Personality and Adoption of Safety Concepts
Carsten Busch
Safety Mythologist and Historian. The "Indiana Jones of Safety". Grumpy Old Safety Professional.
With formal approval to be expected any time soon, and a year of literature studies and preparatory workshops behind me, I will soon launch properly into a PhD-research project about the adoption of safety concepts. I have wondered for years what makes safety professionals and practitioners adopt certain approaches while they ignore others. It will be fun to explore the subject to some depth and width.
To some, this question may sound like research into the cognitive and perhaps emotional processes of individuals. That is partly correct. A cognitive appreciation of concepts will probably play a role. After all, we adopt something because we reason that it will bring us some advantage or help us attain certain goals. Most likely, emotional factors should also play a role. What with the heated debates between proponents and critics of certain approaches…
Zooming in on the individual might therefore sound as a useful strategy to approach the subject. And it may be very neat to categorize people into a number of different kind of adopters. Like, when we use different scales of rationality and emotionality and then put safety professionals in categories such as HiEmLoRa or LoEmHiRa. We might even add colours to them, for example assigning red to highly emotional and low rational people. Or a nice cool blue to those who are highly rational, but low on emotion. We might even turn it into a proprietary tool with which you can test your aspirant safety professionals in order to find the right “cultural match”.
Just for a bit of fun, let’s say that I was to do my research in a personality-styled way. The way to approach it would definitely be to follow “best practice” [1] and construct a two-by-two matrix. Here we could for example examine people based on rate of adoption on one axis and black/white thinking on the other. Then we could label each of the quadrants with a “sticky” moniker. This would give us the following suggested categories of stereotypes:
In the low adoption and low black & white thinking quadrant we find the “I’ve seen it all before” type. Whenever something news appears they will claim that we have been doing this all along. There is nothing new. No need to bother. Their claims are typically based on decades of experience, but there is little to show for in terms of engaging with underlying philosophies. (I guess they would rank in the LoEmLoRa quadrant in the other personality test).
The total opposite we fin in the high adoption and high black & white thinking quadrant. “The Zealot” adopts a new approach without much questioning or reflection. They are absolute and resolute in doing so. Whatever came before is obsolete. Newness is an important element to them. Whatever the new approach preaches is repeated. Zealots are very vocal and typically evangelical.
Where Zealots are enthusiastic in embracing new stuff, “The Denier” does not see the point. He finds countless excuses not to engage, doing so in a quite categorical ways: “This will never work here”, “It is too academic”, “You probably never have experienced [some grisly episode]”, “Leave me alone, I’m just doing my job”, “Regulations (or policy, procedure) requires us to do it this way”, and of course the classic “We have done things always like this”. They know how stuff is done and don’t you come tell them otherwise. Or, God forbid, even ask critical questions.
Then there is a fourth quadrant. Here we find “The Reflective Professional” who follows the Biblical advice of “Test all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21 NKJ). They don’t think too much in terms of black and white or right and wrong. They think in terms of perspectives and situational usefulness.
Wouldn’t it be very satisfying to be divide professionals in such neat boxes? Often, we seek understanding in the form of labels that can stand in for complicated ideas. Regrettably, dividing humanity into four colours or 16 personality types, would be an unforgivable oversimplification of reality. If anything, these practices are best compared to a form of witchcraft thinly disguised as science. [2, 3, 4]
In situations of adoption, safety professionals find themselves in complex systems influenced by social, technical, political, economic, and cultural factors. The personality of the safety professions will probably play a role, but how large that role will be is a big question. After all, this is one factor among many, and it will have to compete with some very powerful ones. Besides, personality may not be as stable as we believe it to. It seems that people respond rather situationally to personality tests, and I recall reading somewhere that a significant amount of people receive different four-letter types after a period of a few weeks. So, personality is no explanation, and if it is, it’s a tiny part of the mix at best.
Just to be clear – this is nothing what my research will look like. If I can, I will stay clear from such simplistic models. However, they can provide nice little thought experiments once in a while. Enjoy the discussion!
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In case you want to read some things that have shaped my interest in adoption of safety concepts, (e.g. culture, or various myths within the realm of safety), please check my books:
https://www.mindtherisk.com/2-uncategorised/204-the-book-if-you-can-t-measure-it-maybe-you-shouldn-t
References:
Author of the Relationship Factor in Safety Leadership ?2020
1 年I don't think your model is too simplistic. It's a johari window into learning.
H&OP Specialist | Author | Consultant | Speaker
1 年Will your research include the “First Rule of Safety Culture?”
Managing Director at Operational Wisdom & Logic
1 年You wrote “Zooming in on the individual”. But will you? There are 8 billion of us so as you say in the following paragraph you may need to group them! Categories. Characteristics. Contexts Etc Then there is the massive influences on adoption of concepts of education, the law, and industry precedent. And thus begins the slow dissolution away from the specificity of the individual with specific personalities into specific contexts with specific hazards and risks. Just look at the attitudes and adoption of ‘climate change’ as a concept and you will witness the human clusterf*c& at work. Have you not set yourself up for failure by gross generalisation? Many standards writers have suffered similar fates (although they insulate themselves sometimes by tapping into widespread expertise, panels of review and statistical apology). Others have commented about zodiac safety. It’s a fair analogy. The measurement of key parameters, data collection and statistics part will be interesting. Good luck.
Proud Naval Veteran. Unleash your human potential from the shop-floor to the top-floor
1 年Carrying on with this you could have a couloured set of the ‘stairway to heaven’ and call them Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday …. Sunday
Experienced Leader in Risk, Security, Resilience, Safety, and Management Sciences | PhD Candidate, Researcher and Scholar
1 年Don’t be shy in sharing your research and thoughts throughout your PhD. I’m sure we will all benefit from it. I know I have throughout my studies, research, work and thesis development