Your Safety Jester drives:
- More Candor
- More Psychological Safety
- Better Reflections
- More Curiosity and Humble Inquiry
- More Organisational Learning
- More Action Orientation
- Clarity in the ‘Why’, Organisational Purpose
- More Organisational Resilience
- Less ‘optic compliance’, ‘demonstrated safety’ and less kayfabe
Read along for a breakdown of how that works!
Guardian angel of the reality
The Jester is the only one who can speak unfiltered truths to leadership, safeguarding against groupthink, biases and illusion. By acting as a reality-checker, he helps organizations to keep seeing reality from the various perspectives throughout organisations.
We don’t know what we don’t know.
Highlights blind spots playfully
Your Safety Jester exposes blindspots. Through humor and gentle provocation, the Safety Jester exposes hidden biases and unexamined assumptions—making tough conversations more approachable. What the mirror tells you is not new. It has been there all the time.
If we don’t look honestly in the mirror, we may end up like the queen in Snow White.
Cultivates psychological safety
The presence of your Safety Jester signals that open critique is not only allowed but encouraged, boosting candor and honest dialogue across hierarchies. The Safety Jester guides in better reflections, in dealing with assumptions and calls for action in observed and felt differences in perception.
Learning is impossible when the price of honesty is high.
Bridges power dynamics
Sitting in a neutral position, Your Safety Jester connects employees and leaders, enabling candid interaction in a lighter, less confrontational way. He does not advise you in how to be a better leader, or what do decide, but only displays wants, needs, suggestions and calls for action from the workfloor to the boardroom. And vice versa.
The Safety Jester gives the workforce a voice.
Fuels better decisions
Your Safety Jester does not tell you how to run your business, but helps deriving better steering information. Honest feedback and fresh perspectives help uncover risks and opportunities that standard channels often miss—leading to smarter, more resilient strategies.
Decisions should not be based only on what we know—but also on what we don’t know.
Anchors organizational resilience
Your Safety Jester does not implement a program, but incorporates a mindset. By encouraging reflection, challenging the status quo, and surfacing uncomfortable truths, the Safety Jester strengthens both a culture of trust and the organisation’s adaptive capacities and abilities to act on weak signals, early warnings and learn from the reality of actual work.
‘We cannot change the human conditions, but we can change the conditions under which humans work’ – James Reason .
Clearer purpose-driven organisation
A core focus area for your Safety Jester is to ensure the ‘Why’ is clear and commonly felt. A clear purpose drives common logic, positivity, better alignment, better communication, more trust. If we all work towards the same goal, silo’s may break down.
‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.’ – Simon Sinek.
Boosts action orientation
Another focus area for Your Safety Jester is to call for action, on projects and initiatives that patiently sit waiting for action. Think about endless do-to lists, non-conformities, never-ending overdue plans of actions from meetings. Take with that a focus on improving meeting-, communication- and reflection ethics. Persistent bad apples can and will be exposed and addressed.
Open question to leaders: What is your role in making the work of your people more efficient, pleasant and effective? And how do you perform?
How well do you know what’s really going on in your organisation?
Triggering questions:
- What is happening when nothing is happening? In other words: what happens when nothing goes wrong?
- Do people have permission to think differently? How candid are they really to speak up?
- What is the perceived reality in your organisation? Does it match with the intended reality?
- Do you and your team listen to understand or to respond?
Are you ready for more candor, safety and resilience?
It is easy to dodge responsibility, but you cannot dodge the consequences of dodging responsibility. —Sir Josiah Stamp
Are you fed up with demonstrating safety and optic compliance? Do you want more focus on the safety of work, and less safety work? So less theater and kayfabe? (Huh, what is kayfabe??) Do you want to be more meaningful and morally correct as a leader? Do you dare to take the red pill? (And what do you mean with the red pill?)
It is not about what you do for others. It is about what you mean to others. So the biggest question is: Who have you decided to be for others?
“There is one sin which I have come to fear above all others: certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. … Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt.”
Ralph Fiennes
Actor in the movie “Conclave” (2024)