Yesterday in a client session, I asked an executive to remember a time he felt safe as a child.
He paused.
“I can’t think of any.”
His story isn’t unusual.
A military family. Constant moves. Then boarding school.
Childhood, for him — and for so many leaders I work with — was absent of safety.
As we worked together, he found a place inside himself that did feel safe. He sat with it for a moment and said:
“Wow… I didn’t realise I’d been in fight or flight my whole life.”
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This is a pattern I’ve seen countless times.
The biographies of well-known ex-boarders often echo the same experiences:
➡️ Bear Grylls recalling how an older boy beat him until he thought his shoulder would snap.
➡️ Boris Johnson describing the “physical cruelty inflicted by the faculty” at his school.
➡️ Tony Blair running away from Fettes, trying to leave the country by boarding a plane.
When childhood lacks safety, leadership often follows the same blueprint.
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Harvard’s Amy Edmondson defines psychological safety as “a shared belief, held by members of a team, that the group is a safe place for taking risks.”
In those environments, creativity, innovation, and loyalty flourish.
But here’s the challenge:
➡️ If leaders have never felt safe themselves, they can unconsciously resist creating safety for others.
➡️ It feels alien. Wrong. Uncomfortable.
I’ve heard this repeatedly from fellow coaches — CEOs wanting their teams to change, but unwilling to do the work themselves.
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The truth is this:
✅ We can’t build psychologically safe companies without first helping leaders feel safe.
In over 5,000 hours of one-to-one work with leaders and ex-boarders, I’ve seen that this is possible.
It doesn’t have to take years. But it does take courage to step across that threshold.
And when leaders do…
They and their companies flourish.
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What’s your experience of psychological safety at work?
Have you ever worked somewhere it was truly present?
#LeadershipDevelopment #PsychologicalSafety #CompassionateLeadership #BoardingSchoolImpact #ExecutiveCoaching #WorkplaceCulture #EmotionalIntelligence #TraumaInformedLeadership #FutureOfWork
