Creativity Doesn’t Need Comfort. It Needs Permission.

Recently, a friend of mine called me in a panic. He had just been chewed out by his boss. From what he told me, it was pretty brutal. His boss told him he was working hard to keep him on the payroll, that he could go out and get someone who does what he does better and cheaper, and on and on. My friend was in a fit, and frankly, I don’t blame him. If what he was saying is true, his boss is a little callous and somewhat mean. I listened, and I talked my friend off the ledge.

Two days later, I got a text from the same friend, which said: “Talked with the boss, I’m safe.” I mentally sighed with relief. I know how hard the job market is, and my friend is very good at what he does, but he doesn’t toot his own horn, and he doesn’t make a show of doing his job; he just does it, and that’s it. But now he was safe, and I felt happy for him.

There’s nothing like starting the new year with fear of losing your job. The market is a nightmare right now, and beyond that, losing a job is hard on the head, heart, and soul. Especially if you like the job and, as with my friend, you thought you were doing fine. So, starting the new year in fear is never a good way to begin anything.

After I texted back and told him I was happy for him, I started to think about his text, especially this part: “I’m Safe.” A few questions ran through my brain; is anyone really safe? What does safe mean? Should being safe be enough? I mean, his boss said some pretty awful stuff; does he not mean that? Was he just in a mood? And does my friend really feel safe, or is he just waiting for the sword of Damocles to drop on him a few months from now? And this question was in the mix as well: should we be seeking safe or is safe the death of creativity?

Safe

Feeling safe is great. Feeling safe has many positive qualities; it calms the nervous system, reduces stress and anxiety, and allows people to express themselves with deep authenticity. This, in turn, allows for better connections with people and the welcome of trust, vulnerability, and more impactful communication. Feeling safe is a wonderful place to be.

Right now, I am still talking about my friend, and his relief at feeling safe after being chewed out by his boss. He wasn't feeling safe, and the first thing he said after talking to his boss again was that he was safe. I was happy, of course, but I worried; he had been in this spot before. He is constantly having small rows with his boss, and the boss always comes back with how easy it would be to let him go, how he isn’t doing the job well, and on and on. So, even though he feels safe now, I have no idea how long that will last.

Feeling safe in life, especially at work, is vital to helping employees do their best. Feeling safe also engenders feelings of peace and ease, trust and freedom to fail, because we all have to fail before we can do better. If you’re safe, the failures don’t worry you as much, and the work gets better because the authentic projection of the self is allowed and never judged. That’s safe. That makes people productive, happy, their minds are quiet, and they can dig deep, think outside of the box, and bring better results to the task at hand. The reality is, when you feel safe, you’re able to move outside your comfort zone and find more.

Unsafe

If you’re a boss, and I don’t mean in the colloquial manner, like he ate that burger like a boss, I mean, if you’re in charge of people and your style of work is to make people feel unsafe so that they do their best, you might want to rethink that. That style of leadership, fear-based or management by intimidation (MBI), may make the boss feel powerful, but what it does to employees is fill them with anxiety, fear, and constant pressure to perform. This leaves no room for creative failures, which lead to creative success because employees are thinking not about achieving or rising higher, but rather living in constant fear, so they simply avoid punishment.

Imagine that as a job description: you’ll do work, and the main part of your job is doing everything exactly right, staying in your lane, and most of all, avoiding punishment. What a nightmare. Avoiding punishment is not a job; it’s incarceration. And that is high stress, anxiety, which impacts mental and physical health. On top of that, when employees feel unsafe, their creativity is stifled, and they become reluctant to share ideas or step out of their comfort zone. And this impacts negatively on the work, as your employees will be preoccupied with fear and making sure everyone else is doing it right, or seeking out unfair treatment. Making employees feel unsafe is just bad for business all around.

The Double-Edged Blade

It’s obvious that feeling safe at work leads to greater productivity, stronger communication, and sharper focus. While feeling unsafe can bring on feelings of fear, lack of trust, and a lack of focus that can hold work up or cause major problems. But is that always true?

In some cases, especially where creatives are involved, feeling unsafe can be the key that unlocks some doors. The fear can motivate people to find solutions to problems, drive innovation through discomfort, and encourage risk-taking. All these factors can lead to great creative breakthroughs and imaginative innovations.

Ask any creative, and they will tell you that when they are hungry, physically and mentally, their creativity is in overdrive. Actors can look back at times when they were just starting out, paying their dues, and they usually see that as a time of hardship, but also a time of creative explosion. When you have to take any gig just to pay the rent, then you find yourself in situations you never would have imagined. But you take the gig to pay the rent, and also to be seen. You’re in a nothing to lose situation, so the actor usually throws themselves into projects.

I recall a period of time before I started working this job, when I was hustling as a writer. I was on freelance pages, writing up to 20 hours a day just to pay the rent. My work was varied and exciting. I went from writing someone’s short story to writing a vodka ad. Writing a product review to personal essays. I was stressed, but my output was amazing. I was pushed by the very real need to pay rent and fill the fridge. The need was real, and it kept me motivated. The variety of work kept me creative. I won’t say it was an ideal situation, but the fear of being homeless sure did motivate me to write.

So, there are times when the fear is good. I am thinking of another actor friend who was with me in the trenches, with me doing showcases, street theater, anything we could do to be seen and pay the bills. He was burned out, and then he got a world tour of a show, and things changed. He had a good, steady paycheck, insurance, and this steady gig in a great show. I caught up with him about a year after he started the tour. He had just spent a month in Italy, and I asked how it was going. His answer surprised me. He said he was bored. He was tired of the show and the travel, and then he regaled me with stories of what the actors were doing onstage. The little jokes they’d play on each other, the dropping of lines, staying out late, and doing matiness hung over. To me, his spark was gone. His drive to pay rent had been removed from his life, and now he was bored. He said as much to me. He started talking about old times and the things we’d do, the gigs we’d take just to pay the bills, and he was wistful, almost melancholy about it. He was safe now, no worries about money, but his craft was suffering.

In this case, the worry, the fear, the moths that flew out of our wallets when we opened them, those all fed into our drive and desire. We actually had it good as artists during that period. As people, we were struggling, but our creativity was on full blast. That’s a situation where fear was certainly a positive force on our work.

So what this tells us is that being safe is good and bad for your creativity. The weird thing is, you need to feel safe enough to be unsafe in your thinking and the choices you make as a creative person. Being vulnerable, especially with those who are sharing the same journey, can open up dialogue and lead to better and better work. When there is no safety net, you can either not cross the wire, or you can say, I have fallen further than this, I’m going to see if I can make it. Being unsafe can bring you new ideas and fresh perspectives.

The Common Factor

Now, you might be saying to me, Paul, "I just moved in with my girlfriend, and I’m learning things about her that don’t make me feel safe. And the only creative things I have developed are how to creatively make sure I am rarely at home.”

That may be a problem to discuss with a therapist or her parole officer. But that’s a different kind of unsafe. I have nothing to offer you here, apart from the number for a cheap moving company.

The common factor here is psychological safety.

When I was hitting the streets with my friend, sharing our last two bucks to buy a few slices of pizza, we always had a plan. If this doesn’t work out in another six months, we’ll go to my uncle's summer retreat and wait tables, sleep in cabins, and make some serious money to live on. That was always an option, so psychologically, we had a safety net. Psychologically, we supported each other and cheered each other on. We kept going because we found safety in each other.

If we look at the business world and think about the boss who rules through fear, we can see that it won’t ever work out to his liking because he has never set up psychological safe spaces. If that type of safety net is there, if you're psychologically sure that you have the freedom to fail and that you’re doing more than just avoiding punishment, then you can have some fear in you, and you’ll still be free in your creativity. But if the boss isn’t into making you psychologically safe, then you’re just going to have to live with fear and do the best you can.

Building Psychological Safety

The building of a psychologically safe workplace falls directly on those who are in charge. Everything comes from the top, and those at the top set the tone for the office. It might be difficult for those top folks to get on board, since creating a safe space takes time and attention.

The main few things the boss needs to do, or you need to do if you’re the boss, is take a step back, breath and put yourself in their place. How would you feel if your primary directive was to avoid punishment? Probably not good and certainly not productive.

Building this psychologically safe space comes down to four pillars: inclusion, learner, contributor, and challenger safety. Now these pillars are actually laid out by Timothy Clark. Basically, the idea is to ensure that everyone feels included and welcome to be included, not just cause we’re doing this thing and everyone has to be there. You want to include everyone and make sure they know you’re happy to include them.

Learner safety is all about being able to make mistakes and have those mistakes seen as a growth opportunity. As my friend, whose boss chewed him out, shows, he never feels he can make a mistake without getting canned. The freedom to make mistakes is vital in any situation for trust and growth to flourish.

Contributor safety hinges on hearing everyone, allowing people to express themselves and contribute without fear of being mocked, rejected outright, or laughed at. No one is going to give their ideas freely and fully if there are dudes in the corner snickering at every word that is spoken. Let people have their voice.

And finally, challenger safety. What happens if your boss is petty and small, and every idea people have, he takes as his own? And, if you call him on that, you get punished in some way. This also means the freedom to challenge the status quo without fear of repercussions or passive-aggressive punishment from the boss.

If these four pillars are strong, you have yourself a psychologically safe work environment, and you’re more likely not just to survive but to thrive.

The Takeaway

Most people say they want to feel safe at work. What they usually mean is they don’t want to feel threatened, humiliated, or one bad moment away from being erased. That’s reasonable. No one does their best work in survival mode.

But safety isn’t comfort. And it isn’t certainty.

Creativity doesn’t need comfort. It needs permission. Permission to try something that might not work. Permission to fail without being reduced to the failure, and to speak up without calculating the political cost of every sentence.

That kind of permission only exists in psychologically safe environments. Not easy ones. Not indulgent ones. Ones where effort is visible, intent is assumed, and mistakes are treated as part of the work rather than evidence of incompetence.

At ThoughtLab, we see this difference all the time. The teams and brands that do the most interesting, effective work aren’t the ones insulated from pressure. They’re the ones protected from fear. They know the ground won’t disappear beneath them if they take a swing.

The mistake leaders make is believing fear creates urgency and safety creates laziness. In reality, fear creates avoidance. Safety creates motion.

So the goal isn’t to make work feel easy. It’s to make risk survivable, trust real, and contribution possible. When that’s in place, people don’t need to be scared into doing great work.

They choose to.