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What if saying “this is a safe space” is the least safe thing you can do?
In this episode, I sit down with Romy, an experience designer and facilitator with a background in human rights, social justice, and emotional intelligence. She has spent the last decade working with groups ranging from youth in conflict settings to 300-person senior leadership events, and she co-runs the Experience Studio alongside Elizabeth Solomon, a monthly session that transforms leadership frameworks and models into lived experiences rather than content to be absorbed.
In this conversation, we explore:
- Why front-loading adjectives like “this is going to be a really fun activity” is a subtle form of oppression, and what to say instead so people can have their own direct experience
- The phrase “this is a safe space” and why Romy says it protects the facilitator more than it protects the group, plus what she does instead to actually build psychological safety over time
- Challenge by choice as a guideline, and how giving people explicit agency over their level of participation changes what’s possible in the room
- The distinction between connection and psychological safety, and why treating them as the same thing leads to programmes that promise what a single activity can’t deliver
- The sign Lionel Richie put on the door before recording We Are the World, and what it taught Romy about how you can prime a group before they even walk in
- John Hearn’s research on how a line manager’s attitude toward a workshop, before it starts, can determine how much participants actually take away from it
- Roger Greenaway’s active reviewing model, and why Romy personally reached out to him to reorder the question sequence so it works with how the brain processes experience, not against it: feelings, facts, findings, futures
- Why a good debrief can rescue a bad activity, and the common mistake of rushing in to explain what the activity was supposed to teach instead of letting the room find it themselves
- The mantra from mentor Will Wise that grounds her when things go sideways in the room: from nervous to service
- What co-facilitating a letter-to-an-emotion activity with Elizabeth Solomon, who has worked extensively with Daniel Goleman, taught her about the difference between scaffolded vulnerability and forced vulnerability
