Mini Post: An Update On The Comfort-Safety Model
Exploring and extending understanding around this model
Last time I introduced this model that positions where learning and impactful change exist when comparing comfort against psychological safety:
You might notice a change to the bottom left quadrant. One of the great outcomes of generative dialogue is the development of deeper understandings around ideas, contexts and models. I’ve been chatting about this model extensively in the past 2 weeks, and this post is an update to the new learning around the model.
Safe & Comfortable: This quadrant creates necessary stability and consolidation. We need the clarity and confidence of this zone to be able to stretch into learning risks.
Safe & Uncomfortable: This quadrant is the zone of learning, and works in elegant partnership with the blue zone to its left. Discomfort, while safe, optimises neurological mechanisms of attention and emotion to create new or deeper understandings and skills.
Unsafe & Comfortable: This ‘orange’ zone is all about maintaining emotional ‘comfort’ at the expense of challenge. This is a ‘let’s not rock the boat’ quadrant because of the lack of trust, or the presence of fear. Sharks are circling under the surface.
Unsafe & Uncomfortable: The combination of fear, or a lack of trust with discomfort results in the activation of survival circuits and emotions in the brain. This quadrant is where flight, flight and the need to be right live.
The Importance of Trust
It seems to me that a primary ‘lever’ that drives behaviour and culture is the presence of trust. Both of the top quadrants are necessary and powerful, yet the diminishing or absence of trust will drag people down to the zones of fear or avoidance.
The thing is that trust itself is a lag outcome. It appears after particular actions and behaviours are experienced consistently and over time. These ‘lead actions’ include:
Which of these would you suggest as contributing strongly to a sustainable learning culture? In other words, which actions/behaviours support the blue and purple zones?
Are there any you might question?
What are your thoughts?
Hi Andrew. I like this model a lot. I see a lot of connection to how we lead change in education. Schools want to be seen as innovative, but not so innovative as to move out of the comfort zone of the community. I like how you talk about a blend of the top two quadrants to move away from the complacency that we find in the bottom left.