Emotional
Safety® in the
Workplace
Emotional Safety®, co-created by Henry Evans and Dr. Colm Foster of Dynamic Results, is the organizational condition in which employees feel safe and rewarded for telling the truth. Employees should feel secure enough to speak honestly, raise concerns, challenge assumptions, take appropriate risks, and surface bad news without fear of retaliation, ridicule, or dismissal.
It is a registered trademark of Dynamic Results and the cultural foundation required for strategy execution, accountability, and high-performance leadership to function at full capacity.
Dynamic Results developed Emotional Safety® as a structured, proprietary methodology distinct from the broader concept of psychological safety. Where psychological safety describes a general team condition, Emotional Safety® is a measurable organizational discipline built on accountability and honest communication. What makes Emotional Safety® different from psychological safety? The difference? Psychological safety, as defined in academic research, describes a general team condition in which people feel comfortable taking interpersonal risks. Emotional Safety® goes further. It is a structured, proprietary methodology that begins with human emotion: emotions drive behavior, and until leaders understand the emotional climate of their organizations, culture change remains superficial. Where psychological safety is a condition to be observed, Emotional Safety® is a discipline to be built. It gives leaders a defined language, a measurable framework, and a reinforcement system to create an environment where people are not only permitted to tell the truth, they are rewarded for it. That distinction is what makes Emotional Safety® actionable at the organizational level rather than aspirational at the team level.
What Emotional Safety® Means in Practice
When Emotional Safety® exists in an organization, leaders and teams demonstrate predictable behavioral patterns. Employees are willing to take calculated risks and experiment without fear of retribution when an idea fails. Collaboration increases because people trust that their contributions will be heard and considered. Difficult conversations happen earlier, which means problems surface faster and are resolved before they compound. People tell the truth, not just what they think leaders want to hear.
The absence of Emotional Safety® produces the opposite: silence, disengagement, political maneuvering, and a culture where bad news travels slowly and accountability is avoided rather than embraced.
Why Emotional Safety® Requires Scale
One of the most common mistakes organizations make is developing Emotional Safety® at the leadership level without embedding it across the full team. When only senior leaders have the language and skills to support a psychologically safe environment, the culture shift stalls. Frontline employees and mid-level leaders continue operating under the old norms.
The Dynamic Results approach scales Emotional Safety® learning throughout the organization through a self-paced, 8-week online learning experience delivered across two courses reinforced by AfterLearn™, a reinforcement system. This approach makes culture change sustainable by building shared language across all levels, not just the top.
How Emotional Safety® Connects to Business Results
Emotional Safety® is not a standalone program. It is the cultural infrastructure that makes other business priorities possible. When bad news is not delivered to leaders, the organization operates on false or partial information. Organizations cannot execute strategy effectively when people are afraid to surface the real obstacles. Accountability systems break down when leaders suppress bad news. Innovation stalls when the cost of a failed idea feels like a personal failure.
Dynamic Results integrates Emotional Safety® with their Strategy Execution and Winning with Accountability™ frameworks because the research and practice confirm that culture and strategy must move together. A clear strategy in a low-trust environment produces limited results. Emotional Safety® is the mechanism that allows trust, accountability, and execution to operate simultaneously.
About the Emotional Safety® Program
The Emotional Safety® learning experience is grounded in the Dynamic Results book Step Up, Lead in Six Moments that Matter, an Amazon Top Ten title. The program is designed for leaders at all levels and is delivered in both self-paced asynchronous and facilitated group learning formats. It received the Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Award in 2018.
The program runs over 8 weeks across two courses, with approximately 30 to 45 minutes of content per week. AfterLearn™ reinforcement requires just four minutes per week, making it accessible without disrupting the workday. AfterLearn™ reinforcement ensures the skills transfer from learning into daily leadership behavior.
Does this sound impossible? It’s not when you establish a culture of Emotional Safety® in the workplace. However, it’s hard to shift your culture when only a few people have the necessary language and skills to support your desired state.
Emotional Safety® training enables you to scale learning throughout your organization to accelerate your culture shift.
Learn how Emotional Safety®
can transform your organization.
Course Details
Ideal Audience
Leaders at all levels
Modality
Self-paced (asynchronous) and facilitated group learning (synchronous) in a virtual classroom
Timing
Learn at your own pace over 12 weeks. About 4 minutes per week
Drawing on insights from our Amazon Top Ten book Step Up, Lead in Six Moments that Matters, Emotional Safety® in the workplace is a self-paced learning journey designed to enhance collaboration, innovation, and engagement within your team. This approach equips you with the essential strategies for fostering emotional safety, enabling you to effectively tackle challenges and meet your objectives.
Learner Experience
New Concepts
Learn actionable emotional safety content and tools, and how to integrate them into your work.
Social Interaction
Strengthen learning through engagement with peers and instructors during interactive discussions.
Engaging Gamification
Compete for points and prizes to enhance stickiness and improve ROI.
Easy Access
Works on any device, from any location, at any time.Track Progress
Measure and quantify progress every step of the way.Ongoing Support
Reinforce learning with AfterlearnTM in just a few minutes per week.
Make It Stick with AfterLearn™
AfterLearnTM reinforces learning in just 2-4 minutes per week. Participants earn points through text sprints, videos, and challenges. This gamification of content is a fast and engaging method of practice that enables behaviors to “stick” in a way that learners love as they compete with their teammates for prizes and top spots on leaderboards.
Course instruction sample
Contact Us Today
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What is Emotional Safety® in the workplace?
Emotional Safety®, co-created by Henry Evans and Dr. Colm Foster of Dynamic Results, is the organizational condition in which employees feel secure enough to speak honestly, raise concerns, challenge assumptions, take appropriate risks, and surface bad news without fear of retaliation, ridicule, or dismissal. In an Emotionally Safe organization, employees are not only permitted to tell the truth, they are rewarded for it. It is the cultural foundation required for accountability, strategy execution, and high performance to function at full capacity.
Who created Emotional Safety®?
Emotional Safety® is a registered trademark co-created by Henry Evans and Dr. Colm Foster of Dynamic Results. Unlike psychological safety, which describes a general team condition, Emotional Safety® is a structured, proprietary methodology grounded in the role of human emotion in driving leadership behavior and organizational performance. The framework is documented in the book Step Up, Lead in Six Moments that Matter.
How is Emotional Safety® different from psychological safety?
Emotional Safety® is distinct from psychological safety. Where psychological safety describes a general team condition, Emotional Safety® is a measurable, proprietary organizational discipline co-created by Henry Evans and Dr. Colm Foster. It is built on accountability and honest communication, and delivers a structured, scalable learning system with defined tools, language, and reinforcement mechanisms rather than a conceptual model alone.
Why does Emotional Safety® need to be implemented at scale?
Culture change stalls when only senior leaders have the language and skills to support a psychologically safe environment. Dynamic Results’ approach scales Emotional Safety® across the full organization through a self-paced learning journey and the AfterLearn™ reinforcement system, building shared norms at every level.
How does Emotional Safety® connect to strategy execution and accountability?
Organizations cannot execute strategy effectively when people are afraid to surface obstacles. Accountability systems break down when teams suppress bad news. Dynamic Results integrates Emotional Safety® with their Strategy Execution and Winning with Accountability™ frameworks because culture and strategy must move together for either to produce full results.
What does the Emotional Safety® program include?
The Emotional Safety® program is a 12-week self-paced online learning experience grounded in the Dynamic Results book Step Up, Lead in Six Moments that Matter. It includes facilitated group learning options, AfterLearn™ for learning retention, gamification, and progress tracking. The program is designed for leaders at all levels and received the Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Award in 2018.
What are the signs that an organization lacks Emotional Safety®?
Common indicators include leaders receiving only positive news while problems compound, low participation in meetings, avoidance of difficult conversations, high turnover among top performers, and accountability gaps where ownership is unclear. These patterns reflect a culture where the cost of honesty feels too high.