improve how to work together | Safety Excellence For Business

A New Season for Relationships in the Workplace

We are coming into a new season of nature with emerging flowers, nesting birds, new gardens, and sunny, warmer days.

It is a time of anticipation of all the new things emerging from the winter hibernation. There is excitement and anticipation in the air. There is hope for new things. Spring is all about change and renewal.

There is also hope for new relationships with our families, friends, and co-workers. The bright, warm sun warms us all.

Suppose we have a new season at work where we develop stronger, more supportive relationships among us. Just imagine the positive impact this would have. There would probably be a lot fewer people getting hurt and a lot less toxicity if our workplaces were filled with caring and support.

New Relationships

In our February blog post, I introduced the idea of a Cycle of Change, which I show here.

How much stronger would this Cycle of Change be if we could work together in an environment of caring and support? What would the morale look like? Would we be looking out for each other and helping where we could? Would we have more open conversations about what is going on and how we could improve things? Would there be a lot less bullying, dysfunction, and workplace violence? Would there be less fear and anxiety? Would the level of understanding among all organizational levels be a lot better? Would conflict between the people on the floor and the supervisors be less? Would we be growing a more sustainable, stronger culture? Would safety and environmental performance be better? Would productivity, quality, cost effectiveness, competitiveness be better?

It is interesting to think that all these would improve by just working on supporting and caring for each other. How we chose to work together has a big impact.

There are a lot of “would” words written above. And this one is used pointedly…Would that we all could understand and embrace this fundamental of life: “We change through the work we do together.” Leaders, especially need to connect these dots!

Making Our Choice

Who decides that supporting and caring are important relationships to work on? Who will make you work this way? Are the ideas of support and caring important to you?

If they are important, can you act on them and spread this way of working, one person at a time? Can you help, and support each other as you spread this way of working?

Each of us can make a positive impact if we want to. What do you want? What do you decide?

Call me at 716-622-6467 and I’ll walk you through how quickly and easily you can adopt this framework to your business, your team, your group.

We Change Through the Work Itself: It is not complicated!

There’s a need for the crucial conversations to help the people in the organization to raise their awareness and identify ways to improve how they do their work together.

We often fall into routines, and skip thinking and talking about ways to improve things. Sometimes safety consultants are brought in to talk about the need to change the mindset of the workers and improve their safety culture.

I have a real problem with this approach.

The word “worker” sends a message that these people are somehow below us and maybe not so smart as we are. This is a terrible message. These people who are doing the work are really not much different than the rest of us. They have families, are paying their mortgages, paying their credit card debts, buying cars, etc. Most of the time they do their work safely and well. Why do we so often, at work, treat them as somehow inferior? In my experience, trying to fix and change someone’s mindset is a hard sell, meeting with resistance and often resentment.

Many of these “change” consultants offer various ways to change the culture, hoping that the people’s mindsets will also change. Most of these changes come across like New Years Resolutions. They sound good, but after a month or two, we drift back to our old habits and nothing really changes.

Change is a process and not a thing.

In my experience change comes about as we work together on something we need to improve, find better ways to do the work to make the improvement, agree on how we will do the work and then do the work. Change comes about through the experience of doing the work itself, together, and learning from that experience. The process looks something like this picture.

change comes about through work experience

This way of working requires open, honest conversations where everyone feels safe enough to share and contribute. As we learn together, amazing improvements begin to emerge. Visualize this as a learning helix. Each step lifts us from level to level.

The people who are close to the work have the best knowledge of what needs to be done. They do not have it all, so they need to talk with people outside the group like safety professionals, engineers, and others to be sure their ideas are the best they can be.

It will be interesting for you to talk together about these ideas. It would be fun to see how it works for you and your organization. Make a modest start and see what happens.

work issues can be solved together

As leaders in workplaces, we need to do better. Give me a call at 716-622-6467 or contact me via email and let’s talk about how you can do this – working with a real problem and genuinely involving the people – sharing their best to make it happen together.