Yet, when we know how to suspend our agenda authentically, ask open questions and orient towards ‘the other’, we then learn the power of listening. Listening empowers the other person to be the agent of their own risk. Telling and controlling are about holding power to the safety agent. And, we know this doesn’t work.
Unless ownership for risk resides in the person taking the risk, whatever happens is just a ‘performance’. The performance of the typical safety observation is usually about a crusader who flies in like a hero to save the day, then jumps in a van and drives away. How astounding that the AIHS BoK Chapter on Ethics doesn’t even mention the word ‘power’. What an amateurish work. It’s so easy to overpower others when you make sure you never talk about the elephant in the room
In SPoR, we are not interested in telling, controlling or assuming power over others, as they tackle the challenges of risk. In SPoR, the agent is the mid-wife who helps the other bring to the surface, their understanding, their concerns, their emotions and their solutions about risk.
Whenever we undertake safety conversation skills workshops with a class of safety people, most can’t suspend agenda, can’t ask open questions and can’t listen. These skills are not cultivated by the safety curriculum.
Indeed, the safety curriculum teaches people the wrong orientation and disposition.
No wonder it’s so hard to turn this around in a workshop. No wonder that ego, power, personhood and moral meaning are never talked about in safety. No wonder that what safety loves most is, slogans and performance. And, it’s never the human performance of the self, it’s about how others perform, how others act and measuring what others do. It’s about power in the safety agent, not the power of the other. It’s always about ‘safety performance’ not about the performance of the safety agent! This is the agenda of HOP.
If you want to be a good listener/observer then you will find nothing in the safety curriculum to help you. You will have to leave the mono-disciplinary safety bubble and explore social science disciplines to help. Yes indeed, and even then, safety is not about ‘helping’. If you want to learn how to be a skilled helper (https://safetyrisk.net/the-advisor-as-skilled-helper/ ), you won’t find any of this in safety.
The best way to learn how to become an effective listener and observer is to seek learning in a helping profession. Safety has never been and never can become a helping profession, as long as it anchors to zero, a deontological ethic and engineering. Without movement away from these, Safety will never know what true observation, real meeting (https://safetyrisk.net/real-meeting-a-book-on-being-in-leadership/ ) and listening is.
In the helping professions, the curriculum is loaded with hundreds of hours committed to: an orientation towards others, a reduction of the self, relinquishing power and control, learning how to ask open questions, knowing how to ‘read’ others as persons, knowing what moral virtues empower ethical meaning, how to build trust, how to engender learning and how to empower others to tackle their challenges. None of this kind of language appears anywhere in any safety curriculum or in traditional safety like HOP. Traditional safety has always been about the performance of others, this is nothing new.
Indeed, even when Safety talks about virtues, its selectively leaves out the most critical, in order to foster a comfort zone for safety so that nothing needs to be ‘different’. Moreso, it doesn’t wish to talk about moral meaning or personhood, otherwise it would have to do more than sprout a few tokenistic slogans. As long as you think slogans are ‘principles’ it is unlikely that one will learn how to orient towards others in risk.
I often advise the many people who contact SPoR that the place to start in becoming an effective observer, listener and helper is to start a study in counselling. One of the best online programs is here: https://www.aipc.net.au/courses/counselling/diploma-of-counselling?
Many who have studied this Diploma testify just how much it has changed their lives and the way they orient towards others. I have no connection with this institution but have seen how much this program has helped people become helpers not tellers and controllers. Indeed, many after doing this study leave safety for a career in helping and say that’s what they entered safety to do: help and care for others. Sadly, this is NOT the purpose of safety. Sadly, this is why many want to leave the safety industry (https://safetyrisk.net/ohs-voices-from-the-resistance-rosa-carrillo/).
So, there you have it, a clear and practical way to become an effective observer and listener.
If this suggestion is too heavy a load, then perhaps you could start with something a little less demanding in SPoR.
The next free module in SPoR is the Ethics and Risk module (https://cllr.com.au/product/an-ethic-of-risk-workshop-unit-17-elearning/) starting on 18 March at 7am Canberra time with Dr Long. The program then continues for 4 more sessions. If you want to start a new journey in something that is actually different, upbuilding and practical, then you can register here: admin@spor.com.au
Dr Rob Long
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