Who knows what’s on your mind? Do your colleagues? Do you?

Discussing and talking about safety practice/performance, – and keeping on doing it is key to achieve a strong safety culture!  The reasons are many:

One reason is that the knowledge and thoughts we all carry are not necessarily a shared knowledge. Actually, the claim would be that it is typically not the same. Still, we tend to believe that we see things in the same way and have the same perspective. For the same reason we also have a tendency not to listen carefully to others, as we unconsciously believe we know what the other person is saying right now, or how he/she sees things.

But we can never know how other people see the world; we all have different perspectives, different ideas, and different experiences. Said in another way we live in parallel universes, multiverses, so to get a clearer picture of where we all come from, what we think and know, we need to share it through words. And we need to listen carefully and open-mindedly.

Sharing views, thoughts and experiences will not only get us to know how other people see things and create a platform for consensus; we will also become clearer about what we believe ourselves.

We all know the feeling of having difficulties sorting out our own thoughts as they often go in many different directions or are ‘interrupted’ by other sudden thoughts and associations. Thoughts are flighty and intangible until they are given shape by words either through the act of speaking or writing. Feelings, sensory perception and sensations along with immediate evaluations and moral impulses always come prior to the concrete thought. The process of describing (articulating) our thoughts, however, helps us to establish meaning, to categorize and conceptualise. It helps us to get into some kind of meta view – and from there make up our minds about it; ‘Is this really how we see it or should we adjust our thoughts; is it relevant to elaborate or explore anything further?’

Therefore, – also when it comes to ourselves – we need to express our own thoughts in words in order to get a clearer picture of what we actually think. Often, we can even get surprised by our own thoughts when saying them out loud. Through words, our thoughts, knowledge and sensation get more concrete and clarified – they get a shape! Only then, can they be explored, shared, calibrated and adjusted for real.

For the same reason reflection processes are also most valuable when they are linked to some kind of verbalisation. It is through the process of speaking that realisation originates. In order to stick better and become more substantial, reflections need to be processed and verbalised – preferably in cooperation with others. Therefore ‘reflective learning’ is absolutely most valuable when practiced in groups as a social event or exercise.

This leads to another significant perspective recognised by many cognitive researchers; namely that the individual brain isn’t very clever in itself – cleverness is to a large degree collective. As an individual person we often think irrationally, make wrong conclusions, and oversee important information, as we need to pigeonhole the huge amount of input from our surroundings in order not to become paralysed. The human brain does not focus on data, but on building patterns and stories to be able to quickly form an opinion and act.

On the other hand, as we humans have a special ability to build on each other’s experiences and ideas and to accumulate knowledge, the collective assembly of knowledge and minds is extraordinary. Cleverness lies to a large degree in the joint exchange of thoughts and in the intersection of minds where thoughts are discussed, challenged, consolidated and re-built. Social frames create the best foundation for fostering more reflection, brightness and innovation!

The social process of building meaning also holds the evident opportunity to revisit our experiences and thoughts, which is necessary to maintain an acute mind, as knowledge over time, when not used, tends to be forgotten or reshaped in our minds if we don’t revisit it from time to time.

Some people use the expression ‘the tyranny of knowledge’ to describe our tendency to somehow ‘getting trapped in what we know’. The human mind is created in such a way that we are tricked to look for confirmation of what we want to see or hear. At the same time, it is a well-known fact that people in general have a tendency to overrate themselves. Again, this is for the sake of making us capable of quickly making decisions and taking actions. However, the downside is that at the same time it is preventing us from being explorative, seeing new perspectives, and being open to needed changes. We have to acknowledge that sometimes we need to ‘think fast’ and act fast – nonetheless in other circumstances we need to ’think slow’, preferably in co-reflection with others in order to do it right. When we are talking about ensuring high safety performance the latter is the case.

Establishing the best possible ground for reflections, keeping best practice knowledge alive, sharing views, experiences and concerns, and staying open for learning and improvement opportunities are all vital for ensuring a strong safety culture.

Only then can we ensure that people have a shared perception of the task at hand, the risks, concerns, experiences, and that improvement opportunities are identified – in time (proactively).

‘Thinking slow’ and verbalising knowledge and thoughts do not require a huge amount of time even to do it several times a day, and the awareness of ongoing communication should be integrated in the daily practice and processes for co-reflection and dialogues to be established.

In order to utilize these fantastic abilities to put thoughts into shape and exchange them with others through dialogue in order to get wiser and be able to innovate ongoing communication should be promoted and carried out all the time. However, creating good dialogues requires an environment where people can openly share thoughts, ideas and concerns – also thoughts which are still in their making and just now being verbalised.

The following principles are good to bear in mind to create a good explorative dialogue atmosphere:

Processes already established for cooperation are evident to utilise for these ’co-reflection dialogues – verbalisations’.

However many other occasions origin during the day – use them all!

Most importantly; keep on talking, listening carefully, be humble towards your own knowledge – this is what creates the best foundation for creating continuous safety awareness and improvement.