Personal Safety: The Risk We Rarely Talk About
A leadership reflection for the start of the year
Early in the year, the pressure can feel oddly quiet and oddly loud at the same time.
Quiet, because the calendar hasn’t filled up with everything it will eventually hold. Loud, because the world doesn’t slow down just because we’re turning the page to a new year. Headlines keep coming. Costs keep rising. Plans change. People change. Expectations shift. You’re still accountable. You’re still the one who gets asked, “What’s the plan?” when the plan has a dozen moving pieces.
And in all of that, it’s easy to do what executives do best: focus outward.
We think about our workplace. Our teams. The operation. The risks. The projects. The next deliverable. The next meeting. The next decision.
But here’s a truth that sits underneath everything we do, and we rarely name it:
Risk begins before work does.
Someone once told me we take risk the moment we get up in the morning - the moment we set foot out our front doors. That idea can sound a bit dramatic at first, and I don’t want anyone to go through life consciously scanning for danger like it’s a full-time job.
This isn’t a call to be anxious.
It’s a call to be intentional.
Because if we’re serious about safety and human factors at work - fatigue, stress, distraction, time pressure, complacency, the normalization of “just pushing through” - then we should be willing to apply the same thinking to ourselves.
Personal safety isn’t a policy. It’s a practice.
And for leaders, it’s also a responsibility.
Not because we’re trying to become productivity machines. But because when we don’t look after ourselves, we quietly reduce our ability to look after anyone else.
The leadership blind spot: “Safety is for everyone… except me.”
Most executives would never tell a team member:
“Skip breaks, power through, and don’t complain.”
“Drive when you’re too tired - it’s fine.”
“Ignore that nagging feeling that you’re not focused today.”
“Take risks because you’re behind.”
Yet many of us do versions of that to ourselves, especially when the stakes feel high and the demands feel relentless.
We normalize it. We rationalize it. We call it commitment.
But human factors don’t care what your job title is.
Stress still narrows attention.
Fatigue still slows reaction time.
Distraction still reduces situational awareness.
Rushing still increases error likelihood.
And chronic overload still makes “small” risks easier to accept.
Personal safety is the foundation layer of executive performance and executive judgement. Not in a corporate-speak way - in a real-world way.
If you want a stronger safety culture in your organization, one of the most powerful signals you can send is this:
“My safety and wellbeing matters enough that I protect it - and yours matters enough that I expect you to protect it too.”
Where personal risk actually shows up (and why it’s so easy to miss)
When people picture “risk,” they often picture dramatic events.
But the truth is: personal risk is usually quiet. It hides inside routines.
At home
It starts before you’ve even left the house.
You wake up already behind.
Sleep was poor - maybe for a reason, maybe for no reason at all.
The day begins with a screen and a scroll.
You skip breakfast, or you grab something without thinking.
You’re carrying emotional weight you haven’t named.
None of these are failures. They’re human.
But they are also inputs - and inputs matter.
During the commute
Commuting is a deceptively risky part of the day because it’s so familiar.
Weather changes faster than plans.
Fatigue is easiest to ignore in a warm car.
Your mind is in the first meeting before you’ve reached the first stoplight.
Time pressure encourages speed, shortcuts, and distraction.
A commute can be a transition… or it can be a risk amplifier.
At work
And then there’s the risk that doesn’t feel like risk at all:
Cognitive overload.
Back-to-back meetings. Complex decisions. Multiple stakeholders. A constant stream of small interruptions. The unspoken expectation to respond instantly.
It’s not dangerous in the obvious way - and that’s what makes it dangerous.
Because when overload becomes the norm, we don’t even realize when we’ve crossed the line from “busy” into “not safe to operate at my best.”
A simple idea: treat yourself like a system
In safety management, we talk about systems: inputs, controls, barriers, failure modes, recovery.
What if we treated ourselves with the same respect?
Not like machines. Like people. Like systems that need care, margin, and recovery.
You don’t need to “optimize” your life.
You need to protect your baseline.
Because the goal isn’t perfection. The goal is resilience: the ability to absorb stress without becoming brittle.
So here are a few practical, repeatable practices that can protect your day - not by eliminating risk, but by reducing the conditions that make risk more likely.
The “Personal Safety Stack”: practices that make you safer and steadier
Think of this as a stack - a set of layers. You don’t need all of them. But every layer helps.
1) Start the day with a deliberate “state check”
Before email. Before news. Before meetings.
Take 30 seconds and ask:
How am I doing - physically, mentally, emotionally?
What’s my biggest distraction today?
Where am I most likely to rush or react?
This isn’t therapy. It’s situational awareness.
If you can’t name your state, you can’t manage it.
And if you’re leading a team, this matters - because your state becomes part of their environment.
2) Build one tiny buffer into your morning
Many days become unsafe because they start rushed.
A five-minute buffer can change how you drive, how you speak, and how you decide.
A buffer might be:
leaving five minutes earlier
not booking a meeting in the first 15 minutes of your day
doing one grounding routine before you open your laptop
It doesn’t have to be dramatic.
It just needs to exist.
3) Choose one “non-negotiable” physical basic
When life gets busy, basics are the first to go - and that’s when risk creeps up.
Pick one you protect most days:
hydration
a real meal
a short walk
getting outside for five minutes
a consistent bedtime window
If you’re trying to do all of them, you’ll do none of them.
Protect one. Build from there.
4) Insert a “decision pause” before high-stakes moments
A surprising number of poor decisions aren’t caused by lack of competence.
They’re caused by speed.
Before a tough call, try a 10-second pause:
What am I assuming?
What am I missing?
What would I advise a colleague to do here?
A pause doesn’t slow you down. It reduces rework - and regret.
5) Reduce distraction at its source (not through willpower)
Willpower is a poor safety control.
Better controls are environmental:
put your phone out of reach during deep work
close the extra tabs
silence notifications for 45 minutes at a time
schedule “response blocks” instead of constant checking
Distraction isn’t a character flaw. It’s a condition.
Change the condition.
6) Create a recovery ritual at the end of the workday
Many leaders go home physically present, mentally still at work.
Recovery rituals tell your nervous system: the shift is ending.
Examples:
a short walk before going inside
a “shutdown” note: what’s done, what’s next, what can wait
a commute playlist that isn’t work-related
five minutes of quiet before family time
This is not indulgence.
This is maintenance.
7) Make your commute a safety practice, not dead time
If you drive, treat your commute like an operational phase with hazards:
no texting, ever
if you’re tired, acknowledge it and adjust: slow down, stop for a break, call someone, change the plan
give yourself permission to arrive five minutes late rather than not arrive at all
It’s simple. But it’s not trivial.
The hard part: permission
A lot of leaders don’t struggle with knowing what to do.
They struggle with giving themselves permission to do it.
Permission to:
take breaks
say no
slow down
ask for help
step away for a moment
admit they’re overloaded
But if you think about it, you already believe in this.
You believe it for your staff.
You’d rather have someone ask for support than push through and make a mistake that hurts them or someone else.
So why would it be different for you?
Personal safety is not a private luxury. It’s a public signal.
When leaders model sustainable behaviour, it gives others permission to do the same - and it quietly strengthens the whole system.
Questions to challenge yourself (and invite others into the conversation)
Here are some questions that are personal, specific, and hard to answer with clichés.
For you, as a leader:
What is currently the biggest risk to your personal safety or wellbeing?
(Fatigue? Stress? Commuting? Health? Time pressure? Distraction?)How do you know when you’re no longer operating at your best?
What are your early warning signs?What do you do when you notice those signs?
Do you have a default response - or do you just “push through”?
About your routines:
What’s one habit that makes you safer, calmer, or more focused every day?
What’s one habit that quietly increases risk for you - that you keep excusing?
What’s a small change you’ve made that had a bigger impact than you expected?
About culture (without turning it into policy):
If someone on your team was working the way you are right now, what would you advise them to do?
Are you modelling the behaviours you want others to feel safe doing?
Do you create space for recovery - or only space for performance?
If you share these questions with your team, you might be surprised by what comes back.
Not because people don’t care.
But because most workplaces don’t give permission to talk about this honestly.
A simple takeaway: protect the person who makes the decisions
If you’re an executive, you carry responsibility. That won’t change.
But there’s a difference between carrying responsibility and carrying damage.
This week, I’m inviting you to make the topic personal:
What does personal safety look like for you - at home, on the commute, and at work?
What are the practices that keep you steady?
What are the risks you’ve normalized that you shouldn’t?
Because if we don’t look after ourselves, who will?
And if we’re not safe, well, and present — what good will we be to the people counting on us?
If you’re willing, I’d genuinely like to hear from you:
What do you do to protect your personal safety and wellbeing - especially early in the year when pressure and distraction are high?
Photo by Medienstürmer from Unsplash