The Nine Asks: Creating Safer and More Courageous Spaces
By Kimberly Danielle
Westminster John Knox Press
227 pages
Published April 1, 2025
[Danielle] describes specific settings, such as schools and faith communities, in which these asks are essential to ensure that each person you meet (including you!) can participate fully. The book serves as a great tool for personal growth and development.
If you’ve ever attended a meeting where tensions escalate, participants fear speaking up and no one can change the tone, you likely understand the need to create courageous spaces intentionally within your organization. Coach and consultant Kimberly Danielle believes that creating a relational environment for all to flourish is not magic, and – most importantly – the skills can be learned.
The Nine Asks is Danielle’s effort to teach these skills and help leaders understand why these are so vital. Through nearly two decades of coaching on organizational culture, Danielle discovered that when she asked people what they needed to feel safe within a space, certain themes emerged. She has compiled these as an invitation to “build(ing) genuine trust; and trust creates pathways for mutual safety.”
The nine “asks” include topics such as “be as honest and vulnerable as possible” and “respect boundaries and thresholds.” Danielle devotes a chapter to each ask, describing it in depth and offering examples of when it is done well or poorly. Case studies that focus on practical applications bring each ask to life.
For those new to facilitation or organizational culture, The Nine Asks is a primer for learning to set the table for safety and participation. Seasoned leaders might find the guidance a bit rudimentary. Still, Danielle’s practical examples are valuable by strengthening the reader’s facility in creating cultures of authenticity and belonging. She describes specific settings, such as schools and faith communities, where these asks are essential to ensure that each person you meet (including you!) can participate fully. The book is an excellent tool for personal growth and development for anyone interested in expanding cultural competency and becoming a healed and healing person.
Danielle approaches this work with a keen sense of social justice and a commitment to valuing the voices of underrepresented people, especially BIPOC communities, who often find that safety cannot be assumed. Her book affirms why some encounters don’t feel right and guides readers to remember what they need for true safety. This book might be especially valuable for those serving in traditionally powerful positions to learn, beyond the limits of their own experience, why safety and belonging are important goals of relational work that lead to healing and wholeness.
The Nine Asks is helpful and insightful. However, the weaving of the different themes sometimes seems obvious and repetitive. Further, Danielle makes many assertions about psychology and healing but only unevenly ensures they are scientifically supported. In an otherwise well-researched book, ideas like “vibrational energy is everywhere, and in shared spaces, it is contagious” detract from the usually grounded psychological and spiritual tone.
Outlook readers will appreciate that Danielle addresses faith-based communities. She points out that churches are often good at welcoming newcomers at first, but she asserts that “the enormity of welcomes is unimpressive if its welcoming gestures cannot be operationalized and embodied as a way of regularly treating people.” This point is obvious and ground-breaking; naming it is just a start, but having the tools to make the change is the challenge. If you are a faith-based leader looking to transform how you and your community “regularly treat people,” The Nine Asks deserves a place on your bookshelf.
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