Continuing our series on Safety Myths – see them all here
The power of a myth is its symbolic exchange for an outcome.
Myth in itself is not bad, it depends on the purpose and ethic of the myth. The same with ritual.
The first question we need to ask when it comes to myth and ritual in safety is: what is the purpose and ethic of this myth and ritual?
The value of a myth is best determined by its ethical outcome. If the outcome is unethical, demonises persons, dehumanises community, puts objects before persons, creates delusional discourse, embodies delusional meanings, corrupts purpose or brutalises, then it is a bad myth.
A myth is good when its outcomes lead to the humanising of persons, communities and ethical practice. This is why the foundation of professionalism is ethics. This is why ethics is excluded in any safety curriculum and why safety is NOT a profession.
If Safety had to study an open-minded approach to Ethics it would have to confront its culture of brutalism.
This is why Care Ethics is excluded from the AIHS BoK on Ethics.
It is simply nonsense to claim the word ‘professional’ and have no sense of ethics.
Similarly, to concoct an exclusive and deontological ethic simply enables brutalism (https://safetyrisk.net/myths-ethics-and-enactment-in-risk/).
Of course, if you can’t articulate a humanising ethic, ontology or methodology, its most likely one doesn’t even have the mental equipment or critical capability to work out what a myth or ritual is doing. Indeed, Safety is most often defensive about its myths and rituals and denies its denial (https://safetyrisk.net/why-is-myth-so-scary-to-safety/ ).
Yet, the moment a symbol assumes mythical power it is made ‘salvic’. This means that salvation will not be achieved without it. After all, ‘safety saves’.
Once a ritual or myth has been established as salvic in safety and given salvation status, it is nearly impossible to be eliminated regardless of its real outcome.
This is because myths operate in the unconscious, individually and collectively, through the symbols, gestures and rituals with which they are anchored.
All myths create their own reality/truth framed by the symbol to which it is attached. The symbol can be visual, textual, verbal/oral or gestural. And we have see what myths like dominoes, bow-tie, risk matrix, curves, swiss-cheese and pyramids do to people. All objects designed to do things to people in the name of good. Such is the alternate reality safety has constructed without an ethic of personhood.
This is why Personhood is excluded from the AIHS BoK on Ethics (https://safetyrisk.net/the-aihs-bok-and-ethics-check-your-gut/ )
As an alternative to the myths of Safety (https://safetyrisk.net/category/safety-myths/), SPoR proposes positive, constructive and meaningful symbols/models/myths/gestures that enable the humanising of persons.
SPoR is focuses on skill development in critical thinking, understanding ethics, Socialitie and the primacy of persons over objects and systems (https://safetyrisk.net/spor-and-the-bbs-myth/ ).
SPoR is about putting into practice positive methods, models, symbols and myths that enable the flourishing of persons, communities and being (https://safetyrisk.net/spor-and-myth/ ).
When we state that ‘SPoR Works’, this is what we mean (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety/).
This is why when one disposes of zero safety improves (https://safetyrisk.net/moving-away-from-zero-so-that-safety-improves/).
Dr Rob Long
Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)
- How to Escape the Safety=Zero Cult - January 14, 2025
- Making Sure There is No ‘Cultural Shift’ in Safety - January 14, 2025
- How to Make Ensure That People Don’t Speak Up - January 13, 2025
- It’s Not a Secret, We Just Don’t Talk About It - January 11, 2025
- Myth, Objectivity and the Subjectivity of Language in Safety - January 11, 2025
Mark Taylor says
Thanks Rob for your wisdom and insights into true new health and safety beginnings
Henry Ford once said:
“Many people are busy trying to find better ways of doing things that should not have to be done at all. There is no progress in merely finding a better way to do a useless thing.”
There are too many gimmicks in health and safety, which simply add no value and in fact increase risk.
Instead of being reactive to problems as they arise, we need to focus on creating new behaviors through positive reinforcement.
Positive reinforcement is characterized by growth-oriented praise and feedback on what a worker is doing well. Many fixed-mindset organisations have policies and procedures rooted in being reactive (how to handle a problem when it arises), instead of being proactive (establishing, modeling, and reinforcing the desirable behaviors and practices).
We need to let people to take educational risks and embrace the process of learning something new. Remind them they don’t have to be the expert before launching. Asking for guidance or seeking assistance, modeling how to handle mistakes, and facing challenges as learning opportunities are all ways we grow and learn.
Risk is complex, so we need to understand complex instructional creative Intelligence (CI) pedagogy to live with it.
Complex instruction engages employees by having them work together using multiple approaches to solving problems, which require employees to help each other learn and meet the expectations.
Risk is open-ended and requires a wide range of intellectual abilities and interdependence at the coalface. A significant part of CI is building routines and norms on how to work cooperatively. The end result CI is that employees are taught they are socially responsible for the learning of the group and must craft thoughtful solutions to problems.
We need to combine active learning with passive learning. Active learning promotes asking thoughtful and intentional questions, justifying methods or rationale, connecting concepts to one another, rephrasing problems, and providing opportunities that are rich and complex, with an expectation that employees will need to collaborate with one another to collect multiple viewpoints and ideas to help them solve the problems.
Passive acts of learning are more procedural and are done independently by following a set of processes.
We need to review policies, and unwritten norms to determine if they elicit growth or fixed-mindset practices. We need to craft new policies, rules, and norms that promote growth-mindset messages.
We need to a shirt cultures around change. Managers should share with employees that change may be uncomfortable and even though mistakes happen, they will be viewed as opportunities to grow.
New evaluation tools used by supervisors, workers and administrators must include growth language?
Morning meetings or assemblies need to focus on growth-mindsets, encouraging employees to face each day ready to persevere in the face of challenges, put in effort, and learn from mistakes.
We need to creat a rotating commission of employees in charge of recognizing effort and perseverance in the workplace. Many times, employees will have a totally new and different perspective from the managers about those individuals in the organisation who are working hard and making an improvement.
Organisations will need to crowdsource suggestions for changing policies to encourage growth mindsets among employees and follow through making the changes.
Companies should be developing curriculum that provides employees with authentic educational experiences where they are collaborating with others, using their curiosity and imagination, and demonstrating initiative and entrepreneurship to create high-quality work.
We need to Implement new thinking that ignites employees to grapple with complex risk challenges and develop skills to apply creative problem-solving solutions.
Rob Long says
Mark, thanks for your comments. The claims of behaviourism are quite limited and do not explain the psychology of motivation. Whilst positive reinforcement works to an extent it doesn’t have much power when compared to the development of meaning and purpose in being. Any ‘new thinking’ ought to be as holistic as we can make it.