Sometimes the experiences that hurt us most can help us understand why it matters to act when someone else is in trouble.
Over the weekend I visited in London with my wife. Whilst in Covent Garden, I heard a song that has the power to stop me in my tracks and to make me cry. Bring Him Home, from Les Misérables, is a song of extraordinary vulnerability. It is a plea for someone to be protected, for a life to be spared, for a loved one to be brought safely home. Every time I hear it, I feel something deep inside me shift. In Covent Gardens that day I openly cried.
The song takes me back to my dad, who went missing in 2008, and to the wish that has stayed with me ever since: that he would have been found alive. There is something raw about the song. It captures a longing that words can struggle to express. A desire to protect someone you love, to know they are safe, to have the opportunity to bring them home. But today like many other days, alongside the emotion, I felt something else – Motivation, and it got me thinking about my work on active bystandership and why we need to do more to help ordinary people recognise the moments when their actions could make a difference.
The Power Of Wanting To Protect Someone
We often talk about bystander behaviour through the lens of psychology. We explore the bystander effect, the diffusion of responsibility, conformity, fear of getting involved and the influence of what we imagine our peers will think of us. These are important insights. They help explain why people sometimes stand by when someone is struggling, being mistreated or moving towards a situation that could cause harm. But I wonder whether we sometimes overlook something equally important: our capacity to care about other people.
Most people don’t want to see someone they care about come to harm. Most of us would like to believe that, if a friend was in trouble, we would notice and do something.
The challenge is turning that instinct into action when the moment arrives. What happens when the person at risk is a colleague rather than a friend? When the behaviour is subtle rather than dramatic? When speaking up might make us unpopular? When everyone else appears comfortable remaining silent? Our good intentions can collide with our fears.
That is why active bystandership cannot simply be about telling people to do the right thing. We need to help them understand why acting matters, give them the confidence and skills to act, and create environments where they know their actions will be supported. We need to connect the desire to care with the confidence to act.
What If We Saw The Person, Not Just The Behaviour?
In my years in policing, I encountered incident after incident where other people had witnessed the build-up to violence. Friends, colleagues and acquaintances had often seen something happening before it reached a crisis point. Often there had been opportunities to intervene earlier, to challenge behaviour, offer support or interrupt a developing situation. Yet those opportunities were missed.
It is easy to look back and ask why nobody did anything. It is harder to understand what people were thinking and feeling at the time. Perhaps they were frightened. Perhaps they thought it was none of their business. Perhaps they assumed someone else would intervene. Or perhaps they simply didn’t know what to say. This is where I believe we need to change the conversation.
Rather than only asking people to recognise unacceptable behaviour, what if we also encouraged them to recognise the person behind it?
The colleague whose behaviour is deteriorating.
The friend who is struggling.
The individual being humiliated in front of others.
The person whose anger is escalating and who may need someone to intervene before they do something they cannot take back.
What if we asked ourselves a different question? If I needed help, what would I hope another person would do?
That question does not guarantee action. Nor should we assume that caring automatically overcomes fear or social pressure, however it gives us a reason to pause, to look beyond our own discomfort and to consider what might happen if we remain silent.
You Don’t Need To Be A Hero
One of the greatest barriers to active bystandership is the belief that intervention requires courage of an extraordinary kind. We picture someone confronting a dangerous individual, challenging a powerful leader or putting themselves in harm’s way. Those actions can be courageous. But most opportunities to prevent harm are far less dramatic.
They might involve asking a friend if they are okay. Sometimes, it is simply refusing to laugh along. These small actions can interrupt the normalisation of harmful behaviour. They can communicate that someone has noticed that the behaviour is not universally accepted, and that support is available. They can also create permission for others to act.
When one person speaks, another may feel safer joining them. When a leader challenges disrespect, colleagues learn something about the standards that matter. When a friend offers support rather than ridicule, the social expectations surrounding behaviour can begin to change.
We don’t need everyone to become a hero. We need more people to recognise that they have a part to play.
From Emotion To Action
There is a danger in using personal experiences of loss to make simple claims about what other people should do. Life is complicated, and we cannot know whether a particular intervention would have changed a particular outcome. I cannot change what happened to my dad in 2008. I cannot know what a different set of circumstances might have mean but I can allow my experience to remind me of something important: people matter, and what happens to them matters.
That is one of the reasons I continue to work on active bystandership. I want to help build workplaces, communities and organisations where people feel able to look out for one another. Where speaking up is understood as an expression of care rather than disloyalty. Where leaders create the conditions for people to act, rather than simply expecting them to find the courage themselves and where we recognise that prevention is not always about a dramatic intervention at the moment of crisis.
Perhaps we can use the stories, experiences and emotions that move us to help people make that connection. Not to shame them for the times they have remained silent, but to help them see the difference they might make next time. |The aim is not to make people feel guilty about what they haven’t done. It is to help them feel capable of doing something when the next opportunity arrives.
The Next Time You Hear The Song
Today, Bring Him Home reminded me of my dad and the wish that he had been found. It also reminded me why I believe in the importance of my work. We cannot promise that every intervention will prevent harm. We cannot always bring someone safely home and we cannot undo every painful event in another person’s life but we can become more attentive to the people around us. We can learn to recognise the moments when something needs to be said or done. We can make it easier for others to speak up, and we can support those who find the courage to do so.
Perhaps the most powerful question we can ask ourselves is not whether we would be brave enough to save someone. It is whether we are willing to take the small steps that might help keep them safe.
Right now, there may be a person hoping someone will notice. A friend waiting for a phone call. A colleague hoping somebody will ask if they are okay. A young person looking for reassurance that they belong. Someone experiencing behaviour that others have learned to ignore.
They may never know what we were thinking when we had the opportunity to act.
But they may remember what we did.
We cannot always bring someone home. But we can help build a world where fewer people have to face their struggles alone and sometimes, it starts with one person deciding not to walk past.
