SaferPatients

We hear a lot about disruptive physicians and Disruptive Physician Policies these days.

As Seth Godin points out in his blog, bad behavior and irrational decisions are almost always caused by fear. If you want to change the behavior, address the fear.

I don’t see that approach to changing behavior much.

In my previous work with airline safety systems, I used to lead what we called “Mediated Debriefs” for cockpit crews that had a total meltdown in teamwork and could no longer fly together safely. Usually the meltdown was caused by disruptive behavior - which can be deadly when experienced in a confined metal tube with wings hurtling through the air at 500 MPH.

After scores of sessions with totally dysfunctional crews, I realized most of the bad behavior stemmed from some sort of fear. That discovery transformed my ability to help the crews get to the root cause of the meltdown and, more importantly, plot a way forward to change behavior.

I wish more folks would try that tactic.

Instead, we ban someone, or we put a letter in the permanent file, or put the employee on a performance improvement plan.

Sometimes asking “What are you afraid of?” is the shortcut in understanding what motivates the behavior you are seeing. Fix the fear - change the behavior.