Safety Isn't Comfort
I used to think my job as a leader was to make things smooth.
Safe. Harmonious. Comfortable.
I was wrong.
What makes us effective in one context can become a liability in another. For me, that’s been true with empathy and conflict resolution. I have a strong ability to pick up on subtle social cues and anticipate friction. And when I sense conflict, I feel an instinctive need to resolve it.
That instinct helped me build collaborative teams. It also got in my way.
When Harmony Backfires
Early on, I gravitated toward leadership principles that promised harmony:
Psychological safety
Blameless retrospectives
Protect your team
The No Asshole Rule
They reinforced what I felt deep down: good leadership should keep things safe, smooth, and free of unnecessary tension. So I leaned in. I created safe spaces. I shielded my teams. I built warm, supportive environments.
And I made some critical mistakes.
We avoided necessary conflict. We operated in silos. We created a bubble of comfort that kept us from engaging fully with the hard realities around us. My teams weren’t growing as fast as they could have—not because they lacked capability, but because they weren’t being stretched.
Safety Isn't Comfort
Growth requires stress.
It’s a fundamental leadership lesson—one I learned the hard way.
Muscles, bones, minds, and organizations all grow through tolerable, managed stress. And it’s our job as leaders not just to create safety, but to foster the right kind of stress—the kind that leads to growth.
That’s when I realized I had misunderstood what those principles were for.
They weren’t the destination.
They were the gear.
Used well, they don’t help us avoid danger—they help us face it.
Psychological safety → Make it safe to say dangerous things.
Blameless retrospectives → Analyze the system objectively so we can face emotionally tricky problems with clear eyes.
Protect your team → Shield them from distractions so they can focus on the real challenges that move the business.
The No Asshole Rule → Don’t tolerate people who create pointless discomfort, because real discomfort takes energy to handle.
These tools don’t exist to make things easy. They exist to make it possible to do hard things well: to grow, to adapt, to innovate.
The Discomfort Toolkit
The hardest conversations in an organization aren’t about product direction or technical choices. They’re about flawed strategies, broken processes, hiring mistakes, and personal missteps. They’re about surfacing buried tension, reconciling opposing viewpoints, and rethinking long-held assumptions.
What makes these moments so difficult is that they challenge our competence, our judgment—and sometimes, our sense of identity.
So how do we build the muscle to step into that kind of danger?
Here’s what I’ve learned about creating productive discomfort:
Start with facts. In both public and private discussions, begin with shared, observable truths. Get grounded before interpreting.
Critique the system first. When something goes wrong, talk first about how the system, process, or environment contributed to the outcome. This reduces defensiveness and increases learning.
Critique people privately, with empathy. When individual feedback is necessary, deliver it directly—but do it with care, clarity, and in the right setting.
Know your own defaults, and model better. If you tend to avoid conflict, lean into it. If you’re blunt, practice softness. Seek out hard feedback yourself. Your team is always watching.
Closing Thoughts
In climbing, you don’t rely on gear to make the mountain easier. You rely on it to make hard routes survivable.
The same is true in leadership. Our tools—psychological safety, feedback norms, personal reflection—don’t make the work less demanding. They make it safer to do the hard, growth-producing stuff.
Self-awareness—of ourselves and each other—is another form of safety equipment. It gives us the footing to have real conversations, the harness to take a fall and recover, and the confidence to keep ascending together.
I’ve worked on teams that surged ahead by tackling hard problems—and on teams that stagnated because they avoided them. No system is perfect, and no leader is either. But the strongest teams aren’t the ones that sidestep difficulty.
They’re the ones that step into it—together.
Where do you see unnecessary comfort holding your teams back? What safety practices allow you to take meaningful risks?
I’d love to hear what you’ve learned.
