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Safe to Great: The New Psychology of Leadership
How do today’s leaders move from playing it safe to playing for great?
In a volatile time of climate crisis, global pandemics, and disruptive technologies, leaders may find themselves clinging to fear-based mindsets that favor individualism over collectivism – inadvertently controlling their teams rather than inspiring genuine commitment in them. To navigate uncertainty and seize emerging opportunities, leaders must move toward a more facilitative, enabling approach that centers on purpose before profit and the team before the individual.
In Safe to Great, consultant, keynote speaker, and author Skip Bowman outlines an integrated organizational and leadership development process for implementing a growth mindset based on psychological safety. Grounded in more than 25 years of experience working with global organizations, Bowman’s model unites theory and practice in a set of practicable principles designed to meet the opportunities and challenges of leading and organizing in the twenty-first century and beyond.
Bowman looks to the concept of psychological safety, as described in Amy C. Edmondson’s work on fearless organizations, to examine how a workplace that tolerates risk and exhibits a willingness to experiment can facilitate high levels of innovation. The tenets of a growth mindset, as popularized by Carol Dweck, also serve as a guiding Bowman urges organizations to take a generative approach to managing people and resources, putting at least much back as they extract. In this relational model, success rests on the combined achievements and developmental growth of the collective rather than on the accumulation of power and wealth by a single executive or small group of stakeholders.
Conversational in tone and packed with big hopes and uncomfortable truths, Safe to Great makes an impassioned appeal for a new standard of leadership that will move people and organizations from a place of relative comfort and little risk to a space of daring curiosity, engagement, and collaboration.
In a volatile time of climate crisis, global pandemics, and disruptive technologies, leaders may find themselves clinging to fear-based mindsets that favor individualism over collectivism – inadvertently controlling their teams rather than inspiring genuine commitment in them. To navigate uncertainty and seize emerging opportunities, leaders must move toward a more facilitative, enabling approach that centers on purpose before profit and the team before the individual.
In Safe to Great, consultant, keynote speaker, and author Skip Bowman outlines an integrated organizational and leadership development process for implementing a growth mindset based on psychological safety. Grounded in more than 25 years of experience working with global organizations, Bowman’s model unites theory and practice in a set of practicable principles designed to meet the opportunities and challenges of leading and organizing in the twenty-first century and beyond.
Bowman looks to the concept of psychological safety, as described in Amy C. Edmondson’s work on fearless organizations, to examine how a workplace that tolerates risk and exhibits a willingness to experiment can facilitate high levels of innovation. The tenets of a growth mindset, as popularized by Carol Dweck, also serve as a guiding Bowman urges organizations to take a generative approach to managing people and resources, putting at least much back as they extract. In this relational model, success rests on the combined achievements and developmental growth of the collective rather than on the accumulation of power and wealth by a single executive or small group of stakeholders.
Conversational in tone and packed with big hopes and uncomfortable truths, Safe to Great makes an impassioned appeal for a new standard of leadership that will move people and organizations from a place of relative comfort and little risk to a space of daring curiosity, engagement, and collaboration.
- GenresPsychology
216 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 26, 2023
9 people are currently reading
18 people want to read
About the author
Skip Bowman
1 book1 followerSkip Bowman is an author, consultant and keynote speaker focusing on how to transform organizations to the green economy with a growth mindset and psychological safety.
Australian-born and Europe-based, he has worked with global organizations for over 25 years developing unique programs and approaches that are captured in his recently released Safe2Great concept.
“People first” is Skip’s mantra for success in business, leadership, and change. Only when people feel valued and respected can you fully realize the potential of a purpose-based organization.
The future of leadership is green and digital. And there is a need to reimagine and reengineer how we lead and organize to meet the challenges of the mid-21st century.
He has spent the last 8 years studying the connections between mindset and effectiveness. This has led to the development of the Safe2Great concept and assessment tools.
This is the first-time the concepts Growth Mindset and Psychological Safety have been integrated into one approach to leadership and organisational development.
Skip’s approach to consulting and coaching is both inspirational and challenging.
There is both a Bright and Dark side to leaders and corporate cultures that must be embraced in any truly transformational approach to growth.
He argues that we need principles for leading and organizing that are effective, morally right and save the planet. These must lead to a vision of prosperity-for-many rather than profit-for-the-few as the goal of all responsible businesses.
Globally savvy, Skip has regular consulting and keynote commitments in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
He uses two working languages (Danish & English). He grew up in Perth, Australia and has spent most the last 25 years working in Switzerland, England, France, and Denmark.
After studying Finance in Australia, he attained his M.A. in Psychology and Languages in Copenhagen. Skip has a Master in Organizational Psychology (Denmark) and completed additional training in cross-cultural management, group dynamics, coaching, and cultural change.
His book ”Safe to Great - The New Psychology of Leadership” will be published in the US in September 2023 and outlines his new psychology for leadership and an integrated process for implementing a Growth Mindset based on Psychological safety in organisations.
Australian-born and Europe-based, he has worked with global organizations for over 25 years developing unique programs and approaches that are captured in his recently released Safe2Great concept.
“People first” is Skip’s mantra for success in business, leadership, and change. Only when people feel valued and respected can you fully realize the potential of a purpose-based organization.
The future of leadership is green and digital. And there is a need to reimagine and reengineer how we lead and organize to meet the challenges of the mid-21st century.
He has spent the last 8 years studying the connections between mindset and effectiveness. This has led to the development of the Safe2Great concept and assessment tools.
This is the first-time the concepts Growth Mindset and Psychological Safety have been integrated into one approach to leadership and organisational development.
Skip’s approach to consulting and coaching is both inspirational and challenging.
There is both a Bright and Dark side to leaders and corporate cultures that must be embraced in any truly transformational approach to growth.
He argues that we need principles for leading and organizing that are effective, morally right and save the planet. These must lead to a vision of prosperity-for-many rather than profit-for-the-few as the goal of all responsible businesses.
Globally savvy, Skip has regular consulting and keynote commitments in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
He uses two working languages (Danish & English). He grew up in Perth, Australia and has spent most the last 25 years working in Switzerland, England, France, and Denmark.
After studying Finance in Australia, he attained his M.A. in Psychology and Languages in Copenhagen. Skip has a Master in Organizational Psychology (Denmark) and completed additional training in cross-cultural management, group dynamics, coaching, and cultural change.
His book ”Safe to Great - The New Psychology of Leadership” will be published in the US in September 2023 and outlines his new psychology for leadership and an integrated process for implementing a Growth Mindset based on Psychological safety in organisations.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 23, 2025
I listened to this book on audio and it was a difficult listen- the author narrates and his narration was not clear, with a lack of clear enunciation which did make the book difficult to follow at times. The key principles of the book talk about the benefits of growth mindset leadership versus a more controlling leadership style. He talks of the importance of psychological safety and introduces the concept of the hippo (autocratic/aggressive), snail (people pleaser, avoids conflict), clam (cynical/undermining) and dolphin (growth mindset). The concepts are all logical and there are some good reminders in her of the theory but very little of the “how” is discussed, so I personally found the book of very limited use.
September 8, 2025
Forgot to record earlier in the year
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews