerful questions a leader can ask. And then let the other person speak.

Then look at the system. What has this team been through? What still hangs in the air? Acknowledge it, without staying stuck in it. A coach or guide can help give that history a place, so that it no longer sets the tone unconsciously.

Conclusion

Safety and trust are important themes in any organisation, perhaps the most important. They are the foundation on which everything rests.

What I see is that these themes are often underestimated. Structures are built in the hope that the feeling will follow. Or trust is worked on while the foundation is not yet stable.

But the greatest pitfall is thinking that it is about others. Safety and trust begin with you as a leader. How safe do you feel in yourself? What can you tolerate? What do you avoid and why?

These questions are a continuous invitation. Because only a leader who can read their own nervous system can give others the space to grow.

Bèta's, engineers & interculturele coaching