Wouldn’t it be great if our employees all felt
they were understood in our business? I often hear business managers/owners saying
how frustrated they are to have their staff not following procedures, making
mistakes, being injured or their plans not going to plan.
If you don’t know your own or your teams “individual
code” (Their “Y”) it makes it near impossible to get to where you want to go
smoothly. The old Peter Drucker statement “Culture
eats Strategies for Breakfast”, hits home about the reality of our business
culture’s impact on the direction of where our business is going. We all see,
hear and interpret the world differently, so why is that? We are hard wired at
birth with a personality, which is then influenced a lot by our social
arrangements that affect what we believe and how we go about our business such
as: family beliefs, school, sports, religion, money and many more.
When we look at the four key temperaments of
personality it gives us an indication on how really different we are. So let’s
look at four samples and then imagine how they may affect the workplace.
The Four Temperaments:
Guardian: They are certain and organised, tend
to love schedules. They seek security and belonging, they are concerned with
responsibility and duty. They excel at organizing, facilitating, checklists and
supporting.
Rational: They are abstract and objective. They tend to
seek mastery and self-control, they are concerned with their own knowledge and
competence. They excel in any kind of logical investigation such as
engineering, conceptualizing, theorizing, and coordinating they are great
strategists.
Idealist: They are abstract and compassionate. They seek
meaning and significance, they are concerned with personal growth and finding
their own unique identity. They excel at clarifying, individualizing, unifying,
and inspiring.
Artisan: They are concrete and adaptable. They tend to
seek stimulation and craftsmanship; they are concerned with making an impact.
They excel at troubleshooting, responsiveness, and the creative handling of
tools, instruments, and equipment.
The above four are just samples to what types
of people we may have in our business and how they see and value the world.
There are 16 different types of “Y’s” to
understand. Carl Jung’s model includes 4 ways to collect data (Perception) and
4 ways to organise information and make decisions (Judgment). We all have the
ability to collect data in all 4 ways, but we only have preference to use one
of these functions.
An example is catching a cricket ball.
•
Extraverted Sensing (Se): How and where to
catch a ball.
•
Introverted Sensing (Si): Know where to run
from past experience.
•
Extraverted Intuition (Ne): Estimate where the
ball could end up.
•
Introverted
Intuition (Ni): Picture the ball from several ways and estimate where you could
catch it.
If we don’t all process how to catch a ball the
same way, then how do groups of employees make sense of risks and company procedures?
We need to understand how to have the right discussions and “listen” carefully to one another and
be mindful of our team’s collective views.
We also need to consider how we use our own
individual persona to perhaps guard our weaknesses or to influence how others
perceive us. This may hide our true strengths from flourishing to the
forefront. Then to put a spin on things we have the environments we live/grew
up in (mum, dad, teachers, coaches) who also influence our biases and the
development of our rules of thumb (Heuristics). So when we start to understand
these critical points, we start to see how our culture is influenced and impacts
our business’s trajectories.
Are we as business owners, managers,
supervisors, using the best language to communicate affectively to our teams
“Y”, to ensure we are all in the same direction to our business’s end goals? Or
are we not understanding how critical it is to understand personalities and
language when listening and communicating, instead we are all unintentionally heading
in different directions?
Imagine if
we cohesively put together the three critical elements in our business!
1. Safety & management systems.
2. Individual culture, biases,
heuristics, “Y” (Personality).
3. Group Cultural influences, language,
biases, “Y” (Personalities).
In business we have our systems,
tools and equipment as our foundations, however we need to understand each other
and how the impact us on a day to day basis. We also need to consider group
influences and how language and world views influences the decision making of groups
and individuals. To put it simply, if we know how to listen to and untangle the
language of an individual as well as considering our own biases/beliefs,
perhaps then and only then we can really connect and understand how we all see
risk differently. This actually means “common sense” is not common, but only
common to individuals in their closest social arrangements.
When we really want employee
dedication and commitment towards work, then we need to consider empowering
them by understanding and listening to their point of views. I remember working
for a company who showed they wanted to listen, took on our views and
encouraged input to the direction of the business. This empowered us, employee
morale was high, absenteeism was low, safety and quality efficiencies were at
their best and the bottom line of the business was highly profitable.
Safe Work Australia have been
working to understand why workplaces are still having injuries and fatalities
even though the legislation changed to harmonisation laws. Why are company
procedures and policies not working? To be successful with risk management there
are more concepts to understand and apply than just complying with laws. Going
back to basics means we will actually need to consider the valuable knowledge,
experience and decision making of employees and how they view the world. This
will help businesses to become more resilient with risk and safety.
