Mindset Mastery: Harnessing the Power of Expectations Goals and expectations are part of what make a workplace successful, but those expectations must be managed appropriately. By Robert PaterApr 01, 2021 Expectations are crucial to learning, motivation and ultimately, to levels of performance. In others words, they have a significant impact in activating intentional change. Think about it. If you expect “too little,” then that’s what you’ll achieve, perhaps at best. Like an unconfident archer satisfied to hit just any part of a target, it’s only happenstance if he makes a bullseye at all—much less regularly. Expect “too much”—like “zero incidents forever,” “be ever aware of what’s around you” or proclaiming “Safety is always number one!”—and leaders are either doomed to be perpetually disappointed or wind-up encouraging others to hide need-to-know risks and incident reports. High expectations are fine and needed—always aim for the center of the bullseye (or towards zero unsafe acts)—but also understand that just as a gust of wind can miscarry an expert archer’s launch, stuff happens in the real world. Going to an extreme of setting overly-high objectives can have negative consequences when rigidly applied. Let me give an example: A company that has significant daily physical and uncontrollable external risks achieved years of accident-free work without cooking any books, along with real encouragement to report all incidents. Then, a worker suffered a broken finger. The company’s CEO, an acknowledged safety champion, revealed over lunch that they were deflated by the incident. After listening, I offered an alternative view: that the one recordable incident after years of being injury-free actually affirmed their safety commitment, performance and record. Many would see this as “the exception proves the rule,” where a perpetually zero injury rate in a high-risk industry might be suspect as hiding, suppressing or otherwise being a whitewashed record. In this case, a broken finger got the attention of the entire organization. Further, because all humans are susceptible to the lulls of complacency, this was a prime opportunity to remind all parties that stuff does happen even to the best of us, and that with risky work it’s essential to mindfully attend to and avert hazards. This article originally appeared in the April 1, 2021 issue of Occupational Health & Safety. Let's block ads! (Why?)