I almost quit on the night my book was due.

I’m a people-pleaser, and I was afraid the book wasn’t good enough to please everyone. Which is silly, of course—even pizza can’t do that. But still. A friend tried to reassure me with: Prove your fans right, not your critics wrong. Wise words. Wish I could have heard them. But the impulse not to turn it in came crashing through: Better to hide it than risk it—stay safe.

That’s the danger of safety: it disguises itself as protection when it’s really suffocation.

Comfort isn’t safety

We all know safety at work matters. Some forms aren’t negotiable: freedom from harassment, discrimination, and harm. But too often, organizations confuse comfort with safety.

When I was on project teams at IDEO, the best work I saw wasn’t born of comfort. Comfort is when everyone nods along to fit in. Comfort is polite. Comfort feeds consensus. 

Breakthroughs came from friction—between perspectives, priorities, and people. Innovations emerged from stepping into what I call “safe danger”: the emotional space where people feel secure enough to risk leaving security behind, but still stretched enough to grow. Trust isn’t built by eliminating risk. It’s built by surviving it together. Safe danger gives us the space to realize our comfort zones aren’t keeping us safe—they’re keeping us small.

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What “safe danger” looks like

Think about the best conversation you’ve had in the past year. Chances are, it wasn’t about the weather or last night’s game. It was about something real—something that asked a little more of you, that felt vulnerable, that pushed past the surface. That’s safe danger in action.

For teams at work, safe danger helps create the conditions where people can bring up the unspoken, admit what they don’t know, or share the idea that feels a little wild. It helps build a culture where tension isn’t avoided, but is used as fuel. It helps build trust.

Safe danger is what turns a group of smart people into a team that can actually change something.

Why it matters now

Predictability is the new religion. Our tools and systems optimize uncertainty out of existence. Even AI, for all its utility, is designed to converge on best practices—to strip away ambiguity. But the problems we face—at work and in the world, from climate to culture—demand something messier: creativity, dissent, emotional risk. They demand divergence. And divergence is a deeply human skill.

Teams that cultivate safe danger will have a secret advantage. They’ll practice saying the unsayable and surfacing the half-formed. They’ll create the psychological space for weird, urgent, or even contradictory ideas to grow. In a world of algorithmic certainty, that is the only real insurance against irrelevance.

The Safe Danger toolkit (AKA team building doesn’t need to suck)

That’s why I wrote this book, Safe Danger. It’s a set of tools—playful, surprising, deceptively simple activities that give people a taste of what trust, connection, vulnerability, and purpose can feel like at work. It draws on my experiences at IDEO on project teams and as well as learnings gleaned from running Make Believe Works—my current team-building company. 

Too often, organizations treat team building as a fun nice-to-have. (Think role-play skits or mini-golf.) But “fun” isn’t enough by itself to make a difference. I treat fun like oven mitts—a safe way to handle dangerous material. Because if you’re going to take time away from work or family, it has to be worth it. Add a little safe danger, and team-building stops being a diversion. It becomes a delivery system for connection. Done right, it’s infrastructure. Done right, it’s how teams practice the traits leaders say they want most: trust, collaboration, creativity, and resilience. 

Those behaviors don’t appear in a crisis just because they’re listed on page 24 of the employee handbook. They appear when people have rehearsed them—in low-stakes moments that make risk feel safe, and safety feel alive.

Done right, team building isn’t a perk—it’s practice. 

Safe danger is personal

Writing this book forced me to practice what I preach. After a year of work, as I formatted the final manuscript an hour before the midnight deadline, the self-doubt I thought I’d outgrown decades ago came roaring back with shocking force: Better to walk away rather than risk something some people might not appreciate. 

Turns out, that was the moment the book was written for—a final reminder that the things we most fear sharing are often the very things that make us come alive. To stretch beyond your comfort zone means risking something real—your pride, your comfort, your certainty. And in doing so, you open the door to growth.

So I handed it in. And now Safe Danger is in the world. Some people will love it, others might not. Just like deep dish vs. thin crust.

Ben Swire, a self-described “creative platypus” with wide-ranging interests spanning psychology, philosophy, film, physics, and art, is the co-founder of Make Believe Works, a team-building company dedicated to building emotional wellness through creativity, community, and play. He’s also a former IDEOer and the author of the new book Safe Danger: An Unexpected Method for Sparking Connection, Finding Purpose, and Inspiring Innovation.