A Performance Mindset to Save Lives in an Emergency

Summary

Excellence for the first time is all that matters.

Like most of the readers of The Sentinel, I read or listen to dozens of articles stating the importance of a growth mindset.  These articles often comment that trying and learning from the experience matters and that how you get back up from the knockdowns is essential. Within the risk and safety field, a simulated exercise is delivered to validate training and an overall response capability, and the final element of a simulated exercise is normally a hot debrief, which is designed to review the actions undertaken and as a way to ensure that lessons are learned from the experience.

Performance Mindset

In a recent article I read in the Business Leaders magazine, Mark Beaumont introduced a new approach to me – “Performance Mindset”.  Based on his experience whilst cycling around the world in 79 days, Mark observed that sometimes delivery is the driving factor, and you simply aren’t worried about learning.  You must perform because not to perform is failure.  A sporting example might be the USA Olympic 4 x 100m Relay team, who, despite being firm favourites, messed up one of the handovers and, as a result, failed to get a medal. No amount of learning from the event will change that result; they failed in their goal and now must wait four years to try again.  A football example would be the England Men’s Football team penalty takers in the Euro 2021 final.  Italy performed better, and England lost; England didn’t perform.

Emergency Response

In Emergency Response, failing to rescue someone from a confined space or to put out a fire effectively could cost a life – failure is simply unacceptable.  So, from a Risk and Safety perspective, I would argue that growth is good for training and exercises, but we are failing to properly train our responders if we are not training them for the added pressures of performance.  Whether they are having a good day or a bad day is not relevant; when they enter a Control Room or put on the SCBA, excellence for the first time is all that matters.  That added expectation and pressure of a real event is a significant challenge for responders and further increases the likelihood of a sub-standard performance if we don’t conduct realistic training i.e. comparable to how we need to perform.  In this 50th Anniversary year of the Health and Safety at Work Act, the opportunity for organisational emergency responders to gain experience through actual incidents may be rare, but for those accountable for an organisation’s response across leadership teams and board rooms, the evidence of what happens when insufficient training is delivered is very evident.

On 3 September 2024, the second and final report into the Grenfell Tower fire of 14 June 2017 was published.  Whilst the report makes recommendations for learning from the tragedy, there were also many references to organisations and individuals failing to perform in the manner expected.  Worryingly, the Grenfell Report is only the latest in a very long line of recent inquiry reports, including Hillsborough, Infected Blood, the Post Office scandal, the Manchester Arena bombing, and COVID-19.  The recurring message is that all the planning and training failed to achieve the best outcome due to individuals or organisations failing to perform.  Risk and safety practitioners have been aware of and have driven the importance of safety leadership for decades.  From a risk bow-tie perspective, I would argue that this focus has been largely aimed at preventative measures on the left-hand side.  Is it time to see more engagement in response leadership to drive the notion of the Performance Mindset when responding under pressure?

IIRSM Sentinel October 2024

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