Safety: The Ultimate Performance Indicator

“We are all on an enduring, lifelong quest to feel safe”.

Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D.

Client X: 

“At the board meetings I withhold a comment that I want to contribute as I don’t want to be shot down. I hear another colleague voice my idea and berate myself for not speaking up”.  I suppose I don’t feel like I belong there”.
Immobilised Zone 

Client Y:

“I can’t seem to switch off my thinking about the target, at the weekends sometimes in the middle of night,” said another client.  When asked what you are afraid of “I suppose I’m really afraid of failing”.Mobilised Flight Zone

Client Z:

“My sales targets are getting bigger each year and I’m getting older, there’s talk of redundancies in the business, I worry that my days are numbered here”.

Mobilised Fight Zone

As the brilliant Michael Allison, Performance Coach, and creator of the The Play Zone commented in Oxford, “when succeeding or failing is on the line, we can’t think our way into performance, we must recognise what’s going on below the thinking brain, between the brainstem and the body, that is more primitive, survival oriented and reflexive”.

Professional life, much like professional sports, is competitive, marked by ever-changing conditions, fluctuating expectations, and constant evaluation. In leadership roles or when we’re in the spotlight and under pressure to deliver, we can feel isolated and, at times, vulnerable. When we step onto life’s stage, our bodies react instinctively and adaptively, often beyond our conscious control. We might experience a clenched jaw, tense shoulders, a weight on our chest, or a lurch in our stomachs. 

Our feelings are neurophysiological responses generated within us in response to stimuli in our environment. These emotions shape our perceptions, affecting what we see, hear, and feel. When we strip away the narratives and judgments we attach to these responses, we gain clarity.

The Connection Between Emotions and Performance

Every component of performance, whether it’s endurance, concentration, problem-solving, creativity, confidence, or belief, emerges from our emotional state. 

Our emotions are, in many ways, signals that we share with the world, whether we realize it or not. When we feel safe, we radiate warmth and welcome through our eyes, face, and voice. Importantly, when we feel safe, we are also primed to seek more safety even in the presence of perceived threat. In contrast, when we are in a defensive, shutdown mode due to perceived threats, we are biased towards finding more danger, even in situations that offer safety.

Our emotional state broadcasts itself to the world through our facial expressions, eyes, jaw, voice, and muscle tension. When we feel overwhelmed, we appear disconnected and signal to others that we are not fully present. How we feel not only influences how we perceive the world, but also how we interact with others and how we think, behave, and react.

Attentional control

Emotions are not a sign of weakness; mental toughness is not viable long-term strategy it disconnects us from our body and leads to a downward spiral. Instead, it should be replaced with attentional control. Rather than attempting to suppress our reflexive and adaptive bodily reactions, we should aim to relate to what’s happening inside us in ways that support our intentions, values, health, performance, and how we want to present ourselves to the world. 

Imagine a scenario where our fear of failure transforms into the freedom to explore our potential, and where we genuinely feel that we belong.

What to do? 

It’s essential to embrace our reflexive and adaptive bodily reactions while finding ways to realign our physiology to get back on track. For leaders and managers its important to recognise when this response is playing out in others.

• Take away the blame and judgement and criticism, recognise the physiology at work.
• We share how we feel with each other for better or worse. Client Y, a CEO with a big target simply needed to express his emotions and find cues of safety. We concluded that a missed target wouldn’t result in losing his job or his reputation.
• We look for cues of safety someone to stand alongside us.  Client X found a mentor on the board who empathised and supported her to find her voice.
• We reassure the body by absorbing cues of safety.
  • Connection with trusted colleagues. The most potent catalyst for resilience, health, performance, and survival lies in supportive, trusting, relationships. Many of us struggle to trust that it’s safe to feel secure in the company of others.
  • Deep breathing or short bout of exercise to down regulate nervous system and reconnect with the body
• Connecting with actions that are within our control to reassure the body.
• Establishing rituals before big events that keep us grounded and focussed on the goal. 

If you would like to explore some more in-depth training on how to adopt fearless leadership practices in your workplace for optimised performance, please get in touch.