Don’t confuse comfort for safety.

To borrow from my friend Caleb Dean, feeling safe should be a “gimme” in team dynamics. Unfortunately, it rarely is — egos flare, underlying sexism bubbles up, or people simply don’t have good models of how to interact appropriately in group settings. I agree with Caleb’s recent post, inspired by the NYT Magazine’s Work Issue. There are a host of hard-to-put-your-finger-on factors of why some teams succeed and others are downright painful.

A story of a manager at Google described a dramatic shift in “psychological safety” of his team when he revealed that he had stage 4 cancer. The shift occurred when the leader allowed himself to be vulnerable, creating a palpable change in the group.

So, yeah…while comfort is great, make sure your team feels safe first.

UPDATE: I changed the title of this post to make it clearer Caleb wrote “Comfort≠Safety.” I just love it as a concept.