Questioning Safety

Questioning Safety- Occupational Health & Safety Magazine, November, 2023

This is a tale of — and lesson from — two stellar professionals who each achieve extraordinary results in safety by enlisting out-of-the-ordinary methods. BY: Robert Pater

This is a tale of — and lesson from — two stellar professionals who each achieve extraordinary results in safety by enlisting out-of-the-ordinary methods. Both Mickey Hannum, MS, CSP, SGE, CPSA, CPEA, Vice President of Health and Safety for McWane Inc., and Craig Lewis, J.D., Harvard Law School (who, as my colleague, is one of the most effective safety change agents I know) realize the value of “questioning safety.” That is, utilizing the right questions at the right time to enhance safety knowledge, skills, motivation and commitment.

A Time-Tested Method
This overall approach isn’t new. After all, the great Socrates famously employed asking-rather-than-just-telling — written about in his student Plato’s “Dialogues” around 400 BCE — to simultaneously draw out others’ thoughts and concerns, surfacing pre-existing knowledge and the lack thereof.

This “Socratic method” of shared dialogue was further refined by the leadership luminary Peter Drucker, who high-graded a style of change agentry that was — and still is — alien to many leaders. Drucker commented, “My greatest strength is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.” And, “The important and difficult job is never to find the right answers. It is to find the right question.”

Applying this to safety, Mickey and Craig have each, in their own ways honed approaches of questioning they’ve found superior to lecturing for reducing defensiveness, engagingly energizing, and increasing others’ sense of being well-regarded (vs. treated as either an unknowledgeable “student” or, worse, an “idiot” or “dummy.”) That going back and forth with workers or other leaders can significantly elevate safer mindsets, which cascade towards considering-then-adopting higher-level skills and actions.

Click here for the dull article on this interesting perspective from Occupational Safety & Health Magazine.