AKEPT Leadership Series

June 5, 2017 By Leave a Comment

On May 24 and 25, 2017, Claire and Dick Knowles were invited to lead a workshop on the theory and use of the Process Enneagram© for the Higher Education Leadership Academy of the Malaysian Ministry of Higher Education.

The Academy has a series of training programs for University Administrators and Professors from all over Malaysia. Dick talked about the theory and use of the Process Enneagram© and Claire talked about applications (for example, how she had used it for helping the Western New York Women in Higher Education to improve the effectiveness of their networking events and mentoring). Our round trip from Tampa to Chicago to Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur was quite an experience and went well.

Professor Kamal, AKEPT Director, and others at the Academy are interested in using the Process Enneagram© as a tool to help them plan for and develop better succession planning processes for several Universities in Malaysia. This is a complex problem with many interacting variables so the Process Enneagram© is an ideal tool to enable them to solve this complex task.


Richard N. Knowles &
Prof. Dr. Mohamad Kamal, Director

Dick & Claire

About 75 deans, provosts and professors from all over Malaysia attended the two-day workshop with us. They connected well with the Process Enneagram© and sees its power in helping them to solve complex problems.

The Process Enneagram©, which we created over 25 years ago and have used in hundreds of workshops around the world, is the only known tool that bridges complexity theory and practical applications. The challenge of developing a better succession planning process involves many people in a changing, dynamical environment.


Richard N. Knowles talking at the AKEPT Conference
Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, May 25, 2017

Malaysia is a highly-diverse society where people have learned to get along well together. About 55% of the people in Malaysia are Muslim. There are Hindu, Christian and Buddhist people, as well. Everyone treated us very well – helping us at every opportunity. Our stay was terrific. We will continue our work with the AKEPT people using virtual tools to communicate and share information.

 

Filed Under: Safety for Business, The Process Enneagram© Tagged With: , ,

Staying Focused…Amid Distractions…Looking Out for Each Other

May 10, 2017 By Leave a Comment

I love talking with people and getting to know them. Sometimes it is really interesting and sometimes it gets quite funny. The other night I was at the local piano bar, sitting between two older gentlemen. One was an 86-year-old retired colonel who was pretending to play his imaginary drums along with the piano player and the other guy introduced himself to me 5 times in the first 10 minutes. Sometimes you just don’t know until you start talking.

Hopefully the people with whom we talk to at work are more focused than these two gentlemen. Staying focused on our work is critical to doing it safely. However, it is so easy to lose focus and have our minds wander for a moment. That may be just the time of a critical step and we miss it. This is one aspect of working alone that is problematic.

Other things can cause us to lose our focus as well. People joking with you can be a big distraction, pulling your mind off the work. High levels of noise can distract us. Having to work in unusual places like at heights or inside of a closed space can be distracting. Fatigue and muscle soreness can be distracting.

A big distractor is the bully who likes to harass you. These people should be taken aside by their supervisors and instructed to stop the bullying. This can be hard and it takes courage to have these encounters. The supervisors need to be supported so they can deal effectively with the bullies. Bullies need to stop their destructive behavior or be removed from the workplace. The toleration of bullies by supervisors is a major failing in management.

There is so much in our work environments pulling our focus away from doing the details of our job that we must always be alert to. When you feel that your focus is lost, stop, back away, take a deep breath, and think about what you are doing. Resist the urge to push forward through the job. This is a time when some one looking out for you can help. This is your brother’s or sister’s keeper looking out for your back. We all need this. Building a more supportive, caring workplace where people are looking out for each other is one of the top jobs for our leaders.

Talking with each other and helping to stay focused is not rocket science or difficult. It is simply an important component of improving our safety and having everyone go home in one piece to their loved ones.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: ,

Workplace Violence Prevention

April 17, 2017 By Leave a Comment

This is another dimension of our workplace safety challenges. Our focus here is to prevent deliberate harm to one another. Terrible tragedies are created when someone brings a gun into one’s workplace and starts shooting. But our concern here goes more broadly than these incidents. Frustrated, angry people can do mean things to each other by sexually harassing, bullying, or repeatedly picking on those who are seen as weak or at a disadvantage. OSHA reports that about 2,000,000 cases like this are reported each year. How many more go unreported?

I have read surveys that indicate that up to 80% of the people in our organizations are frustrated and unhappy. In these sorts of hostile environments, bad feelings can fester and grow to the point where they blow up and people get hurt in one way or another. It doesn’t have to be that way!

A step towards preventing workplace violence is to use the Partner-Centered Leadership (Engagement) Process. As we learn to work together, talk together, listen to each other, and build trust and interdependence, we create an environment that is more supportive, caring and effective. (It doesn’t take long to uncover the obvious: rudeness, disrespect and unprofessionalism lead to incivility and discord, which in turn, leads to bullying and harassment, which in turn, can accelerate to Workplace Violence – physical or mental.)

The steps I suggested in the first part of this newsletter are good ones to use to help to make our workplaces more kind, supportive and healthy. We can all do this if we want to do it! Increasing our levels of positive engagement with all our people is the key to healthy workplaces. The Partner-Centered Leadership Process is the way.

the three types of employees

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: ,

Spring Cleaning

April 10, 2017 By Leave a Comment

spring cleaningAs the snow begins to melt and the spring winds arrive, it is time for cleaning up the place. Mud season is upon us as the snow melts. All sorts of curious things emerge from the melting piles of snow; stuff that was covered up and lost. (Just imagine: Years ago the settlers kept their animals sheltered next to their houses or barns attached to their houses so that they could care for them when the winter cold set in. They really had to do the spring-cleaning!)

I would like to consider a special kind of spring-cleaning. What are the old cobwebs, dusty corners and dated ideas we have tucked away in our heads? Are these holding us back – preventing our ability to achieve safety excellence? Erik Hollnagel talks about the need to shift our thinking from the traditional approach (Safety-I) to a more open, inclusive, more effective approach he calls Safety-II. (Erik Hollnagel, 2014. Safety-I and Safety-II).

Let’s open the windows and let the light in with our Partner-Centered Safety Leadership processes that enable all of us to move towards safety excellence.

Here are some simple things we can do to make the shift towards a Safety-II environment:

  • As leaders, managers and supervisors let’s talk together to develop a clear, consistent safety vision and message.
  • We can go into our workplaces, talk with the people, open our minds, listen, and learn together to develop the trust and the best safety rules and procedures so everyone goes home to their families free of physical and mental injuries.
  • We can continually grow and learn together.
  • We can identify those areas where we need to do more training or develop new procedures.
  • We can find new ways to connect safety and security with having personal meaning for everyone.
  • We can bring in specialists to help us when necessary.
  • All sorts of options for improvement open up to us as we shift our thinking and brush away the cobwebs.

As we learn and grow together, trust and interdependence build, everyone begins to open up, taking the initiative to improve things. As we work together with the Partner-Centered Safety Leadership process, we can all get better and that is fun!

 

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: ,

Hand-in-hand with Safety Issues…Let’s Lift Them Up!

March 13, 2017 By Leave a Comment

It Should Be No Surprise…Spring comes Every Year…Hand-in-hand with Safety Issues…Let’s Lift Them Up!

Hand-in-hand with Safety IssuesEach time the construction cycle picks up, more people get killed, mostly from falls. Some falls are the result of poor footing. Some falls result from poor housekeeping and clutter. Some falls result from inadequate barricading of edges or open holes in the floors. Some falls result from poor pre-shift preparations and the work is started before things are ready. Some falls result from people rushing to get the work done quickly. Some falls result from some people being careless.

Each of us needs to be physically and mentally ready to do the work. Do you have pre-shift meetings that really focus on getting ready for the work of the day? Is all the PPE and safety equipment ready? Have people gone through 10-15 minutes of stretching so that they are physically ready to do the work?

Have all of you talked together about the potential fatal accidents that could occur in your work? Do you just step back for a couple of minutes and imagine what you think is the impossible? Have you talked about recent near misses and learned from what they can teach?

People newly hired for the work are at a much higher risk of being injured or killed. They need to know the requirements for the work. They need to be introduced to the specific hazards of the work at hand. Do they know the safety requirements for this work? Do you know if they are really qualified and trained for the work? What previous experience have they had with the work at hand? Do you know if they are physically and emotionally fit for the work? Who has talked with them and screened them? Do you trust them enough to work safely with you?

With all the uncertainties and variable working conditions, all of you need to be looking out for each other – I mean really watching and helping each other. Being ready and willing to stop unsafe work is important. It is critical that information flows freely so that everyone knows what is going on and are able to work closely together.

A big barrier to open communications are the bullies among you. They push people around, shut down important communications among yourselves, and cause people to pull into themselves at a time when people need to be open, sharing information and helping each other. Supervisors and managers need to be aware of who the bullies are and stop this destructive behavior. Sometimes the supervisors are the bullies so management needs to deal with them. This sort of behavior needs to be eliminated or the bullies removed from the work.

In all this construction work, the people actually on the job are the most important in helping each other. You are there. Please be present, alert and pro-active in your safety efforts.

Filed Under: Safety for Business Tagged With: , ,

Here’s What “Business Betterment” Looks Like…

February 10, 2017 By Leave a Comment

As I talk with Leaders, I often hear that things are so entrenched they cannot even conceive that this type of “betterment” can happen for them.

We know that it can, and we prove it over and over again, as we work with leaders, their teams, and their businesses.

CULTURE: We help to knock down the walls that have grown up between people and groups so that the arguments and fighting stop and they learn to value and help each other. We help to drill holes in the silos of production, HR, maintenance and finance so that people can talk to each other to get the information they need to do their jobs. We help to remove the barriers that are restricting the up and down flow of critical information, improving its accuracy, so the organization can function more easily. We help to remove the barriers between the people writing rules and procedures (the work- as-imagined) and those doing the front-line work (the work-as-done). We help people to see that most of the injuries and incidents are the result of patterns and processes that need improvement and shift away from a culture of blame and criticism.

SAFETY: I believe that we do not have a right to make our living in a place where it is okay to hurt people. When we make this our top belief, many fewer people get hurt and our economic performance is a lot better as well. As we learn to work this way the barriers and roadblocks melt away and new channels and connections emerge.

LOSS: Avoiding the losses and waste means that our businesses are more competitive and healthy. How much do you suppose an OSHA Lost Time Injury costs the business?

  • The pain and suffering is miserable.
  • There is the direct cost of the doctors, hospitals, medications, etc.
  • We loose time:
    • having to investigate the injury and incident.,
    • writing reports,
    • having an OSHA investigation,
    • perhaps the cost of challenging OSHA’s findings,
    • legal costs for the company attorneys,
    • preparing for a potential law suit,
    • the cost of lost production time,
    • the cost of bringing someone and train them to replace the injured person,
    • the cost of lost sales,
    • the cost of bad publicity,
    • the cost of lower morale among the people,
    • and so on.

BOTTOM LINE: When the safety gets right, everything else gets right as well. In this more positive culture, not only does the waste of injuries and incidents go away, people shift the way that they chose to work together resulting in other improvements like:

  • fewer arguments,
  • fewer grievances,
  • better meetings,
  • fewer meetings,
  • more suggestions for improving our systems and processes,
  • people taking the lead in helping to fix something that is not right,
  • new ideas for better customer service emerge,
  • lean manufacturing works better,
  • the quality of products and services get better,
  • absenteeism drops, and
  • people can work together to build a better future.

When the safety performance and culture get better, the organization thrives.

These are things that each organization can work on right now. In Partner-Centered Leadership, Richard N. Knowles & Associates can help organizations to achieve all these things. This does not require investment.

  • Get clear on your thinking and purpose.
  • Go into your organization talking with and listening to the people.
  • Help them to build on their ideas.
  • Let them know how important they are to the success of the business.
  • Do this with respect and honesty.

Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change.
~ Tom Peters

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Process, Safety Partnership Tagged With: , ,

A Time of New Opportunities

January 17, 2017 By Leave a Comment

Our new year is full of opportunities, dark clouds and unknowns. The world is full of strife of all sorts. Our political situation here in the U.S. is full of hope, tension, noise, and unknowns. So many people are screaming about their opinions that it is almost impossible to hear. I get so tired of it that I often just quit trying to listen. That is probably a mistake for me to do that; we are all connected and I can’t just go away and hide. None of us can do that.

Here at home in the U.S.A., our culture is undergoing a shift towards the right with a move away from the centralization of power and decision-making towards one with a broader base for the exercise of power and decisions. Many people have very strong views about this shift in our culture and concerns about what will happen. What is going to be good? What is going to be bad? The complexity of all this prevents us from clearly knowing just what decisions is best.

All of this change (at both the macro and micro levels) presents us with opportunities to step in and make a positive difference. More opinions are floating around, more ideas being offered, more questions emerging. In the heat of all this, we each have an opportunity to listen for the truth, think about what is possible and to more openly share our ideas and thinking. Each of us can make a positive difference. While some people try to be louder that others, this in not where the best thinking will come from.

The best opportunities for truth and the best decisions to emerge are when we each engage together in thoughtful dialogue, searching for what is best for us, those around us and our larger communities, cities, businesses, and our country. For our specific work and how we choose to live, we each probably have the best information about what is most appropriate for success. We are engaged with living as it actually happens. When someone tries to impose his or her ideas as to what we should do or how we should live, we get resentful. Our higher leaders have a broader scope of information and know more about what is happening in the broader picture, but they do not know our specific needs or the best solutions for us. We need to talk together at all levels so that we can all develop a better understanding of the broader picture and make appropriate decisions together. This is true in our personal lives as well as our work lives.

When we can come together with respect, listening, being in a search for understanding together in our dialogue, new thinking, ideas and possible solutions emerge. We are all learning to live in this new world and we need each other’s help and support. None of us individually have the “right” answer, but together we can discover solutions that can really help.

Bringing This Into Our Workplaces and Businesses

safety work groupsAs we bring this sort of thinking and being together into our workplaces, we can seek ways to improve our safety performance and business results. I have found over and over that we can vastly improve our safety and business performance when we share information together, listen for understanding, develop trust among us and see how well are all contributing, solutions emerge. When we help to change the behavior of bullies of get them out of the work place, we get even better.

Every organization has work groups within them where the safety performance and business results are excellent. In our dialogues, let us search for these fine examples and learn from them. The people in these groups have a lot to offer us so we can learn together with them.

When the upper management and leaders create the environment where people doing the work have the information they need and can make the appropriate decisions about how they perform the actual tasks, then each group can make the best contributions to the success of safely working and developing the best business results.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Self-Organization Tagged With: , , ,

Even When the “Force” is With You, Things Can Go Wrong!

November 11, 2016 By Leave a Comment

The background story:
workplace safety for employeesA recent article in the October 13, 2016 Daily Mail reported a £1.6 Million fine (equivalent of $2 Million) against Disney after actor, Harrison Ford, was crushed by the Millennium Falcon’s hydraulic door on the set of the latest Star Wars Episode VII, “The Force Awakens”, movie which was being filmed in June, 2014.

Ford had gone through the door, hit a button, walked out the door, and unexpectedly turned to walk back through the door when it came down on him. He assumed that the set was not live since it was a rehearsal. In this scene, Ford was helping his injured Wookiee friend through the door into the spacecraft. The door, which was operated by a person who was remotely located and could not see Ford, quickly closed it as he unexpectedly turned back into the spacecraft. Ford screamed and an emergency stop button was pressed, stopping the door just eight inches from being completely shut. They described it like a blunt-edged guillotine with a force comparable to being hit by a small car. Ford was pinned to the ground, suffering a broken tibia and fibula, a dislocated ankle and cut hand. The door had to be opened by the operator.

Disney’s subsidiary, Foodles Production (UK) Ltd., admitted to two counts of safety violations. In the main violation, while the company had done a risk assessment recognizing the risk of death, they had failed to talk to Ford so he was unaware of the precautions he needed to take. In earlier films, the door was operated slowly by a rope and pulley by a stagehand. The mechanized operation moved the door very quickly, surprising the 71-year-old Ford. After Ford’s recovery of about eight weeks, the film was completed.

The Meaning of the Story: Looking at the Blunt End and the Sharp End of Safety

Blunt End and the Sharp End of SafetyThis story illustrates so many of the changing conditions and people involved in our work places. Most of our companies do a good job in risk assessments and developing safe working procedures. However, this planning often takes place away from the actual location where the work will be done. This is sometimes called the “blunt end” of the safety process where the people doing the planning do not understand what happens in the work at “sharp-end” where conditions and demands may be quite different, and where most of the injuries happen.

Relating this Story to Safety Theory and Practice

the past and future of safety managementIn Erik Hollnagel’s book, “Safety-I and Safety-II” (2014. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., Surrey, UK), he discusses ideas like the significance of the gap between “the work-as-imagined” done by managers and engineers planning and designing the work and the “work-as-done” by the people actually doing the work. This is illustrated nicely by the Ford Star Wars incident where the people doing the “work-as-imagined” failed to understand the actual conditions and mindset of Ford doing the “work-as-done.”

Hollnagel describes the way in which we have traditionally done our safety work as reactive and where so much of it relates to “work-as-imagined” as Safety-I. The gap between where the “work-as-imagined” and “work-as-done” is where there are very difficult communication challenges. We tend to react to what has gone wrong. Bridging this gap moves our safety work into Safety-II where we move into the world of more performance variability, more adaptability and resilience. This is a world where everyone needs a better understanding of how and why things work, particularly our organizations. It is a world where we need to have a sense of both the whole and the parts. It is a world where we focus more on understanding what is going right than just on what went wrong. It is a world where we are more proactive in our safety work.

The Bottom Line: Re-engaging the Force…People and Business Together

At Richard N. Knowles & Associates, we help organizations move into a world similar to Hollnagel’s Safety-II world. Our work environments and tasks are complex. Our organizations are complex, adapting, self-organizing networks of people. Building on these ideas, we help organizations to learn how to open up the communications, to engage everyone, to help and support each other, to listen and learn from each other, and connect real caring with the work that needs to be done. We help organizations to reconcile the relationship between the needs of the business and the needs of the people, which results in the release of enormous energy and creativity.

Give us a call so we can explore this more fully with you and help you see the sorts of improvements you and your people can make. We are here at 716-622-6467 to meet your needs.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business Tagged With: , ,

Working with Multi-Generations in our Workplaces – Safely!

October 10, 2016 By Leave a Comment

Historical context:
workerConsider the Golden Gate Suspension Bridge (San Francisco) built between 1933 and 1937, an architectural marvel, thought to be impossible because in order to bridge that 6,700 ft. strait, in the middle of the bay channel, against strong tides, fierce winds, and thick fog, meant overcoming almost impossible odds. But it was built, with a grand opening in May of 1937, deemed, at the time of its completion, to be the tallest suspension bridge in the world as well as the longest. A man named Joseph Strauss engineered many new ideas, including developing safety devices such as movable netting, which saved 19 lives; though in all, there were 11 men lost during this construction. Thousands of men – workers of varying ages and from varied ethnic groups – came together to complete this project. (They had to listen and learn to be successful together.)

high-scalersConsider the feat of building the monumental Hoover Dam (1931-1936) – a miracle of technology and engineering. No dam project of this scale had ever been attempted before. There were 21,000 people working at that site with approximately 100 industrial deaths. The walls for this structure – that would uphold the weight of the dam – required workers called “high-scalers” who excavated the cliffs, dangling on ropes from the rim of the canyon. Can you even fathom this?

niagara-power-projectConsider the great Niagara Power Project (1957-1961). During construction, over 12 million cubic yards of rock were excavated. A total of 20 workers died. When it opened in 1961, it was the Western world’s largest hydropower facility. Many people, including from the “greatest generation” and the “traditionalist generation,” worked together on this project. It was a 24/7, multi-year project.

Note that the Niagara Power Project, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Hoover Dam construction (detailed above) all occurred before OSHA was in existence – the protections were sparse so people (young and old) had to especially look out for each other! Each of these great projects, nonetheless, took lives – workers that did not come home to their loved ones.

Today’s multigenerational Workplace – with Greater Safety Emphasis and Engagement

Fast forward to today…to your workplace…a different time and place…where people of multi-generations also come together for a purpose – to complete the work of your respective business (safely). Managing multi-generational workforces is an art in itself.

  • Young workers want to contribute and make a quick impact, valuing inclusion
  • The middle generation needs to believe in the mission – it has to make sense – they have to see the “why” of it
  • The older employees don’t like ambivalence; they’re looking for clarity, straight-forwardness, and no wishy-washy explanations

Does that make success (together) impossible? Absolutely not. The common denominator is that all people, regardless of their labeled generation, want to be accepted for who they are, to have their contribution valued, and to feel a part of the team/business endeavor. All want to go home from work safe. The need for their brother’s/sister’s keeper remains paramount.

In today’s workplaces, we often have a co-worker population that can represent age ranges of forty-plus years. With that range comes a host of different experiences, expectations and perspectives, and technology prowess. (All good; all offer ways to learn from each other.)

Everyone in the workplace came to there because of the employment opportunity – the opportunity to make a living – in order to provide for themselves and their families. (That’s a collective no-brainer…and the place to start in safety-mindedness – so we can all keep earning a living with all our parts, hands, toes, eyes, ears, etc. all in-tact, every day, regardless of what generation we touch.)

Granted, there are some differences in how teamwork is viewed, loyalty to the job and dealing with change, work-life balance, diversity, rewards and recognition, decision-making, personal growth and development – yet all of these differences are surmountable. Consider too, that all of these differences pale in comparison to the generations that went before, who demonstrated that when working together, toward a clear purpose, were able to complete the type of monumental projects described earlier in this article. To do what they did, required extraordinary teamwork.

I’m reminded of the (illustrative) story of four people going gulf fishing in a boat – a Traditionalist, a Boomer, an X-er, and a Millennial. All of a sudden the boat’s captain fell over dead with a heart attack and, in that process, did something destructive to the boat’s motor key mechanism as he fell over, as well as hitting the radio – breaking its channel mechanism. The boat stalled – dead in the water. Fully adrift.

So the combination of four people had to figure out how they’d get back to shore. Each of them devised a workable plan and got to work. The Traditionalist quickly determined what he could salvage from the boat to make more workable oars for paddling back to the shoreline and readied safety flares for expected overhead helicopters or airplanes; he also knew, instinctively, their directional status, fully understanding the sun’s position in the sky.

The Boomer hunted for and found the boat’s engine manual and was troubleshooting the starting mechanism, and how to bypass it – to restart the engine – plus was troubleshooting the boat’s radio, etc.

The X-er immediately used his phone’s GPS coordinates and was preparing to call in to the Coast Guard for help. The Millennial quickly text messaged an SOS to the Coast Guard with emphasis for HELP!

We often resort to solving problems with the technology to which we are most accustomed. In this illustration, each method had value. Each had potential to solve the problem and return the group to shore! Each person, regardless of his/her generational label, has something important to offer – a way of thinking about things. We each have ideas to offer for solving problems in our workplace; we are each other’s brother/sister in the workplace. We are all in the same boat!

We all can learn from each other, especially in safety. We all can listen to each other. History teaches good lessons. We all can share our concerns, our expectations, our perspectives, our technologies…for the betterment of the success of whatever it is that we came together to do (together).

We, at R.N. Knowles & Associates, work with leaders, teams, organizations, and businesses, helping them to solve their complex problems (together). We know that complex situations require new ways of thinking and being. We also are keen on the use of the Process Enneagram© because it is the proven “tool of complexity” that helps leaders and their teams resolve their complex issues (together and quickly). It allows for extensive input, ideas, perspectives, realities, understanding, and acceptance of various ideas, sharing and learning…so that we bridge perception differences and viewpoint gaps around any complex issue that you are facing. When we learn from our individual talents and work as a team, there is no limit to our potential achievements – including our collective safety!

Call us at 716-622-6467and we’ll show you how it can work for your organization, too.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Process, The Process Enneagram© Tagged With: , , ,

Caring for Each Other: How to Hold Those Meaningful Conversations!

August 12, 2016 By Leave a Comment

Richard-ASSE-Conference2016In my June 29th presentation at the American Society of Safety Engineers 2016 Professional Development Conference, I discussed the fact that one of the best ways for the safety professional attending the talk to help to improve the safety performance in their workplaces was to show the people that they cared about them and to enable them to make decisions about their specific work. I want to elaborate on these ideas in this newsletter. This is not just for the safety professional. This is for every team leader, supervisor, and workgroup leader. Going into your workplaces and opening up the conversations is a journey; each time you do this it gets easier and more effective. (Caring, Understanding and Openness!)

Meaningful caring to me means that we treat each other with respect as adults.

  • As managers and supervisors we get out of our offices and go into the workplace.
  • Help people to see that it is okay to talk together and be open with each other.
  • We sit down together in their work place and have a cup of coffee together. We are not in a hurry just trying to make some specified number of contacts.
  • We share the truth together as best we can knowing that today’s truth may be different than the truth for tomorrow because the world keeps changing, and reminding them that you’ll be back tomorrow if things have changed.
  • We ask about how we each are doing. How is the day going? What good things are happening? What have we learned today or over the last few days? We listen to what we each are saying.
  • We try to build on each other’s good ideas.
  • We talk about how the business is doing? We talk about the contributions we are making to the success of the business.
  • We discuss problems together sharing our viewpoints and seeking possible solutions. If people ask you questions which you can’t answer, tell them you do not know and will get back to them…then do it. We pay attention to the dynamics and do not over stay our visit.

As we get to know each other better we begin to explore what is really going on around here.

  • Are we really doing what we say we want to be doing?
  • How can our communications get clearer and better?
  • What is the rumor mill saying? Talk together about the rumors and clear them up.
  • Do you see better ways to go after the problems around here than we are doing? What are we missing?
  • Are there hidden elephants we need to be addressing?
  • When we have made a mistake, we own up to it and say we are sorry. We ask for their help.
  • Are there better ways that you see to get your job done well?
  • What information do you need to get your work done more effectively? Let’s talk some more about your good ideas and see if you can make some improvements.
  • What is going on over and over that is really bugging you?

As you get to know the people even better, there will be opportunities to inquire about how the family is doing. You can ask…how the kids are doing in their sports and schoolwork, ask if there are things that you can be doing to help them, ask how everyone’s health is, etc. You need to use good judgment as you get into these personal conversations and not push things too far into their privacy, by accident.

These are the kinds of conversations that most of us would like to have with our own managers. How many times have you wanted to talk together with them to share an idea or problem and have not had a chance to do it? How often do you get to talk with your boss’s boss? What is important and good for you in talking with your boss is about the same as for you talking with the people in your organization about the things that are important to them.

We are all partners in making our workplaces to become healthier, physically and mentally, and helping the people in them to be the best they can be. This is a key element of Partner-Centered Safety!

Filed Under: Safety for Business Tagged With: , ,
« Previous Page
Next Page »