Ben Swire: Author of "Safe Danger" on the hidden reason team building efforts fail

As educators, we’ve grown wary of the term “safe spaces,” especially when what many students really need is a space to engage with “dangerous” ideas. But true dialogue doesn’t begin with risk—it starts with trust. Our guest today, Ben Swire, wrote the book Safe Danger, which offers a thoughtful, practical approach to building the psychological safety that allows curiosity, connection, and even productive disagreement to flourish. Find bonus content and more on our Substack: https://designbetterpodcast.com/p/ben-swire-former-ideo-design-lead Ben’s career took him from the buttoned-up world of financial marketing to IDEO—a shift he describes as going “from Kansas into Oz.” At IDEO, he discovered that world-class work could be fueled by something radically different than what he’d experienced everywhere else. That discovery led him to spend years exploring a deceptively simple question: How do you get people to fail but enjoy doing it? The answer became the foundation of his book and h...