When Safety Becomes Your Best Strategy
Ann du Plessis
Psychological Safety Expert | Helping Companies Build High-Performing Teams Through Safety,Trust & Communication | Reducing Staff Turnover, Increasing Innovation | Self-Defense & Anti-Bullying Specialist | Team Building
You can feel it in the tension in meetings. The half-hearted yeses. The kids who suddenly stop talking. The leaders who keep trying to “motivate” a team that’s already burnt out.
2025 was supposed to be the year we found our rhythm: hybrid work finally settling, digital classrooms becoming the norm, a sense of stability after years of disruption. But we’re still grappling with systems that aren’t built for trust. Leaders who don’t know how to hold conflict. A generation raised online, trying to make sense of what it means to feel safe in a world that never stops watching.
Comfort isn’t the bar. We need environments where people feel safe enough to say the hard thing, ask for help, or take a risk without fear of being punished for it.
In South Africa, this conversation isn’t just cultural, it’s legal. Our labour laws require employers to take reasonable steps to protect psychological wellbeing. That’s not a fluffy HR memo. In a country shaped by inequality, trauma, and generational mistrust, it’s a responsibility. Failing to take it seriously opens the door to real consequences: constructive dismissal claims, reputational damage, and more of the same disconnection we say we want to fix.
For online coaches, the context might look different, but the stakes are the same. Your clients aren’t just navigating goals and strategies. They’re navigating the risk of being honest about what they want. They’re testing whether this space can hold the truth. You don’t need to be a therapist, but you do need to be a place where it’s safe to do hard things.
Parents are feeling it too. Kids are shutting down, lashing out, or breaking down under pressure that doesn’t make sense on paper. It’s not just teenage angst, it’s what happens when overstimulation, disconnection, and constant comparison become a child’s daily baseline. And in South Africa, where violence, suicide, and silence are showing up in younger and younger age groups, we can’t afford to ignore it.
So what does safety really mean?
Not comfort, avoidance or shielding people from truth.
It means creating the conditions where:
Being a safe leader isn’t about being soft. It’s about being precise, calling things early, choosing empathy over control, sharing power and staying transparent, even when things are messy.
Psychological safety isn’t a soft skill. It’s structural, legal, cultural and it’s the edge that sets apart the leaders, coaches, and parents who can hold real transformation from those who just manage appearances.
Whether you’re leading a team, a client, or your own kids, I can help you create the kind of safety that drives real results, on paper and in people.
Message me directly or contact me on ann@flagacademy.co.za to talk about how we can work together. Corporate training, self-defense seminars, or private coaching, let’s make safety your strategy. Visit www.flagacademy.co.za for details on all our services.
In your corner
Ann
I specialize in facilitating discussion by bringing like-minded people together to create real impact | Amazon New Release Best Seller | Walking the Path - A Leader's Journey | GoFundMe
6dAnn du Plessis, keen insight here . . . "But we’re still grappling with systems that aren’t built for trust. Leaders who don’t know how to hold conflict. A generation raised online, trying to make sense of what it means to feel safe in a world that never stops watching."
Facilitating human-centered, data-driven solutions to your water challenges.
6dExcellent point, Ann. Timely. We need dissent in the workplace. As tech and communication challenges increase people must feel free to suggest various alternatives to getting the job done.