March 7, 2025 • 19 mins
The podcast episode discusses the relationship between ethical decision-making and workplace safety. Hosted by Dr. Mark French, the episode explores how distance from the work environment affects ethical judgment in safety-related decisions.
Dr. French references an article from the Journal of Applied Psychology (February 2025) titled Out of Sight, Out of Mind: How High-Level Controls Can Decrease the Ethical Framing of Risk-Mitigating Behavior. The research highlights how individuals making safety decisions—often executives or managers—tend to underestimate workplace risks when they are physically removed from the job site. This detachment leads to decisions that may prioritize cost and productivity over worker safety.
The discussion emphasizes how safety professionals frequently face ethical dilemmas, such as choosing between enforcing safety measures and aligning with corporate expectations. Dr. French underscores the challenge of instilling ethical behavior, noting that while organizations can promote accountability and structured procedures, individuals ultimately make their own ethical choices.
He provides examples of how ethical misjudgments have led to real-world safety failures, citing an incident where a supervisor disregarded a stop-work order, leading to worker fatalities. He stresses the importance of leadership engagement—actively seeing and understanding workplace conditions—to ensure informed safety decisions.
Drawing from quality management principles like Six Sigma and Toyota’s Gemba method, he advocates for leaders to observe work environments directly, rather than making abstract, detached decisions. The episode concludes with an invitation to the Tennessee Safety Conference in April, where Dr. French will discuss integrating values into organizational safety culture.
The key takeaway: ethical safety decisions improve when leaders engage directly with frontline work, reinforcing a culture where employees feel empowered to prioritize safety without fear of retaliation.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:01):
This week on the podcast, we're talking about
ethics. We're going to talkabout, how do we help create
stronger ethical ties that thenlead to better safety decisions?
This and more. This week on thepodcast, you
(00:33):
Mike, welcome to the leading andlearning through safety podcast.
Your host is Dr Mark French.
Mark's passion is helpingorganizations motivate their
teams. This podcast is focusedon bringing out the best in
leadership through creatingstrong values, learning
opportunities, teamwork andsafety, nothing is more
(00:55):
important than protecting yourpeople. Safety creates an
environment for empathy,innovation and empowerment.
Together, we'll discover meaningand purpose through shaping our
safety culture. Thanks forjoining us this episode and now
here is Dr Mark French. Youmark, hello and welcome to this
(01:25):
episode of the leading andlearning through safety podcast.
I am your host, Mark, and I amso happy that you have joined
me. Also sorry for my absencethe past few weeks, as with this
time of year, and you canprobably still hear it in my
voice. Illness struck, and itwas really hard to talk
(01:48):
sustained, which might be goodfor some people.
My family may have been happy bythat, but now I am feeling
better, and I've got someexciting topics that I want to
keep discussing, and I lookforward to this. So welcome
again. Glad I am part of yourpodcast routine, and let's jump
(02:12):
on in. So this week I got a gotone of my psychological
journals, and this is theJournal of Applied Psychology,
and I was really excited when Iopened it and found an article
that directly related tooccupational safety. It wasn't
even a stretch to get there. Itwas definitely an occupational
(02:33):
safety style article. Andresearch works. So again, the
Journal of Applied Psychology,February 2025,
the name of this article is outof sight, out of mind, how high
level controls can decrease theethical framing of high of risk
mitigating behavior. Yeah, amouthful, but it means a lot,
(02:55):
and it's something that we assafety professionals have known
for a long time, is that thefurther that someone is from the
work,the easier it is to say it's not
that risky. And so the researchlooked at some high risk work
opportunities and did a fewminor experiments try to
understand how that works, howthat there can be high work
(03:18):
context and low work context,and basically trying to show the
ethical framework around safetyjudgment calls. And the people
who make the judgment calls forsafety are normally the ones
that aren't right nearby. Nowthis is something that has been
in ethical decision making andsafety decision making. This
(03:41):
research is coming more and moreto the forefront of the safety
world, of understanding how ourdecisions impact real safety and
how it actually is ethical inits framing, because safety is
it's a huge piece of ethics. Wemake the decision whether or not
there's enough risk present todo or not do something, and
(04:05):
whether it be fixing it, notfixing it, allowing the work,
not allowing the work. How muchrisk is acceptable, how much
loss is acceptable in what we doin decision making, and a lot of
the times, even the safetyprofessional has a lot of
dilemma, having to choosebetween, do I do the right
(04:27):
thing, or do I go along withwhat I know my boss wants, or
what the corporation or theorganization wants? We dive into
these ethical decisions everysingle day, and it's probably
one of the largest dilemmas, atleast in my opinion, and it has
affected me for years and years,and made me ponder a lot of what
(04:48):
I do and how I do it, and who Iwork for and where I work over
and over again, is, can we makethe ethical decision or.
Much punishment do we take formaking the ethical decision, for
doing the right thing, forcalling the thing out? And I've
(05:08):
been on both sides, good andbad, and I'm sure if you've been
around the safety world for longenough, you've seen it too, that
making the right decisionsometimes comes with not
necessarily direct punishment,where it'd be retaliation, but
more work, or you're excluded,or you're not asked anymore, or
(05:28):
that opinion isn't needed, orthey give you more work because
of it. Well, yeah, if that'strue, then you need to go find
the fix for it. Those ethicalframeworks are organizational.
They're part of the larger groupof the organization having to
choose. Now, I'll take a stepback and say the hardest thing,
and probably one of the mostimpossible things we can do as
(05:51):
safety professionals, is helpsomeone become ethical. Now we
can hold the line. We can holdaccountability. We can write
procedures that lead that way,but ultimately, when we go
inside the human being, and I'mbeing very philosophy, being a
philosopher here, philosophicalbringing that out and saying, We
(06:13):
cannot dictate someone's ethics.
We can help guide them intodoing the right thing, but
ultimately their ethics aretheir ethics, and we see people
that want tomaybe blur that line or have a
very gray or even dark ethicalalignment to what they do in the
(06:34):
workplace. It's very common, andwhat this study looked at was it
began with the premise that thepeople who are making the
critical decisions for safetygenerally are not the people on
site, the worker can allegedlynow here's where I some
companies do a great job of astop work program. They empower
(06:56):
it, they celebrate it. They dothe right things. Some companies
don't. They don't fullyunderstand what it means to do a
stop work, and it isuncomfortable to go almost stop
work, because there's apotential that someone could get
hurt. Sometimes it's a nobrainer. Sometimes it's super
easy. Other times it's kind oflike, well, you know, done it a
few times, maybe do it again,try it one more time. But
(07:19):
ultimately, the decisions weremade upstream from the work that
influence and dictate thedecisions that will happen the
moment of a potential incidentand to the person that the
incident could happen to. And inthe article, they cite a few
(07:39):
examples of that historically,where the key decision makers
for the big safety decisionswere not there. They were
separated from the work.
Therefore it was easier for themto make ethical assumptions that
things were just the decisionthey made was not going to
(08:03):
affect someone's safety, but,yeah, it was important, and it
could, but they reallydiminished their own ethical
ownershipin that decision, which I found
absolutely fascinating, becauseit's Something we've known we
know that as safety people, wethink about large corporate
organizations making decisionsfor safety, and we think about
(08:30):
these suited people, and I'm,again, I'm giving this context
of just generalizing, we thinkof these in a boardroom making
decisions on cost productivity,without any consideration for
what it could do towards safetyand a lot of catastrophic
incidents. When you trace thedecision making way back, it
(08:51):
comes from those decisions thatwere made not sitting in front
of people, not being on thefront lines, or even
understanding what it looks likeon the front lines, but just
making a decision arbitrarilyand with generalizations at that
higher level. And so it beginsto look at can Is this true?
(09:15):
Does it really create someopportunity for risk? Does it
create this opportunity for it'seasier to ethically justify it
when I don't see it. Andabsolutely, for those of us who
have seen this work time andtime again, even I'm going to
talk a little bit later aboutcontinuous improvement Six Sigma
(09:37):
in those productivity managementsystems and how even they are
contrary to that decision makingin the boardroom, that it has to
be made based on the what isreality and the physical truth
of the situation that we sit in,we can only make those ethical
decisions when we are looking atthe work.
(10:00):
Work. Maybe it's a photograph.
Maybe there's ways remotely now,with no doubt that with the
technology, we have to betterengage ever before with the work
in the workers. Are we doing it?
Though? Yeah, I'm as Gill. Ido. I get out in the field as
much as I want to. No, I'm gonnago ahead and preamble the fact
(10:23):
that I understand I'm not thereas much as I want to be. But I I
see this, I understand the factthat the decisions that I can
make still affect in a very realway, decision making and overall
ethical determination of how acompany runs a safety program.
(10:44):
Let's talk more, and let's moveon to the positive on what does
this mean for what we can docoming up on the second half of
the leading and learning throughsafety podcast. You are
listening tothe leading and learning through
safety podcast with Dr MarkFrench dsda Consulting, learn
you lead others. The MyersBriggs Type Indicator is an
(11:11):
amazing tool. Problem is that itcan be easily misinterpreted. Dr
Mark French is MBTI certifiedand ready to help you discover
your inner strengths. The MBTIassessment can help with team
building, stress management,communication, conflict
management, and so much more,individual and group sessions
(11:32):
are available to help youdiscover what makes you great.
For more information, visit uson the web at tsda
consulting.comWelcome back to the second half
of the leading and learningthrough safety podcast. This
week we're talking about anarticle in the February 2025,
(11:53):
a Journal of Applied Psychologyfrom the American Psychological
Association.
The articles title is out ofsight, out of mind, how high
level controls can decrease theethical framing of risk
mitigating behavior. Soessentially, the further away
you are from the work,the easier it is to make a very
high level ethical decisionmaking process that may not
(12:17):
really be beneficial to thepeople in the field or the
people doing the work. It mayactually influence them
Oppositely, to make decisionsthat are not in their best
interest and in their bestsafety. And the biggest way, the
biggest way, to overcome thatobstacle of out of sight, out of
mind, which the title said itall right there. If it's out of
(12:40):
sight and you're not seeing it,it's out of mind. It's just a
statistic. It's just a number.
It's just a thing where aprocedure is out there that
something should happen. It goesback to seeing the work, getting
feedback, real feedback aboutthe work. Yeah, there are times
(13:01):
where leaders do go out in thefield, and sometimes it's just a
pony show. Sometimes it isstaged. It is not the real work
that's going on. And hopefullywhat you do see as a leader is
the real work. You have a chanceto interact and talk to people
in a real way, to understand thedecisions they have to make
(13:21):
every day for their own safety.
Let's go back to qualitymanagement. Let's move to a
continuous improvement Six Sigmastyle, whatever, wherever you
want to put that. And even whenwe go back to the book The
Toyota way, looking at some ofthe foundations of it and Deming
and his studies, it begins withthe idea of the Gemba, the going
to the place of the work to seeit, knowing that you can't fully
(13:46):
understand the qualityimplications. And here we're
talking about safetyimplications of what's happening
until you go and see it. Maybeit's a video, maybe it's a
photo, maybe it's a Face Timevideo, where you're seeing it
live, but in a different way,and in a remote workplace, or
(14:06):
workplaces that are spread out,you have to get creative with
how you evaluate and how youlook at that risk. So it becomes
real. Once it becomes real, it'shard to ignore. It's hard to not
make the ethical decision. It'salmost a forced ethical decision
when you're looking at theperson now, time and time again,
(14:27):
I am amazed, both good and bad,and in this case, bad with human
nature. There are absolutelytimes where people have stopped
work, and this was late lastyear, if I remember correctly.
One of the news stories wetalked about together was that
they stopped at work at a trenchsite. Everybody came out. The
(14:49):
supervisor, the leader of thegroup, said, it's perfectly fine
Get back in there. And he wasthere when it collapsed and
killed people. You.
That is despisable, despicable,horrible to be
that level. And again, this iswhere I go back and say, we
(15:12):
can't. We can't create ethicaldecision making for people. We
can, we can help guide themthrough it, but ultimately their
ethics of their own. And ifthat's their level of ethics,
that's a scary place to be as aleader, and it gets even easier
imagine that leader, even easieras the further away from your
work. He looked those guys inthe eyes and said, Get back in
(15:33):
that trench, and then watchedthem die.
And again, that was months ago.
I remember that article. Can'tremember all the details, but I
remember being just as angry nowas I was then about it, and I
read this article, and I go,Yeah, exactly when it comes to
having to make these ethicaldecisions or being able to
(15:53):
empower our team to do the rightthing, we have to be able to see
it. We have to put our eyes onit. We have to understand for
real the construal, the contextof what is happening, so that we
can help empower them to makethe very best decision that they
can make on their own behalf.
(16:16):
Isn't that wild that we as acompany, we as organizations,
have that level of powerthat people second guess making
the right decisions forthemselves because we have
created something, that theyfeel like they have to do it
that way, that they don't haveempowerment to say no, or
empowerment to say, can we thinkabout this a little further?
(16:39):
Because I don't feel comfortablewith it. I don't feel good about
this. I don't feel safe doingthis, that there are
organizations that have put suchgreat pressure on people from a
distance, again, that ethicaldecision making from far away
puts the pressure on people thatthey feel that the productivity,
the cost measures, the othermeasures are more important to
(17:00):
make those decisions than it isto save their own lives or to
protect themselves from harm.
That's a scary situation, and Ilove the fact that this article
is trying to find creative waysin the theoretical sense of
psychology, of understanding howwe make these ethical decisions
(17:20):
and how we as people, we asleaders, can make better
decisions for our team. And itcomes back to the very simple
premise of go to where the workis happening, one of the tried
and true methods ofunderstanding, of improving, of
problem solving, of all the allthe things that make a great
(17:43):
process. It all begins withgoing out there, seeing it,
putting eyes on it, being in themix, engaging with our team,
being able to really see thework as it's happening, and be
able to make good decisionsbased on what we see in the
(18:04):
feedback we get from the team inthe field doing the work. Thanks
for joining me on this episodeof the leading and learning
through safety podcast. Asalways. Thank you for joining
me. Always a pleasure to haveyou. A little bit of fun. News
coming up in April. The firstweek of April is the Tennessee
(18:24):
safety conference. Very timely.
I'm going to be talking abouthow do we build values into our
organizational structure to helplead safety we're going to get
right to the heart of it. We'regoing to talk about values.
We're going to talk aboutmission and vision, and we're
going to talk about how we buildthat to really drive safety
coming up in Nashville in April.
(18:46):
Hope you can join me. It'll be alot of fun. Great conference,
probably one of the best in thenation. I love it. So excited.
Until next time we chat, staysafe.
Thank you for listening to theleading and learning through
safety podcast. More content isavailable online at www dot tsda
(19:12):
consulting.comall the opinions expressed on
the podcast are solelyattributed to the individual and
not affiliated with any businessentity. This podcast is for
informational and entertainmentpurposes. It is not a substitute
for proper policy, appropriatetraining or legal advice. You
(19:53):
This has been the leading andlearning through safety podcast.
You.
This week on the podcast, we're talking about
ethics. We're going to talkabout, how do we help create
stronger ethical ties that thenlead to better safety decisions?
This and more. This week on thepodcast, you
(00:33):
Mike, welcome to the leading andlearning through safety podcast.
Your host is Dr Mark French.
Mark's passion is helpingorganizations motivate their
teams. This podcast is focusedon bringing out the best in
leadership through creatingstrong values, learning
opportunities, teamwork andsafety, nothing is more
(00:55):
important than protecting yourpeople. Safety creates an
environment for empathy,innovation and empowerment.
Together, we'll discover meaningand purpose through shaping our
safety culture. Thanks forjoining us this episode and now
here is Dr Mark French. Youmark, hello and welcome to this
(01:25):
episode of the leading andlearning through safety podcast.
I am your host, Mark, and I amso happy that you have joined
me. Also sorry for my absencethe past few weeks, as with this
time of year, and you canprobably still hear it in my
voice. Illness struck, and itwas really hard to talk
(01:48):
sustained, which might be goodfor some people.
My family may have been happy bythat, but now I am feeling
better, and I've got someexciting topics that I want to
keep discussing, and I lookforward to this. So welcome
again. Glad I am part of yourpodcast routine, and let's jump
(02:12):
on in. So this week I got a gotone of my psychological
journals, and this is theJournal of Applied Psychology,
and I was really excited when Iopened it and found an article
that directly related tooccupational safety. It wasn't
even a stretch to get there. Itwas definitely an occupational
(02:33):
safety style article. Andresearch works. So again, the
Journal of Applied Psychology,February 2025,
the name of this article is outof sight, out of mind, how high
level controls can decrease theethical framing of high of risk
mitigating behavior. Yeah, amouthful, but it means a lot,
(02:55):
and it's something that we assafety professionals have known
for a long time, is that thefurther that someone is from the
work,the easier it is to say it's not
that risky. And so the researchlooked at some high risk work
opportunities and did a fewminor experiments try to
understand how that works, howthat there can be high work
(03:18):
context and low work context,and basically trying to show the
ethical framework around safetyjudgment calls. And the people
who make the judgment calls forsafety are normally the ones
that aren't right nearby. Nowthis is something that has been
in ethical decision making andsafety decision making. This
(03:41):
research is coming more and moreto the forefront of the safety
world, of understanding how ourdecisions impact real safety and
how it actually is ethical inits framing, because safety is
it's a huge piece of ethics. Wemake the decision whether or not
there's enough risk present todo or not do something, and
(04:05):
whether it be fixing it, notfixing it, allowing the work,
not allowing the work. How muchrisk is acceptable, how much
loss is acceptable in what we doin decision making, and a lot of
the times, even the safetyprofessional has a lot of
dilemma, having to choosebetween, do I do the right
(04:27):
thing, or do I go along withwhat I know my boss wants, or
what the corporation or theorganization wants? We dive into
these ethical decisions everysingle day, and it's probably
one of the largest dilemmas, atleast in my opinion, and it has
affected me for years and years,and made me ponder a lot of what
(04:48):
I do and how I do it, and who Iwork for and where I work over
and over again, is, can we makethe ethical decision or.
Much punishment do we take formaking the ethical decision, for
doing the right thing, forcalling the thing out? And I've
(05:08):
been on both sides, good andbad, and I'm sure if you've been
around the safety world for longenough, you've seen it too, that
making the right decisionsometimes comes with not
necessarily direct punishment,where it'd be retaliation, but
more work, or you're excluded,or you're not asked anymore, or
(05:28):
that opinion isn't needed, orthey give you more work because
of it. Well, yeah, if that'strue, then you need to go find
the fix for it. Those ethicalframeworks are organizational.
They're part of the larger groupof the organization having to
choose. Now, I'll take a stepback and say the hardest thing,
and probably one of the mostimpossible things we can do as
(05:51):
safety professionals, is helpsomeone become ethical. Now we
can hold the line. We can holdaccountability. We can write
procedures that lead that way,but ultimately, when we go
inside the human being, and I'mbeing very philosophy, being a
philosopher here, philosophicalbringing that out and saying, We
(06:13):
cannot dictate someone's ethics.
We can help guide them intodoing the right thing, but
ultimately their ethics aretheir ethics, and we see people
that want tomaybe blur that line or have a
very gray or even dark ethicalalignment to what they do in the
(06:34):
workplace. It's very common, andwhat this study looked at was it
began with the premise that thepeople who are making the
critical decisions for safetygenerally are not the people on
site, the worker can allegedlynow here's where I some
companies do a great job of astop work program. They empower
(06:56):
it, they celebrate it. They dothe right things. Some companies
don't. They don't fullyunderstand what it means to do a
stop work, and it isuncomfortable to go almost stop
work, because there's apotential that someone could get
hurt. Sometimes it's a nobrainer. Sometimes it's super
easy. Other times it's kind oflike, well, you know, done it a
few times, maybe do it again,try it one more time. But
(07:19):
ultimately, the decisions weremade upstream from the work that
influence and dictate thedecisions that will happen the
moment of a potential incidentand to the person that the
incident could happen to. And inthe article, they cite a few
(07:39):
examples of that historically,where the key decision makers
for the big safety decisionswere not there. They were
separated from the work.
Therefore it was easier for themto make ethical assumptions that
things were just the decisionthey made was not going to
(08:03):
affect someone's safety, but,yeah, it was important, and it
could, but they reallydiminished their own ethical
ownershipin that decision, which I found
absolutely fascinating, becauseit's Something we've known we
know that as safety people, wethink about large corporate
organizations making decisionsfor safety, and we think about
(08:30):
these suited people, and I'm,again, I'm giving this context
of just generalizing, we thinkof these in a boardroom making
decisions on cost productivity,without any consideration for
what it could do towards safetyand a lot of catastrophic
incidents. When you trace thedecision making way back, it
(08:51):
comes from those decisions thatwere made not sitting in front
of people, not being on thefront lines, or even
understanding what it looks likeon the front lines, but just
making a decision arbitrarilyand with generalizations at that
higher level. And so it beginsto look at can Is this true?
(09:15):
Does it really create someopportunity for risk? Does it
create this opportunity for it'seasier to ethically justify it
when I don't see it. Andabsolutely, for those of us who
have seen this work time andtime again, even I'm going to
talk a little bit later aboutcontinuous improvement Six Sigma
(09:37):
in those productivity managementsystems and how even they are
contrary to that decision makingin the boardroom, that it has to
be made based on the what isreality and the physical truth
of the situation that we sit in,we can only make those ethical
decisions when we are looking atthe work.
(10:00):
Work. Maybe it's a photograph.
Maybe there's ways remotely now,with no doubt that with the
technology, we have to betterengage ever before with the work
in the workers. Are we doing it?
Though? Yeah, I'm as Gill. Ido. I get out in the field as
much as I want to. No, I'm gonnago ahead and preamble the fact
(10:23):
that I understand I'm not thereas much as I want to be. But I I
see this, I understand the factthat the decisions that I can
make still affect in a very realway, decision making and overall
ethical determination of how acompany runs a safety program.
(10:44):
Let's talk more, and let's moveon to the positive on what does
this mean for what we can docoming up on the second half of
the leading and learning throughsafety podcast. You are
listening tothe leading and learning through
safety podcast with Dr MarkFrench dsda Consulting, learn
you lead others. The MyersBriggs Type Indicator is an
(11:11):
amazing tool. Problem is that itcan be easily misinterpreted. Dr
Mark French is MBTI certifiedand ready to help you discover
your inner strengths. The MBTIassessment can help with team
building, stress management,communication, conflict
management, and so much more,individual and group sessions
(11:32):
are available to help youdiscover what makes you great.
For more information, visit uson the web at tsda
consulting.comWelcome back to the second half
of the leading and learningthrough safety podcast. This
week we're talking about anarticle in the February 2025,
(11:53):
a Journal of Applied Psychologyfrom the American Psychological
Association.
The articles title is out ofsight, out of mind, how high
level controls can decrease theethical framing of risk
mitigating behavior. Soessentially, the further away
you are from the work,the easier it is to make a very
high level ethical decisionmaking process that may not
(12:17):
really be beneficial to thepeople in the field or the
people doing the work. It mayactually influence them
Oppositely, to make decisionsthat are not in their best
interest and in their bestsafety. And the biggest way, the
biggest way, to overcome thatobstacle of out of sight, out of
mind, which the title said itall right there. If it's out of
(12:40):
sight and you're not seeing it,it's out of mind. It's just a
statistic. It's just a number.
It's just a thing where aprocedure is out there that
something should happen. It goesback to seeing the work, getting
feedback, real feedback aboutthe work. Yeah, there are times
(13:01):
where leaders do go out in thefield, and sometimes it's just a
pony show. Sometimes it isstaged. It is not the real work
that's going on. And hopefullywhat you do see as a leader is
the real work. You have a chanceto interact and talk to people
in a real way, to understand thedecisions they have to make
(13:21):
every day for their own safety.
Let's go back to qualitymanagement. Let's move to a
continuous improvement Six Sigmastyle, whatever, wherever you
want to put that. And even whenwe go back to the book The
Toyota way, looking at some ofthe foundations of it and Deming
and his studies, it begins withthe idea of the Gemba, the going
to the place of the work to seeit, knowing that you can't fully
(13:46):
understand the qualityimplications. And here we're
talking about safetyimplications of what's happening
until you go and see it. Maybeit's a video, maybe it's a
photo, maybe it's a Face Timevideo, where you're seeing it
live, but in a different way,and in a remote workplace, or
(14:06):
workplaces that are spread out,you have to get creative with
how you evaluate and how youlook at that risk. So it becomes
real. Once it becomes real, it'shard to ignore. It's hard to not
make the ethical decision. It'salmost a forced ethical decision
when you're looking at theperson now, time and time again,
(14:27):
I am amazed, both good and bad,and in this case, bad with human
nature. There are absolutelytimes where people have stopped
work, and this was late lastyear, if I remember correctly.
One of the news stories wetalked about together was that
they stopped at work at a trenchsite. Everybody came out. The
(14:49):
supervisor, the leader of thegroup, said, it's perfectly fine
Get back in there. And he wasthere when it collapsed and
killed people. You.
That is despisable, despicable,horrible to be
that level. And again, this iswhere I go back and say, we
(15:12):
can't. We can't create ethicaldecision making for people. We
can, we can help guide themthrough it, but ultimately their
ethics of their own. And ifthat's their level of ethics,
that's a scary place to be as aleader, and it gets even easier
imagine that leader, even easieras the further away from your
work. He looked those guys inthe eyes and said, Get back in
(15:33):
that trench, and then watchedthem die.
And again, that was months ago.
I remember that article. Can'tremember all the details, but I
remember being just as angry nowas I was then about it, and I
read this article, and I go,Yeah, exactly when it comes to
having to make these ethicaldecisions or being able to
(15:53):
empower our team to do the rightthing, we have to be able to see
it. We have to put our eyes onit. We have to understand for
real the construal, the contextof what is happening, so that we
can help empower them to makethe very best decision that they
can make on their own behalf.
(16:16):
Isn't that wild that we as acompany, we as organizations,
have that level of powerthat people second guess making
the right decisions forthemselves because we have
created something, that theyfeel like they have to do it
that way, that they don't haveempowerment to say no, or
empowerment to say, can we thinkabout this a little further?
(16:39):
Because I don't feel comfortablewith it. I don't feel good about
this. I don't feel safe doingthis, that there are
organizations that have put suchgreat pressure on people from a
distance, again, that ethicaldecision making from far away
puts the pressure on people thatthey feel that the productivity,
the cost measures, the othermeasures are more important to
(17:00):
make those decisions than it isto save their own lives or to
protect themselves from harm.
That's a scary situation, and Ilove the fact that this article
is trying to find creative waysin the theoretical sense of
psychology, of understanding howwe make these ethical decisions
(17:20):
and how we as people, we asleaders, can make better
decisions for our team. And itcomes back to the very simple
premise of go to where the workis happening, one of the tried
and true methods ofunderstanding, of improving, of
problem solving, of all the allthe things that make a great
(17:43):
process. It all begins withgoing out there, seeing it,
putting eyes on it, being in themix, engaging with our team,
being able to really see thework as it's happening, and be
able to make good decisionsbased on what we see in the
(18:04):
feedback we get from the team inthe field doing the work. Thanks
for joining me on this episodeof the leading and learning
through safety podcast. Asalways. Thank you for joining
me. Always a pleasure to haveyou. A little bit of fun. News
coming up in April. The firstweek of April is the Tennessee
(18:24):
safety conference. Very timely.
I'm going to be talking abouthow do we build values into our
organizational structure to helplead safety we're going to get
right to the heart of it. We'regoing to talk about values.
We're going to talk aboutmission and vision, and we're
going to talk about how we buildthat to really drive safety
coming up in Nashville in April.
(18:46):
Hope you can join me. It'll be alot of fun. Great conference,
probably one of the best in thenation. I love it. So excited.
Until next time we chat, staysafe.
Thank you for listening to theleading and learning through
safety podcast. More content isavailable online at www dot tsda
(19:12):
consulting.comall the opinions expressed on
the podcast are solelyattributed to the individual and
not affiliated with any businessentity. This podcast is for
informational and entertainmentpurposes. It is not a substitute
for proper policy, appropriatetraining or legal advice. You
(19:53):
This has been the leading andlearning through safety podcast.
You.
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