The Innovative Brain

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A New & Improved Twist on Safety

— For the Body, Heart, and Mind

Play safe! Be safe! Safety first! Every time a kid leaves the house they are reminded to be safe. Don’t forget to wear your seatbelt! Your helmet! Your tooth guard! Steel toed shoes! Think about all of the attire and paraphernalia that are produced to support people’s safety. Think about all of the professionals that are serving our safety interests — police, firefighters, safety professionals, etc. Safety is integral to everything we do.

Typically, when we think of safety at work, we think about physical safety, and we think about industrial environments where employees wear hardhats and operate large equipment and handle complex electrical challenges. We think about OSHA requirements. Most organizations commit significant resources to being safe and have dedicated safety professionals on staff. And, all of the focus is given to physical safety and wellness.

Physical safety is crucial; there is no question about that. However, we submit that we might be missing an opportunity to apply similar resources to preventing emotional and cognitive safety issues as well. At New & Improved, we’re very interested in helping organizations foster an organizational climate for creativity and innovation. We already know that this is dependent on creating a climate that feels emotionally safe — a place where new ideas are welcomed and win/win relationships are valued.

Over the past couple of years, N&I has been working with a utility company that does complicated electrical and mechanical maintenance in the field and at their headquarters. Nearly a third of their employees are professionals working in offices. The organization has a robust safety program and a pretty good safety record. But, it is not perfect and perfection is their goal. So, they contracted us to help a cross-functional group of employees create a new safety vision for the organization.

The group came up with a vision that was compelling to all of them. In the vision, they made reference to helping employees manage safety in all aspects of their lives. The core value that underlies the vision is caring. So, whether an employee is at work or at home or in the car — caring for the well-being and safety of self and others all of the time is really the goal. What they came to realize was that there were lots of resources dedicated to physical safety and no resources dedicated to emotional safety or cognitive safety.

It became apparent to us that there were far more instances of someone not feeling emotionally safe in the work environment — for example — being talked about behind their back, gossip, personality conflicts, dominant personalities, a poor relationship with their manager, a dysfunctional team, etc. And yet, there were not any training programs or initiatives in place to help employees manage relationships, manage conflict or to help them communicate with each other more effectively. On numerous occasions we observed conflicts that got ignored because people didn’t know what to do in these situations. Our experience — and the research — show that dynamics like these imprison the creative urge.

We worked wih a team where trust had eroded. The manager was not well—liked by his staff, and members of the team were “getting work done” but rarely did they talk about the issues or try to make the situation more functional. We facilitated several meetings to help this group learn to talk with and listen to each other. They began managing their conflicts in a win/win manner and reduced the shaming and blaming. The team had an opportunity to get to know each other in a new way and relationships improved. We improved trust and developed a strategy to foster ongoing trust as well as accountability. This is an example of transforming an emotionally unsafe environment into one that is much safer — and more creatively productive — today.

Quick Coaching Tip

Research on managing for creativity by Theresa Amabile at Harvard clearly shows that in many organizations, appearing critical of others ideas can make you seem smarter to your boss, and potentially enhance your own career at the others expense. The downside: it kills creativity dead. As leaders, we need to foster an environment that follows the concept of “Praise First” and reward those who follow this particular “Creativity & Safety SOP.”

There are no statistical measures posted publicly for the number of emotional safety mishaps like there are for physical injuries. Paying more attention to developing emotional intelligence in the workplace will more than likely result in happier employees, more caring, and interestingly, also fewer physical accidents. (Many accidents are caused by the distraction that accompanies emotional turmoil.)

All of us feel unsafe when we experience our ideas being attacked. This is what we mean by cognitive safety. You can go to any meeting, in most organizations, where ideas are being shared and find that they are getting criticized as fast as they are being generated. We all know how it feels to get an idea slammed — it can cause us to shut down in a group. To surrender. Sometimes in defeat other times in quiet defiance, but to give up trying. Yet, when deferring judgment and getting all of the ideas out first, then evaluating them in an affirmative way is practiced, we foster a climate where new ideas are welcomed and it feels safe to share them. When this really happens, trust builds in the organization and caring increases. People look out for each other more. Paying attention to how people manage ideas and creativity becomes an important factor in nurturing a safe working climate.

One way we have helped this organization to promote cognitive and emotional safety is by helping them learn to manage meetings more productively. When solving problems they have learned to separate divergent and convergent thinking. We have taught thinking and decision making tools that promote dialogue, consensus, and action. When practiced, these kinds of tools and principles encourage people to think creatively and feel cognitively and emotionally safe.

While it is important to always reinforce physical safety and train employees to perform their job safely, it might also be important to provide them with emotional and cognitive training. To be effective in relationships, it is important to learn how to listen with empathy, to confront in a productive way, and resolve conflict in a win/win way. To manage ideas productively, training in Creative Problem Solving provides employees with a common language and a common set of thinking tools and principles. There are many possible ways to develop emotional and cognitive skills and we think it is important to be deliberate about doing something to foster an environment that expands safety to these realms.

Though we can approach physical, emotional, and cognitive safety separately, we know that, in practice, they are interdependent. Our physical well-being effects our emotional well-being which effects our cognitive functioning etc.

The bottom line — Safety is integral to everything we do. It is a value that many of us hold and it is a practice that needs regular attention. Safety is about caring about and looking out for self and others. It is about physical safety, no question, and it is also about emotional and cognitive safety. It is our belief that if we would apply the resources to emotional and intellectual safety that we do to physical safety that we would prevent accidents and injuries and improve the organizational climate for creative thinking and innovative output.

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