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Early in 1995, with my
educational psychology background, I had helped a client overcome
problems associated with “cultural clashes” on one of their
installations. When they contacted me again, they asked for help with
a serious safety problem. Despite all their efforts people were still
getting hurt.
The Senior Manager was very
worried because they didn’t know what else to do! They had many
thorough procedures and some of the best equipment available. They had
tons of personal protective clothing (boots, gloves, eye protection
and fire resistant coveralls) and excellent training programmes.
Posters were put up everywhere alerting people to potential hazards.
And still people were getting hurt. Even telling people that everyone
has the right to stop a job and it is a good thing to do, didn’t seem
to help. Consequently, doing more of the same wouldn’t improve
matters.
So we analysed their accidents
and some others from similar installations and what we found was very
interesting. People knew what they should have been doing – they knew
the procedures, they knew the rules and they understood commonsense –
but sometimes they just didn’t do what was right.
Why do we sometimes
do things we know we shouldn’t?
We found five things
or “traps” that stopped people doing what they should have been doing
to work safely, but the biggest one was FEAR. When we asked people why
they didn’t follow their procedures or their commonsense, it took a
bit of probing, but eventually it came out that they were afraid.
Here’s a list of the fears people mentioned.
- Fear of looking
stupid (so people don’t ask questions or stop unsafe jobs)
- Fear of being seen
as lazy (so people hurry up)
- Fear of seeming
incompetent (so people struggle on without asking for the manual or
help)
- Fear of upsetting
friends who may not speak to me for the next two weeks (so people
just go along with the team)
- Fear of being
regarded as a troublemaker as this may result in being given all the
lousy jobs, or worse, losing one’s job.
Do you agree that
lecturing or hectoring wouldn’t work? Telling people to grow up and
not be afraid doesn’t work. As I’ve already mentioned, even being
comforting and supportive, explaining how people won’t look stupid and
won’t be seen as lazy, doesn’t work as well as it should. When there
is a tension between doing what is right and fear, fear often wins. So
how does one fix this?
Socratic questioning
Knowing that lectures
and exhortation doesn’t work, we devised a workshop in two parts. The
first part involved participants in analysing four accidents and
giving THEIR recommendations on what the people involved should do in
future to avoid a similar one. The second part involves a discussion
between the facilitator and the participants. The facilitator
deliberately dreams up situations where the people cannot follow the
recommendations they have offered. In other words obstacles are put in
the way to prevent people following the correct behaviours. This
forces people to confront their own fear of having to stop a job.
The third part
involves an open and honest discussion of fear during which some of
the questions are asked and answers sought by the whole group.
- So it’s true then
that at the root of an unsafe act is being afraid to do the right
thing?
- How many adults
have these fears do you think?
- Do you think these
fears are justified?
- Is anyone willing
to share an example where you did something out of fear when you
knew you shouldn’t?
- Do you think we
have a fear problem here?
- What makes people
afraid like this?
- What can we do to
lessen the fear factor?
This type of questioning is
part of a values education approach. When you allow these questions to
be mulled over the truth will out. It has a powerful effect on people
– they realise for the first time that you can blame whomever you like
but you chose to go ahead when you know it was unsafe. Bringing people
to their own realisation of what is right helps them to change for
good because they want to – it is difficult to go against the
principles one has devised for oneself. Values education strives to
get people to draw on all their experience and innate human wisdom to
do what is right – for themselves and others.
There are many possibilities for
research in the field of values education in a business environment.
Dr Bill would be happy to
assist postgraduate students (with the
approval of their university or college) devise research topics and
conduct a study. Contact him on
bill.robb@valueseducation.co.uk
Copyright © 2008 Values Education Ltd
Note to editors. Feel free to use this article as long as the
following details are retained. “A values education article from CAVE
www.valueseducation.co.uk
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