During an assignment

What are early signs of an unsafe situation or transgressive behavior? Read below how to recognize this in yourself and in others. Here, we're talking about social and psychological (un)safety.

Signs in yourself

It can sometimes be hard to put your finger on transgressive behavior or unsafe situations. Physical signals can point to a feeling of unsafety: tension in your chest, a knotted stomach, tense shoulders, shallow breathing, making yourself small, avoiding eye contact, extreme tiredness after a workday or certain work situations, ruminating, poor sleep, headaches, and other physical complaints.

Besides physical signals, there are also behavioral and cognitive signs. Scientific research shows that people in unsafe situations unconsciously adjust their behavior as a survival strategy, long before they consciously label the situation as unsafe. Examples include:

• You adjust what you say based on who's present, rather than on what you actually think.
• You over-prepare for conversations out of fear of a certain person's reaction.
• You avoid certain topics, places, or people without knowing exactly why.
• You downplay or minimize things that bother you: "it's not that bad," "that's just how he is," "I'm overreacting."
• You notice you're adapting yourself to avoid triggering a negative reaction or to prevent transgressive behavior.

Signs in a group

What are group-level signs pointing to an unsafe culture? See examples of patterns below.

• Unwanted behaviors (such as discrimination, bullying, harassment, or aggression) are accepted or kept quiet.
• No one contradicts the manager or person in power, even when something is clearly going wrong or when unwanted behavior is displayed.
• Mistakes are covered up, or the blame is placed on others.
• There's a lot of talk behind people's backs, but little direct communication.
• New people quickly adapt to the existing culture without asking questions.
• There's a clear difference between what people say in a group and what they say when spoken to individually.
• Humor is used to mask tension or test boundaries.
• People are treated differently based on their identity.