5 Minutes on Safe Spaces VS Brave Spaces

You’ve likely heard of creating safe spaces. This can seem cutesy or vague, but what it really means is creating psychological safety among team members to say what they really think and feel.

But what happens when our safe space practices are too focused on keeping everyone comfortable? Why do we need brave spaces rather than safe spaces?

Let’s dig into the difference between psychological safety and comfort, and explore the purpose of a brave space.

With psychological safety ALL team members are more likely to participate, honestly express themselves, and engage in meaningful conflicts or difficult conversations.

Afterall, teams are systems with invisible dynamics.

These dynamics can be influenced by interpersonal relationships, personalities, hierarchy, power, race, gender, and so much more. This is sometimes called "relationship system intelligence."

And it’s true, a great way to unearth and manage those invisible dynamics is with psychological safety.

But sometimes safe spaces and psychological safety can be inaccurately equated with comfort. Uh oh.

Comfort is not what we’re after. Comfort does not equal psychological safety.

When we seek to keep everyone comfortable, we can actually end up stifling critical voices and avoiding tough conversations.

This can be a real pitfall when creating safe spaces in our everyday work, and especially our DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) work.

It’s pretty easy to see the ways White Privilege might influence a safe space and who it is safe for.

That’s why I was so happy a training participant introduced me to the concept of brave spaces.

A brave space ensures psychological safety for everyone, but it does not focus on comfort. In fact, it needs to be uncomfortable from time to time.

Think of a team you lead or participate in and ask yourself the question Arao and Clemens explore in the article linked below:

Has creating a safe space actually hindered your efforts towards honest and challenging conversations?

Is your team ready to explore creating a brave space?

Want a deeper dive into brave spaces?

Check out this article “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces. A New Way to Frame Dialogue Around Diversity and Social Justice,” HERE. Or read about creating a brave space HERE.