Business and safety leaders face ever-increasing expectations and obligations placed on them. The world is infatuated with results, and the world of safety is the same, and zero accidents is the ultimate achievement. However, how zero is achieved has become dysfunctional. Cynical safety leaders argue with inept safety experts on which dysfunctional practice is better than the other. It’s not healthy when safety organizations like OSHA, or business leaders and safety leaders use the threat of punitives (i.e., punishment, penalty, and extinction) to get results. The legal community also makes it tough with laws that are solely punitive and drive fear into the hearts of business and safety leaders when mistakes are made. Don’t get me wrong, we need safety law, and order. The core problem is that you can’t lead (influence) people to fully function and perform at their best while based on fear. Fear causes people to react rather than respond, and that’s a bad thing. Professional people are trained to respond. In psychology, we call this the fight or flight response. The safety community, unfortunately, is driven by fear and continues to function in dysfunction, driving flight (hiding injuries, bad decisions, and bad leadership) and fight (passive-aggressive attitudes) in people. The safety community needs to change from fear to passion and recognize how to work with each other in a way that motivates people to fight for safe behavior every day. Unfortunately, the tradition in safety has been flawed from the beginning and will never create sustainable results because results are the wrong focus.
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