Civility and Situation Awareness

I'm a private pilot and part of my cockpit responsibilities is situational awareness. There are rules for moving an airplane from spot A to spot B, and it is MY responsibility to know and follow those rules and to be responsible for taking actions even when others do not follow the rules. Lives are at stake. It's a rigid form of civility. It includes the communications between ME, the CONTROLLER, and OTHER PILOTS and anyone else on or near the A to B path (in front of me, beside me, and even behind me, above and below me).

So, here's a situation that my wife and I encountered this morning that doesn't take on the magnitude of "life and death" necessarily but certainly causes a "blip" on the civility radar. We were attending a city breakfast for the "Sister Cities" organization, which in this case included cities in Japan, China, and Germany. There were several hundred attendees. The current chapter president is an old friend and asked us to attend the fundraiser - which we were certainly pleased to do.

When it was time for breakfast we headed to the line which divided into two lanes as we approached the main course (eggs, bacon, etc.). This made the service faster. Both sides of the self-serving table could be used - smart and typical. At the other end of the main course line the division ended and we simply had to join into a single line again to pick up fruit and beverage.

Two gentlemen in the line to our left were fully engaged in a discussion and didn't notice that my wife and I were together, so when she moved to the single line configuration, one of the gentlemen abruptly edged me out. I audibly said to my wife, "I'll see you back at the table." She responded. It was apparent that we had been separated by two gentlemen with an appetite for fruit and conversation before any thought of civility. Their situational awareness had evaporated. There was no incident. Others around us noticed and smiled at me with minor apology in mind. We were all gracious about it.

I thought about the many times I've been rudely cut off by a driver and said, occasionally out loud, "Guess he went to a different driving school than the rest of us." On occasion I've added other words with special meaning! But really, these too have been potential "life and death" situations and, although I've survived them so far, I know that not everyone has. I know that somewhere every day a home gets a knock on the door from an unwanted messenger delivering a unwanted message.

The breakfast line was really no big deal by comparison but it does offer food for thought (pun intended) from an organization development perspective. Do we even talk about situational awareness, and is there a need for it to be talked about. Is it an empathy thing, a survival thing, a civility thing, or can it be bigger yet and prevent the catastrophe that looms just out of sight as someone, somewhere takes it upon himself to restore equity from dozens of situations where an imbalance might have gone unnoticed. Will it be resolved by extending a open hand of reconciliation rather than extending a hand filled with Smith and Wesson as sometimes tragically happens.

"Civility and Situation Awareness" deserves some airtime on the agenda of specific events (again with the intentional pun - can't seem to help it today). So, give it some thought and weave it in where appropriate. Everyone has stories. Whenever I hear about violence in the workplace I'm relatively sure that it likely could have been prevented somewhere along the line. It's our job as od professionals* to find the perfect place for this topic and get after it.


A Note for the RGB Certifieds: We'll be modifying our CapacityWare(TM) Technology to incorporate the topic of this post in the near future. If we don't find a better place for it, the subject will be included within the ProZone Model in Book 4, Tab 2. From this "location" the information will then be included in both Residency Certification programs and Leadership, Management, and Supervisory (LMS) Training events. It's an ideal topic to be included in events that strike at conflict as well.

*od professionals - od is used as a verb rather than a noun.