There are many stories of workers who are afraid to tell their supervisor something is wrong. Co-pilots are afraid to tell the pilot about a critical safety issue. Nurses are afraid to tell the surgeon he is operating on the wrong leg. Sometimes, they are afraid to speak up even in life threatening situations.
In those field, there has been some research and training to address this important issue. The basic problem seems to be that there is no reinforcement for speaking up. Indeed, there are significant punishments, as apparently (at least in some situations) surgeons and pilots tend to act in an extremely vengeful manner toward anyone who challenges their authority. Leaders in the aviation and medical fields took steps to encourage people to speak up since there were clear-cut cases where people died, even though the co-pilot or the nurse clearly knew that there was a problem and the tragedy could have been averted.
Although behavior analysts are not usually in life threatening situations, we have the same issues that pilots and surgeons have—our staff are sometimes afraid to tell us something is wrong. Instead, staff training usually focuses on the importance of following the procedure exactly to maximize client gains. We rarely encourage staff to give feedback on what can be improved, and often they are too afraid to speak up when they see problems.
From what I’ve seen, it is a rare organization or BCBA that really puts an emphasis on the Poogi and encourages staff or parents to speak up when they see problems. But how can you tell if they are afraid to speak up? One warning sign is when a parent or a staff person says,
“But you said…”
What causes a parent or staff person to use this phrase? This phrase is defensive. The staff person is afraid of getting blamed for something going wrong. For example, let’s say a child is failing to learn a skill or a behavior problem is not improving. During the problem-solving discussion, the BCBA might ask the staff something like, “Why are you using that procedure?” The staff think they are doing the right thing, and interpret the BCBA’s question as an accusation. That leads to an almost instinctive response, “But you said…”
The key issue that I’m interested in here is not who is at fault. What concerns me is if there is an obvious problem, why is the staff not bringing it to the BCBA and having a conversation? Although hard to prove, my view is if staff aren’t bringing problems to you, it is often because they are afraid. If you hear people saying, “But you said…”, that’s a clear sign they are afraid of getting blamed for problems, and it’s time for a review of how staff can be encouraged to speak up.