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Book review: Safe Enough to Soar

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Julio Biason 4 years ago
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title = "Safe Enough to Soar - Fred Miller, Judith Kat"
date = 2021-03-29
[taxonomies]
tags = ["reviews", "books", "books:2021", "team building", "communication",
"stars:1", "fred miller", "judith kat"]
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[GoodReads Summary](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38508128-safe-enough-to-soar):
Some organizations pay a great deal of attention to ensuring the physical
safety of their team members, but do the team members feel safe enough to speak
up and raise tough concerns or share bold and still-in-formation ideas? In this
book, bestselling authors and inclusion experts Frederick A. Miller and Judith
H. Katz introduce the concept of "interaction safety" and demonstrate how it
can help create a work environment of trust, inclusion, and collaboration.
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{{ stars(stars=1) }}
Don't get me wrong, I do understand where the book is aiming for -- giving
people a voice, no matter what -- but I believe it aged badly, mostly due the
way culture changed. Also, the analogies/anecdotes are a bit too far fetched,
which actually hide the real purpose of "interaction safety".
So, what it is this about: This is, basically, "give everyone a voice, and let
them exercise it". All good, I totally agree with this, and a good leadership
should always worry about it.
But what isn't specified -- and what I meant by the way the culture change --
is that it misses the point that people will talk to each other more things
that just work. How do you give a voice to someone that denies the holocaust?
Should you give a chance to someone that keeps bringing "election fraud" in
every possible instance? Those are part of a culture shift, in which we started
to being more stuff into work. Sure, it makes totally sense to get new input on
work subjects, but that would require a good culture inside the company to
leave controversial statements *outside work* outside, and the book doesn't
cover that (and I'm all in for controversial statements about work itself).
Also, it lacks some conflict resolution: What if I give a voice to someone,
explain the problem with their idea, but they can't concede that it doesn't
make sense? Would that person feel fine with it? How do you disarm the possible
bomb when constant suggestions are dropped for one reason or the other?
The analogies are also a bad point of the book. Since the authors describe four
levels of "interaction safety" in the book, they put a little story for the
level. And, obviously, the first level is pretty bad, while the fourth one is
all marvelous and people love their work for that. And it gets tiring very
early seeing "interaction safety" instead of "conversations" or something like
it.
Another problem: The lack of concrete points on how to act. Sure, there are
lists like "A company in X level would have this" which you can infer some
actions, but a list of "start writing X down", "when you realize comments that
sound racist, call the person to explain why they shouldn't say it, instead of
calling them out in public" -- which **is** a real thing people should do
to provide safety to the group -- would be a lot more helpful than anything.
Again, I'm not against the aim of the book, I just dislike the way it is
presented.
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