Background
Burnout, stress, and anxiety were already issues in the workplace prior to the pandemic and recession. With the pandemic's mental health impact now into the mix work-related stress is reaching staggering high levels. Business leaders are now bracing themselves for ongoing aftershocks and looking at ways to meet a dramatically heightened need for behavioral support services.

The latest Census Bureau survey showed that more than one-third of Americans have displayed clinical signs of anxiety, depression, or both since the coronavirus pandemic began. A key point is that only 50% of employees are comfortable discussing mental health issues.

Numerous studies show that the economic crisis is an important stressor that has a negative impact on workers’ mental health. Most of the studies document an increased rate of mood disorders, anxiety, depression, distress, and low self-esteem all negatively affecting bottom-line performance. Fear of illness and financial security for self, loved ones and friends are key negative emotional drivers of behavior.

As many recent studies have confirmed, despite the efforts of most, well-intentioned people development professionals their coaching and training efforts do not produce sustainable changes in behavior.

Performance is simply the manifestation of a person's behavior and associated action.
The performance bottom line is that most companies today are still stuck in yesterday’s ways of doing business that has created spaces which are completely psychologically unsafe. In these unsafe spaces people are experiencing stress, emotional turmoil, burn-out, toxicity and low morale affecting their performance and well-being.

What is a Workplace SAVE HAVEN?
The Safe Haven Behavioral Coaching Model is about helping all individuals find their way along the right path of guidance and support they require.

A workplace safe haven is a place where people feel protected from outside dangers and 100% safe and free to be themselves.

A Save Haven is a Safe-talking and Safe-being space built and overseen by qualified, accredited, performance behavioral coaches (internal or external).

One or more qualified, performance behavioral coaches oversee the Safe Haven space and freely provide guidance and counsel on a private, one-to-one or group basis. Workers report that it for helps restore hope, direction and confidence in both their working and personal life.

• In large organizations managers / leaders as coach and/or a team of performance behavioral coaches (full or part-time) provide encouragement, positive advice and importantly make no judgment on their client’s behavior.
   
• The responsibility for overseeing behavioral health and performance for most smaller businesses is typically outsourced to a certified behavioral practitioner (external accredited performance behavioral coach) rather than an extra member of staff.

All personnel (leaders and workers alike) are encouraged by their performance behavioral coach towards what they can achieve with no limits or boundaries. The performance behavioral coach is by their side in both the good times and tough times -empowering them to perform at the highest level, fulfil their potential and enhance their overall wellbeing and happiness. The performance behavioral coach provides performance / behavioral health resources and uses neuro-behavioral tools that increase everyone’s emotional, physical and mental well-being. High Performance Behavioral Coaching is a developmental program for all persons and not remedial focused. For example; it is used to ‘tune’ well-functioning brains to enhance a person’s mental abilities and allow them to perform at their peak. What is High Performance Behavioral Coaching? Mainstream / generic workplace coaches are trained to be goal and skill focused. Whereas, High Performance Behavioral Coaches (in the workplace, educational institutions, healthcare etc) are focused on the person's environment affecting their performance and well-being. Both work successfully together, however, the High Performance Behavioral Coach uses a brain-mind-body approach to address developmental needs whereas the generic coach must stay away from the mental / physical domains and the psychological change models they are not trained in. From the client's point of view, it's simply about the kind of assistance they need eg; brain-mind-body or positional skills coaching or both. Today, the exciting fields of neuroscience and the behavioral sciences provides us powerful, safe and easy-to-learn tools to generate changes in the brain-mind-body continuum that produces real, sustainable, measurable, positive physiological and mental changes. This “new alliance” between neuro-behavioral sciences and coaching places the Behavioral Coaching Institute’s students at the forefront in the world people development field by providing them with cutting-edge, proven, neuro-behavioral performance interventions, tools and accredited, internationally recognized credentials.

-The Safe Haven Behavioral Model
The Safe Haven allows people to articulate thoughts they may otherwise hesitate to say -from fears to personal troubles. A safe-talking and safe-being space empowers people with confidence to express concerns that won’t ruin their working relationships or their career. At the same time, the coaches commitment to withholding judgment let’s the coachee feel safe in being themselves.

People must feel welcomed and that their wellbeing is truly a priority for their behavioral coach.

A Save Haven is a safe space where people honestly believe that they can be themselves and reveal their fears, doubts, worry, sef-limiting emotional drivers affecting their well-being and performance etc.

Safe spaces don’t coddle people or blind them from the realities of our world. They offer all people an opportunity to be vulnerable and let down their guard without fear of judgment or harm.

Safe spaces allow people to build resilience so they can be the strongest, most authentic versions of themselves and engage confidently and maturely with their peers.

Most importantly, safe spaces allow people to practice self-care so they can make thoughtful, productive contributions to enhancing performance and raise difficult discussions that need to be had.

There’s something powerful about not having to apologize for being who you are, what you’re feeling, what you’re experiencing or what you’ve done. When you feel free to express yourself and confident instead of regretful and defensive, you feel less afraid. And when you feel less afraid, you are capable of processing and working towards productive change more freely..

A Safe Space is established on the understanding that everyone at various times may struggle with behavioral / mental health and performance related issues. If people know that they are not alone and that their peers and colleagues are also having to deal with their own behavioral issues, they are more likely to seek out and become an active participant in a safe space.

One of the reasons a safe space is so impactful is because it provides a sense of reliability. It’s not uncommon in the workplace for people to say things and make promises they have no intention of keeping, so honesty and accountability are especially important in a safe space.

When we think about safe spaces in the context of mental health, it’s obvious how they can be a beneficial — and an essential — part of everyone’s life.

A Save Haven is high on psychological safety and bottom-line performance results.

Psychological Safety
Today, more than ever, leaders, managers and people developers need to know their people beyond the basic level. Many managers / leaders / coaches simply miss opportunities with their people because they have not been trained how to go beyond the first level coaching dialogue they have been taught to use. Is the coachee's dialogue revealing? Was the communication open, honest and revealing about their doubts, fears and self-limiting behavior?

What do most generic workplace coaches want?
The great majority have simply been trained to accelerate skills and team IQ. What most coaches miss is the opportunity to provide psychological safety – a safe space where people can freely communicate what negative emotional drivers are affecting their behavior/performance. Fear-stricken people give you their hands, some of their head, and certainly none of their hearts.

Some Example BENEFITS of a converting a work space into a Safe-Haven.

Innovation and Creativity
Safe-spaces are places where people can share ideas. People can sometimes feel inadequate and insecure if they share their ideas, suggestions, solutions etc. This is also a world where senior members offer their mentorship.

Psychological safety, the freedom to authentically be yourself at work, is increasingly recognized as a key driver of engagement and innovation.

Change
Safe-spaces are also a place where people can challenge the status-quo and take-on old-winning habits with proven new-pathways. Its action-led where robust discussions are held and different points of view explored. Even though conflicting opinions are freely aired people feel secure enough to challenge each-other. An organization which creates safe-spaces provides immunity from oppression, victim-hood.

Equal Opportunity
A safe-space is where people can feel included, treated fairly and listened-to. Its largely about affirmations, acceptance, nurturing and growth. Its sometimes emotion-led due to the topics of conversation. Psychological-safety and a low performance-pressure environment welcomes all people here regardless of gender, title, position, authority. An organization which creates safe-spaces inclusive of ‘equal opportunity’ provides cross-pollination, immunity from marginalization or rejection. Hence it becomes a safe-space for people who may feel oppressed by their race, sexual orientation etc..

Learning & Development
Many people privately feel exiled, outlawed, lonely and resourceless to fight the demanding high performance-world they function in. Organizations that create safe-spaces help address a person’s behavioral challenges restricting their learning and development. Providing a safe-space helps organizations rediscover themselves and provide better training and coaching programs / solutions for their people.

When students or new employees/interns are thrust into finding their place in a new learning environment it can often become a pressure cooker as they try to figure out how to make the grade and take care of themselves. A safe space makes students, new interns or new employees feel welcome. Learners require a space where their mental health is supported so they can comfortably continue engaging in the daily mental challenges they are confronted with.

Learning environments are uncomfortable and challenging, not just in academic ways, but mentally. People can feel vulnerable and scared. If they can come out on top, as more deeply experienced human beings, they are better for it.

Emotional Self-Discovery
- Safe-spaces encourage people to engage in self-awareness.
Safe Spaces are designed around experiential interventions that increase empathy, relatedness and compassion which are especially important in increasing emotional awareness. This in turn helps create psychological-safety within individuals and teams.

Through experiential individual and group exercises positive emotions such as; pride, joy, gratitude, hope/optimism, and feeling of interconnectedness are explored and used to replace maladaptive negative emotions.

The workplace is a stressful place for everyone at various times and in various degrees.
 
The sound of anger.
People with lower patience thresholds may experience sudden bursts of anger or become easily irritated by minor incidents. Their behavior may seem irrational at first, but genuine anger, in most cases, stems from the inability to be heard. Chances are their behavior is greatly influenced by the office environment / space they are working in. They need a safe place to be listened to -and they appreciate that!

Leadership Development
- A psychological safe-space is a by-product of a leader’s emotional-smarts.
Handling psychological discomfort and creating psychological safety doesn’t simply happen when a leader commits to being a nice-person. The climate, organizational culture or psychological safe-space is a by-product of a leader’s emotional-awareness. The first step is to engage in performance behavioral coaching followed by training as a performance behavioral coach for their people. Leaders need to freely telegraph the journey of their emotional awareness to their workers and the benefits that can follow to all that engage in the same process.

Actions speak louder than words.
Leaders who step up and embrace the challenge of their own self-development and creating work environments that meet these fundamental needs will have the chance to make a substantial contribution not just towards their people’s long-term well-being but also to the organization’s bottom-line performance, productivity and future.

The role for leaders is clear.
 -The path from uncertainty to clarity and security.
Rather than tweak the old rules to help business more productive to stem losses, smart business leaders are using this opportunity to develop new growth development models for themselves and their people —to enable a more resilient, caring and generative relationship between business and workers.

Productivity boosting behaviors is not about using outdated training, executive and team coaching models of change. To perform at a consistent, high level requires the use of today’s, evidence/science-based, brain-mind-body approach using neuro-behavioral growth models and techniques.

The need to rebalance priorities.
Business resilience and productivity, over time, is a function of caring for the major input to the business—its people.

Calling a space a safe space is not enough.
Neither is building the space and encouraging those that come to it to speak up and take risks. The leader as behavioral coach needs to create a culture of trust that welcomes openness. Only when someone feels they have the strength to open up and be free will a safe space serve its true purpose.

Real change in business priorities will always face headwinds, but that’s where leadership comes in. The starting place requires taking advantage of this moment, and making people development decisions that will serve well into the future.

One of the primary goals of performance and behavioral coaching is ensuring that employees feel safe to explore their behaviors to become the best version of themselves and actually care about the work they are doing. This not only helps a company by increasing the level of output and quality during tough economic times, but it encourages lengthy terms of employment so that a core talent base can see a company through the important evolutions it must undergo.

Unsurprisingly, changing economic conditions are simply a wake-up call for leaders to challenge themselves and their teams to best manage their mental self and achieve even more ambitious results through rigorous self-awareness, self-development and the new possibilities that go with it. Uncovering fears, doubts, worry and a range of self-limiting behavioral patterns and replacing them with higher-performing behavioral patterns and positive emotions driving sustainable, performance boosting behavior is now a must for today's leaders and managers to navigate through the choppy economic waters.

People want to do good work—to feel they matter in an organization that makes a difference. Work can be liberating, or it can be alienating, exploitative, controlling, and homogenizing. Despite the changes that new technologies bring, the underlying forces of people’s individual and collective behavior is the power that drives an organization. And yes, to create an authentic organization that fully realizes human potential at work is a challenge that some companies today will fail at and therefore have a limited future.