Hi there,
We all know there is benefit to your team if you watch them work and then give them feedback.
We also know that if you ask them for feedback on your behavior, they are more engaged…and it helps you to improve.
But, have you ever considered whether it could be useful to watch other people do their work, without giving them feedback or asking for feedback?
Some years ago my team and I were doing a lot of behavior-based safety (BBS) consulting and research and this got us wondering about the role of observing others at work.
The primary element of behavior change in BBS comes from conducting observations and giving feedback and praise or correction.
We spent a lot of time trying to help observers get good at looking at work, picking out behaviors, and then having a productive conversation with their coworkers that helps everyone work and go home safely.
Along the way, we watched thousands of people conduct observations, and when we looked closely we. were. shocked.
We thought we were seeing observers change THEIR OWN behavior as much or more than the people who they were observing.
This inspired one of my grad students, Alicia Alvero to run some studies on it – (Dr. Alvero is now running a large part of the CUNY system, by the way!)
Sure enough, our guesses were right – when people conducted observations of the behavior of others, the behavior of the observer changed. We called it the observer effect.
In her first study, we found some college undergraduate students, gave them a list of various tasks to perform, and recorded their office (ergonomic) safety data.
After recording their baseline (pre-intervention) data, we gave them five minutes to study an information sheet that explained the safest ways to perform their tasks. We asked them to perform the tasks again after the information training – it helped.
Then, we asked them to observe the other students during the tasks…but they had to look for specific things for this to be effective.
We gave the observers a checklist with definitions of how to perform each task safely and had them fill out the checklist when their peers were completing the tasks. Then, we had the observers themselves perform the tasks again…
After observing and evaluating their peers’ behavior, the observers’ own safety behavior increased, FAR MORE THAN information OR training alone.
They received no feedback. They just watched others do the task.
Why would this be?
Well, we don’t know for sure. But, in our exit interviews, some of our participants said that observing and evaluating other people’s safety behaviors caused them to pay more attention and self-monitor during their own task completion.
How might this study benefit your organization? Asking your team to observe each other’s safety behaviors might just be a simple, efficient way to reduce risk of injury…
But don’t stop at safety. What other important behaviors do you have going on and how can you involve others in collecting some data on them to make improvements? How about quality of meetings? Quality of one on one’s? Quality of services delivered? Quality of presentations? Customer care?
