Episode 136 - Educating the Educated

The Dunning-Kruger effect states that those with less knowledge may be more confident about that knowledge. How do we, as leaders, help guide those to learn more and challenge their understanding without belittling or sounding condescending?  All that and more in this podcast episode

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Announcer: 0:15

Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French marks passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now, here is Dr. Mark French.

Mark French: 1:02

Hello, and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast, the AI I'm your host, Dr. Mark French, and I am so happy that you have chosen to join me again for another podcast. Or maybe this is your first thank you for giving me a shot I hope to entertain and educate all at the same time. We'll see if that works. Last week, we were talking about biases, cognitive biases that affect us as safety people affect us as leaders, I usually start from the premise of a safety person, because that's where I've lived most of my life. But really, it's bigger. It's about leadership. It's about caring for people. And ultimately, that, to me is leadership. So when you have to look at the safety of your people, if you're not a good leader, they're your people aren't going to benefit from it. And so we start with that, and we build from it. Last week, we talked about the the idea of the curse of knowledge or the curse of expertise, where once someone learn something very well, they may go, Oh my gosh, how did I not know this before everyone else must have known this before me. And so we fail to teach or educate or speak up. Because we have the same eye we have the idea that they're coming from the same knowledge base that we are. And I gave some stories last week about my personal experience with that of it times fading away, or washing out of a conversation because I have to digest things, it takes me time. If something new or something different than I expected comes up, I have to take time to think and it causes me to fade a little bit because I because the first item I usually have trouble with is that if I'm speaking from my level of expertise, and someone is challenging that in some form or fashion, I make the automatic assumption that they must have the same level of education expertise experience that I do in so how could we be so different if we come from the same basis, which is usually an incorrect premise? Because unless you're actually having a conversation with someone in your field, then it's really not that equivalent. And I struggle with that I still do I have to really focus on the fact that no, who am I talking to? And maybe they don't have an end is not that I'm here to belittle. It's not that I'm here to critique, condemn speak down to. But maybe this is an opportunity for me to ask some good questions about why they think that or where their knowledge base came from, and then give them the correct answers the best that I can, in hopes that we can share knowledge rather than challenge each other. And that's where that cognitive bias can be overcome is the first step is to ask the good question to see where the knowledge base is. But this week, I want to talk about one. And again, usually I'm talking more about safety news and things but this is really caught my eye as I'm closing out the year this year, and I'm really trying to figure out how do I get better at what I do. Every year I go through this exercise of self reflection and preparing for art. How do we I mean, the New Year always feels like a fresh start even though it's really just another day. But it's an opportunity for me to clear my mind and be ready for what's next. I hope you have the opportunity to do the same. It's a great exercise. You're around your family, hopefully, hopefully you have some downtime, it's an opportunity to reflect, and an opportunity to prepare for what's next and how we go forward. And so cognitive biases are something I enjoy learning about. So I want to share a little bit. The next one that I want to talk about during this podcast is one called the Dunning Kruger effect. And this one's been talked about in a few different books, but I'm going to take it from kind of this perspective of the leadership safety professional, what the Dunning Kruger effect it, it basically says that the less someone knows about a subject, the more confident they may act about knowing things about that subject. But it also has an inverse, almost a bathtub curve, that says that those who are really expertise in an area may appear less confident, mainly because they're still trying to learn and those that are new to it may assume there's really not much else to it. I've learned all i need i can make decisions from this. If you had been in the safety realm, or even HR realm, for any amount of time, I am almost certain that you have come across this at some point or some time someone has come to your office, someone has met you in the workplace, and you've tried to give guidance on something and they go now that no, this is how we do it. I worked at this place, or I know this person, or I learned this through a two hour online class or I did a Google search. And this is the right way to do it. Oh, wow. I'm certainly happy that Google has taken my job away. And I'm no longer needed. Not necessarily true. I wonder how many of you are shaking your head going? Yeah, I've had that happen. I've had that happen a number of times, where sometimes, that little bit of knowledge really empower someone that they've met someone, they've done it in another workplace, it as we find out in the safety professional, especially not every workplace is a good safety workplace, they may talk about it, they may teach it, they may not live it. Or they may not live it teach it or any of that they may just be completely don't care. Or it may be misconstrued based on what they're doing in their circumstances. They didn't have to teach you about that, because they didn't do it, that someone else did it. Maybe it was completely fully contract working. I'll tell you a story about that. And it was years ago, and we had come across a permit required confined space. It had broken it, we needed to get in it. And we had been told from the very, very beginning, when I first got there, I asked about confined spaces, I was told that there's a local contractor, that's mechanical contractor that has all their life that has all the training, and we call them and they would come in and enter that space. When work needed to be done in it. I was like great, perfect. Don't have to worry about it. Well, lo and behold, as you can probably guess from this point of the story, it broke down. Of course, it was like 3am. So we call we we panic because we need this machine up. I come in that next morning, people are already like fired up all over me about this. And they're like, it's not really a confined spaces, we can just go in it. Right, right. But no, you can't. It's got the cool label. I've looked at it. It's definitely a permit required confined space. Because here's the definition of a confined space. Here's the add ons that say if it is a permit required, and sure enough, it has both. This is this is what it is. And so I was like well, I was told, and my understanding here is that we have this contractor down the road that is going to be more than happy to come in and do this work. Why don't we call them and that's it while we're at it because we're talking about this. I want to ask them about their training. So these guys come in, they get all their gear with them. Basically mechanical gear. I didn't see any like rescue gear. So ask the first guy said, Hey, are you trained in permit required confined spaces because you're about to go into one? He goes, No, I'm not supposed to do that. That's not my job. I don't go into confined spaces. I've never done that never will do that. That's not part of our job. And they're like, so we can't do this work. See you they leave. You can only imagine what happens next. And I want to tell you more about that because that story carries on in to where I'm getting to about the Dunning Kruger effect and that cognitive bias. Let's finish up that story and talk more about it. On the next half of the leading and learning through safety podcast,

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you are listening to the leading a learning through safety podcast with Dr. Mark French.

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D is da consulting, learn you lead others, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. The problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr. Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more. Individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at T SDA consulting.com. And welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So I left on a cliffhanger, we had a confined space, piece of equipment that was broken, the contractor that I was told, and that we were all told was going to be our entry team. And they did all the work because they were trained had just left because evidently they don't do that work. And here we are with a broken piece of equipment and no way of getting in it.

Mark French: 11:22

And so at this point, people start panicking, and the stress sets in and we start moving down a road that's not really productive, which is arguing. I have someone come to my office in power position of power, saying we can go in that there's no doubt in my mind, we can go in that. All you need to do is like a five minute toolbox talk on confined spaces. And we can send everybody in there. Well, let me back up first, the first debate was it's not really a confined space, you're just making it difficult because you hate me. What do you mean? Well, I know confined spaces. It's only common sense that is not a confined space. There's no way confined spaces are like grain silos. They're these chemical vats. There's these other things. It's not this piece of equipment. Well, of course, me being me at that time. I just got the regulation on so well. Does it meet one of these three? Well, you know, if I apply common sense, it really shouldn't apply to these three will. Literally a does, though. Okay, then we move on to is it permit required? Well, sure enough, it has I think two or three things on there that makes it permit required. And know that those don't apply? Because we've we've we've turned it off. You mean it can't leak by it can't do this, it doesn't have these internal things? Well, once we start working on it, we'll be taking those out anyway. So it should be fine. Because we're actually going to go in there to take that piece out that makes it a permanent word. No, the initial entry is permit required. So and then well, I've worked for insert large companies names 123. They didn't have to do that level of training. It was basically like a five minute toolbox talking to get a little card that told you about confined spaces that you carried around on your badge. We don't do any of that. Well, we just back and forth, back and forth. Someone else came in who saw this, another person in a position of power and said, Hey, in that other places you work, did you have a confined space entry team? Or did you contract it to another group? He then the answer came out? Well, we had a completely contract person that came in and did it. Oh, well, no wonder you didn't have to the superduper training for your your team. Because they didn't have to go in and just like the people who just left who were supposed to go in it. So how did we resolve it? Ultimately, we took that thing apart piece by piece from the outside in, we completely just had to dismantle it from the outside in. And actually when we called the vendor, that's what they told us to do. Anyway, don't crawl in that thing. Just take it apart from the outside in and you're never inside the space, boom, and you can send us the parts will refurbish them, send them back, or here's the way to get it back up and running sooner. So amazingly, not to pat myself on the back that I was right. But it shows that sometimes that little piece of cursory knowledge will empower someone, especially if they're under some sort of duress. If they're really concerned about something else, they're willing to really step back and go with the baseline knowledge to try to get what they need done. And that's an interesting aspect of when you're under duress versus not. I imagined that if we were just having a casual preparation conversation, it would have been completely different because after that event, we trained people, we got the equipment, we did entry, we had rescue, we were prepared to do what we needed to do to have our or team go in there. And we kept that training. And we kept doing it to make sure every year that we were prepared for if something like that happened again, we could do it safely, we could do it the right way. And there were no arguments there. And I think even before then, if we had come to an agreement saying, Hey, we had to train some people, we could have an issue, we're not prepared. It all started with that idea, that whole person saying, Oh, no, this other group absolutely will handle it. They couldn't handle it. And then that created significant stress, to where suddenly, knowledge was readily apparent to everyone everyone was, was an expert in the confined space entry protocols, when truly, I was probably the only one that had really learned it thoroughly. And even I'm not going to tell you that I'm great at it, I still have to really read and in dig and do my research. And that's the thing about safety is that it is really not superduper difficult. I'm not going to say that this is some sort of this isn't rocket science, I guess, is the correct, I guess, analogy. But it does require the the ability to learn, you've got to be able to really dig not just the regulations, letters, interpretation, background, things that have happened to lead up to that. There's a lot of work to read between the lines to get to where you need to go to really understand the law, the black and white tax that's on paper, to understand what they were trying to convey ultimately, what they ended up conveying black and white. And then how do you apply that to the workplace that you have, because they're written broadly because not every workplace has the same hazards. So it's written broadly to try to capture those hazards. So you have to have that ability to learn to do even in when I see HR, there's times where Oh, well, I've read that this is an at will state. I'm just going to fire whomever I want to whenever I want to. That's great. How do you tell me that wasn't discriminatory in any form or fashion? If we just randomly fire people? Oh, no, that's not one that will state things as I'm like, Whoa, now we're in even deeper territory. So this effect is Dunning Kruger effect, really, really does have an effect on us as professionals in the HR safety leadership. Because someone can come in look at a situation. And they can overstate their competence very easily without recognizing they're doing it. Again, this could be a very unconscious bias. They feel like they have some early knowledge. They're proud of that knowledge, which is awesome. Be proud of what you know, learn more. And then they tried to share it though, in a very over the top overconfident way that may lead others down the wrong path. And we know that leading others down the wrong path can lead to injuries and illness and severe, severe things that we don't want to happen in the safety. Thanks for joining me on this episode. I hope it made sense what I was trying to talk about my story that we have to watch out for that we have to educate people. That's part of our leadership role and safety people and I love doing that. But thanks for joining me, I have certainly enjoyed studying and learning more about these biases, these cognitive biases that are out there and how we overcome them and how it affects our leadership as those in the workplace the conscience of our organizations, how we lead better by understanding how people react. Until next time we chat. Stay safe.

Announcer: 19:02

Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online at www dot T S D A consulting.com. All the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice. This has been the leading and learning through safety podcast