Creating a Safe Environment for Development - Aug 2009

As a leader, you want to ensure that you act in trustworthy ways.

Ensuring that you do not share confidences with others is one way to create a safe environment. You also want to create a safe environment where you challenge others to succeed.

You do not want to challenge too much and set others up to fail. You want to match challenge with what you know of the person and ask employees for their input regarding assignments.

You will want to manage your emotions ensuring that you are a calm professional not a volcano of negative emotions that could erupt on others.

Another way to provide a safe environment for development is to see others as having good intentions, then helping them course correct behavior when performance needs improving.