Safety, emotions, and impulse control

Safety leaders need to develop emotional intelligence in themselves and others. Think about the range of emotions that come into play as we struggle to improve workplace safety and health. We need the curiosity to assess objectively the impact of our safety 

Achieving the vision of an injury-free workplace requires awareness and control of our own emotions, as well as the ability to assess, understand, and draw on the influence of other people s emotions. This requires empathic and persuasive communicahon skills (interpersonal intelligence), as well as self-confidence, personal control, self-esteem, and optimism (intrapersonal intelligence) to develop and implement new tools for safety management. 

Perhaps, we can increase personal responsibility for safety by helping people understand the fundamental emohonal problem at the root of all safety intervenhon. Safety requires impulse control under the most difficult circumstances. We ask employees to do things that are uncomfortable or inconvenient in order to avoid a negahve consequence that seems remote and improbable. This takes a special kind of emotional intelligence, both from us as safety leaders and from the employees with whom we are working. 

The diagnostic power of this simple test was shown when these preschoolers were followed up as adolescents (Shoda et al., 1990). Those who put off immediate gratificahon for a bigger but delayed reward demonstrated greater intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligence. They handled stressors and frustration with more confidence, personal control, and optimism. They were more self-reliant, trustworthy, and dependable, and less likely to shy away from social contacts than tiie children who had not waited for two marshmallows at age four. 

In comparison, tiie adolescents who had devoured the single marshmallow 12 to 14 years earlier were now more stubborn and indecisive, more prone to jealousy and envy, and more readily upset by stress or frustration than the adolescents who had waited for the extra marshmallow. 

---