Hubris in Safety - A Prideful Obstacle to Safety Improvement

If you watched the Super Bowl, you may have witnessed what some have been discussing as the worst play call in the history of football.  With three downs remaining, Pete Carroll the head coach of Seattle, decides to throw a high-risk pass play, even though he has three downs remaining to run the ball with the best running back in the league.  Well, the pass was thrown, intercepted, and the New England Patriots won their fourth Super Bowl.  Many individuals believe it was Pete Carroll's hubris that got in the way and caused such a stunning loss for the Seattle Seahawks.

You’ve likely dealt with extreme forms of pride that have gotten in the way of ongoing safety improvement. Hubris is the bad side of confidence; it’s excessive pride about being correct or overestimating one’s abilities to achieve whatever is seen as possible.

Since the beginnings of its study in the 1960s and 70s, hubris has been dissected and categorized in a number of ways. And seemingly, a growing interest in the study of hubris leadership stems from our ever expanding, narcissistic-driven world. However, those inflicted with large doses of hubris are first and foremost fully self-confident regarding actions that will take them and their organizations closer to their desired goals.

Excessive pride or hubris has gotten in the way within various organizations that I have supported. Many of us have realized the destructive forces of hubris and its harmful wake which takes others down a path of disappointment, disillusionment, and loss.

Individual personality flaws help to form the basis of hubris and can occur throughout an organization and at any level. Let’s take a look at some of the issues we have all likely experienced.

Senior leaders may oversimplify safety and commit to a vision that is larger than the organization can accept. These leaders push down and cause undue pressures on individuals and demand excellence, or even zero, with an absence of organizational maturity and resources to move closer to that vision. Other pressures they exert may be enough to launch a series of unwanted actions that lead to catastrophic results.  Relying largely on lagging indicators such as recordable rates further reinforces their overconfidence and that of others. Hubris may also remove a leader from the type of safety support and influence it requires. These leaders may believe that safety is not critical to the health of their organization and declines to provide appropriate safety leadership support. Some leaders may even feel that it is beneath them to be engaged in safety improvement. All of this is a set-up for larger forms of setbacks.

Managers and supervisors may exhibit hubris through production-driven risk taking — short-cutting procedures and policies. These front line leaders have completed difficult and challenging work for many years with close calls that haven’t been well identified or reported. In turn, many near-miss activities, from a production and quality standpoint, have been accomplished with relative and prideful success.

Workers embrace similar pride though an overestimation of their capabilities which leads to judgment errors. And managers and supervisors with similar hubris reinforce their actions on a regular basis. Even more, these same workers become quite self-reliant and tend to believe their success is largely due to their own mental and physical capabilities. They don’t need the help or support of others, and in fact, like their supervision, detest any type of safety-related feedback or coaching. Getting the job done, taking risks, even severe and distinguishable injuries, form a badge of honor that is proudly worn by some. Pride in risk-taking is further reinforced by senior leaders and supervisors who overtly or discretely applaud many of the types of risk-driven efforts of the workforce.

Safety professionals and practitioners have to deal with their particular forms of hubris. Some don’t handle success very well and get too comfortable with their perceived achievements. Oftentimes, their main forms of success are calibrated through a lens focused on recordable and lost-day rates. These individuals are close-minded when it comes to new ideas, methods, practices and interventions — even when large amounts of empirical support are provided and offer new opportunities for ongoing improvement.

Many hubris-driven individuals insulate themselves from others and desire little feedback or input. Some may be recognized as lone wolves who want to remain in their personal silos.

Hubris-bias is very real, with arguments for two sides — the good and the bad. Near the top, good hubris provides confidence and helps to formulate a compelling vision for safety, which appeals to the masses. It helps to obtain an initial degree of engagement; however, others soon face frustration regarding a fanciful dream and cultivate a newly formed cynicism toward safety because of hubris.

Within other parts of an organization, hubris helps to develop a can-do attitude and work ethic. On the other side of the hubris-coin, arrogance, self-reliance, and risk-taking create formidable challenges to individual growth, organizational maturity, engagement, and the realization of a shared vision for safety achievement.

The key to mitigating the bad effects of hubris begins with open and objective feedback that will diminish arrogance and self-reliance. It also helps to foster collaboration and teaming for objective reality testing about strategies, tactics, processes, programs, and interventions. But certainly, the key is feedback — which begins with approachability, and leads to trust and openness in receiving other viewpoints, even when it may hurt.

Successful leaders have to embrace humility and objectivity to ward off the harmful impact of hubris. But they also have to embrace the confidence that has made them believable, successful, and influential — not an easy task.

Tom Peters, author and consultant states, “The four most important words any leader can say — What Do You Think?” Difficult words for some but so very necessary to foil the kinds of hubris, which holds us back.


Reference:  Picone, M.P, Dagnino, P.M., Mind, A., . (2014).  The origin of failure:  A multidisciplinary appraisal of the hubris hypothesis and proposed research agenda. The Academy of Management Perspectives, 28(4), 447-468.

Vision - What's More Important?

In 1998, I was touring a large production facility to get a feel for the operations.  I was about to begin a safety culture assessment because the leaders wanted to more fully understand the perspectives of the entire workforce.  Company leaders also wanted to identify various management and employee perception gaps that were important to the health of their organization. This award winning Fortune 200 Company has been highly regarded for decades largely because of the way it values its workers, and it showed.  As I walked and talked with one of the leaders, it was clear that he had a vision for what he wanted to see but his new organization wasn’t there, quite yet.  He previously worked for an exceptional chemical company and stated, “I don’t see but I will — I’ve seen and felt it before.”  He had the remnants of a great culture for safety in his mind’s eye but it may have been fading.  This leader wanted a comparable culture within his current organization.  He had a vision for an outstanding future state but there was work to do.


It Starts With a Vision 

Any type of higher-ordered success in safety starts with someone’s vision for excellence — a thought, a mirrored image from the past, perhaps a muddied picture of perfection that bounces around in one’s thoughts.  Any great organization, institution, or innovation started with someone’s vision!   Having a great vision for outstanding safety performance gets things started and moves people to action.  A safety vision describes a compelling future state of excellence — it helps to paint a mental picture and assists others in building the framework and foundation.  It is inspiring, engaging, and energizing.  It pulls people in and gets people involved.  A shared vision helps to create a focal point, a positive sense of identification, and sheds light on the path forward. 

Many companies, certainly most large corporations, with safety and health professionals, have a safety vision statement.  However, I have my doubts about the time and energy put into these assertions. In my experience, vision statements are usually written by one or two people, with little input from the workforce or its organizational leaders.   One has to ask, was there buy-in from the senior most leaders?  Was the vision something that was truly desired and seen as achievable or worthwhile?  Was the vision for safety tested in any way?  Can leaders and workers regularly articulate the vision in ways that positively affect others?


A Mistake

Workers need to play a role in developing and framing the organization’s vision for safety — embracing it, validating it, branding it, articulating it, and making it thoroughly visible. Then it becomes theirs too, not the sole product of management or a committee or a small team. The vision is about “we,” rather than “I.”  To be honest, I don’t see many good safety vision statements.  I recently reviewed over 20 safety vision statements on various company websites. Few are persuasive. They are not going to make employees think "we" instead of "I". They do not give employees reason to move to excellence. But they do give employees reason to roll their eyes and shake their heads. The statements are often too wordy, too ambiguous.  I don’t see the time and valued importance put into these statements.


Bring The Vision to Life

John Maxwell, states that Good leaders must communicate vision clearly, creatively, and continually…”

We are in a position to sell some form of our vision for safety to our leaders.  And we sell it by making an emotional connection for the potential loss of humanity, connecting with the organization’s values — whatever it takes!

A few years ago, I delivered a talk to a group of construction foremen and spoke about leading from the heart.  Afterward, I received a lengthy email from one of the supervisors.  I need to share a small part of his thoughts:

I’ve heard your words over and over in my mind and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you were saying. I had a safety meeting with all of our employees today.... I truly had everyone’s attention.  A lot of our safety talks are about what to do and what not to do.  I’ve done talks before where I asked them to be safe for their wives and kids, but I think this one made an impact. In all the years I’ve done safety talks, I’ve never had employees thank me. A few of the guys told me they never went to a safety meeting and had their hearts massaged.

Embracing a vision for safety excellence is about more than simply gaining additional support. Getting the vision means getting it deep inside, cognitively and emotionally. 

Our vision rarely comes alive, until we feel it, understand it, and share it in deeply personal ways — connecting the heads and hearts of those around us. And we need to do whatever is possible to help our leaders see and share a compelling vision for safety so that eventually — everyone’s heart is massaged. 

Are You Making These Mistakes With Your Safety Climate Surveys?

In 1980, Dov Zohar addressed various implications of assessing safety climate through a 40-item questionnaire in order to improve safety-related outcomes.  Zohar wrote one of the first scholarly works pertaining to safety climate and I was intrigued.  His work led to more research on my part during a time when there were many heated debates regarding the assessment of broader forms of organizational climate – not safety alone.  Amongst the many arguments, there were questions raised regarding the validity and ethical use of surveys to gather culturally-based information through surveys alone.  Many believed that culture assessments should largely be addressed by direct observation and interviews rather than through the use of surveys. In the late 1980s, I began using various self-developed safety perception surveys which proved quite useful. 

Through the 1990s, the climate-culture debates continued and became more pronounced. However, this led to more common uses of surveys to better understand one’s culture for safety, primarily through climate surveys. Since that time, I have seen several common mistakes that should be avoided when examining ones climate and culture for safety.  Averting these pitfalls can make for a more accurate and useful understanding of your safety climate.

1.  The Response Scale.  There are endless varieties of arguments related to the number of response choices that pertain to the level of disagreement or agreement with survey statements.  Some surveys use 4, 5, 6, 7, or even more response choices for each statement.  However, many researchers believe that using an even number of choices with no “uncertain” or “neither agree nor disagree” option in the middle, works best.  This is especially true within climate surveys as opposed to political polls.  Like many, I prefer the use of a 4-point scale because it forces respondents to choose a position, not simply resort to a neutral response. In safety, most people have strong opinions that need to be reflected in the data.  Wider-ranging scales, from 6 to 10-points, provide too much of a gradient and makes interpretation even more difficult.  Can you imagine the frustration of a line or field worker in having to choose along a 10-point continuum – my head would hurt! 

2. Your Statements.  Using the right kinds of statements or questions in order to obtain useful information from your employees is a necessity.  Statements that relate to front-line leadership, openness in communications, or tools, equipment, and facilities, as well as a host of other critical statements is required if you want a well-painted picture and in order to intervene in a cogent way.  By example, if you want to begin to understand how front-line leadership communicates with its workers and the degree of their two-way communications, your statements need to get to that understanding, with the right types of statements.  Don’t add to your employees’ confusion by asking more than one question in a single statement.  Ask one question at a time, by not using the word and, because it often leads to two questions being asked, rather than one.    “Double-barreled” questions like these produce ambiguous data.

3. Questionnaire Length.  Some surveys are too short or too long.  When they’re too short they typically don’t capture enough important information regarding what should be a robust reflection of your culture for safety.  Generally, I have seen 10 or 20 statements used in an attempt to cover multiples dimensions (categories) that should reveal what people believe about their organization and its culture for safety.  In contrast, more lengthy surveys with 60 to 80 or more items, may take 25 minutes or longer to complete.  These types of surveys are unwieldy and bothersome for the user.  Typically, a larger number of survey items can be collapsed into a lesser number and would prove more useful.  Who would want to work though such a questionnaire?  Respondents tire quickly and end-up giving useless or thoughtless responses because the survey is too burdensome to complete. 

4. Aggregating Data.  Another common problem that I have seen in working with safety climate surveys is the way people aggregate their data.  For example, if you work in a plant and simply lump all your data from management and the workforce together, it’s going to be reasonably poor data.  These higher-level results may allow management to feel good about their support but the data is rather limiting.  However, if you segregate comparison data with regard to senior management, supervisors, and employee perceptions, you can begin to examine the perception gaps between groups, with lower-level data that becomes increasingly useful and actionable.  If for example, management believes they are very open in receiving information and feedback from their workers regarding hazards and other concerns, but their employees don’t feel nearly the same, you have work to do in order to close that particular gap.  There are times to aggregate data in collective ways, quite possibly when comparing and ranking plants or locations, but on most occasions, organizational data should not be compiled in a higher-level manner, with a view from 30,000 feet.   

Make it Better…
These are just a few common mistakes that can lead to less than desirable safety data that could make huge differences in better understanding your culture for safety.  This is particularly true if you are attempting to construct your own survey without the support and validation of a group of experts.  Making your survey data more useful and actionable will allow you to intervene more cogently with appropriate support, improvements, training, and other distinct ways that will leave a positive impression on your safety culture.  I have said it for many years, it matters what you measure and how you measure it.

Chuck Noll’s Leadership Legacy

Chuck Noll's human body was laid to rest today but his legacy lives on forever.  The very recent passing of Chuck Noll, Hall of Fame coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers has stirred the emotions and thoughts of many.  Chuck Noll is the only NFL head coach to win four Super Bowls and may be the greatest NFL head coach of all time.  Charles Henry Noll never received the credit he truly deserved but those closest to him realized his exceptional leadership qualities, almost instantly.
  

In the local press coverage, former players and those from the Steelers’ front office have had the most to share about Coach Noll.  He had many outstanding leadership qualities but one of the most highly regarded was his candidness.  Chuck Noll knew how to be very straightforward about performance but he wasn’t deeply offensive – he had tact. We can learn from Chuck Noll by being forthright and candid about safety related performance.

          1.  Be as direct about performance issues by being as open and honest
               as possible.
          2.  Don’t make it personal or use name calling to defeat someone.
          3.  Don’t wait to address performance issues - the earlier the better.
          4.  Don’t belittle someone in front of their peers or others.
          5.  Use your words carefully – some words cut deeply and humiliate.

It takes courage and tact to be appropriately candid, but it is very necessary in order to hold people accountable and to set a standard of performance that will define your culture for safety.  Mike Tomlin, the current head coach of the Steelers often uses a phrase that characterizes the Steelers’ culture of success, “the standard is the standard.” 

The Steelers’ standard of success didn’t start with Coach Tomlin, it started with Chuck Noll.  Learn to be candid about safety performance; it will go a long way in setting and defining your own standards of success.