Hardwired Inhibitions: Hidden Forces that Keep Us Silent in the Face of Disaster

Employees’ willingness and ability to stop unsafe operations is one of the most critical parts of any safety management system, and here’s why: Safety managers cannot be everywhere at once.  They cannot write rules for every possible situation.  They cannot engineer the environment to remove every possible risk, and when the big events occur, it is usually because of a complex and unexpected interaction of many different elements in the work environment.  In many cases, employees working at the front line are not only the first line of defense, they are quite possibly the most important line of defense against these emergent hazards. Our 2010 study of safety interventions found that employees intervene in only about 39% of the unsafe operations that they recognize while at work.  In other words, employees’ silence is a critical gap in safety management systems, and it is a gap that needs to be honestly explored and resolved.

An initial effort to resolve this problem - Stop Work Authority - has been beneficial, but it is insufficient.  In fact, 97% of the people who participated in the 2010 study said that their company has given them the authority to stop unsafe operations.  Stop Work Authority’s value is in assuring employees that they will not be formally punished for insubordination or slowing productivity.  While fear of formal retaliation inhibits intervention, there are other, perhaps more significant forces that keep people silent.

Some might assume that the real issue is that employees lack sufficient motivation to speak up.  This belief is unfortunately common among leadership, represented in a common refrain - “We communicated that it is their responsibility to intervene in unsafe operations; but they still don’t do it.  They just don’t take it seriously.”  Contrary to this common belief, we have spoken one-on-one with thousands of frontline employees and nearly all of them, regardless of industry, culture, age or other demographic category, genuinely believe that they have the fundamental, moral responsibility to watch out for and help to protect their coworkers.  Employees’ silence is not simply a matter of poor motivation.

At the heart this issue is the “context effect.”  What employees think about, remember and care about at any given moment is heavily influenced by the specific context in which they find themselves.  People literally see the world differently from one moment to the next as a result of the social, physical, mental and emotional factors that are most salient at the time.  The key question becomes, “What factors in employees’ production contexts play the most significant role in inhibiting intervention?”  While there are many, and they vary from one company to the next, I would like to introduce four common factors in employees’ production contexts:

THE UNIT BIAS

Think about a time when you were focused on something and realized that you should stop to deal with a different, more significant problem, but decided to stick with the original task anyway?  That is the unit bias.  It is a distortion in the way we view reality.  In the moment, we perceive that completing the task at hand is more important than it really is, and so we end up putting off things that, outside of the moment, we would recognize as far more important.  Now imagine that an employee is focused on a task and sees a coworker doing something unsafe.  “I’ll get to it in a minute,” he thinks to himself.

BYSTANDER EFFECT

This is a a well documented phenomenon, whereby we are much less likely to intervene or help others when we are in a group.  In fact, the more people there are, the less likely we are to be the ones who speak up.

DEFERENCE TO AUTHORITY

When we are around people with more authority than us, we are much less likely to be the ones who take initiative to deal with a safety issue.  We refrain from doing what we believe we should, because we subtly perceive such action to be the responsibility of the “leader.”  It is a deeply-embedded and often non-conscious aversion to insubordination: When a non-routine decision needs to be made, it is to be made by the person with the highest position power.

PRODUCTION PRESSURE 

When we are under pressure to produce something in a limited amount of time, it does more than make us feel rushed.  It literally changes the way we perceive our own surroundings.  Things that might otherwise be perceived as risks that need to be stopped are either not noticed at all or are perceived as insignificant compared to the importance of getting things done. In addition to these four, there are other forces in employees’ production contexts that inhibit them when they should speak up.  If we're are going to get people to speak up more often, we need to move beyond “Stop Work Authority” and get over the assumption that motivating them will be enough.  We need to help employees understand what is inhibiting them in the moment, and then give them the skills to overcome these inhibitors so that they can do what they already believe is right - speak up to keep people safe.

When Progressive Discipline Is in Order

We have trained leaders, managers and supervisors in a lot of companies and almost all of those companies had some form of progressive discipline policy. The term “discipline” implies that the person receiving it has done something wrong or failed to follow rules, policies or procedures and you are trying to motivate the person with negative consequences to do it right in the future. As we discussed previously, motivation is just one of many possible reasons for failure and discipline seldom impacts performance when motivation is not the cause. When lack of motivation is the cause, understanding the consequences of continued failure can be a powerful tool for getting performance improvement. So how should you go about “progressive discipline”? We suggest a four step process beginning with an exploration of the causes of the initial failure and ending with “termination of employment” if the other three steps don’t work. Let’s look at these in order. Please note that the labels we use may be different than the ones used in your organization but hopefully the progression is similar. You should always check your organizations progressive discipline policy to make sure that you are in compliance. Also note that in some cases you can/should go to the last step (Termination) first, for example when the person violates a company policy on drug/alcohol use. But for now, let’s assume that we are dealing not with that type of policy violation, but with performance failure. Step 1 - Performance Redirection: This step is used when you have an initial performance failure. We call this type of failure an “episode”. This is the first time the person has failed to achieve this particular desired result and you want to get them back on track so you have a conversation to identify the failure, determine the reason the failure occurred and determine how that reason can be eliminated so that future success is ensured. In other words, you use the accountability process that we have been describing in our previous 2014 newsletters. This process should be used anytime you incur an episode, but what do you do when you have the same episode occur again on one or more occasions? Reoccurrence of a particular failure is what we call a “rerun”. It’s like watching the same TV show again. Our suggestion is that you begin by treating it the same way you did the first time to determine if the same cause is in play and why your “fix” didn’t work. If you find a different cause, then fix it, but if you find the same cause, then moving to Step 2 may be in order.

Step 2 - Corrective Counseling: There are really two objectives with Corrective Counseling; (1) to communicate the importance of improvement, and (2) to provide legal support if termination becomes necessary. This step is the same as performance redirection with one addition…“documentation”. Your organization most likely has a documentation form for you to complete to detail the conversations that you have had with this person about this continued failure, so complete it, sign it and get the employee to sign also. By the way, their signature simply indicates that they attended the meeting and received the information, not that they agree. As a matter of fact, they should be able to state in the document if they disagree. We are often asked what you should do if the employee refuses to sign the document? We suggest that you have a witness (someone at your level or higher, not a coworker of the employee) sign to indicate that the session occurred and that the employee refused to sign. Additionally, the employee should be advised that continued failure will result in Step 3. Finally, place the document in the employee’s permanent personnel file. Should the employees performance improve you can always document the improvement and put that in the file as demonstration of the improvement.

Step 3 - Corrective Action: This step is simply Corrective Counseling with one addition…some form of punitive action, e.g., time off without pay, demotion to a lower position, etc. In some organizations there is a predetermined progression of punitive action, so you should check with Human Resources to determine what that progression is. Obviously you will document, but it is also highly recommended (required in many companies) that you have a witness present when conducting a Corrective Action meeting. Again, the employee should be advised about the results of continued failure especially if Step 4 is next in the progression.

Step 4 - Employment Termination: Unlike the previous three steps, this step is not intended to motivate the individual but rather is the culmination of those previous attempts. The objective is not to “punish” the person but to communicate that their continued failure has left you with no other option but to give them the opportunity to go somewhere that they can be successful. Your organization will have specific procedures in place for this meeting and will most likely be a joint session with an HR representative and possibly your supervisor/manager. If you have followed the progressive discipline policy then this result should not be a surprise to the employee and additionally should provide the legal framework to protect the organization against a possible lawsuit.

Finding and developing successful employees is possibly the most important job of a supervisor. Progressive discipline is one of the tools that you have to help develop your employees. If you put most of your focus and effort on Step 1, you shouldn’t need Steps 2-4 very often.

What’s the Point?

Performance issues usually stem from multiple and varying factors. Rarely is motivation the only cause of poor performance. However, when motivation is the driving factor, progressive discipline can be used to affect the motivation of the employee through the use of negative consequences. The key is to always use progressive discipline in accordance with your company's policy and with guidance from your HR department. Remember the goal is to improve performance, not simply punish.

Safety Intervention: A Dynamic Solution to Complex Safety Problems

If your organization is like many that we see, you are spending ever increasing time and energy developing SOPs, instituting regulations from various alphabet government organizations, buying new PPE and equipment, and generally engineering your workplace to be as safe as possible.  While this is both invaluable and required to be successful in our world today, is it enough?  The short answer is “no”. These things are what we refer to as mechanical and procedural safeguards and are absolutely necessary but also absolutely inadequate.  You see, mechanical and procedural safeguards are static, slow to change, and offer limited effectiveness while our workplaces are incredibly complex, dynamic, and hard to predict.  We simply can’t create enough barriers that can cover every possible hazard in the world we live in.  In short, you have to do it but you shouldn’t think that your job stops there. For us to create safety in such a complex environment we will have to find something else that permeates the organization, is reactive, and also creative.  The good news is that you have the required ingredient already…..people.  If we can get our people to speak up effectively when they see unsafe acts, they can be the missing element that is everywhere in your organization, can react instantly, and come up with creative fixes.  But can it be that easy?  Again, the short answer is “no”.

In 2010 we completed a large scale and cross-industry study into what happens when someone observes another person engaged in an unsafe action.  We wanted to know how often people spoke up when they saw an unsafe act.  If they didn’t speak up, why not?  If they did speak up how did the other person respond?  Did they become angry, defensive or show appreciation?  Did the intervention create immediate behavior change and also long term behavior change, and much more?  I don’t have the time and space to go into the entire finding of our research (EHS Today Article) , just know that people don’t speak up very often (39% of the time) and when they do speak up they tend to do a poor job.  If you take our research findings and evaluate them in light  of a long history of research into cognitive biases (e.g. the fundamental attribution error, hindsight bias, etc.) that show how humans tend to be hardwired to fail when the moment of intervention arises we know where the 61% failure rate of speaking up comes from…… it’s human nature.

We decided to test a theory and see if we could fight human nature simply by giving front line workers a set of skills to intervene when they did see an unsafe action by one of their coworkers.  We taught them how to talk to the person in such a way that they eliminated defensiveness, identified the actual reasons for why the person did it the unsafe way, and then ultimately found a fix to make sure the behavior changed immediately and sustainably.  We wanted to know if simply learning these skills made it more likely that people would speak up, and if they did would that 90 second intervention be dynamic and creative enough to make immediate and sustainable behavior change.  What we found in one particular company gave us our answer.  Simply learning intervention skills made their workforce 30% more likely to speak up.  Just knowing how to talk to people made it more likely that people didn’t fall victim to  the cognitive biases that I mentioned earlier.  And when they did speak up, behavior changes were happening at a far great rate and lasting much longer that they ever did previously, which helped result in a 57% reduction in Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) and an 89% reduction in severity rates.

I would never tell a safety professional to stop working diligently on their mechanical and procedural barriers, they should be a significant component of the foundation on which safety programs are built.  However, human intervention should be the component that holds that program together when things get crazy out in the real world.  It can be as simple as helping your workers understand their propensity for not intervening and then giving them the ability and confidence to speak up when they do see something unsafe.

They Care, Now What? A Human Factors Approach to Accountability

Over the past several months we have been proposing an approach for holding others accountable for failed performance that is grounded in a “contextual” diagnostic model. This model allows you to determine the “real” causes of failed performance prior to determining the “best” approach for improving that performance going forward. Last month we talked about how to effectively motivate an individual who is failing due to either a lack of intrinsic (self) motivation or a need for extrinsic motivation. Fixing the Motivated

This month we will explore how to improve performance for individuals who are motivated but for some other non-motivational reason are failing to perform in a manner that is acceptable. We can fail for a variety of reasons as we discussed in our May Newsletter (A Causation Model for Poor Performance), so determining the “real” cause is obviously required before a sustainable fix can be put into place. The key to finding and implementing an effective fix requires commitment on the part of the other person and the best way to get this commitment is for the person to come up with the fix himself. In other words the objective is to help the person determine the best fix himself so that he has ownership of the plan and thus more commitment. This means that you have to be a “facilitator” and not a “dictator”. To facilitate simply means to make it easier for something to happen. In this context it means to make it easier for the person to find a fix for the reason behind his own poor performance. Facilitating is really rather simple and only requires a few skills for success. You start by asking for their ideas about how to fix it by using a simple open ended question like…..” What is something we can do to fix this?” or “Do you have any ideas for fixing this?” Asking a question such as…..”Do you think we should send you to training?” is not an open ended question because it suggests a specific solution that is your idea and not the other person’s. Remember, the objective is to get his ownership and if the plan is his then he owns it. Be careful not to criticize or belittle ideas or the person will most likely become defensive and stop offering ideas. If the person offers a fix that won’t work, explore why it won’t work. Don’t just say, “That won’t work”. Ask them to think about the natural consequences, or outcomes of their plan to help them see why it might not be the best approach.

Dealing with Complexity

Remember, failure can be due to more than one reason and fixing only part of the problem will most likely not lead to sustainable success. For example, let’s assume that the person does not have the knowledge to perform successfully and they are experiencing pressure from you to perform quickly. Providing the person with training will only solve part of the issue and will require that you determine how you are creating the pressure that is effecting performance. This may require that you “drill down” by asking additional questions to determine exactly why the person is feeling undue pressure and how that pressure is helping to create failure. Remember to monitor your defensiveness here because that could stop the facilitative process in it’s tracks. One additional skill that is required is to “listen completely”. Listening is more than just “hearing” what the other person is saying, but rather is “understanding” both the words and the underlying meaning of how they are saying it. Watch for signs such as facial expression, eye contact, body posture, etc. that could indicate that the person is not saying exactly what their words are saying. Saying “that sounds good to me” while smiling and looking you in the eye is not the same as saying those same words while looking down with a “flat” expression on their face. Always ask questions to determine the real meaning of their words if you think you could be misunderstanding their true intent.

Finally, provide help in executing the plan that has been designed through facilitation. Your role as supervisor (or parent if you are applying these skills to your children) is to help the person achieve success, so following up and providing support and feedback are crucial to maintaining success going forward.

What’s the Point?

Performance issues usually stem from multiple and varying human factors. Rarely is motivation the only cause of poor performance. When we find that the performance is lacking due to factors that don't include motivation, we simply need to brainstorm ways to fix the causes. Avoid the temptation to motivate the already motivated and find a way to fix the other causes of their poor performance.

Human Error and Complexity: Why your “safety world view” matters

Have you ever thought about or looked at pictures of your ancestors and realized, “I have that trait too!” Just like your traits are in large part determined by random combinations of genes from your ancestry, the history behind your safety world view is probably largely the product of chance - for example, whether you studied Behavioral Psychology or Human Factors in college, which influential authors’ views you were exposed to, who your first supervisor was, or whether you worked in the petroleum, construction or aeronautical industry. Our “Safety World View” is built over time and dramatically impacts how we think about, analyze and strive to prevent accidents.

Linear View - Human Error

Let’s briefly look at two views - Linear and Systemic - not because they are the only possible ones, but because they have had and are currently having the greatest impact on the world of safety. The Linear View is integral in what is sometimes referred to as the “Person Approach,” exemplified by traditional Behavior Based Safety (BBS) that grew out of the work of B.F. Skinner and the application of his research to Applied Behavioral Analysis and Behavior Modification. Whether we have thought of it or not, much of the industrial world is operating on this “linear” theoretical framework. We attempt to understand events by identifying and addressing a single cause (antecedent) or distinct set of causes, which elicit unsafe actions (behaviors) that lead to an incident (consequences). This view impacts both how we try to change unwanted behavior and how we go about investigating incidents. This behaviorally focused view naturally leads us to conclude in many cases that Human Error is, or can be, THE root cause of the incident. In fact, it is routinely touted that, “research shows that human error is the cause of more than 90 percent of incidents.” We are also conditioned and “cognitively biased” to find this linear model so appealing. I use the word “conditioned” because it explains a lot of what happens in our daily lives, where situations are relatively clean and simple…..so we naturally extend this way of thinking to more complex worlds/situations where it is perhaps less appropriate. Additionally, because we view accidents after the fact, the well documented phenomenon of “hindsight bias” leads us to linearly trace the cause back to an individual, and since behavior is the core of our model, we have a strong tendency to stop there. The assumption is that human error (unsafe act) is a conscious, “free will” decision and is therefore driven by psychological functions such as complacency, lack of motivation, carelessness or other negative attributes. This leads to the also well-documented phenomenon of the Fundamental Attribution Error, whereby we have a tendency to attribute failure on the part of others to negative personal qualities such as inattention, lack of motivation, etc., thus leading to the assignment of causation and blame. This assignment of blame may feel warranted and even satisfying, but does not necessarily deal with the real “antecedents” that triggered the unsafe behavior in the first place. As Sidney Dekker stated, “If your explanation of an accident still relies on unmotivated people, you have more work to do."

Systemic View - Complexity

In reality, most of us work in complex environments which involve multiple interacting factors and systems, and the linear view has a difficult time dealing with this complexity. James Reason (1997) convincingly argued for the complex nature of work environments with his “Swiss Cheese” model of complexity. In his view, accidents are the result of active failures at the “sharp end” (where the work is actually done) and “latent conditions,” which include many organizational decisions at the “blunt end” (higher management) of the work process. Because barriers fail, there are times when the active failures and latent conditions align, allowing for an incident to occur. More recently Hollnagel (2004) has argued that active failures are a normal part of complex workplaces because of the requirement for individuals to adapt their performance to the constantly changing environment and the pressure to balance production and safety. As a result, accidents “emerge” as this adaptation occurs (Hollnagel refers to this adaptive process as the “Efficiency Thoroughness Trade Off”) . Dekker (2006) has recently added to this view the idea that this adaptation is normal and even “locally rational” to the individual committing the active failure because he/she is responding to a context that may not be apparent to those observing performance in the moment or investigating a resulting incident. Focusing only on the active failure as the result of “human error” is missing the real reasons that it occurs at all. Rather, understanding the complex context that is eliciting the decision to behave in an “unsafe” manner will provide more meaningful information. It is much easier to engineer the context than it is to engineer the person. While a person is involved in almost all incidents in some manner, human error is seldom the “sufficient” cause of the incident because of the complexity of the environment in which it occurs. Attempting to explain and prevent incidents from a simple linear viewpoint will almost always leave out contributory (and often non-obvious) factors that drove the decision in the first place and thus led to the incident.

Why Does it Matter?

Thinking of human error as a normal and adaptive component of complex workplace environments leads to a different approach to preventing the incidents that can emerge out of those environments. It requies that we gain an understanding of the many and often surprising contextual factors that can lead to the active failure in the first place. If we are going to engineer safer workplaces, we must start with something that does not look like engineering at all - namely, candid, informed and skillful conversations with and among people throughout the organization. These conversations should focus on determining the contextual factors that are driving the unsafe actions in the first place. It is only with this information that we can effectively eliminate what James Reason called “latent conditions” that are creating the contexts that elicit the unsafe action in the first place. Additionally, this information should be used in the moment to eliminate active failures and also allowed to flow to decision makers at the “blunt end”, so that the system can be engineered to maximize safety. Your safety world view really does matter.

Skills for Fixing Motivation Issues

Last month we discussed how to determine the “real” reasons behind performance failure. Now that we have determined causation, this month we are going to examine one of those possible reasons for performance failure: motivation, or lack of it. But before proceeding we first need to be quite sure that motivation is indeed the driver of the poor performance. Keep in mind that the Fundamental Attribution Error leads us to make bad guesses about why people do what they do and that bad guess is often lack of motivation. Therefore, ensure that you’ve drilled down enough to determine that motivation is indeed a cause. Once you have done this it is time to motivate. What is Motivation?

I have been working with and training supervisors and managers for the past 30+ years and the issue of how to motivate employees is an issue that is always high on the list of concerns that they have. First, let’s look at what motivation is and where it comes from, and then we will look at a couple of skills that you can apply to generate the energy necessary to get the performance that you want.

For our purposes, we will define motivation as “the level of eagerness to engage in and accomplish a specific task”. We have all had situations where we couldn’t wait to get involved in an activity (motivated) and conversely we have all had situations that we dreaded and put off engaging in as long as possible (unmotivated).

Motivation comes in two forms: Extrinsic and Intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation simply means motivation from outside of the person and includes things like positive feedback, praise, money, negative feedback, etc. Intrinsic motivation comes from within the person and is commonly referred to as “self” or “achievement” motivation. It is the desire to succeed simply because you value succeeding. It is a sense of “personal pride”.

We all need and for the most part have both in our lives. We need money (extrinsic) and we like to succeed (intrinsic). When people fail because of lack of motivation, we first need to determine the source. Is it extrinsic or intrinsic? The reason for having this knowledge is because the “fix” will vary with each?

Fixing Extrinsic Motivation

Fixing extrinsic motivation is easier than intrinsic fixes because you have more direct control over extrinsic fixes.

You can provide praise for success. You can at times provide financial reward for success but throwing money at the issue is not always the best approach.  You can also provide negative feedback for failure. In other words, if you determine that the problem is extrinsic motivation and you know what specific extrinsic factor is involved, you can just fix that factor and most of the time the issue will be resolved.

Often the person is not motivated because they aren’t aware of the likely extrinsic consequences of their actions. A very useful technique in this case is to “Bring Consequences to Life”.

• Help the person discover the “natural” consequences of failure.
• What impact can their continued failure have on the team? On profits? On salary increases? On their future? On their family? Etc.
• When appropriate you can also bring “imposed” consequences to life such as their continued employment, but using “threats” is less powerful than their understanding of the natural consequences of continued failure.
• Additionally, it is always better to have the person identify the consequences on their own rather than telling them. Self discovery creates more ownership and understanding which in turn creates more motivation going forward.

Fixing Intrinsic Motivation

It is much harder, however, to fix intrinsic motivation issues. When the person just doesn’t like the task or see the need to perform up to standard you have an intrinsic motivation issue.

While there are many techniques for dealing with this, I would suggest one that I have found to work most of the time: “Connect to Self-Respect”. Intrinsic motivation is directly tied to a person’s sense of self-worth, self-esteem and self-respect. The idea here is to find what the person values - how the person wants to be seen by others - and make the connection between their performance success/failure and that value.

For example, I am not intrinsically motivated to mow and trim my yard but I do want to be seen as a good neighbor who takes pride in my property and who wants to abide by city ordinances. Understanding that failure to take care of my property would be incongruent with my values motivates me to do something I don’t really like doing.

I bet you have something that you don’t like doing, too. Think about how failure to do it can impact the way you are seen by others and how it can impact the way you see yourself. In other words, when holding someone accountable for failure that is due to an intrinsic motivation issue, help them understand how continued failure is incongruent with what they value most, and how success is congruent with their values. Motivating others is more than simply giving and taking away. It is helping them understand the real impact of success and failure.

What’s the Point?

Successful performance requires both skill and motivation. When you determine that failure is due, at least in part to motivation, then your job is to determine the best approach for getting that motivation. Start by determining whether extrinsic or intrinsic motivation is the issue and then apply the appropriate tool to energize performance.

Safety Culture Shift: Three Basic Steps

In the world of safety, culture is a big deal. In one way or another, culture helps to shape nearly everything that happens within an organization - from shortcuts taken by shift workers to budget cuts made by managers. As important as it is, though, it seems equally as confusing and intractable. Culture appears to emerge as an unexpected by-product of organizational minutia: A brief comment made by a manager, misunderstood by direct-reports, propagated during water cooler conversations, and compounded with otherwise unrelated management decisions to downsize, outsource, reassign, promote, terminate… Safety culture can either grow wild and unmanaged - unpredictably influencing employee performance and elevating risk - or it can be understood and deliberately shaped to ensure that employees uphold the organization’s safety values.

Pin it Down

The trick is to pin it down. A conveniently simple way of capturing the idea of culture is to say that it is the “taken-for-granted way of doing things around here;” but even this is not enough. If we can understand the mechanics that drive culture, we will be better positioned to shift it in support of safety. The good news is that, while presenting itself as extraordinarily complicated, culture is remarkably ordinary at its core. It is just the collective result of our brains doing what they always do.

Our Brains at Work

Recall the first time that you drove a car. While you might have found it exhilarating, it was also stressful and exhausting. Recall how unfamiliar everything felt and how fast everything seemed to move around you. Coming to a four-way stop for the first time, your mind was racing to figure out when and how hard to press the brake pedal, where the front of the car should stop relative to the stop sign, how long you should wait before accelerating, which cars at the intersection had the right-of-way, etc. While we might make mistakes in situations like this, we should not overlook just how amazing it is that our brains can take in such a vast amount of unfamiliar information and, in a near flash, come up with an appropriate course of action. We can give credit to the brain’s “executive system” for this.

Executive or Automatic?

But this is not all that our brains do. Because the executive system has its limitations - it can only handle a small number of challenges at a time, and appears to consume an inordinate amount of our body’s energy in doing so - we would be in bad shape if we had to go through the same elaborate and stressful mental process for the rest of our lives while driving. Fortunately, our brains also “automate” the efforts that work for us. Now, when you approach a four-way-stop, your brain is free to continue thinking about what you need to pick up from the store before going home. When we come up with a way of doing something that works - even elaborate processes - our brains hand it over to an “automatic system.” This automatic system drives our future actions and decisions when we find ourselves in similar circumstances, without pestering the executive system to come up with an appropriate course of action.

Why it Matters

What does driving have to do with culture? Whatever context we find ourselves in - whether it is a four-way-stop or a pre-job planning meeting - our brains take in the range of relevant information, come up with an effective course of action, try it out and, when it works, automate it as “the way to do things in this situation.”

For Example

Let’s imagine that a young employee leaves new-hire orientation with a clear understanding of the organization’s safety policies and operating procedures. At that moment, assuming that he wants to succeed within the organization, he believes that proactively contributing during a pre-job planning meeting will lead to recognition and professional success.

Unfortunately, at many companies, the actual ‘production’ context is quite different than the ‘new-hire orientation’ context. There are hurried supervisors, disinterested ‘old timers’, impending deadlines and too little time, and what seemed like the right course of action during orientation now looks like a sure-fire way to get ostracized and opposed. His brain’s “executive system” quickly determines that staying quiet and “pencil whipping” the pre-job planning form like everyone else is a better course of action; and in no time, our hapless new hire is doing so automatically - without thinking twice about whether it is the right thing to do.

Changing Culture

If culture is the collective result of brains figuring out how to thrive in a given context, then changing culture comes down to changing context - changing the “rules for success.” If you learned to drive in the United States but find yourself at an intersection in England, your automated way of driving will likely get you into an accident. When the context changes, the executive system has to wake up, find a new way to succeed given the details of the new context, and then automate that for the future.

How does this translate to changing a safety culture? It means that, to change safety culture, we need to change the context that employees work in so that working safely and prioritizing safety when making decisions leads to success.

Three Basic Steps:

Step 1

Identify the “taken-for-granted” behaviors that you want employees to adopt. Do you want employees to report all incidents and near-misses? Do you want managers to approve budget for safety-critical expenditures?

This exercise amounts to defining your safety culture. Avoid the common mistake of falling back on vague, safety-oriented value statements. If you aren’t specific here, you will not have a solid foundation for the next two steps.

Step 2

Analyze employees’ contexts to see what is currently inhibiting or competing against these targeted, taken-for-granted behaviors. Are shift workers criticized or blamed by their supervisors for near-misses? Are the managers who cut cost by cutting corners also the ones being promoted?

Be sure to look at the entire context. Often times, factors like physical layout, reporting structure or incentive programs play a critical role in inhibiting these desired, taken-for-granted behaviors.

Step 3

Change the context so that, when employees exhibit the desired behaviors that you identified in Step 1, they are more likely to thrive within the organization.

“Thriving” means that employees receive recognition, satisfy the expectations of their superiors, avoid resistance and alienation, achieve their professional goals, and avoid conflicting demands for their time and energy, among other things.

Give It a Try

Shifting culture comes down to strategically changing the context that people find themselves in.  Give it a try and you might find that it is easier than you expected. You might even consider trying it at home. Start at Step 1; pick one simple "taken-for-granted" behavior and see if you can get people to automate this behavior by changing their context. If you continue the experiment and create a stable working context that consistently encourages safe performance, working safely will eventually become "how people do things around here."

Diagnostic Tools for Poor Performance

In our May Newsletter we described a Contextual Model designed to help us understand how people make decisions that impact their performance. You will recall that we focused on four general contextual factors (Self, Others, Surroundings and Systems) as primary contributors to determining performance success or failure. The salience or "relative weightiness" of specific factors within these general factors create what we called “local rationality”. Local rationality is a term to describe the fact that individuals perceive and interpret the contextual factors weighing on them in a way that is uniquely their own and makes total sense to them, irrespective of how "irrational" the interpretation appears to an onlooker. This locally perceived and vetted interpretation of the contextual factors weighing on a person, in turn, determines how the person decides, behaves, or performs.

Therefore, to accurately (and thus effectively) hold someone accountable for performance requires that we examine their context before we attempt to “fix” their performance.

Four Skills

We suggest four skills that when applied during an “accountability discussion”, or what we also refer to as a “re-direction” discussion, will help you get an accurate picture of the person’s context.

We have a natural tendency to want to understand and explain what we see as quickly as possible, so we have a tendency to make a guess about the causes of poor performance.

Thus the first skill:

“Don’t Guess”

Whether you are right or wrong in your guess, you are likely to create defensiveness and we have already talked about the negative impact that defensiveness can have on communication (Read the Blog: Dealing with Defensiveness in Relationships).

Additionally, when you guess you can unintentionally influence the person to agree with your assessment even if it is incorrect. So, instead of guessing, become curious and think to yourself...”I wonder why it makes sense to him to do that?”.

This question also weakens the influence of the Fundamental Attribution Error and allows you to entertain factors other than motivation as a cause for failure.

This leads to the second skill:

“Ask Opening Questions”

Start by making sure that your tone of voice is respectful and not accusatory which would most likely be interpreted as a guess and lead to defensiveness.

Don’t ask “Yes” or “No” type questions which would also be seen as guessing, rather simply ask the person to help you understand why they did what they did (a reflection of your curiosity question above).

For example “Can you help me understand why you are doing it this way?”

If you show genuine curiosity and not judgement you will be much more likely to get at the real reason behind the decision and behavior.

Sometimes you will only be able to identify a general contextual factor with your Opening Question, so this brings the third skill into play:

“Ask Drill Down Questions”

Remember, the objective of this discussion is to determine the real reason or reasons behind the poor performance so that you can fix it. If you didn’t get enough information from your first question, then just ask a second, more specific question (i.e., Drill Down Question).

For example Let’s say the person used the wrong tool for the job and when you ask them why they say they didn’t have the right tool. You might drill down by asking something like...”Why didn’t you have the right tool?”.

Just telling them to use the right tool might not fix the problem if the reason they don’t have the right tool is because there is only one available and someone else is using it!” Remember, drill down far enough to find the real reason(s) before you attempt to fix it.

And finally, during the whole conversation apply the fourth skill:

“Listen Completely”

Listening to “what” the person is saying (their words) is only half of the process. To listen completely, you must also pay attention to “how” they are speaking, e.g. their tone of voice, their willingness to maintain eye contact, their body posture, etc. These help you understand the “real” meaning behind what they are saying and will also help you get to the real context that led them to perform as they did.

What's the Point?

Only after you have ascertained the real reason(s) do you have a sufficiently complete and accurate “accounting” of the failure. With this "accounting", you can now help find a fully informed fix that will lead to sustained improvement going forward.

The Human Factor - Missing from Behavior Based Safety

Since the early 1970’s, there has been an interest in the application of Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) techniques to the improvement of safety performance in the workplace. The pioneering work of B.F. Skinner on Operant Conditioning in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s led to a focus on changing unsafe behavior using observation and feedback techniques. Thousands of organizations have attempted to use various aspects of ABA to improve safety with various levels of success. This approach (referred to as Behavior Based Safety, or BBS) typically attempts to increase the chances that desired “safe” behavior will occur in the future by first identifying the desired behavior, observing the performance of individuals in the workplace and then applying positive reinforcement (consequences) following the desired behavior. The idea is that as safe behavior is strengthened, unsafe behavior will disappear (“extinguish”).

The Linear View

Traditionally, incidents/accidents have been viewed as a series of cause and effect events that can be understood and ultimately prevented by interrupting the chain of events in some way. With this “Linear” view of accident causation, there is an attempt to identify the root cause of the incident, which is often determined to be some form of “Human Error” due to an unsafe action. The Linear view can be depicted as follows:

Event “A” (Antecedent) → Behavior “B” → Undesired Event → Consequence “C”

Driven by the views of Skinner and others, Behavioral Psychology and BBS have been concerned exclusively with what can be observed. The issue is that, while people do behave overtly, they also have “cognitive” capacity to observe their environment, think about it and make calculated decisions about how to behave in the first place. While Behavioral Psychologists acknowledge that this occurs, they argue that the “causes” of performance can be explained through an analysis of the Antecedents within the environment. However, since they also take a linear view, they tend to limit the “causal” antecedent to a single source known as the “root cause”.

Human Factors

The field of Human Factors Psychology has provided a body of research that has demonstrated that many, if not most, accidents evolve out of complex systems that are not necessarily linear. Some researchers call this a “Systemic” view of incidents. The argument is that incidents occur in complex environments, characterized as involving multiple interacting systems rather than just simple linear events. That is, multiple interacting events (Antecedents) combine to create the “right” context to elicit the behavior that follows.

In such complex environments, individuals are constantly evaluating multiple contextual factors to allow them to make decisions about how to act, rather than simply responding to single Antecedents that happen to be present. In this view, the decision to act in a specific (safe or unsafe) manner is directed by sources of information, some of which are only available to the individual and not obvious to on-lookers or investigators who attempt to determine causation following an incident.

Local Rationality

This is referred to as “Local Rationality” because the decision to act in a certain way makes perfect sense to the individual in the local context given the information that he has in the moment. The local rationality principle says that people do what makes sense given the situation, operational pressures and organizational norms in which they find themselves.

People don’t want to get hurt, so when they do something unsafe, it is usually because they are either not aware that what they are doing is unsafe, they don’t recognize the hazard, or they don’t fully realize the risk associated with what they are doing. In some cases they may be aware of the risk, but because of other contextual factors, they decide to act unsafely anyway. (Have you ever driven over the speed limit because you were late for an appointment?) The key here is developing an understanding of why the individual made or is making the decision to behave in a particular way.

A More Complete Understanding

We believe that the most fruitful way to understand this is to bring together the rich knowledge provided by behavioral research and human factors (including cognitive & social psychological) research to create a more complete understanding of what goes on when people make decisions to take risks and act in unsafe ways. We believe it is time to put the Human Factor into Behavior Based Safety.

A Causation Model for Poor Performance

We have all failed at some point to meet expectations, either our own expectations or the expectations of someone else. I would guess that most of us did not try to fail, but we did anyway. Most of us thought that we were performing well until we were either told by someone else that we weren’t or we saw the results and determined it for ourselves. The question then becomes...”Why did we fail? What caused the failure?”

Failure Failure occurs for a variety of reasons and understanding the real cause(s) of a person's failure is absolutely critical to the accountability process and to assuring future success for the individual.

Local Rationality We make decisions to perform in specific ways because it makes sense to us to do so. This is called “local rationality”. What may look ridiculous or stupid to someone else, looks perfectly correct to us because of the context that we have at that moment.

The factors that are most obvious, pressing or significant from your point of view aren’t necessarily all that obvious, pressing or significant from another person’s point of view. However, it is that very set of factors that determines what makes sense and what doesn’t.

It is these factors that determine your decision to perform in a given manner. Sometimes these factors lead to failure while other times to success.

Context is Everything Context is everything and understanding that context is absolutely required before we can apply the “Ask” skills in an accountability conversation.

So let’s take a look at look at a contextual causation model for assessing performance.

The Contextual Model We find it helpful to think of context as involving four general factors, each made up of other specific factors which can have an impact on performance.

Gaining an understanding of which specific factors are affecting a person's performance will help us both understand the performance and determine how to help the person improve the performance going forward.

Self One of the general factors involves the individual and we call these the “Self” factors.

• Motivation: Does the person actually care about success? Is the person willing to put out the energy to perform successfully? It should be noted that we have a tendency to attribute most, if not all failure to lack of motivation when in fact it is only one of serval self factors that may be at play. Remember the Fundamental Attribution Error that we discussed last month. So be careful not to guess that failure can be fixed simply by motivating the person.
• Ability: Can the person actually engage in the performance needed for success? Do they have the skill set necessary for success or are they lacking those skills?
• Knowledge: Does the person know how to perform correctly? Have they been given the training necessary for success?
• Habits: Has the person done it the wrong way so many times that it has become engrained to the point that the person is on “auto pilot”?
• Attention: Is the person failing to focus on performing correctly? Is the person distracted for some reason? Has the person done the task so many times that he/she does it without thinking?

Others A person’s performance can also be impacted by what the people around him/her do and say, and we refer to these as the “Others” factors.

• Help: Do people in the workplace (supervisor and coworkers) provide assistance or not? Do they do things that make it difficult or easy to be successful? Do they remove or create barriers to success?
• Pressure: Is there peer pressure to perform in an unacceptable manner? Does the boss knowingly, or unknowingly push the person to perform in a manner that leads to failure? Does the boss create an environment where one aspect of success (e.g. productivity) is seen as more important than another (e.g. safety)?
• Modeling: Do others in the workplace perform in a manner that makes it seem normal to perform in a manner that leads to failure? Or do they perform in a manner that assures success?

Surroundings The workplace itself can also impact performance and we call these the “Surroundings” factors.

• Equipment: Does the person have the right tools/resources to perform successfully? Or is the person forced to adapt tools that are not really fit for the job?
• Climate: Are temperature, light, wind, or other environmental factors impacting success?
• Layout: Are things located in such a way that they make it easier or more difficult to achieve success?

Systems And finally there may be institutional factors that impact performance and we call those the “Systems” factors.

• Rules: Are there requirements from the company, customer, industry or government that make success difficult? Are there rules that are in conflict and force the person to make a choice of which one to follow?
• Rewards/Punishments: Are incentives impacting performance either positively or negatively? Does the incentive program create the need to take short cuts in order to be successful? Does the incentive program reward speed over accuracy
• Procedures: Are accepted procedures actually making success more difficult? Are there actually procedures in place that will help the person achieve success?

Think about a time when you failed to meet expectations. What factor or factors were at play to contribute to that failure? Were you held accountable and, if so, did the person holding you accountable understand why you failed? Did he/she explore your context before creating a fix for your failure?

What's the point?

Next month we will examine the four “Ask” skills that will help you use the Contextual Model to determine what exactly is contributing to an individual’s failure. This is so that you can then help them “Fix” the right things to create a context that will lead to success going forward.

Dealing with Defensiveness in Relationships

If you are a normal human, then you are regularly stuck dealing with defensiveness in relationships, both in yourself and in others. Defensiveness is the normal human reaction to threats to a person’s reputation and/or dignity. We are hardwired to protect ourselves both physically and emotionally and we do that by either fleeing or fighting. We call these “retreating” or “pushing” and both are signs of defensiveness. When we feel threatened, some of us, at times, get quiet and don’t say anything. Others argue back or provide justification for their actions. Depending on the situation and the person with whom we are interacting, all of us can, for the most part, resort to either defense mechanism.

The bottom line is that defensiveness, while normal, is also harmful and disruptive because it doesn’t help us think or communicate effectively. As a matter of fact, it causes us to “dumb down” and become cognitively less effective in the moment.

We call this process “the Defensive Cycle” and it looks like this:

Us

• It starts when we see or hear someone do or say something.
• We then make a bad “guess” about why they did it. That bad guess is what is called the “Fundamental Attribution Error” because we mistakenly attribute the other person's action to some internal state of theirs that puts them into a bad light (e.g. poor motivation, selfishness, personal satisfaction in insulting or devaluing you in some way).
• That interpretation then creates a desire in us to defend.
• We then do so by either retreating (sulking, withdrawing, looking down, etc) or by pushing back (using harsh words, giving a harsh glare, etc).

Them

• The other person observes our action.
• They interpret our response as offensive.
• They likewise defend by either retreating or pushing.

Us

• We in turn respond and the cycle goes on until someone “wins” (actually until both lose because there is always a winner and a loser and when we lose we like to get even with the winner which leads to another defensive cycle).

Notice that the defensive cycle begins when one person does or says something and the other person “guesses” bad intent. It is that “guess” that is the problem because we can't determine the true intent unless we communicate. Unfortunately, the bad guess leads to anger or frustration which impedes the very communication we need.

Dealing with Us

We suggest that the key to defusing your defensiveness is to “Learn Your Trigger”. When you become angry or frustrated, let that emotion trigger curiosity rather than blame.

When you become angry or frustrated, think to yourself, “I must be guessing something bad. Why would this person have done or said that?”

Simply stopping and asking yourself this question interrupts the defensive cycle, re-engages your brain and keeps your cognitive skills at a higher level so that you can hold a more effective, less defensive conversation. So that is how you can help control your defensiveness, but what about the other person’s defensiveness?

Dealing with Them

Remember that defensiveness starts with a bad guess, so when the other person becomes defensive it is because they have attributed bad intent to what you have done or said. Your job is to help them understand your true intent which you can do by simply telling them what that intent is.

Use what we call a “Do/Don’t Statement” to accomplish this. Tell them what you do mean and, if necessary, tell them what you don’t mean.

For example

You and your spouse are planning to attend some event and it is time to leave. You are not sure that she is aware of the time since she doesn’t wear a watch, so you say to her…”Do you know what time it is“ and she responds with “I can tell time!”

To this you could respond with a Do/Don’t statement to clarify what you really mean…”I certainly don’t mean to insult you or make you feel rushed, I just wanted to know if you were aware that it is time to leave.”

Dealing effectively with both your defensiveness and the defensiveness of others will lead to happier, healthier relationships and a lot less “getting even”.

Stepping up to an Accountability Discussion

As we discussed in our March Newsletter, we often fail to “Step Up” to accountability discussions even though we know that speaking up can mean the difference between good and bad results, even life and death in some cases. Why is that? Flawed Approaches

It’s usually because we have spoken up in the past and the other person either became defensive or angry or they didn’t change their performance. This was probably because we used one of three flawed approaches.

Female boss pointing a pen at her male employee

Charm We may have attempted to be really nice or charming so that the person would want to change. In other words, we tried to motivate the person to “want” to change to please us.

Push We may have attempted to push or force the person to change by using whatever power or authority that we had. Again we are attempting to motivate the person to change, but this time out of fear.

Neither of these approaches work reliably to change poor performance for the long-term, especially if the reason behind the failure is not a motivation issue. (We will have much more to say about how to determine the “real” reason for the person’s failure in our May & June Newsletter discussions).

Retreat And this leads to the third flawed approach which is to retreat or say nothing because it wouldn’t make any difference anyway. We have tried the “charm” and “push” methods and since neither worked it must be because the person is flawed…..so what is the use. It is now on them to change and if they don’t, then it is their fault, not mine.

Play it S.A.F.E.

Effective redirection of performance - which produces longterm behavior change - is possible and we have broken the process down into four practical steps.

Step Up

Ask

Find a Fix

Ensure the Fix

So let’s look in more detail at how to Step Up and effectively enter that accountability discussion so that you don’t get defensiveness and/or fail to get improvement.

Step up

Our Step Up objective is to engage the person at the right time, about the right issue, in the right way, to change the poor performance.

Let’s first address the basics: Who & When and then we will examine How.

Who? The answer: You!

You can redirect anyone if you do it with the right intent (to help the person improve) and in the right way.

When? Our first reaction is to do so immediately, but there may be situations in which you should wait. If the person is doing something that presents an imminent risk (e.g. could cause them to get hurt), then intervene immediately.

Immediate redirection is usually best unless it will distract the person and put them in danger, or unnecessarily put the person on the defensive (when others are watching, for example).

So if there is no imminent danger and the person can’t pay attention or intervention could lead to “loss of face” then you should probably wait until the person can give attention to the discussion without being embarrassed by the conversation.

How? We suggest the use of three skills that will create the right environment and minimize or eliminate defensiveness.

1. State the Problem The problem statement includes two components:

“What the person is doing” & “Why it is wrong”.

When stating what the person is doing it is important to focus on the actions or results, and NOT the person. Your goal is not to blame the person for the failure, thus creating defensiveness, but rather to have a discussion around the behavior/actions that are creating the failure.

Stating why the action is wrong helps the person understand more about the context of their failure.

For Example “You haven’t turned in your report (What) and the company president needs that information for the board meeting in 10-minutes (Why)”.

Notice in this example that there is nothing about “Why” the person is failing. We don’t know that yet, so any reference to it would simply be a “Guess”. Guessing almost always leads to defensiveness and should therefore be avoided. We suggest that you always employ the next skill instead.

2. Stick to the Facts Facts are what you see and hear, and what can be seen and heard by others as well. They are not up for debate.

In the example above, it is a fact that the person either has or has not turned in the report.

It is a verifiable fact that the president needs the information contained in the report.

It is a verifiable fact that the board meeting will begin in 10-minutes.

It is a “Guess” that the person is too lazy to finish the report and suggesting that he is unmotivated would most likely lead to defensiveness.

Stick to the facts and you will have a much better chance of creating an environment that will allow for a calm evaluation of the real cause(s) of the failure when you get to the “Ask” step. However, if you still get defensiveness you can use the next skill to help diffuse it.

3. Use a Do/Don’t Statement We talked about this skill in our March Newsletter discussion of why we tend to avoid intervention discussions in the first place.

Remember, defensiveness is a perceived attack on the person's reputation, dignity, or both.

So when you sense that the person has misunderstood your intent or when you have failed to stick to the facts and made a guess, you can simply state what you 'do' mean and/or what you 'don’t' mean.

For Example “I don’t mean to imply that you are lazy at all, but we do need to get the report to the boss in time for his meeting.”

Remember, our objective is to create a setting where you and the individual can calmly explore why the failure occurred and what can be done to correct it going forward. Eliminating defensiveness is a key to making that happen.

What's the Point?

Once you have "Stepped Up" to the accountability discussion and entered it without creating defensiveness, you are now ready to explore why the failure occurred in the first place.

This requires an understanding of a contextual model of causation which we will explore in our May Newsletter.

4 Feedback Pitfalls Every Manager Should Avoid

Giving feedback to employees is critical for improvement to occur, but effective feedback involves avoiding these four pitfalls.

1. Avoiding feedback all together or waiting too long to give it

Research has demonstrated that feedback that follows immediately after the action will have the biggest impact on the behavior. Immediate negative feedback will weaken unwanted behavior and immediate positive feedback will strengthen behavior. But don't let not being able to give immediate feedback keep you from giving it at all. Later is still better than not-at-all!

2. Over-or under-boarding

Have you ever seen a manager call someone up in front of a group for some success and go on-and-on about the success, totally embarrassing the recipient of the praise? That is what we call "over-boarding" and it should be avoided because the praise actually becomes punishing and has an effect opposite of that which is desired. On the other hand, failing to provide enough feedback for significant success can lead to reduced motivation in the future. For example, you just saved the company $2 million and the boss, in private says, "Hey, thanks." Make it appropriate to the level of success.

3. Blaming the employee for a failure

Blame rarely fixes anything; it usually only de-motivates. Focus on finding the real reason for a failure and fix that. Blame may be quick and satisfying, but it is not effective.

4. Punishing in public

No one likes being "made an example of" or humiliated in front of their peers. Such humiliation leads to "getting even" and employees can be very creative when getting even ... like work slow-downs, fake injuries, bad-mouthing the boss behind his back, or talking bad about the company to potential customers. Negative feedback should always be given in private. There are instances when a witness will be present, but the witness should not be a coworker of the person receiving feedback.

Why We Fail to Hold Others Accountable

Have you ever failed to hold someone accountable for poor performance? Perhaps it was a server in a restaurant who failed to provide good service. Perhaps it was an employee who didn’t meet stated expectations. If you are like us and the thousands of participants in our Performance Management in the Workplace™ and PerformanceCompass® classes over the last 30+ years, the answer is a resounding “YES”!

So why do we often fail to step up to the conversation needed to hold another person accountable for failure?

Female boss pointing a pen at her male employee

Well, there are probably a lot of reasons, but a research project that we conducted in 2011 sheds a lot of light on a couple of those reasons. Our research project focused on one form of workplace performance failure (unsafe actions), but the results serve as a model for any form of failure in the workplace.

The question that we posed to more than 2,600 employees was, “When you see someone doing something that is unsafe and choose not to intervene in what they are doing, what is usually the reason?”

We asked this question (and several others) to both supervisors and non-supervisors with a negligible response difference between the two groups.

Survey Says? The two primary reasons that respondents gave for not intervening (i.e. not holding the other person accountable) when they see something unsafe:

1. The other person would become defensive or angry
2. It would not make a difference.

These two reasons indicate a common, underlying problem. Namely, a large number of employees, including supervisors, do not hold others accountable when they see something unsafe because they either are or believe themselves to be incapable of doing so effectively. They do not believe that they can intervene in a way that stops and sustainably changes the other person’s unsafe behavior, while also preserving a respectful working relationship.

Anecdotally, when we ask supervisors in our training classes why at times they don’t step up to hold their employees accountable for other forms of performance failure, they give us the same two reasons.

Reason #1: Defensiveness All of us, at some time, have been defensive and have experienced defensiveness on the part of others. Defensiveness does not occur because of the words that are used, but because of the interpretation of the intent behind the words.

If you, or the other person interpret the intent as an attempt to harm dignity, reputation, or both, then defensiveness is most likely to occur.

Think about it; when you think someone is out to harm your dignity or reputation, don’t you become defensive and either shoot back at the person, or retreat with your feelings hurt? If you do, then you are normal.

The Solution Successfully handling defensiveness in others is critical to having the confidence to step up to accountability conversations. We suggest a simple tool/skill to help you deal with defensiveness and we call it a “do/don’t statement”.

When you sense that the other person has misinterpreted your intent then just clarify what you really intended. For example, “I don’t mean to imply that you are incompetent. I do want to make sure that we get the results that were expected.”

Notice that the order of the “do” and the “don’t” doesn’t really matter as long as you clarify your “real” intent. Of course if your real intent was to harm dignity or reputation, then an apology might be in order.

Reason #2: It would not make a difference Most of the time we don’t speak up because we have failed in our attempt to get improvement before and assume that we will fail again. This is because we have not helped the person “find a fix” for the real cause of their failure.

Stay Tuned We will talk about this in more detail in a future newsletter because there are several skills required to accurately understand the real reason(s) behind the failure and thus find a fix that will create sustained success. For now please understand that there is a simple, easy to use set of skills that will create success in accountability conversations and help create sustained performance improvement in others.

What's the Point?

While there are probably other reasons why we don’t speak up when we observe failure of all types, the two primary reasons both have to do with our doubt that we can either successfully deal with defensiveness or get sustained improvement.

Both of these reasons have associated skills that can predictably lead to success.

3 Keys to Building and Maintaining Confidence and Confidentiality

“Confidence” is the feeling or belief that you can rely on someone to do what they say they will do, including keeping personal information confidential.  In supervisor and coaching relationships there must be mutual confidence between the parties for mutual trust to be developed.  Here are three keys to developing confidence in a relationship. 

1. Set confidentiality ground rules.

This may seem unnecessary, but just setting a ground rule that all information about each other is to be held in confidence unless there is agreement to the contrary can help create an environment of trust. This will create an atmosphere where the parties are willing to be vulnerable with each other, making it easier to be helpful to the other person.

2. Be honest about expectations and abilities.

In supervisor or coaching relationships it is critical that each party understand the capabilities and expectations of the other. This requires that honest evaluation of what is expected from the other person and what the other person feels competent to deliver is made clear. Supervisors must have confidence that the employee understands and is able to deliver. The employee must have confidence that the supervisor is providing complete information about expectations and the resources necessary for success. Failure in either of these areas can lead to lack of confidence.

3. Keep promises.

This is simple; do what you say you will do. People need to be able to rely on others if trust is going to be maintained. When you can’t do what you say you will do, then make sure that you make the other person aware at the earliest possible time so that surprises are eliminated. The ability to rely on the other person to do what they say they will do and to protect that which is told in confidence is critical to the development of mutual trust in a relationship.

Avoid Cognitive Bias to Create Workplace Accountability

As we discussed in our January Newsletter, the first step to Accountability involves an examination of the facts/reasons underlying a specific event/result (accounting). In order for this process to bear fruit, it is important that we accurately and fairly evaluate the causes of the poor performance. To effectively examine the facts/reasons for a specific event/result requires that we understand how our biases could affect that evaluation. This is where Cognitive Biases can come into play. You may be saying to yourself…”I don’t have any biases. What are they talking about?”

Well, the truth is that we are all impacted by biases and much of the time for that matter.

What is a Cognitive Bias?

A Cognitive Bias is anything in our thought process that can distort the way we view things including the actions of another person.

There are a multitude of cognitive biases that have been identified and studied by psychologists, but there are two that directly impact accounting for the actions/results of another person.

Confirmation Bias

One of these is what is called Confirmation Bias or the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions. In other words, we are predisposed to look for causes that confirm what we expect.

This means, for example, that if we are predisposed to view another person as competent, a hard worker and motivated, then we will tend to look for these types of behaviors in that person and also overlook behaviors that are in conflict with our preconception. Additionally, we would be more likely to account for poor performance on the basis of external factors such as lack of resources, lack of support, etc. rather than internal factors such as knowledge, ability or motivation. In other words, we would be likely to conclude that the failure was out of the person’s control.

On the other hand, if we are predisposed to view another person as incompetent, lazy and unmotivated, then we will tend to look for support of this preconception as the cause for failure and perhaps blame the person for the failure.

The Confirmation Bias is the underlying driver for a phenomenon commonly referred to as the Self Fulfilling Prophecy. This phenomenon has been demonstrated through research and personal experience in various environments and is notably reflected in the positive correlation between a supervisor’s expectations of a subordinate and that subordinate's performance.

Low, negative expectations tend to result in poor performance, whereas high, positive expectations tend to result in good performance.

Therefore, how we view an individual not only can color how we evaluate performance, but it can also determine how the individual actually performs. To fairly hold others accountable for failure we must be aware of our predispositions/biases regarding the individual and how we may have contributed to the failure in the first place.

Fundamental Attribution Error

The second Cognitive Bias related to Accountability is called the Fundamental Attribution Error.

Have you ever been driving on a three lane highway, going the speed limit in the right hand lane (left hand lane if you are from the UK) approaching an exit that you are not taking, only to have someone cut dangerously close in front of you to take the exit? What were your thoughts about the person doing the cutting? If you are like most of us you called the person a “jerk” or something worse and honked your horn or gestured “politely”.

You just attributed the other person’s actions to an internal attribute related to carelessness or some other bad motive. In other words, we view the other person as “bad” in some way.

Now, have you ever cut someone off in a similar circumstance when you were needing to get to an exit? If you are like us, and everyone else we have asked this question, then the answer is “yes”!

So why did you do it?

Probably because that “jerk” in the right hand lane wouldn't get out of the way and let you exit. In other words, your poor performance was due to external causes and not your carelessness or bad motive.

This is the Fundamental Attribution Error which says that we tend to attribute internal/motivational causes to the poor performance of others but not to our own poor performance. This cognitive bias can cause us to “jump to the conclusion” that the cause of the poor performance was due to motivation and thus interfere with our complete evaluation of other causes. Failure to accurately evaluate the “real” causes will most likely lead to consequences or corrections that will not lead to success in the future.

What's the Point?

Simply being aware that these two Cognitive Biases exist will help reduce or hopefully eliminate their impact on the accountability process.

As we will discuss in a future newsletter, starting your accounting of poor performance without “guesses” as to the cause(s) will almost always lead to a more accurate evaluation.

All They Care About Is Money!

So is money a requirement for motivating employees? For years we have been asking students in our Performance Management classes to tell us why people leave their jobs, and for years they have told us that most people leave for more money.

Actually, research has consistently shown that while salary increase is important, it is usually far down the list of reasons why employees decide to leave for another job. Significantly more people leave because they want more or new challenges, they are not happy with how they are treated by their current supervisor or they believe their contributions are not valued. Money is obviously important because it allows us to meet our basic needs and achieve some of our life goals, but it may not be as important as other factors that are in the direct control of supervisors.

Using Extrinsic Motivators Effectively

The best supervisors understand that money is just one of the extrinsic motivators that they have at their disposal and that the way they use these motivators is more important than the motivators themselves. Because of this, they follow what we call “The Contingency Rule” in the application of all extrinsic motivators. So what is this rule?

The Contingency Rule: Tie the extrinsic motivator to performance. Extrinsic motivators that supervisors have at their disposal include such things as money, praise, job assignments, training opportunities, etc. Making the receipt of any of these contingent on successful performance is critical to their motivational impact. For example, it has been well documented that cost of living increases act as a satisfier and not as a motivator because they are not tied to performance. It could be argued that not receiving an expected cost of living increase could act as a motivator to look for another job, but in this case it would be a de-motivator for improved performance in the current job.

"Best Bosses" are clear about what they expect from employees, and they are also clear about the relationship between accomplishment of those expectations and extrinsic motivators. When people know that successful performance leads to increase in pay, praise, desired job assignments, etc, they are much more likely to put out the effort required to receive those things. Failure to understand these contingencies will only lead to employee confusion, dissatisfaction and lowered motivation. It might also lead the person to look for another job.

Accountability Summary and Overview

For the past 10 months we have attempted to examine the issue of holding others accountable for their performance. We began by dismissing accountability as simply “punishment” but rather defined it as involving first the identification of either failure or success, followed by an examination of the underlying reasons for the failure/success and then the determination of the appropriate consequences to help sustain the success or eliminate the failure in the future. Determining the underlying reason(s) for failure/success is arguably the most critical aspect of the accountability process. We then discussed how two cognitive biases can impact how we initially react to performance failure and thus impact our evaluation of causation. One of these is what is called the Confirmation Bias or the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms our preconceptions. In other words, we are predisposed to look for causes that confirm what we expect. The second cognitive bias is what is called the Fundamental Attribution Error which says that we tend to attribute internal/motivational causes to the poor performance of others but not to our own poor performance. This cognitive bias can cause us to “jump to the conclusion” that the cause of the poor performance was due to motivation and thus interfere with our complete evaluation of other causes. We also discussed our research which indicates that much of the time we fail to even speak up because we are concerned that the other person will become either defensive or angry and our intervention will therefore not really change anything anyway. Effective accountability requires that we speak up, but do so in a way that minimizes or eliminates defensiveness. This requires us to stop committing the fundamental attribution error and stop guessing about the cause of the failure because this can lead us to blame the person for the failure and cause them to become defensive. Rather we should realize that failure can occur for a myriad of reasons, only one of which is motivation. When people fail it is usually not because they are trying to fail, rather what people do makes perfect sense to them in the moment. We call this “local rationality” because their actions make sense given the context in which they find themselves. We examined a “contextual model” of performance which includes four primary factors: self, others, surroundings and systems, and several specific factors for each (see “Diagnostic Skills for Poor Performance”). Many times we cannot see these factors at work until we discuss them with the person, so it is imperative that we ask the person questions to determine the real cause(s) of the performance failure. We suggested that you begin by respectfully (without guessing) ask an opening question to determine the general factor(s) involved and then ask drill-down questions to determine the specific factors that need to be addressed. Always remember to listen completely to their response including both what they say and how they say it. If it turns out that the reason for the performance failure is motivation, then you must determine if it is an intrinsic or extrinsic motivation issue. Often the person is simply not aware of the consequences of continued failure (extrinsic motivation) so bringing the possible natural consequences to life might be all that is needed to increase motivation. When intrinsic motivation is the issue, then connecting continued failure to their self-respect is often a good approach to increasing motivation. When the failure is the result of non-motivational factors then getting the person involved in determining the best fix is very important, so invite their ideas rather than prescribing the solution and you will get much more buy-in and probably a much better fix. When the fix doesn’t work and you discover that the person has failed again, then we suggested that you first determine if the failure is due to the same cause(s) as before. If not, then fix the new cause(s). If they are the same and the continued failure is really a motivation issue, then we suggested that you implement your organizations progressive discipline procedure. This process should help improve motivation, but also provides legal documentation should termination become necessary.

Finally, don’t forget to recognize success. Providing positive feedback for success is necessary to sustain that success going forward. In our October Newsletter (Sustaining Good Performance) we discussed the What, When, Where and How of providing positive feedback.

What’s the point?

Successful performance requires that we get feedback on how we are doing so that we know what and how to improve. Not getting feedback would be like driving blindfolded and we can just imagine what would happen if everyone did that. Holding people accountable for performance is really a process of providing that feedback and when done correctly we can eliminate defensiveness, improve motivation and get better results.

Workplace Accountability - What Is It Anyway?

When we ask managers to tell us what the most difficult aspect of their job is, they many times say it is “holding other people accountable for poor performance”. When we ask them what the most important aspect of their job is, they many times say that it is “holding other people accountable for poor performance”.

So accountability is both difficult and important.

For this reason, we have decided to focus on various aspects of workplace accountability, including how to do it, in our 2014 newsletter series.

What is accountability?

We will begin our discussion this month by examining what accountability is and what it isn’t.

How many times have you heard a politician say that a government official must be held accountable for failure to manage his/her responsibilities effectively? What they really mean is that the government official should be fired for failing to do his/her job the way that the politician thinks it should be done.

Accountability is, therefore, often associated with negative consequences for failure. While this is certainly a possible outcome of the accountability process, it is certainly NOT the purpose of the process.

So, accountability is NOT simply punishing someone for failure.

As we will discuss in more detail in our October newsletter, positive feedback for success is also an important component of the accountability process.

Accountability actually involves an examination of the facts/reasons underlying a specific event/result (accounting) followed by the application of appropriate consequences for those actions and results in an attempt to more predictably have success going forward.

In other words, accountability involves first the identification of the failure or success, followed by an examination of the underlying reasons for the failure/success and then the determination of the appropriate consequences to help sustain the success or eliminate the failure in the future.

Complex Environments

This involves evaluating and understanding actions and results in light of a complex environment that includes:

We have used the term local rationality in some of our other articles to describe why it makes sense for a person to do something that may not seem logical to someone who is either observing performance or evaluating the result after the fact. While we will discuss the components of this “Contextual Causation Model” in a future newsletter, it is important here to understand that people fail and/or succeed for a multitude of reasons and unless we understand those reasons from the person’s context, we will fail at the accountability process.

The next 11 months

We are looking forward to examining this critical set of skills over the next 11 issues of the newsletter and we hope you will join us for the discussion. If you have ever failed to hold another person accountable for failure then you might want to join us next month as we discuss the psychological reasons for not speaking up when we should.

Conflicting goals make room for performance failures

Most people do not set out to fail. On the contrary, most of us regularly attempt to succeed; but at times we do fail none-the-less. The role of a supervisor is to get results through the efforts of other people, so an important question for supervisors is, “Why does a specific performance failure occur?” There are a lot of reasons - knowledge, skill, motivation, etc. - and key among them is something called “goal conflict”.

We live in a complex work-world with multiple competing demands. We must be safe, fast, cheap and valuable all at the same time. It is humanly impossible to make all of these goals #1 at the same time, so we make cost-benefit tradeoffs and “choose” which objective is the most important at the time given the pressures of the environment/culture that we are in. I may choose to “hurry” because of time pressure, but in so doing sacrifice safety and quality.

As a supervisor I need to understand the drivers behind employees’ performance failure before I can adequately help them become successful. What “tradeoffs” did the employee make that produced the failure? Did his desire to “please” the supervisor outweigh his calculation of his own skill-level? Did her perceived pressure to produce outweigh the thought to evaluate hazards associated with the task and take precautionary action?

Unless we as supervisors take the time to evaluate the conflicting goals that drive employees’ performance, we will be less effective in reducing the opportunity for failure.