• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Health, Safety and Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • BIGGEST COLLECTION of WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
      • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
      • Safety Acronyms
      • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
      • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
      • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
      • Safety Slogans List
      • Road Safety Slogans 2023
      • How to write your own safety slogans
      • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
      • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
      • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
      • Safety Slogans for Work
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL POSTS
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no Hierarchy of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • THEMES
    • Psychosocial Safety
    • Resiliencing
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychosocial Safety
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety
      • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
      • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
      • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
      • What is Psychosocial Safety
      • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
      • What is Psychological Safety?
      • Understanding Psychological Terminology
      • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
      • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
      • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Robert Long / The Advisor as Skilled Helper

The Advisor as Skilled Helper

February 11, 2019 by Dr Rob Long 2 Comments

The Advisor as Skilled Helper

safety helpingThe idea of ‘helping’ is essential to the professions (Susskind & Susskind., The Future of The Professions 2015). However, the absence of the language of ‘helping’ in the safety industry is not surprising. When the goal is zero and the activity is counting where is the motivation for ‘helping’?

One’s goals are a manifestation of decision making and often drive one’s behaviour and the absence of the language of ‘caring’ and ‘helping’ in the safety industry is astounding, particularly in ratio to other language like ‘compliance’ and ‘vigilance’ and of course, the discourse of ‘telling’.

Here is a little experiment for you: go to any policy in safety in your company and simply do a word count. Look for the favoured words and non-favoured words in the policy and this will guide you to understand what the policy desires. Then it comes to psychological injury – look for key words like: ‘vulnerable’, ‘human’, ‘person’, ‘fallible’, ‘mistake’, ‘learning’ and ‘listening’, and see what you find. Then count the mechanistic language and words of objectivisation in the policy and do a comparison. What does it tell you about the policy? What does it tell you about safety?

One of the foundation texts for Pastoral Care and Helping is The Skilled Helper by Gerard Egan (https://cengage.com.au/product/title/the-skilled-helper-a-problem-management-and-o/isbn/9781305865716?OLDEDITION/isbn/9781285065717 ). This book is really the ‘go to in Pastoral Psychology. Egan’s book is based on a problem-centred and pragmatic approach to helping. It’s anthropological assumptions presume fallibility, vulnerability and mortality in both the helper and the helpee. Zero is nonsense to anyone in helping.

The tone of the Egan’s text is about empathy driven by mutuality (there but for the grace of gods go I). The helper does not adopt a position of superiority to the helpee. There is no place in helping for the language of perfection, blaming, projection of error or moralizing. Instead there should be lots of language about moving from ‘being smart to being wise’.

There have been several articles on this site previously about helping:

https://safetyrisk.net/safety-as-a-helping-profession/

https://safetyrisk.net/the-paradox-of-helping/

https://safetyrisk.net/the-power-in-helping/

https://safetyrisk.net/helping-in-safety/

https://safetyrisk.net/support-and-empowerment-in-helping-others/

When it comes to the challenges of psychological injury, mental health issues and social psychological stressors in the workplace, the right approach is not about regulation, policy, advising or policing but rather about ‘helping’.

Whenever I am called to ‘help’ supervisors and managers improve their work in safety, I call upon all the skills that Egan plainly lays out in his book. More on Egan’s book later.

There are no secrets to how to be an effective helper. Some of the best material I give out as helping tools to managers and supervisors are based on work from the following:

  • Bolton, R., (1987) People Skills
  • Egan, G., (1994) Working The Shadow Side, A Guide to Positive, Behind-the-Scenes Management
  • Nichols, M., (2009) The Lost Art of Listening
  • Schein, E., (2011) Helping, How to Offer, Give and Receive Help.
  • Weisinger, H., (1998) Emotional Intelligence at Work
  • And one of my favourites from one of my mentors: Bill Andersen, (2013) walking alongside, a theology for people-helpers.

These are just a few of the many good resources on helping. And in helping there is none of this silly language about ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ skills. It is much better to talk about ‘people skills’ and ‘human skills’. There is no place in helping for much of the patronizing language that dominates safety discourse. Just have a listen to the language of these women who work in safety to hear how safety could be spoken about if a feminist view was considered:

Life and Work – Feminine Perspectives from Human Dymensions on Vimeo.

It is so interesting, all this concern about mental health in the safety industry and so little discourse about ‘wisdom’, ‘helping’, ‘serving’, ‘relationships’ and ‘empathy’. A good example of just how impoverished the industry is in this regard is to look at the many programs for first-responders and incident investigators on the market that include no mention of training in pastoral care or the skills of helping. Interestingly, one of the most popular articles ever published on this blog site was on a wise, caring and helping approach to mental health:

https://safetyrisk.net/mental-health-risk-safety/

https://safetyrisk.net/mental-health-risk-and-safety-part-2/

This included some very practical tips on helping and empathizing in mental health issues at work.

When it comes to the issue of suicide problems in the risk and safety industry amplify. When an industry thinks it is wise to use language such as ‘dumb ways to die’ (https://safetyrisk.net/dumb-ways-to-die-doesnt-work/; https://safetyrisk.net/dumb-ways-to-die-and-a-strange-sense-of-success/; https://safetyrisk.net/promoting-dumb-anxiety-and-harm-in-the-name-of-good/), it really does have a problem.

When it comes to suicide, language and discourse are critical. This was recently demonstrated by comprehensive research published by Mindframe (http://www.mindframe-media.info/for-media/reporting-mental-illness). People in safety would do well to attend to these resources and learn to speak a new language and discourse about the risk of suicide. On things is for sure: tokenistic questions and simplistic strategies are a disaster in tackling the challenges of suicide ideation.

However, back to Egan and The Skilled Helper. If one is seeking to be professional and to ‘help’, put away your WHS regulation, standards and policies because there is nothing there to ‘help you’. Instead, have a look at Egan’s ‘Curriculum for Helpers (p. 16). (There is nothing like this in any safety curriculum). And consider that ‘helping’ is a messy activity. When it comes to human helping all the safety language about ‘zero’, ‘intolerance’, ‘compliance’ and ‘prediction’ are nothing short of totally delusional. Instead, have a look at Egan’s Skilled-helper Model (pp. 24-38) (http://highgatecounselling.org.uk/members/certificate/CT1W3%20Paper%202.pdf) and try to apply it to how you engage others at work.

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • Lies, Shortcuts and Lessons from Armstrong - December 4, 2023
  • Real Risk, An New Icon for SafetyRisk and Competition - December 4, 2023
  • Understanding Human ‘Being’ The Foundation for Understanding Human Error - December 4, 2023
  • The Behaviourist Human and Human Being - December 2, 2023
  • There is no Fast and Slow Thinking, Nor Quick Learning - November 28, 2023
Dr Rob Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk, Zero Harm Tagged With: help, helping

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rob long says

    February 12, 2019 at 6:32 AM

    Thanks Kathryn. I often get amused how the masculinist discourse in safety is so readily adopted by women then rebranded as women in safety. The discourse is the same. The video exemplifies a different discourse we rarely hear in the industry regardless of gender.

    Reply
  2. Kathryn Howse says

    February 12, 2019 at 5:35 AM

    That was one of the best discussions with the fantastic women you chose to talk with. Thank you for recording it.

    Reply

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them belowCancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,520 other subscribers.

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Recent Comments

  • Admin on The Behaviourist Human and Human Being
  • Matt Thorne on Understanding Human ‘Being’ The Foundation for Understanding Human Error
  • Rob Long on Practical and Positive Methods to Tackle Risk – Free Workshop
  • Rob Long on The Behaviourist Human and Human Being
  • Rob Long on The Behaviourist Human and Human Being
  • rosa antonia carrillo on The Behaviourist Human and Human Being
  • rosa antonia carrillo on The Behaviourist Human and Human Being
  • Rob Long on Semiotic Methods to Help Tackle Risk
  • BRENT R CHARLTON on Semiotic Methods to Help Tackle Risk
  • Rob Long on Semiotic Methods to Help Tackle Risk
  • Jason Martell on Semiotic Methods to Help Tackle Risk
  • Rob Long on Critical Sources of Harm Ignored by Safety=Zero
  • simon p cassin on Critical Sources of Harm Ignored by Safety=Zero
  • Matt Thorne on Book Launch – SPoR and Semiotics, Methods to Tackle Risk
  • Rob Long on A Book to Help Get You Started on Cultural Improvement in Risk
  • Matt Thorne on Book Launch – SPoR and Semiotics, Methods to Tackle Risk
  • Peter Saaman on Book Launch – SPoR and Semiotics, Methods to Tackle Risk
  • Rob Long on Book Launch – SPoR and Semiotics, Methods to Tackle Risk
  • Brian on Having Meetings Without ‘Meeting’
  • Shannon Barter on Embracing Risk–Video

RECOMMENDED READING

viral post – iso 45003 and what it cannot do

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

Psychosocial Safety and Mental Health Series

Don’t be Obsessed with Safety

A Guide to Psychosocial Safety Skills

Mindfulness is NOT Brain-fullness and other Psychosocial Myths

Have You Had a Drink of SafeTea?

If You Can’t Manage Fallibility, You’ll Never Tackle Psychosocial Health

Embodiment, Myth and Psychosocial Risk

7 Golden Rules that are NOT Golden

Why Zero Vision Can Never Tackle Mental Health

If Psychosocial Health Matters, Stop Hot Desking

Effective Strategies in Mental Health at Work

More Posts from this Category

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Footer

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • Christmas Safety Messages, Toolbox Talks, Safety Moments and Slogans
  • Practical and Positive Methods to Tackle Risk – Free Workshop
  • The Behaviourist Human and Human Being
  • Understanding Human ‘Being’ The Foundation for Understanding Human Error
  • Culture is NOT ‘What We Do Around Here!’
  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS, CHECKISTS, REGISTERS, TEMPLATES and APPS
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails

Recent Posts

  • Lies, Shortcuts and Lessons from Armstrong
  • Practical and Positive Methods to Tackle Risk – Free Workshop
  • Real Risk, An New Icon for SafetyRisk and Competition
  • Understanding Human ‘Being’ The Foundation for Understanding Human Error
  • The Behaviourist Human and Human Being
  • There is no Fast and Slow Thinking, Nor Quick Learning
  • Fragility, Resilience and AntiFragility in Risk
  • The Sponsors of Zero Are
  • Why Zero Cannot Understand the Basics of Safety – ALARP and Due Diligence
  • No Room for Ethics in a Zero ‘Mindset’
  • Zero Harm and the Fear of Failure
  • Semiotic Methods to Help Tackle Risk
  • Top 10 Simple Things You Can Do To Dramatically Improve Safety
  • SPoR and Semiotics, A Conversation – Free Download
  • The Traffic in Zero Only Goes One Way
  • Critical Sources of Harm Ignored by Safety=Zero
  • Zero and a Culture of Denial
  • Shaping Change to Zero
  • A Book to Help Get You Started on Cultural Improvement in Risk
  • Risk Intelligence and What to Do About It – A Video
  • Feel Good Safety and Un-Ethical Ego-Centrism
  • Book Launch – SPoR and Semiotics, Methods to Tackle Risk
  • When Zero Doesn’t Work, Don’t Change Anything
  • Having Meetings Without ‘Meeting’
  • Leaders in Safety are NOT Gurus
  • Method and Message Congruence in Risk
  • Guilt and Shame, The By-Products of Safety-Zero
  • Update on Zero Survey, Just believe!
  • Zero is NOT the Only Acceptable Number
  • Don’t be Obsessed with Safety
  • Zero Ideology as Maximum Offense, Zero Benefit
  • Embracing Risk–Video
  • Hey CEO? Does Zero Apply to You?
  • OHS Voices from the Resistance – Rosa Carrillo
  • A Guide to Psychosocial Safety Skills
  • A Guide to Tokenism in Ethics in Safety
  • The Questions You Ask in Safety are Showing?
  • Introduction to SPoR, SEEK and Culture
  • What is Safety? Video
  • Understanding Motivation is Essential to Understanding Risk
  • Semiotic and Poetic Literacy for Safety
  • Speak Up, but Don’t Tackle the Cause
  • KISS Safety in a VUCA World
  • OHS Voices From the Resistance – Book review
  • Wo-Men in Safety
  • SPoR Podcasts Back Up and Running
  • What is Semiotics? – Video
  • Finding Balance in SPoR
  • Zero as Extremist Ideology
  • Understanding Cults and Safety/Zero

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

Pascal’s Wager and Sacred Safety

Defining Safety

Safety as a Knowledge Culture

Zero as Morally Wicked

The Safety Charade as Tokenism in Safety

Toward Zero, A Failed Goal

The Reason Safety Has Gone So Crazy

International Workshops – Belgium

‘False Consciousness’ and Perception in Risk and Safety

Free Poster–Risk

Safety Giveaways–Free Stuff!

Sticks and Stones and the Nonsense of Zero Harm

Safety as Avoidance

Censorship and Taboos in Safety

Understanding Psychological Terminology

Embodied Enactivity in Safety

The Challenge of Social Sensemaking in Risk

Y is Being and Doing

Six Tips to Improve Your Safety Conversations

The New Leadership – Risk and Safety

Visualising Risk

Free Online Workshops

Desensitization, Statistics and the Psychic Numbing of Numerics

Social Media and Safety

Sanctimonious Safety

Shaping Change to Zero

Think Different, Act Differently in Risk

Balance in Risk and Safety

Social Psychology of Risk Doability

Safety and Risk Leadership Master Class

Europe – International Workshop Social Psychology of Risk Introduction

Auditing the 7 Golden Rules of Zero, A Miserable Fail

What Does Your Risk and Safety Icon Say?

The Fear of Power and the Power of Fear

You Can’t Will Attentiveness

Dumb Ways to Discourse, a Failed Approach in Safety

I’m Concerned That We Can’t See The Safety Forest For The Safety Trees

Calculators, Matrices and Mumbo Jumbo Risk Assessment

Goals and Vision in Safety

Intuition and Safety

More Posts from this Category

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,520 other subscribers.

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?


WHAT IS PSYCHOSOCIAL SAFETY