Consequence Predictability and Results

by Phillip Ragain

Have you ever worked for someone whose reactions were unpredictable? One day they were giving positive feedback for success and the next day they were dressing you down for the same results? How did/would that make you feel? What impact would that have on your desire to achieve good results? For most of us the lack of predictability would create a reduction in motivation to succeed and show initiative.

Research has shown that lack of predictability of consequences increases stress and that increased stress, beyond a certain point, reduces the ability of individuals to perform. When we know what to expect, we are less stressed and more likely to put out the effort required for success. Although we might not appreciate a “knit-picking” boss, we can live with it (for a while), if we know that it is his/her style and it is predictable. We all prefer working for someone who provides consistent positive feedback for success and consistent input (redirection) on how to be more successful when we fail.  

It is always better to hold people accountable for their results in a predictable and consistent manner. As always, we recommend fair evaluation of results followed by consistent/predictable positive feedback for success and consistent/predictable redirection of actions that have led to failure.  

By the way, parents, this goes for your children, too.  They need to know that they can expect appropriate, consistent and predictable consequences when they succeed and when they fail.  

Unsafe Behavior Is a Downstream Indicator

by Phillip Ragain

At first glance, the suggestion that behavior is a “downstream” indicator may seem ridiculous, because in the world of safety and accident prevention, behavior is almost universally viewed as an “upstream or leading” indicator.  The more unsafe behaviors that are occurring, the more likely you are to have an undesired event and thus an increase in incident rate (downstream or lagging indicator).  This view is the basis for most “behavior based safety” programs.  

Over the past few years, however, there has been a great deal of research in the area of human factors which suggests that there are variables much more upstream than behavior that can help us decrease the chances of an incident.  The human factors approach views an individual’s behavior as a component of a much more complex system which includes contextual factors such as social (supervisory and peer) climate,  organizational climate (rules, values, incentives, etc.), environment climate (weather, equipment, signage, etc.), and regulatory climate (OSHA, BOEMRE, etc.).  Individuals work within these climates, evaluate action based on their interpretation of these climates and then act based on that evaluation.      

Research has shown that individuals, for the most part make rational decisions based on the information that they have at their disposal in the moment.  If an individual “understands” that her boss really rewards speed, then she is more likely to pick up speed even if she is not capable of working at that speed and thus increases the likelihood of having an incident.  While speed of performance is a behavior, it is the result of the person’s knowledge of the demands of the climate and is therefore a downstream indicator.  Evaluating and impacting the climate is thus more upstream and should be the focus of our intervention programs.  When we can impact the decision making process (upstream) we can have a much better chance of creating safe/desired behavior (downstream).

Why Rule Breaking Makes Sense

Complexity & Rationality

by Ron Ragain, Ph.D. and Phillip Ragain

Why do employees decide to break the rules?  Do it their way?  Resist change?  It doesn’t make any sense!

It can be frustrating, and often perplexing, when employees fail to adhere to company policies and procedures, especially when those policies and procedures are in their best interest.  There is a useful way to think about this issue:  What employees do makes sense...to them; but the complexity of work environments makes it hard to understand why it makes sense to them.

We live and work in complex environments.  It helps to think of our environments as systems with overlapping and interacting components - including people, things, rules, values, etc. - which are, in turn, complex sub-systems.  One of the principles of complex systems is that the “people” component tends to respond only to the limited information that they are presented with locally. We make decisions based on our knowledge of what makes sense at the local level, which is called “local rationality”.  

The policies and procedures contained in the corporate manual are only influential if they are brought to bear on the daily lives of people in the workplace.  If those policies and procedures only exist in the manual and are not made a part of the local workplace, then they don’t exist in reality and will not have an impact on performance.  They will lack influence.

Companies have policies and procedures for a reason - to create good, reliable results; so it is the responsibility of supervisors to bring those policies and procedures to life in the workplace.  By intentionally incorporating formal policies and procedures into the “local” work environments of employees - through conversation, feedback, modeling, etc. -  supervisors make it “rational” to follow the rules.

The Safety Side Effect

Things Supervisors do that, Coincidentally, Improve Safety

by Phillip Ragain

Common sense tells us that leaders play a special role in the performance of their employees, and there is substantial research to help us understand why this is the case.  For example, Stanley Milgram’s famous studies of obedience in the 1960s demonstrated that, to their own dismay, people will administer what they think are painful electric shocks to strangers when asked to do so by an authority figure.  This study and many others reveal that leaders are far more influential over the behavior of others than is commonly recognized.  

In the workplace, good leadership usually translates to better productivity, efficiency and quality.  Coincidentally, as research demonstrates, leaders whose teams are the most efficient and consistently productive also usually have the best safety records.  These leaders do not necessarily “beat the safety drum” louder than others.  They aren’t the ones with the most “Safety First” stickers on their hardhats or the tallest stack of “near miss” reports on their desks; rather, their style of leadership produces what we call the “Safety Side Effect.”  The idea is this: Safe performance is a bi-product of the way that good leaders facilitate and focus the efforts of their subordinate employees.  But what, specifically, produces this effect?

Over a 30 year period, we have asked thousands of employees to describe the characteristics of their best boss - the boss who sustained the highest productivity, quality and morale.  This “Best Boss” survey identified 20 consistently recurring characteristics, which we described in detail during our 2012 Newsletter series.  On close inspection, one of these characteristic - “Holds Himself and Others Accountable for Results” - plays a significant role in bringing about the Safety Side Effect.  Best bosses hold a different paradigm of accountability.  Rather than viewing accountability as a synonym for “punishment,” these leaders view it as an honest and pragmatic effort to redirect and resolve failures.  When performance failure occurs, the best boss...

1. consistently steps up to the failure and deals with it immediately or as soon as possible after it occurs;
2. honestly explores the many possible reasons WHY the failure occurred, without jumping to the simplistic conclusion that it was one person’s fault; and
3. works with the employee to determine a resolution for the failure.

When a leader approaches performance failure in this way, it creates a substantially different working environment for subordinate employees - one in which employees:

1. do not so quickly become defensive when others stop their unsafe behavior
2. focus more on resolving problems than protecting themselves from blame, and
3. freely offer ideas for improving their own safety performance.

The Positive Side of Conflict

by Phillip Ragain

We usually treat conflict like a pest - a plague on organizational efficiency and effectiveness.  It disrupts operations, sours cultures and inhibits collaboration.  But is it always and entirely bad?  We suggest that there are two overlooked sides to conflict that, if managed correctly, can be harnessed for good and give your organization a boost:

1. Conflict gives rise to conversations about "undiscussables".  These are things that silently constrain healthy interaction among employees and that need to be resolved, but are considered minor enough that they do not outweigh the risk associated with trying to resolve them.  For example, employees might perceive that leadership does not respect their contributions.  This would normally be a topic of conversation that employees choose to avoid when in the company of the organization's leaders because, while bothersome, it is not so severe a problem that it warrants "rocking the boat."  When conflict arises, though, there are usually strong emotions involved and the parties will bring up issues such as this, which, in more sober moments, would be considered "undiscussable."  It then becomes the responsibility of the leader to take the opportunity to learn from the conflict driven discussion and make changes that will lead to increased productivity within their team.

2. Differences in opinion (conflict) can also fuel productive creativity.  Substantial research by Dr. Charlan Nemeth has demonstrated that, when people disagree, they put significantly more effort into supporting their positions.  In other words, we think through, develop and vet our own ideas much more thoroughly when we have to defend them against countervailing pressures.  Conflict among individuals can present such countervailing pressure and therefore increase analysis of ideas and lead to more positive discussion and thus increased creativity.  It goes without saying that such increased creativity can, when managed effectively also lead to organizational improvement and innovation.

Unfortunately, conflict is usually a destructive force in organizations.  People disagree, emotions elevate and the social bonds that keep organizations operating effectively begin to dissolve.  When unmanaged, this is what most conflict creates, but we have proposed that conflict has a positive side.  It presents us with an opportunity.  The key, of course, is for the conflict to be handled well.  When people (1) understand the anatomy of conflict - how and why it fuels emotional fires and spirals out of control - and (2) possess the skills to redirect conflict into healthy conversations, conflict becomes a uniquely positive force on organizations.

3 Essential Components of Mutual Trust

by Phillip Ragain

There is an old saying that “relationships are built on trust” and it goes without saying that trust must go both ways for a relationship to grow.  Effective supervisors know that there are three primary components to building trust.

1. Shared Purpose:  Both parties are interested in achieving the same thing in the relationship, and believe that the other person shares that purpose.  If either party thinks that the other is not interested in or actively helping with the achievement of a common purpose, then trust is diminished.  For example, if the employee perceives the boss as only interested in making him/herself look good and not in helping the employee to progress, then shared purpose does not exist and trust is diminished.
2. Mutual Respect:  Each person shows respect to the other.  Notice that we say “shows respect” not “likes” the other person.  While it helps, it is not necessary to like the other person; but it is essential that you show respect for the person as a person.  One of the primary ways that respect is demonstrated is by taking the time to listen to each other in an attempt to completely understand before giving advice.
3. Confidence and Confidentiality:  This is the willingness and ability to confide in each other and depend on the candid, truthful feedback from the other.  It is also the knowledge that each person can depend on the other to do what they say they will do.  Failure to maintain dependability and confidentiality are sure ways to diminish confidence and trust in a relationship.  

Over the next three weeks we will examine each of these in more detail to determine how to go about executing each one.

3 Keys to Building Confident Employees

by Phillip Ragain

Most supervisors want employees who are willing to show appropriate initiative in their work - employees who do things without having to be told to do them.  How many of you would like for your children to clean their room without being told?  OK, maybe that is a little far fetched, but you get the idea.  We know from a lot of research over the past 50-years that people with confidence are much more willing to take initiative.  With this in mind, really good supervisors do everything they can to instill confidence in their employees.  So how do they do it?  

There are three essentials to building confident employees (and children): 

1.  Evaluate strengths and weaknesses

2.  “Engineer Opportunities for Success” based on those strengths and weaknesses  

3.  Acknowledge success to increase confidence

First, you have to honestly evaluate what each employee is really good at and where they could use some improvement.  Second, “engineer opportunities for success” primarily for the areas needing improvement, but also for the areas that are already strengths.  Remember, while we can learn from failure, confidence is built primarily on successes.  Finally, “acknowledge the success”.  People need positive feedback from important people in their lives, and as a supervisor or parent, you are significant.  Be a confidence builder and you will find that things get done faster and with less of your effort.

What is Accountability Anyway?

by Phillip Ragain

One of the primary roles of a manager, supervisor or parent for that matter is to hold people accountable for their performance and the results that they either achieve or fail to achieve.  We hear over and over again that people must be held accountable if you want improvement.  We agree, but what is accountability anyway?  

Here are some real life examples of what accountability is NOT:  

• Blaming a peer when they fail to meet an important deadline

• Making an example of an employee to discourage others from making the same mistake

• Threatening the team during a meeting to demonstrate that you won’t tolerate “poor performance”

• Sending out a memo to let everyone know that team members must have thick skins to keep standards from slipping

• Writing a “strongly worded” performance evaluation to reflect your sincere disappointment with an employee’s contribution over the last few quarters

• Giving your significant other the cold shoulder or withholding affection until they start paying attention to your needs, too  

• Sending a child to his room when he doesn’t do what he is told

Here are the common themes with all of these accountability failures:

1. The disappointed party assumed that motivation was the cause and blamed the poor-performer for the results they observed, and 
2. The disappointed party chose to punish the poor-performer into new behavior.

This simply isn’t what effective accountability is all about.  For us, accountability is a process and it includes two basic components:

1. Examination of the facts/reasons underlying a specific event/result -- We take the “accounting” in accountability seriously.  Without knowing exactly “why” the person didn’t meet expectations, it is virtually impossible to know how to do the next step.
2. Applying appropriate consequences for the actions and results -- These consequences must be logically tied to the real reason behind the result if you want improvement.

In our March newsletter we will be discussing how to effectively use these two basic components to effectively hold others accountable when they fail to meet expectations.

Consequences of Not Speaking Up

by Phillip Ragain

     What we learned upon completing a large-scale (3,000+ employees) study of safety interventions is that employees directly intervene in only about two of five unsafe actions and conditions that they observe in the workplace.  The obvious concern is that a significant number of unsafe operations that could be stopped are not, which increases the likelihood of incidents and injuries; but this statistic is troubling for a less obvious reason - its cultural implication.

     The influence of culture on safe and unsafe employee behavior is of such concern that regulatory bodies, like OSHA in the U.S. and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in the U.K., have strongly encouraged organizations to foster “positive safety cultures” as part their overall safety management programs.  

     Employees are inclined to behave in a way that they perceive to be congruent (consistent) with the social values and expectations, or “norms,” that constitute their organization’s culture.  These behavioral norms are largely established through social interaction and communication, and in particular through the ways that managers and supervisors instruct, reward and allocate their attention around employees.  When supervisors and opinion leaders in organizations infrequently or inconsistently address unsafe behavior, it leads employees to believe that formal safety standards are not highly valued and employees are not genuinely expected to adhere to them.  In short, the low frequency of safety interventions in the workplace contributes to a culture in which employees are not positively influenced to work safely.

     These two implications – (1) that a significant number of unsafe operations are not being stopped, and (2) that safety culture is diminished – compound to create a problematic state of affairs.  Employees are more likely to act unsafely in organizations with diminished safety cultures, yet their unsafe behavior is less likely to be stopped in those organizations.     

(Look for the full-length article in the May/June 2011 edition of EHS Today.)