In our book and on the podcast, we’ve talked a lot about toughness and how it connects to psychological safety. That connection sometimes causes people to push back.
They hear “psychological safety” and think it” soft.
Psychological safety doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want. It means if you follow the rules, give full effort, and commit to Growth, you have space to try things, fail, and try again. Playing time isn’t guranteed and if you aren’t the bets, you don’t play. But, it’s an environment where athletes can take risks and develop new skills without fear that one mistake will cost them everything.
That kind of safety actually leads to more toughness—not less.
We’ve been talking about this idea that empathy leads to grit. We’re still working through exactly what that means, but here’s where I land right now:
Empathy, at its core, is about understanding where your athletes are coming from. It’s knowing their developmental stage, what pressures they’re feeling, and how they process feedback. When a coach takes the time to understand that, it should inform everything about how they lead.
Empathy doesn’t remove high standards. It builds the trust that makes those standards possible. When players know their coach cares about them and has their best interest at heart, they’re willing to be pushed. They can handle correction. They can fail, adjust, and keep going.
This then interacts with trust. Bruce Brown from Proactive Coaching said it best on our podcast:
“If you’re in a low-trust environment, you can measure your words as carefully as you want and someone will still misinterpret them. In a high-trust culture, you can say the dumbest thing in the world and people still know what you meant.”
That’s the difference between compliance and commitment.
In a high-trust team, players don’t play scared. They compete with freedom. They know their spot on the team is safe, even if their playing time isn’t guaranteed.
That’s when real toughness shows up—when athletes take risks, push limits, and keep working even when it’s uncomfortable.
If you boil it down, it’s pretty simple:
Empathy builds trust.
Trust builds psychological safety.
Psychological safety creates space for grit to grow.
You can’t skip steps. You can’t demand grit from people who don’t feel understood.
And you can’t have toughness without trust.
Question for you:
Do you believe empathy actually leads to grit, or can they exist separately?
Put your thoughts in the comments. This is one we’re still learning about, too.
Things That Are Making Us Think
“You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you Love?” -Jim Carey
“We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think” -Antonio Damasio (via )
