Organisational Psychology  ·  Leadership Development

Most leaders are derailing
their own growth
without knowing it.

That's not bad luck. That's comfortable nonsense. The causes are always below the surface — and they're always measurable.

Go Deeper → See the instruments
25
Years researching what actually drives
culture — not what leaders assume
04
Validated assessment instruments.
Global benchmarks. Real data.
10+
Languages. Delivered by accredited
practitioners worldwide.

February 22, 1954: Life Magazine published Peter Stackpole's feature on the filming of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Captain Nemo showed the world what was hiding below the surface.   Seventy-two years later, this is built on exactly the same idea.

Depth Reading — Three Fathoms Down

What's actually happening
below the surface.

Fathom 01  ·  Self-Awareness

Leaders don't know how they're reinforcing a poor culture.

Every day, in meetings, in how they respond to bad news, in who gets rewarded and who gets ignored — leaders are shaping culture. Most have no idea what signals they're actually sending. Their people do.

Fathom 02  ·  Daily Behaviour

Leaders don't know how to embody the right culture every day.

Knowing what good culture looks like is not the same as living it on a Tuesday afternoon in a difficult conversation. The gap between intent and behaviour is where cultures go to die.

Fathom 03  ·  Honest Feedback

Leaders don't get any honest feedback.

Direct reports say what they need to say to keep their jobs. Peers stay quiet. Boards ask about results not behaviours. Leaders are operating blind — and the higher up they go, the worse it gets.

Explore the full methodology →

Read the Beyond Speak Up guide →     Read the growth mindset guide →     Read the conspiracy of silence guide →

"Most leaders believe in growth. Most are quietly undermining their own. Nobody is telling them. That's not bad luck. That's comfortable nonsense."

Skip Bowman  ·  Author, Safe to Great

Four precision
instruments.
No comfortable answers.

Built from the SAEF22GREAT study. Validated against thousands of leaders globally. Each instrument measures what's actually happening below the surface — not what leaders believe is happening. Available in 10+ languages. Delivered by accredited practitioners only.

Instrument 01  ·  Leadership 360°
Growth Mindset
Leadership 360

Multi-rater assessment of leadership behaviour. What you think you're doing versus what your people actually experience. Benchmarked against leaders globally. Uncomfortable. Essential.

Instrument 02  ·  Self Assessment
Growth Mindset
Self Test

Maps the inner game — your actual mindset patterns, blind spots, and behavioural defaults under pressure. The version of you that shows up when it matters most.

Instrument 03  ·  Teams
Great Teams
Assessment

Real-time team dynamics on the Protective-Growth scale. Commitment, accountability, conflict, decision-making, innovation. Designed for workshops and sprints. Results in hours, not months.

Instrument 04  ·  Organisation
Culture for Growth
Survey

Organisational culture mapping using stratified sampling — only 30-40% participation needed. Identifies healthy behaviours, locates where toxic practices are hiding, and tells you what to fix first.

All instruments are linked via the Growth Mindset Compass — an integrated system for leadership, team, and cultural development.
Delivered exclusively by accredited Safe2Great practitioners.   Explore the full instrument detail →   ·   Become a practitioner →

Organisations that chose uncomfortable truths over comfortable ones
Danfoss
Vattenfall
Maersk
Novo Nordisk
Rockwool
Siemens
Philips
HSBC
Lego
L'Oréal
Surface Contact — For Organisations

Your culture is a leadership problem.
Let's measure what's below it.

Safe2Great works directly with leadership teams, HR directors, and boards who are serious about understanding what's actually driving their culture — not what the engagement survey says.

Talk to Skip →
Deep Dive — For Consultants & Coaches

Add real measurement
to your practice.

If you work on culture, leadership, or team performance — accreditation gives you four validated instruments, global benchmarks, and a methodology that tells clients what they need to hear.

Apply for Accreditation →
Skip Bowman
Skip
Bowman
Organisational Psychologist
Author · Speaker
Copenhagen, Denmark
"I go below the surface.
That's where the truth is."

"I've spent 25 years watching leaders destroy cultures they were genuinely trying to build. The pattern is always the same. And it's always fixable."

Skip Bowman is an Australian organisational psychologist, leadership expert, and author of Safe to Great — The New Psychology of Leadership. Based in Copenhagen, he has worked with some of the world's most demanding organisations on the one question that matters most: why do smart, well-intentioned leaders keep getting culture wrong?

The answer is never the strategy. It's never the market. It's almost always the same three things — and all three are measurable. That's what Safe2Great was built to fix.

Skip is also the investigator behind In The Dark — an investigation into household energy independence as the most important economic shift of our generation. The same psychology that keeps organisations stuck in comfortable nonsense is keeping households captive to energy markets designed for extraction, not supply.

25
Years of organisational psychology research and practice
4
Validated instruments with global benchmark data
10+
Languages across the Safe2Great instrument suite
2
Books — Safe to Great and In The Dark (2025)
Safe to Great — The New Psychology of Leadership by Skip Bowman
The Book

Safe to Great
The New Psychology of Leadership

The book that became the methodology. Written after 20 years of watching organisations invest heavily in leadership development and get modest results — and asking why. The answer turned out to be hiding in plain sight: most organisations were measuring the wrong thing, developing the wrong skills, and training the wrong people.

Safe to Great maps the inner game of leadership — the mindset patterns, behavioural defaults, and psychological dynamics that determine whether a leader builds a high-performance culture or quietly undermines one. Practical, evidence-based, and written for leaders who are ready to look honestly at what they're actually creating.

"A timely and positive way forward in our time-starved and often bleakly-portrayed future."

Ricardo Troiano · Global Head, Change and Organizational Development, Syngenta
Get the Book → Talk to Skip about the methodology →
Part of the Skip Bowman ecosystem
Safe2Great Skip Bowman Vivisolari Comfortable Nonsense

Ready for what's below?

Whether you're a leadership team that needs to know what's really driving your culture, or a consultant ready to deliver real measurement to their clients — Skip reads every message personally.