5 Ways to Create a Safe & Healthy Work Environment

In the past few months, the U.S. has faced waves of crises — health, economic, and social. It’s affected your daily life, your home, your work, and your community. Crises, even just one, can threaten how safe you, and everyone around you, feels. Unfortunately, feeling threatened limits access to your prefrontal cortex — the logical, creative, problem-solving part of your brain. That’s the part you need more than ever during times of stress and crisis!

If you’re in a leadership position, others expect you to be able to deal with threats and provide safety. As Simon Sinek says, we give our leaders extra benefits as an investment in our future safety. In exchange for those advantages, we expect them to take care of us when bad things happen. That’s why we despise “leaders” who use their power against us and only protect themselves.

David Rock wrote in the NeuroLeadership Journal there are five human needs that influence behavior in social settings. (I highly recommend reading the entire 10-page article for more info on how the brain responds to each and what to do about it.) As far as your human instincts are concerned, your very survival depends on meeting these needs. And as you can probably guess, all five are severely threatened by the current health, economic, and social crises we are facing, not only in our communities, but at…