I recently interviewed a specialist in safety psychology who has worked with over 300 major companies and he saw ‘fundamental attribution error’ ( I’ll call it FAE from now on ) as central to his work. FAE is where we over-emphasise the role of individual personality in what happens ( whether a disaster or a success ) and under-emphasise the environment, processes, systems and all the other factors that can contribute. Thus, if there’s  major accident  it must be Fred or Susan’s fault ( rather than a culture which emphasised speed, terrible components or any of the other things that can cause disaster).

There’s a slightly more subtle version of this which concerns our self-attribution: how we explain failure or success when we rather than someone else is involved. Many people will ascribe success to their own brilliance and blame failure on the tools they’re asked to work with, other people, the system and processes ( sales people meeting or missing targets tend to switch between these two positions ).

It struck me that a lot of the debate about the financial melt-down is being carried out in these terms: there’s a disaster so it must be ‘those people’s’ fault, while ‘those people’ are pointing out some other factors had a role to play. At its worst this results in an extremely unhelpful stand-off between personal abuse and a sense that none of us have any effect on complex markets and organisations. The demonisation of senior banking staff perversely strengthens the ‘hero’ model of leadership: ‘these people’ are so powerful that when they get it wrong the world trembles. The ‘hero’ model of leadership is as much influenced by society at large as any other piece of social theorising: it’s an 80s model and is long past its sell-by date though recent debates about party leadership in the election lead up are depressingly carried out in  its language.

I’d be the last person to underplay personal factors in life. The five factor model is particularly robust in explaining why things happen. Norman Buckley’s post on self-deception raises a point I’ve often observed ( Introvert / Emotionals  often get overlooked in their often taken-up role as internal consultants, but can temper the over enthusiasms of other personality types ). But you can over-explain situations - and get them wrong - relying just on personality explanations. They’re intrinsically attractive: more so than, say, ability descriptions ( ‘ This person simply has too little reasoning ability to do the job’) or the onerous, uncomfortable business of trying to change a major product, a whole system or the way a workforce is managed.

But, because of this, there is a danger that personality talk gets separated out from its real work and organisational context and is over-relied on. Recent research shows that modern personality tests are increasingly practical tools in organisations. But there’s a real task to connect their results up to other sorts of organisational and social analysis. This suggests that the old consultancy divide between individual development and organisational development needs junking. They’re two aspects of the same thing.

There are three of you in the room. It’s likely that one of you will have suffered some form of mental illness during your life - from mild depression to full-blown schizophrenia. This is sometimes seen as a clinical or health issue. Of course, it is. But it’s also an employment issue.

If a significant percentage of your employees are suffering from, say, a combination of mild depression, substance abuse, unwarranted euphoria and obsessive-compulsive disorder then you’d better be prepared to cope with this from an organisational and an individual perspective. Stress has something to do with the expression of these and other conditions, so be prepared for more people to act out of character in an economic downturn, requiring more work and more high-profile decisions. I coach people and every so often I find a session entering ‘ cliincal territory’ where professional rules suggest that I need to refer the coachee to someone else with more relevant in-depth training.

Organisations have recognised this. Among the evidence is:

• The growth in coaching and counselling;
• Use of tests of management ‘derailers’ and the management ‘dark side’;
• A growth industry in books called things like ‘ the psychopath at the desk next door’

We need to be careful.

In a culture where we emphasise the positive as a ‘psychological’ way of ensuring we reach our targets ( often using techniques developed in sport ), it’s difficult to admit to stress, let alone mental problems. We also need to be careful that we don’t start labelling people negatively. The whole point about all of this situation is that mental problems are not some separate issue ‘over there’: a lot of us will suffer from these sort of compaints at some time in our lives. Mental illness is part of  a continuum with ‘normality’ ( whatever that is). And as we stress the need for talent, creativity, exceptional performance we’re liable to see more of it. There’s some research evidence that highly creative people are more prone to suffering certain conditions.

FACET 5 is based on a model - the five factor model - which is used in clinical work. It can’t be used to diagnose these sort of conditions but some careful work and sensitivity might allow its development so it helps people who work hard, contribute a lot but who occasionally - sometimes for long periods - suffer depression of mood and real problems which in turn effects their effectiveness at and enjoyment of work.

I come cross this situation occasionally. I’m bemused its not discussed more and in a less headline grabbing way -with more sensitivity to its individual and corporate effects

‘Heroes’ rarely rush into a situation mindlessly. Research I did years ago on people who risked their lives for others suggests that they weigh up the  odds, plan carefully and therefore end us as live heroes rather than dead ones.

Risk-taking sits at the very foundation of every organisation and every job. Take any decision and it involves a risk. If you’re in marketing you’ll know a bit about the differences between risk-taking behaviour in personal and professional decisions - this difference underlies the fact that consumer marketing and professional marketing use different techniques. Any good salesperson knows that part of what they’re selling is a reduction of risk ( hence ‘no-one lost their job by buying a market leader’; there’s safety in numbers.)

Inaccurate, bad or stupid risk taking helps to explain the recession. Companies, particularly financial ones took ridiculous risks. Leaders were irresponsible. Its not just true of finance houses. The whole of the 80s and 90s were about social pressures to increase risk in business. If you weren’t highly leveraged you weren’t using your assets. If you didn’t try something new you were a ‘rabbit’. There’s a distaste for the word ‘ risk’,  let’s look at opportunities. This is the ‘macho’ model of leadership and it’s failed.

Leadership and management jobs are about balancing risks ( like balancing a pension portfolio). You need to take risks to improve but you need to offset these with reasonably sure things. Taking risks based on gut instinct is, often, a recipe for disaster.

There are plenty of academic, statistical models of risk taking. Go to any business school and you’ll find them coming out of your ears.

Isn’t it about time we started at looking at how people ACTUALLY take risks; finding out who takes risks in what ways; teaching better techniques ? It’s obvious that social / organisational pressures come into play - some firms encourage risk, others ( equally ridiculously ) won’t countenance it in any form. But individual preferences, skills and personality are critical. I think this is one of the big issues for 2010-2015 and I’d like to see FACET 5 linked to other tools to develop a really good risk-taking profile method.

Anybody else got any ideas on this ?