To fully leverage diversity we must foster an environment where people feel safe to show up authentically and give 100% of themselves.  Safe Enough to Soar, skillfully outlined four levels of Interaction Safety and provides a pragmatic process that will help move from D&I strategy to activation.” 

Safe Enough to Soar offers essential, practical tools on how to be most effective at work and create strong organizations. It is also a beautiful guide to social change—that when we include the voices and strengths of all, we create a more just world.

Brave. Courageous. Willing to do what it takes to trust. These are words from Safe Enough to Soar that come to mind as I reflect on the levels of interaction safety that Judith and Fred offer us as a way to build this safety – to get to Level 1. Just yesterday in a diversity/equity/and inclusion session it became evident that interaction safety was not set and it created uproar and dysfunction. We sorted through it and good learning occurred by attendees to take back to their workplace, but we would have made even more progress if interaction safety at Level 1 was already in place. Safe Enough to Soar is much needed in today’s times. I know that for sure!

Safe Enough to Soar is written to address a topic never before discussed. Designed for organizational leaders, this book will help you learn how to create safety for employees in the marketplace.

This is a brilliant and desperately needed way to understand how social systems—organizations and even families—create the space for the freedom and self expression that we all need to thrive. It is clear that the world is making progress, but there is a lot farther to go. Thanks to Fred and Judith for bringing this out. It's now up to all of us to make it happen.

Interaction safety has never been more critical for the survival of today’s organizations. Judith and Fred capture the most important elements for creating a culture of interaction safety that lead to productive, agile, and innovative organizations.

Whether you are leading an effort or an employee wanting to contribute—​​​​​​​Safe Enough to Soar is a must read. Judith and Fred give critical building blocks for creating a culture of interaction safety that lead to highly productive, innovative, and collaborative organizations.

Lincoln brilliantly framed the question which the best leaders try to answer daily. How do organisations best bring out “the better angels of our nature"? This book provides a fresh, compelling answer. "Safety" in organisational culture can unleash capabilities which no organisation can afford to not encourage in the new world of work.

How can individuals and organizations make it safe enough to realize their full potential?  Fred and Judith provide a compelling response that deconstructs the mindsets that ultimately create a new way of being that has the potential to transform organizations. Safe Enough to Soar is the latest and most compelling response from two key thought leaders to contemporary challenges facing client systems.

A ground-breaking book for those aspiring to be inclusive leaders and team members. 

A sense of belonging cannot be achieved without creating a safe environment for the expression diverse perspectives and interaction with those who bring counterpoints. Fred and Judith’s book bring these points home clearly and insightfully!

Understand how to recognize whether an organization’s environment fosters a lack of safety exists, how it might be unconsciously perpetuated by an organization’s culture, and how it is embodied by the behavior of individuals is where the real value of your book lies.   

The book encouraged me to look at both my own behaviors and experiences, and my firm’s culture. It broadened my perspective by encouraging me to see them through a range of prisms and in the process helped me to understand how even a great culture can inadvertently create blockages to safe interactions. It has been humbling.

As a long-tenured organizational leader, experience has shown me that high individual and team performance is absolutely predicated on a safe work environment. Safe Enough to Soar provides a very practical approach with simple language that we can apply each day to create safety for ourselves and with our teams so we can do our best work together. 

This book couldn’t come at a better time, the pace and size of change we are all facing today is a clear and present danger distracting us from our best selves.

A quick read that is well worth your time. Filled with practical, straightforward advice that can help your organization achieve its full potential by building trust, inclusion and collaboration throughout.

If you’re not thinking about interaction safety in your organization, you’re missing an opportunity to engage your people and to create an inclusive environment where the best thinking is applied.

The bad news: this book may awaken you to the low state of interactive safety in your organization. The good news: you’re provided with tools on how to create a “Level 4” organization where safety is a way of life. Where inclusion is the how and where people and ideas soar.

Achieving interaction safety is not easy; Miller and Katz's straightforward and clear explanations of the four levels and how we can move across them make interaction safety, and especially its fourth and optimal level—Way of Life—less utopian and more achievable.

The higher the level of interaction safety, the easier it is for employees to bring their full attention and efforts to contributing to the organization – they are not distracted by the energy distortion of others dysfunctional behaviors or focused on trying to detect unwritten rules, avoid fear of embarrassment or punishment, and fearing personal safety leading to self-doubt or leaving the organization. Using cases studies with characters that the reader follows through the levels of interaction safety assists the reader in understanding how each level impacts the personas and the reader can translate that impact to their own personal needs.

…managers struggle with patience to allow groups to work through issues and manage their own conflicts in a respectful way. Using cases studies with characters that the reader follows through the levels of interaction safety assists the reader in understanding how each level impacts the personas and the reader can translate that impact to their own personal needs.

This book is a great resource for any organization seeking to tap into the wisdom of their employees and make it safe enough for them to soar!

Miller and Katz have done it again. Creating this “safety” helps jumpstart needed change in an organization, unleashing the path to increased engagement, retention of top talent, and strong business performance.

Safe Enough to Soar reminds us of the power of leadership when that power is used to create a safe and inclusive environment.

Change isn’t easy, especially in government. I can attest to that. But having a simple guide to begin the change is imperative to the future of government at any level. If we want our communities to be Safe Enough to Soar the workforce that builds and maintains that community must feel that as well.

This book gets to the heart of what it means to be safe at work.

As I read this book, the application of the 4 Keys and the Conscious Actions for Inclusion, the ‘when and where’ that for me was somewhat elusive up to now, opens like a treasure map that I didn’t know how to unroll before.

Safe Enough to Soar provides a clear and inspiring roadmap to a fundamental element for creating inclusion at work and giving all of us the space to be ourselves, to bring out our best, and to make our unique and full contributions: the safety of our interactions.

Fred and Judith have done it again! From Be Big to Opening Doors and now Safe Enough to Soar, they have been masters of describing what it takes to create workplaces worthy of our humanity.

When interaction safety is present, conflict doesn't go away—it takes on a different shape and form, one in which conflict and disagreements are not seen as win-lose but an opportunity for growth and learning.

Trust. Inclusion. Collaboration. Beyond buzzwords, Fred and Judith outline a process by which organizations can tap into employees’ best efforts and thinking. Safe Enough to Soar is an invitation for everyone to create environments at work that foster real engagement and contribution.

The book addresses the often-heard lament in organizations about not knowing how to deal with the complexities of creating environments where people can thrive and contribute their talents to the fullest.  Perhaps because we have so few lived examples of inclusive organizations, when we attempt to create new ways of working together we often default to the well-known practices of exclusion and suppression of different voices.  It is a paradox with significant, practical consequences—leaders repeatedly express their commitment to deep organizational transformation and yet these same leaders can be perpetuating the exclusive practices that keep their organization stuck in traditional communication patterns and leadership behavior.  In other words, they unconsciously prevent the kind of innovation and creativity that they most desperately need.  Your model makes this complexity more direct and accessible to wider audiences.  By providing specific, actionable steps individuals and leaders can take to create more interaction safety, you lay a user-friendly roadmap that the committed traveler can follow to learn and grow themselves and their organizations.

Many have decried the tendency for organizations to encourage difficult conversations or robust dialogue without due regard for the lack of interaction safety in those conversations. I have not come across many books that address this topic with such clarity like Fred and Judith have done. I am particularly drawn to their definition that interaction safety includes not only the feelings of safety to share best ideas but their ‘still in formation ideas’. It is only when we feel free to speak that we can share ideas that are still in formation - where we do not feel judged and have accepted that everyone can be wrong at times. Interaction safety leads to rich dialogue and creative solutions to problems.

Excellent addition to the work of creating inclusive workplaces. Well done!!

Miller and Katz have elevated SAFETY as a key condition in creating inclusive cultures in their model of interaction safety.  Safety is often in the eyes of the beholder. The four levels of safety described in Safe Enough to Soar: Accelerating Trust, Inclusion, and Collaboration in the workplace are critical for people to explore, examine and enact, not only how safe they feel, but also how they contribute to creating a culture of safety for others. Miller and Katz offer concrete examples to make cultures that are more than Safe Enough to SOAR!

In today’s challenging and ever-changing work environments, interaction safety is crucial for individuals and organizations to reach their full potential and soar. Fred and Judith provide a visionary and practical guide for how to achieve it as a ‘way of life’.

Safe Enough to Soar seamlessly weaves together complex concepts of systems thinking, the business case for culture change, and neuroscience in a simple and engaging yet highly effective format. I love the use of authentic stories of real people and situations to illustrate the key points, the 4 levels of interaction safety, and the checklists for individuals and managers. I will definitely utilize and recommend this memorable and practical resource with my clients.

As a woman business founder and owner I know firsthand what it means to be able to speak out and speak up. As a business leader I recognize that creating an environment that supports every individual to be their best self, to contribute fully and learn openly from others is a model not only for our companies but for our society as well.