Brave space for courageous inquiry

The term brave space is spreading across professional development, academia, and conversations about organizational culture. In many ways, it responds to and evolves from “safe space”. While safe space offers protection from discomfort, brave space invites us to enter it together with intention, mutual respect, and a commitment to growth. It asks us not to avoid challenges, but to engage with them courageously.

I have been reflecting on the value of creating brave spaces. That is, places that invite candid dialogue and thoughtful engagement across classrooms, conferences, and everyday personal and professional settings. In a course I teach for entry-level occupational therapy doctoral students, each student is assigned a day to give a five-minute presentation on current social, economic, political, geographic, or demographic factors that affect the delivery of occupational therapy, and to identify emerging trends at the local, national, or global levels. This brief assignment has become a structured brave space for examining complex, “wicked” problems ¹ , and students frequently tell me they appreciate the opportunity to engage in these conversations.

The concept of brave space is not just a pedagogical framework or a facilitation technique. It is, at its core, a philosophy about how we do our best work together. Brave space is a guiding philosophy about how we can work together most effectively.

The term brave space is most often attributed to Arao and Clemens (2023), who challenged the idea that learning environments should prioritize comfort. ² They argued that prioritizing safety can undermine the growth and dialogue that educational and professional settings are meant to foster. Real learning, they said, requires risk; the willingness to speak imperfectly, to hear difficult things, to sit with ambiguity, and to remain connected even when relationships are strained by disagreement. Brave space does not remove the possibility of harm; instead, it creates a shared agreement to engage thoughtfully with that possibility. ² This distinction matters enormously in the context of work.

Work is inherently relational. Whether we are supporting clients, researchers collaborating, educators guiding students, or administrators navigating change, we work with others. Doing so brings differences in perspective, experience, training, culture, power, and privilege. These can be uncomfortable and, if ignored, harmful.

Brave space does not promise freedom from discomfort, but it promises respect. Your humanity will not be questioned, even as your ideas are challenged. The discomfort we share should be purposeful, leading to understanding and better work. Ground rules include speaking from personal experience, active listening, sitting with uncertainty, and recognizing impact matters, even if the intent was good. ² These are demanding expectations that require sustained personal and professional maturity.

Brave space is closely tied to leadership. Leaders best support it by modeling brave space engagement: speaking truthfully, inviting dissent, and admitting uncertainty. Brave space leadership is hard. It challenges many workplace norms such as projecting certainty, avoiding conflict, or seeing vulnerability as a weakness. Changing those norms takes sustained effort and leadership that is brave, not just safe.

I believe that it is important to embrace brave space as a professional value. It is at the heart of health and well-being. I believe that doing this is transformative. That participation, even in the face of challenge, is worth the effort and the risk. Brave space asks us to apply that conviction not only to our clients’ lives but also to our own professional communities, classrooms, research conversations, and workplaces.

Brave space is not a permanent state. It is a practice we create each time we choose candor over comfort, curiosity over certainty, and connection over avoidance. May we find the courage and wisdom to build and sustain it at work. I encourage you to take a step today: invite a brave conversation, challenge an assumption, or model vulnerability within your professional environment. Let us actively create the brave spaces we wish to see.

I am pleased to share that the Editor’s Choice paper for this issue is The Digital Workplace and Meeting Accessibility: A Qualitative Study on Listening Effort in Video Meetings for Employees with Hearing Loss. The paper was co-authored by Erik Marsja, Carine Signoret, and Victoria Stenbäck. This topic was particularly relevant to me as I have a hearing loss, too.

As always, I welcome hearing from you especially with topics you would welcome being published in WORK.

With warm regards,