Building Relationships…One Conversation at a Time

September 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

In my view, reducing injuries and incidents is strongly related to our relationship with our people in the organization.

We build these relationships by talking together, treating each other with respect, listening and learning together, deciding what we need to do together, and doing it with integrity.

In doing these things, here is a simple list of subjects we can talk about and build upon to build relationships. You may have other things to talk about.

  • Who are we as individuals and together?
    • Do you know the people with whom you are working?
    • Do you talk about the work together?
  • Do you talk about what you are trying to do?
    • Do you talk about how to do the work better and more safely?
    • Do you talk about the customers you are serving?
    • Do you talk about your team and how they are doing? Does everyone know we need to be a team and that bullying and/or sexual harassment are out of bounds?
    • Does everyone know that all forms of workplace violence are not okay?
  • Does everyone know why you are doing this particular work before you?
    • Do you know the quality and safety standards?
    • Do the people feel that it is okay to talk honestly about these things?
    • Do people feel confident that they can stop work if they see a safety or quality problem, without any negative repercussions?
  • Does everyone know the production schedules and when things need to be done?
    • Does everyone know about the flexibility in the schedules?
    • Do the people put the right emphasis on fixing a safety problem? Some fixes can wait for a break in the schedule, but some need to be fixed now!
    • In your conversations, do you talk about the subtle things like creep and drift from the required procedures?
  • Does everyone know where to go to get help to get things done properly, without cutting corners or taking short-cuts?
    • Do people know where all the PPE is located and how to use it properly?
    • Does everyone view the safety people as guides and experts?
    • Do the line supervisors participate in these discussions regularly, so they are up to date on things?
    • Do you talk about safety being a line responsibility; the supervisor is in charge and the safety person is an advisor and expert?
    • Do you talk about the bottom line – that everyone gets to go home at the end of their shift with their eyes, ears, legs, arms, and all body parts intact?
  • Does everyone really know how to do their job and look out for the others on their team?
    • Do you talk together about the proper qualifications for the work?
    • Do you talk about keeping the training and development work up to date?
    • Do you talk about surprises in doing the work that can help or cause problems?

safety professionals building relationships

Change Happens One Conversation At a Time

These kinds of conversations are important and need to be done every day, to build relationships. Some variation of these conversations is fine. If we think that we can do these once a month and mark our check list, then we miss the point and will have little positive impact. This is about integrating caring conversations of consequence into our daily interactions.

Daily conversations about one or the other of these questions will have a big impact over time. We’re talking about meaningful, constructive change for better safety, quality, and productivity. Each of these small conversations are like grains of sand falling in an hourglass.

The potential energy slowly builds and then one day, positive change will happen. Most of the changes will be small, some will be bigger, and some will make a huge difference. We can’t predict when or where the changes will happen, but they will happen.

We have to be persistent in our conversations, look for weak signs of change, and celebrate success. Ultimately, these conversations build solid, safety-minded strength into our team’s and relationships.

This is the stuff that I did as plant manager, and the results were amazing. Over a 4-year period, all of us together cut our injury rates by 97%, emissions dropped by 95% and earnings rose by 300%. I can’t claim credit for these improvements; everyone contributed because they wanted to make things better.

authenticity and integrity can build relationships and workplace safety

Safety Is About Having People Go Home To Their Families IN One Piece

Did you ever complete the investigation of a tragic, fatal accident by going to the funeral of the person who lost their life in your facilities? Have you talked with the family and apologized for that terrible event? Have you felt the depth of the tragedy? It never goes away for them. You do not want to have to do this.

Go talk with the people. Listen, learn, and act together.

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

Decades of Non-Improvement in Key Safety Stats Reveal Concerns

August 25, 2025 By Leave a Comment

Let’s try to climb out of this hole for the safety of our employees!

As you know, I have been talking for a long time about the need to reduce the number of people being killed at work and safety statistics have shown why there’s concern.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that about 5,200 people have died at work for each of the last 10 years. With all the people working diligently in the safety business, I expect that most people would think that these numbers should be getting lower and lower, but they are not going down.

Many ideas, models, and theories have been suggested, but we are not seeing a decline in the number of people getting killed. I wonder if there may be a deep, subtle force at work. The way we look at the people in the organization and think about them could be a key.

climbing out of the hole with safety statistics

Descriptions Are Critical

The most common label we apply to the people in organizations is “Employee.” This is a name for the contract between them and their employer. Most of us use this term to refer to anyone reporting to us in our organizations.

This may be troublesome in subtle ways because it carries a lot of baggage.

As their supervisor, one could feel you have the power to tell them what to do, to scold them, discipline them, make all sorts of demands on them, blame them for mistakes, not listen to them, even bully them. Many (uncaring and unenlightened) supervisors treat them as less than us, not as smart as us, etc. Employees can be seen as things which we can just move around (like puzzle pieces) as we please – all while being quite nice, but they can see right through this.

Most people do not like to be treated this way. All these employee-focused behaviors prevent trust from building. It blocks learning and performance from improving. We can push safety improvements very hard, but most of the time only get to compliance, which is where most organizations are stuck. Compliance does not get the organization to excellence.

Everything Changed

When I learned to think of the people as “people,” everything changed.

There were still differences in roles and responsibilities, but we are all people with similar hopes and desires as I have. They had good intelligence, knew a lot that I did not know, and wanted to make a positive difference. We all wanted to work safely, have the business succeed, and feel better about ourselves.

People do want to go home from their work shift with all their body parts intact. We were partners in this work. We treated each other with respect, told the truth, shared almost all information except personal stuff, helped each person to see the importance of their work, gave and received feedback. Bullying and harassment virtually disappeared. It was safe for us to talk together and share our ideas and thinking, to find better and safer ways to accomplish our tasks.

Partner-Centered Leadership Makes the Big Difference in Safety!

We discussed the work together to find better, safer ways to do it. People learned to make decisions to solve their own problems. More decisions were made close to the actual work. We coached each other. People self-organized within the boundaries we set together. The collective intelligence of the whole organization rose and got a lot better. Great ideas emerged from all around. Energy and excitement grew. Everything changed as we learned and grew together.

highly participative leadership process produces much better results that the top-down management process

My role as plant manager became much easier as more and more people pitched in and contributed. With so many making contributions, our total performance improved with the number of injuries dropping by 97%, emissions to the air, water and earth dropping by 95% and earnings rising by 300%. We used these metrics to keep track of things, but we led the improvements by partnering.

As we (as people) learned to partner this way, all the ways we worked together changed having a positive impact on all we did. This would not have worked if we had tried to stove pipe it and just do it for safety. Everything is connected and interacts so working on the whole systems is critical.

This effort to create a better way to safely and more economically do our work was not easy.

At first, standards had to be reestablished, which was difficult. People needed to know that we were determined to improve and quit hurting people. There was a serious problem with bullies who were blocking improvements. In the first two years I had to terminate about 30 people (there were 1,300 people at the Plant) for flagrant safety and bullying problems. Things got a lot better after this first difficult period. Most people want to have a safe environment and not have to deal with bullies.

We also promoted the most qualified people as openings developed to lead different parts of our efforts. We needed the best quality of thinking and working together in order to be really successful. We wanted to be good, not just look good! We became one of the best performing plants in the DuPont Company, in just 4 years.

climbing out of the hole for safety

Conclusion

We call this way of working “Partner-Centered Leadership.” It applies to all we do. Just a simple shift in how we think about things leads to big changes in everything.

I urge all of you to think about the people as people, build relationships of respect, trust and open communications.

I would be pleased to talk with any of you about this if you would like to do that. Please call me a 716-622-6467. I live in the Eastern Time Zone; calling between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm would be best.

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

Leading Safety in the Midst of Change is Important for Business

May 10, 2025 By Leave a Comment

The amount of change and the rate of change in the middle of DOGE is huge.

Different accounts and stories about what is happening swirl around like a storm. Organizations like NIOSH and OSHA are having to make adjustments for safety. Depending on the report, the stories of partial or even total elimination abound. Those of us outside the inner circles really do not know the details of what is happening, so we can get quite worked up about it all.

Some of the work being done in NIOSH may be vital in trying to improve workplace safety, but some of it may not be very important. From the outside, it is hard to tell. Hopefully any cuts in budget will focus on the less important work. NIOSH has been around for 50 years, and I’m told they’ve done much in the research end of safety and health.

As many of you know I have been asking why our fatality and injury rates are stuck at around 5,200 and 2.400,000 cases, respectively, for about the last 10 years. I do not know how the work of NIOSH directly impacts the workplace and in what ways their work has made the most difference. Based on the number of fatalities and injuries, you can make a case that NIOSH had very little impact so budget cutting may be the correct approach.

OSHA works closer to the actual workplace, thus having a more positive impact. But, again, the fatality and injury rates are not coming down so they may need to find out why that is.

I am more concerned about any OSHA budget cuts because OSHA is already spread very thin. OSHA has been around since 1970…can anyone say that our workplaces would be as safe as they are or that people would follow the safety rules that are in place without OSHA being the enforcer?

safety and security are the goals at the end of the day

We Can Do a Lot Ourselves for Safety

Even though all the changes and cuts are happening, we can do a lot in our own workplaces at the local, company level to make a difference.

Workplace safety is a local issue, which we at the local level can impact regardless of all the other changes going on. What is the mindset we each can hold as to whether we will go home from the workplace today and every day with all our fingers, toes, legs, arms, eyes, and ears intact? What about how well we look out for our co-workers being able to also return home from work with body and mind wholeness?

We can work directly with our people to help improve the total safety performance.

We can help our organizations get a whole lot better in all aspects of our work, not just in safety. We need to help all the people in the whole workplace to work more purposefully together. We need to treat each other with respect. Listen to each other. Help each other to share information more abundantly. Listen carefully to each other so we can learn together. We need to help people find meaning in their work and have more satisfaction with themselves.

safety and security in the business still can be profitable

When we work together doing these kinds of things, the whole workplace becomes much more open and healthier.

People do not have to fear that they will get punished in some way when they speak up and make suggestions. These kinds of behaviors positively impact all we do. In an environment like this, we can all learn and grow together.

I think that the only way we can create sustainable improvements in safety is to create a climate where everything in the organization is improving. And where people work to keep each other safe.

When I was the Plant Manager at a big plant that was having terrible performance problems, we on the Leadership Team decided to become the best producer and supplier of chemicals to our customers through improving all aspects of our work.

We focused on safety. environmental performance, people development, quality, customer service, costs, and our relationship with our community. Our total culture improved dramatically over the next 4 years, our injury rate dropped by 97%, emissions dropped by 95%, productivity rose by 45%, and earnings rose by 300%.

In the Midst of Great Change, We Can Do a Lot To Get Better!

We can take charge and sail our ships successfully in this great storm!

Call me at 716-622-6467 and let’s discuss how!

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

The Costs of Workplace Violence…Bigger Than You May Think

March 11, 2025 By Leave a Comment

An important dimension of workplace safety is eliminating workplace violence.

Examples of this workplace violence are lack of respect, bullying, sexual harassment, fights, and even murders. These are all on a continuum of behaviors which get more and more serious across the progression.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, for 2022 (the most recent summary), there were 5,283 fatalities at work and 740 of these were homicides. The number of women who were murdered was 140, which is the second highest cause of death for women in the workplace. Murder was the 5th highest cause of death for men.

These are sad situations for the families and the business coworkers. These murders cost the businesses a lot of money and bad publicity. But bullying and sexual harassment cost the people and the businesses a whole lot more because they are so widespread.

A recent Gallop poll found that over 50% of all our businesses struggle with bullying and sexual harassment problems. Unfortunately, most businesses ignore these problems hoping they will go away. They won’t go away and they are eating up a lot of profits.

These behaviors cause a lot of suffering among the people and they eat up a lot of time in a number of ways.

workplace violence

A Deeper Look

Let’s consider an organization with 100 people, with an average salary of $25 per hour. The organization has decided to do some training, or it is required by the state in which they do business to do mandatory training. So they bring in a consultant and have a one hour training session for everyone. This may cost $3,000 for consultant fees and lost wages of the people sitting in the session. These sessions do not solve many problems, but management gets their “ticket” punched.

Based on the Gallop study, about 50 of these people in this organization are engaged in bullying and/or sexual harassment. Each time someone gets pushed around, they may lose a half an hour of work because they are upset. If there are 200 incidents a year, there is another $62,000 in lost wages; there are probably a lot more than just 200 incidents. Suppose 20 of these bullying events are serious enough that management and human resources gets involved. We have another $5,000-$10,000 a year in lost wages.

Sometimes someone eventually gets terminated so now human resources, legal, and management are involved. Then we need to replace that person so we could lose up to $15,000 for this event. All this stuff adds up and for this 100-person organization. the lost costs could be around $100,000 a year.

But there is even a potentially bigger loss that can happen.

When there is bullying and harassment behaviors in the organization, people won’t talk together unless they have to. When the organization is free of these dysfunctional behaviors, people talk together and learn. New ideas often emerge which can be big possibilities for new earnings. I have seen this happen with people generating big savings through improved procedures which none of us had even realized possible before the conversations. These sorts of improvements could easily exceed the losses from the bad behaviors.

For example, when I was the DuPont Belle, West Virginia Plant Manager, we had one operation that made a variety of products. These were all synthesized in the same equipment. We would run a campaign of one product, take the equipment apart, clean everything out, and put it back together. Then we would synthesize the next product, followed by another clean out; and so on, and so on.

The job of taking things apart, cleaning everything, and reassembling them was taking about 7 weeks. After we had rooted out the bullies and had formed teams, the people were talking openly together about how to improve things. One day I discovered that their team had been talking together about how to make improvements and had shortened the time between campaigns from 7 weeks to just 5-6 days. This enabled us to significantly expand our production capability, and it was free. A traditional approach would be to build new equipment, which would have cost several hundred thousand dollars.

workplace violence comes in all forms

Wrapping Up

Developing respect and driving out bullying, sexual harassment, and other dysfunctional behaviors like lying and cover ups, are not just nice things to be doing. There is a big impact on improving the morale and openness in the organization, which is very good. And there is also a big impact on the potential lower costs and higher earnings for the organization as new ideas emerge from their conversations.

When these dysfunctional behaviors are driven out, everything gets so much better for both the people and the business.

Call me (716-622-6467) or email me. Let’s chat about how your organization can make a marked difference for reducing workplace violence across the spectrum.

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

Why Are So Many People Being Killed and Injured at Work?

November 11, 2024 By Leave a Comment

A New Safety Leadership Paradigm is Needed

This is a question I have been thinking about for quite some time. There are lots of good people working to improve our safety performance, yet the numbers hardly change from one year to the next. In reading Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (1962), the idea of a paradigm shift comes to mind. A paradigm shift is when the basic concepts and practices of a particular area of study need to change. Perhaps a change in the way we approach total safety performance is needed; we need a safety leadership paradigm change!

Background: Our Current Safety Management Paradigm

For years we have looked at the structure of organizations as if they are machines focusing on things, equipment and tools, even seeing people (the employees) as if they were merely interchangeable parts of the machine. Since the advent of OSHA, this approach has really improved the total safety performance of most organizations, yet across our industry we now seem to be stuck. The underlying pattern is one driven by fear of failure and punishment. The energy is driven down from the top with little feedback. Most people resist processes of power and change being imposed on them. Information flow is restricted to a “need to know” basis. Perhaps we have improved total safety performance about as much as we can using this approach. I know from my own experience as a plant manager in leading this way, that improving and sustaining the safety performance is slow and difficult.

with safety leadership businesses can be safer

Partner-Centered Leadership: A New Safety Leadership Paradigm

I spent a lot of my time as the plant manager studying how and why organizations work or not. The ideas coming out of the new insights about complexity, chaos, and complex adaptive systems offered a different way to lead. I learned to see organizations as if they are living systems and a new paradigm formed. I saw people as caring and partners in our work together. The relationships with and among the people became the most important feature of our work. People want to be respected. They want to be heard. They have ideas they want to share. They know more about their work specific work than I did as the Plant Manager.

We shared information abundantly providing almost constant feedback to each other. We co-created our future using a guided conversational process called “The Process Enneagram” (see my YouTube videos to learn about this process). We learned Self-Organizing Leadership and developed the Partner-Centered Leadership approach1. People took responsibility for their work and new ideas constantly emerged as we talked together. Change happened as we learned to work together in new ways finding the results of work getting better and better. The collective intelligence of the people blossomed.

The people (everyone) and I had to learn to work this way as we worked together. We gradually found that the safety performance (TRIFR down 97% in 4 years) and everything else improved. As we learned about Self-Organizing Leadership, we realized that as people self-organized around their work that the system needed to be held together with a container that allowed the flow of information and energy but did not overcontrol the system. I called this container “The Bowl.” Some people talk about needing “guide rails,” which is also a useful idea.

A Comparison of the Managing and Partner-Centered Leadership

I wrote a paper for Professional Safety in 2022 about our work at our plant and comparing the effectiveness of the Managing and Partner-Centered Leadership processes2. It clearly showed the superiority of the Partner-Centered Leadership process.

The Partner-Centered Leadership process may very well be the new paradigm that is needed to greatly reduce the number of people being killed (~5,200/year) and injured (~2,400,000 people/year).

Please seriously consider this and let’s work to get a lot better. This is not just trying harder; it is really about doing things differently and more effectively.

Please give me a call and let’s talk about how this can happen for your organization.

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

An Invitation to Make A Difference

October 10, 2024 By Leave a Comment

In many of my posts, I have talked about the high number of people being killed and injured at work.

There are many safety professionals and others working to improve safety, yet the number of deaths and lost time injuries remains relatively constant at about 5,200 deaths and 2,500,000 lost time injuries a year. We need to make a difference in the workplace.

I am not seeming to have much impact in reducing these numbers (by myself) and am wondering about gathering some interested, knowledgeable, professional people together in Zoom conversations to explore possible ways to reduce the number of deaths and injuries. I’m looking for people who care deeply about this too.

I do not know if anything will come out of these conversations of concern, but there is a real possibility we could accomplish something to help reduce these tragedies. I would be willing to host these conversations.

make a difference

Let’s Make a Difference!

If we can look at this from a systems perspective, important ideas and real possibilities will likely emerge. The systems approach will give us a much deeper perspective of the whole system than we normally use, and this could lead to some really good ideas and possibilities.

If any of you readers want to give the conversations of concern a try, please contact me at RNKnowles@aol.com. I’ll see what we can put together. I have an expectation that we can make a difference.

make a difference together

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

Overcome feelings of Impatience in the Workplace

September 10, 2024 By Leave a Comment

When leadership can help employees overcome feelings of impatience, frustration and anger, the energy and creativity of the people emerges, enabling much quicker, better decisions and more effective work to take place.

Impatience

In a long road trip over this Labor Day Weekend, we got stuck in an hour-long traffic jam on a very busy Interstate Highway. The GPS message was “Your route is closed.” We were sitting on the 3-lane highway with big trucks all around us and there was no way out.

My impatience level went way up as we just sat without knowing anything about the stoppage or a possible alternative way out. Other car drivers were also getting impatient and beginning to make poor decisions. For example, several impatient drivers wiggled thru tight spaces, actually turning their respective vehicles around – then began their journey against the normal traffic flow, maneuvering along the shoulder to get to the last exit we had passed so they could get off the Interstate and go around the holdup on secondary roads.

We just waited with the trucks to see what was going to happen. After about an hour the traffic began to move and open up. We never saw the source of the holdup, but we had a sigh of relief to be able to move forward again.

overcoming frustration and impatience in the work place

Ruminations

I began to think about the times in my own career when things got bogged down or we had had an incident that stopped everything. I struggled with these same feelings of impatience. Everyone was impatient and frustrated. Some people wanted to just push through before we had given things enough consideration to understand what was wrong and see a way out of the problem. Others spent time in their offices, away from the situation, trying to dictate solutions; it is easy to come up with possible solutions when you do not know what is really going on. This really became frustrating when the corporate people tried to tell us how to solve our problem. Others wanted to cut through the safety procedures since they felt the procedures were getting in our way.

We were all impatient, anxious, angry, struggling with a strong sense of urgency and frustration. This is a dangerous situation where it is very easy to make dreadful mistakes. The people working close to the problem feel acute pressure to solve the problem and get going. They are extremely aware that their managers want to get going. Their managers are also under a lot of pressure from their managers or from sales or from customers to get going.

The people working close to the problem are aware of all these pressures, but also know that they have to do things right so no one gets hurt, so the process will really run correctly when things are restored, and so there will not be a new safety or environmental incident on startup.

Leadership’s Role

In these situations of high frustration and impatience, the people close to the work need to be helped and supported by their management and leaders.

As a Plant Manager, my role was to create a safe space for those working close to the problem to think things through, organize themselves, plan the restoration processes, and make the other decisions needed to get back up and running safely. The operators, mechanics, engineers, and safety people know what needs to be done, so as the Plant Manager, my role was to create a safe space where they could do their work. I also reminded them to work with high safety, environmental and customer standards, helping each other to do their best in the situation.

As we shared information on the progress to solve the problem and the things around it, we also helped to maintain respect and caring among everyone and gave credit to them as progress was made. These made a big, positive difference.

When we can minimize the feelings of impatience, frustration and anger, the energy and creativity of the people emerges, enabling much quicker, better decisions and more effective work to take place. This is Partner-Centered Leadership in action!

Call me at 716-622-6467 and I’ll be pleased to talk to you about Partner-Centered Leadership. It is the way forward.

feelings of impatience in the workplace

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

Why Are People Getting Killed At Work?

August 10, 2024 By Leave a Comment

Indifference… At a local event this past week, I asked a friend who is involved in safety work the question, why are people getting killed at work? He quickly came up with this answer.

“A lot fewer people are being killed than it used to be before OSHA. There has been a lot of progress. We must be at about the best we can do.“

Then the conversation moved off to the Olympics. He just brushed this off as no longer important.

But this is important to the approximately 5,200 families who have had someone in their family killed. This experience remains with the family forever. And this 5,200 total number is an every year statistic!

Those of you reading my newsletters know that I am constantly trying to help people reduce injuries and deaths by building Partner-Centered Leadership and sharing real case studies that have been published in Professional Safety. We can reduce the numbers of injuries and fatalities, and we shouldn’t just push this problem aside with indifference.

hard hats save workers from being killed at work

Leaders Lacking Insights About What Is Possible

At a recent graduation celebration gathering, I was talking with a family member who has a very responsible safety leadership job in a large company, about my efforts to have fewer people killed at work. We talked about Partner-Centered Leadership and having everyone involved, co-creating our shared futures and taking more responsibility for the whole business efforts, including safety.

I was asked, “How do you work this way across widely dispersed sites?” This is a challenge for sure. The way I see it, this effort has to begin with the CEO and the Leadership Team. They need to talk about Partner-Centered Leadership and walk the talk at every site visit so people can understand that they mean it. The top people need to personally engage the lower levels in learning to lead this way and insist that everyone is involved. The CEO and Leadership Team should do some of the training of the lower-level people.

If someone does not get on board, then some tough decisions need to be made. The message should be that this is the way the company is going to do business going forward. But equally important is helping everyone to see that going home to one’s family at the end of the workday with all one’s body parts intact – no injuries, no incidents, is the absolute answer to What’s in it for me?

My mantra when I was a plant manager was, “I don’t have a right to make my living where it is okay for you to get hurt!” Does anyone have this right? The methodology for success is to engage people – for supervision across the board, up and down the organization to learn how to ask process questions. When it comes to safety, leaders who are in denial, or pretending one “doesn’t know” just doesn’t cut it. Asking process questions can ensure accountability.

We then talked about why there was so much resistance to these ideas. Based on some hard systems thinking, I think that the whole US safety industry with all the training, audits, fines, blame, etc. is driven by FEAR! This idea can be startling. Examining safety from a systems perspective was a different idea – particularly noting that fear was a key driver.

The problem with a culture being driven by fear is that it is very difficult to learn and do new things. Just about everyone is concentrated on covering their backside rather than talking together in an environment that is safe enough to explore new ideas together. When we work together using Partner-Centered Leadership, we can open up the vast knowledge that is lying hidden in our organizations. When we treat people with respect, listen and learn together, amazing new ideas and possibilities bubble up.

Everything changes! Productivity goes up. Earnings go up, Safety improves. The culture becomes one where almost everyone is learning, growing, taking more responsibility and producing great results. New possibilities emerge which often lead to much better earnings.

workplaces should value safety

Partner-Centered Leadership

When the CEO and the Leadership Team learn what is possible and how to work this way with authenticity and caring, this can spread throughout their organization and achieve significantly better results. It takes some effort and dedication, but there is no need for new capital investment. In a sense, Partner-Centered Leadership is free!

Contact me (716-622-6467) and let’s discuss how this can work for you and your organization.

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

It Sure Is Hot Outside so Watch Out for Heat Exhaustion!

July 10, 2024 By Leave a Comment

There is a lot of concern about the heat and related problems like heat exhaustion.

It would be great if all our workplaces were air conditioned so no one would get heat exhaustion, but that is not the case. Some places are open and air can circulate if there is a breeze. Some places have big fans to circulate the air. Some places are stifling and difficult for everyone. Some people must work outside in lawn care or construction.

OSHA and others want employers to provide relief in some way for heat exhaustion, but that is not always possible. This is very tough, no one has all the answers, and there are no easy solutions. In situations like this, the people doing the work need to be actively involved in trying to figure out how to mitigate the heat hazard and help each other as much as they can.

I heard of one group of men who made cast-iron castings who decided to work wearing only eye protection, gloves and boots. But that does not meet anyone’s safety standards. I read about others trying to lower the heat stress by changing their workday to start very early in the morning before the heavy heat of the day. Staying hydrated remains the key preventative to heat stress and exhaustion.

People are creative and can come up with many good ideas so that they don’t get heat exhaustion.

watch out for heat exhaustion in the heat

I liked to sit down with the people to talk together about how our particular group could handle the heat stress issues we were facing. Often creative solutions came up that would provide some relief. Perhaps it was a schedule change, wearing broad-brimmed hats, shortening the hours on really bad days, or taking longer breaks with ice-water or gator-aid in cooler chests to drink. These days cool-gel neck wraps and cooling vests are worth considering.

There are a variety of ways that people can use for their work situation that are safe and appropriate. As people come up with these ideas, talk together about how to best manage things to reduce the likelihood of someone having a heat stress problem. Try to figure out together what the best solution will be for your group under your conditions. I have found that involving the people in trying to figure this out usually results in the best solutions.

Ever wonder what people did to keep cool before air conditioning? Take a look at this short history lesson from History.com, “11 Ways People Beat the Heat Before Air Conditioning.”

The Politics

The political issues heading into the next few weeks and months and into this next election are very hot and difficult. It is best if you can keep them out of the organization – verbal political hostility can escalate quickly.

Political arguments can be a big distraction and lead to loss of productivity, increased injuries, and even workplace violence like bullying or even fights. Hostile environments can be fed by politics that turn mean and dismissive. Try to keep these heat issues out of the workplace. Employers need to remind employees that everyone has their right to their own political views, and because we endeavor to have a civil and respectful environment – where everyone is free from abuse of any kind – we need to keep our political views apart from our workplace.

The …isms

There are so many …isms that all sorts of distractions can come up. Opinions are very strong and tempers fly. Try to keep these debates out of the workplace. We all know better.

watch out for heat exhaustion in the heat

There is Relief for Everything, including Heat Exhaustion

Sit with the people together to talk about all the heat/hydration issues. Listen and let people talk about them without criticism. After having identified the most important ones for your group, talk together about ideas and ways that you all can work together and minimize the various heat stress problems as best you can. Develop a list that is most important for your situation and ask everyone to agree to work together so that things can be cooler, safer and healthier. Post these around the workplace so everyone can see them and live up to them.

Many of our problems we can solve ourselves so let’s do it! Give me a call at 716-622-6467 if you’d like to talk about this – happy to share with you.

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

Shifting Our Thinking and Behavior

June 10, 2024 By Leave a Comment

We should be shifting our thinking and behavior.

I have written a lot about our whole safety system in the US being stuck for the last 8 years, with about 5,200 fatalities and 2,400,000 serious injuries a year.  There is a lot of effort by many people, but the results are not getting better. That’s why we should be shifting our thinking and behavior.

I have also written and spoken a lot about Partner Centered Leadership, which is a very effective process to help organizations get a lot better in all dimensions of performance. In this process everyone thinks and works together with caring, respect, honesty, and trust. We all help each other to be our best.

shifting our thinking and behavior

Partner Centered Leadership requires a significant shift in how the managers lead.

I used to use the hard, top-down management approach. But I had to shift my thinking and behavior to being more open, really caring and working with the people, listening and learning together.

This is not just trying to be a better top-down manager. It is a complete shift to real partnering and caring.

The way I thought about the people and the huge knowledge they have about their actual work had to change. I had to learn to talk with the people and not at them. I had to listen.

Organizations are complex adaptive systems behaving more like a living system than a machine. No one has all the answers, so we had to co-create our future together. We found that our collective knowledge and intelligence were amazing. As this became revealed in our work, we all got more and more excited about what we were trying to do.

We discovered a relatively simple complexity tool called the Process Enneagram that we could use together so we could:

  • see the whole system in which we were working,
  • see the various parts and
  • see how they interacted.

This was the first time we could see this way; it really helped us.

The Three Levels of Work

As we learned, we also became quite conscious of different, interdependent, interacting, simultaneous levels of work processes. When you watch a soccer game you can see the three levels of activities.

  • At the Level 1, the players on the field are self-organizing as the game unfolds. They are making instantaneous decisions using the clues and actions they take in as they play. The best decisions are made by them as the game goes on.
  • At Level 2, the coaches on the side lines are making decisions based on what they are seeing. They see different things. They will call in plays, make decisions about replacing a tired player, think about improving or adjusting the over-all strategy, and cheer the players to perform better.
  • At Level 3, the referees make sure the conditions for the game are consistent with the league rules. They work on stuff like proper ball pressure, and the correct markings on the field as well as making sure everyone is playing fairly, calling penalties and managing the over-all game. If the players and coaches do not play by the agreed upon rules, the game will fall apart and no longer be soccer.

In Partner Centered Leadership, all three levels are working. Together we co-create the agreements of how we are going to live and work together at Level 3. All of us are accountable and take responsibility for them. The Level 3 agreements govern everything and are the difference in whether the organization is successful or not.

Those of us in management or leadership positions are at Level 2; we respectfully interact with the people sharing information about how the people and the business are doing. We ask for their help and ideas about how to get better. We encourage people to make decisions close to their work, with consultation with others who are also close and knowledgeable. We also use our situational awareness as we interact sensing problems like bullying or harassment, or how the organization is feeling at that moment, etc.

Those doing the actual, physical work at Level 1 are constantly learning and sharing so we are all improving. Making decisions close to work is usually the best place to make them. This is like the idea of “work-as-done” and “work-as-imagined.”

Shifting Our Thinking and Behavior: Partner Centered Leadership

When I was the plant manager, walking the plant every day, I operated at Levels 2 and 3. At Level 2 I talked respectfully with the people to help to build trust and interdependence. I shared lots of information about all we were doing. I also encouraged their decision-making, praising their successes. I also apologized for my mistakes.

I also worked at Level 3 as I talked about our agreements on how we wanted to work together. I would watch what was going on praising good behaviors, and if I detected poor behavior, we would talk about it. Rarely, I would have to address a bullying or harassment problem; these cannot be ignored since they are like a rotten apply and will spoil everything unless the behavior is eliminated.

I rarely worked at Level 1 since the operators, mechanics, engineers, first line supervisors, and safety people (we had 4 safety people) knew far more than I did. My Level 2 and 3 work enabled them to grow and be their best.

In leading this way, all 1,300 of us together, reduced injuries by 97%, and emissions to the environment by 95%. Our productivity rose by 45% and earnings rose by 300%. We did this in just 4 years.

Partner Centered Leadership really helped us all to get a lot better!

The shift in thinking and doing is worth it!

working together means success

Shifting our thinking and doing are critical in helping to lead our organizations to a successful, safer and more prosperous future. Partner Centered Leadership will really help your organization to prosper.

I’m heartened to learn about the Safety Futures’ – Advanced Safety Professional Practice, a 12-week program under David Provan, (Melbourne, Australia), having recently graduated 100 newly-enlightened Safety Professionals. This program covers the critical professional practice capabilities that are not taught well in other health and safety professional development programs. Click here for David’s LinkedIn profile.

Please give me a call (716-622-6467) or contact me at RNKnowles@aol.com. I will be pleased to connect with you about the “shift.”

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