Brake pads make cars go faster.
It was 1888. Bertha Benz was about to revolutionalise transportation.
Unbeknownst to her husband Karl, Bertha set off with their two teenage sons in his prototype 3-wheeled Motorwagen to Pforzheim, about 100 kilometers from home.
Along the way, the wooden blocks Karl had installed as brakes began to fail.
So, Betha had a local cobbler tack leather pads to the blocks.
These worked so well that Karl was able to refine the vehicle's design, prove the viability of it and sell this new mode of transportation.
Up until then, cars had been slow because they were difficult to stop.
Bertha changed that.
Motoring has never looked back β and neither has Mercedes-Benz.
We often look at constraints, rules and boundaries as barriers to progress.
But without them people tend to hold back. When you donβt know where the envelope is, you canβt push it.
The best leaders know that psychological safety is not only about telling people you have their back and behaving that way, but setting up the conditions to allow them to flourish.
And part of those conditions is knowing that the brakes work.
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