Creative Confidence Podcast Building Risk-Taking Teams: Ben Swire
Mar 5, 2026
Ben Swire, co-founder of Make Believe Works and author of Safe Danger, helps teams build trust and creative confidence. He discusses why most team building fails, the difference between comfort and psychological safety, practical rituals to rehearse risk, and how leaders can model vulnerability to make real cultural change.
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Use Story Drawing To Elicit Vulnerability
- Do use low-stakes storytelling prompts to build vulnerability without forcing oversharing.
- Ben Swire’s drawing-and-story warm-up asks people to depict a person who shaped them, revealing values without pressuring perfection.
Why Most Team Building Fails
- Most team building fails when it optimizes for fun or instruction instead of behavior change.
- Ben Swire identifies competition, passivity, and "old news" activities as traps that leave workplace dynamics unchanged.
Bake Safe Danger Into Daily Work
- Do weave safe-danger practice into everyday rituals, not just one-off workshops.
- Ben Swire recommends status meetings that invite half-formed ideas and leaders admitting gaps to rehearse risk-taking.
