You know about dissonance. You may have strong personal and professional convictions about an issue; however, you feel you have to act in another way — and that way doesn’t align with your beliefs or values. The result is a bad kind of feeling in your head and in your heart. Ultimately, there’s guilt or regret — but that’s not always a bad thing.
Skilled managers and supervisors know how to initiate conversations that help their employees realize when they’re not working in ways consistent with their beliefs or values. These productive safety communications create uneasiness and motivate employees to work safer. And when worker-actions become consistent with their personal values, the discomfort leaves or dissipates. You can bring about this kind of dissonance through storytelling and other tactics. But there’s another kind of safety-related dissonance that’s not talked about nearly enough — one that needs to happen somewhere else within the organization.