Situational awareness is in some ways about ‘reading’ and ‘sensing’ the unknown but how can that make sense? Isn’t that a paradox? Yes, it is but in SPoR many things are held in paradoxical tension. Such is life. Situational awareness is about a ‘sixth sense’ of knowing well beyond any thinking promoted in traditional safety. Situational awareness is NOT about prediction. Indeed, all of the tools that Safety advocates, including the nonsense of ‘predicative analytics’, cannot help with situational awareness. (Insight is not about data but about feeling and knowing the human e-motions. Unfortunately, Safety demonises the emotions and feelings as the enemy of safety)
The methods, philosophy (positivism/behaviourism) and discourse of Safety has its focus on hazards and controls not on social and cultural reality.
Situational awareness is discovered in all the things Safety never talks about, such as: intuition, the unconscious, the collective unconscious, experiential learning, faith, hope, belief, trust, relational knowing, social psychology, cultural knowing, semiotics, speculation, linguistics, insight, History, fallibility, disciplinary expertise, Transdisciplinarity, the psychology of perception and organisational sensemaking. Quite a list that the industry ignores. The list of safety silences is extensive (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-culture-silences/). What is more, many of these critical issues are unconsciously made taboo in safety!
Regarding situational awareness, here are a few questions to consider.
How can a fallible human see the unpredictable when prediction is impossible? Where does the capability to follow hunches and feelings emerge? How can a human read the emotions of persons, moments and situations when they have been indoctrinated in a focus on objects? How can Safety expect the unexpected when its climate and culture are focused on conformance and certainty? How can a behaviourist lens help with any situation waiting for a behaviour to be perceived? How can the safety industry help anyone with situational awareness when it never talks about the nature of consciousness? These are some of the questions that should be considered in understanding situational awareness.
One of the things we specialise in SPoR is how to make the unconscious conscious. We use various methods of ‘surfacing’ to help people improve perception and situational awareness. Situational awareness is anchored to advanced perception that is learned and cultivated and, this requires familiarity in discourse with all the things safety doesn’t talk about. Indeed, some even suggest (Busch) that we shouldn’t talk about it.
There’s nothing more disabling than the engineering lens that frames the gaze of Safety.
How can you know what you don’t know, when all you promote is compliance to what you know?
For example, when the lens of psychosocial safety is on ‘hazards’, one can only look at the objects associated with psychosocial harm. Indeed, any understanding of linguistics/semiotics demonstrates that the language/discourse of psychosocial ‘hazards’ simply ‘frames’ one’s worldview. This is why the Safety focus on psychosocial ‘hazards’, will never effectively deal with the challenges of psychosocial harm.
Or, look at the traditional safety focus on ‘functional resonance’, ‘resilience engineering’, ‘harnessing people’, ‘organisational performance’ and the slogans of HOP and none of it assists any discourse on the unconscious, social psychology or situational awareness.
Indeed, any priority on the lens of safety will disable the ability to develop situational awareness. If you want to develop skills in situational awareness you must NOT start with safety. If your primary focus is on behaviours or ‘performance’, you will never be ready to understand any situation.
Any journey into maturity in situational awareness requires a beginning conversation on the nature of human consciousness. This requires jettisoning the nonsense metaphor of brain-as-computer. It also requires ditching the rationalist-behaviourist-materialist discourse that dominates safety. Dumping these assumptions is where we start in SPoR to help people ‘un-learn’ safety indoctrination and develop situational awareness.
One will never learn how to ‘read’ people, ‘sensemake the unexpected’ or encourage intuition when a discussion of the human unconscious is off the table.
What we do in Transdisciplinarity in SPoR is put all of the taboos of Safety back on the table.
When we start to give equal regard to disciplines other than Safety and take them seriously, we are ready to learn about situational awareness.
So, when anyone comes into a SPoR worldview and jettisons the indoctrination of safety, they are ready to learn. Nothing holds back learning like the indoctrination of safety. And, we find when people finally drop the delusions of safety and embrace other disciplines, they wish their fear had not held them back for the last 20 years.
There’s nothing quite like the fear of faith to prevent a leap of faith. There’s nothing quite like the fear of the unknown to anchor one to the known. Unfortunately, both views inhibit learning and situational awareness.
To give you an idea. I was invited to speak at a conference last week to an organisation screaming out for knowledge on situational awareness. I was due to speak for just 40 minutes but my time was stolen by Safety that left me with 10 minutes to speak, after already flooding the conference airwaves with Hierarchy of Controls for 2 hours! This is how safety works.
How strange it is, the need for Safety to constantly flood itself with the comfort of what it thinks it knows. Just listen to any of these safety podcasts on the airwaves on safety and all they do is re-cycle safety. Even when safety is marketted as ‘punk’ all that is discussed is traditional safety. Just read any of the propaganda from the safety differently camp and it’s all just re-cycling safety. You will never find intelligence in situational awareness from a foundation or focus in traditional safety.
Semiotically, the challenge looks like this (Figure 1. Situational Awareness in SPoR):
Figure 1. Situational Awareness in SPoR
However, if you are ready for a challenge and ready to step outside the mythical security of safety or the delusions of zero, there is much to learn and much of it is for free.
You can download free books here: https://www.humandymensions.com/shop/
You can do the free Introduction to SPoR here: https://vimeo.com/showcase/4233556
You can email for coaching here: admin@spor.com.au
You can watch free videos here: https://vimeo.com/cllr
Or you can come to the SPoR Convention in September: https://spor.com.au/spor-convention-2025/
All of these avenues of learning are available to you if you want to learn and improve your skills in situational awareness.
And, all of what you will learn will help re-frame your worldview and improve your situational awareness. It is all practical, positive and doable. It’s up to you if you are ready for that leap of faith.
Dr Rob Long
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