In this episode of the "Leading and Learning Through Safety" podcast, Dr. Mark French focuses on communication. He emphasizes the importance of effective communication in leadership, particularly in the context of safety. Dr. French discusses the challenges of two-way communication, highlighting the need for understanding and acknowledgment. He explores tools like the Blanchard SLII system to assess motivation and knowledge levels, stressing the significance of knowing one's audience. Dr. French also touches on the pitfalls of ineffective communication, such as using it as a weapon or failing to ensure clarity. Overall, the episode underscores the role of communication in building a positive safety culture within organizations.
In this episode of the "Leading and Learning Through Safety" podcast, Dr. Mark French focuses on communication. He emphasizes the importance of effective communication in leadership, particularly in the context of safety. Dr. French discusses the challenges of two-way communication, highlighting the need for understanding and acknowledgment. He explores tools like the Blanchard SLII system to assess motivation and knowledge levels, stressing the significance of knowing one's audience. Dr. French also touches on the pitfalls of ineffective communication, such as using it as a weapon or failing to ensure clarity. Overall, the episode underscores the role of communication in building a positive safety culture within organizations.
This week on the leading and learning through safety podcast, it's all about communication. We're building on what we talked about last week and keeping that conversation going, and learning more about good and effective communication.
Announcer:Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr. Mark French marks passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork, and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation, and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode. And now here is Dr. Mark French.
Mark French:Hello, and welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. I am so happy that you're joining me as we talk about leadership and leadership from a safety perspective, leading with safety first leading with our people in mind in what we do it knowing that when our people are motivated when our people feel safe, physically and psychologically, that they're doing great work for our organization. They're giving us more, just more, because they are empowered, they are heard in this week, I want to keep building on what we talked about last week last week, I feel like I really hit something that I wanted to continue with. And it began with the the news stories that I read about workplace violence. And when I think about workplace violence, and I think about what happens in those areas, from you need good physical barriers, you need the security things that are there. One of the components that I find vital in any organization, not only with workplace violence, but with a lot of injuries is clear communication, in safety. Right from the very beginning, it's even legislated that there should be communication, about topics. The first thing that when you start reading in any of the legislation, you start going through the law, it says you're going to train on this, you're going to communicate, when it changes, you're going to do these things. And it's fundamentally communication. We as safety professionals have so many different hats we wear as leaders, we are trainers, we are communicators, we're technical experts, we're, we go out and mitigate with people and problem solve. We do a lot of leadership activities that we have to take credit for. And we have to learn from it helps spread the word to others that it's so important that we do it. Communication is a natural process of we as humans learning to communicate. But doing it effectively takes practice. Because I've met a lot of people who think they are communicating, they're doing a lot of something, whether it be verbal or nonverbal, or typing up an email. They're doing a lot. But is it effective? Is it reaching the audience? Is it is it meeting the intended goal that the person wanted. And in safety, this is so important, as I was doing a lot of work for my dissertation. It came a lot of the findings came from styles of communication, and versions of communication and creating effective communication. And that's what I want to talk about this week, I want to take us on a journey of leadership through communication. The first thing about communication and I have to remind myself of this so often, Communication is a two way street. As someone who has done in training and instructor work, it is so easy to get in the mindset that I must impart knowledge that I have eight items that I have to say that I have to commute indicate and I've got to get those out, no matter what they have to be said. And so the focus is so much on imparting knowledge. And the time constraints sometimes only allows for the transfer of that knowledge. And the acknowledgement coming back that two way street, it doesn't mean that we're engaging in I talk for 30 minutes, then someone else talks for 30 minutes could be that. But what it really is, is some kind of acknowledgement that the message was received. There is some kind of methodology, I'm gonna use that word loosely that says, I have imparted my knowledge I have put it out there to you. Did you get it? And did you understand it? So many times in safety? Especially, there's the idea that we just retrain? Well, they made a mistake, let's retrain them. Is it the same training? Is it the same training over again and over again, because if it didn't land once, maybe the content will land the second time, maybe. What I'm concerned about, and what I probably think would happen, and see happening is the same problem with the communication, not landing, the communication, not being two way just happens again, it's the same thing. And the person has really learned either a don't report what just happened or be avoided the whatever circumstance got them hurt. So we didn't really improve the situation, we just really broke the communication barrier through almost a communication punishment, by making that happen. And it's hard. There's not enough time or people to do this training correctly, time and time again, I hear this, and I have no good answer for it. Other than to utilize as much technology as we can, to utilize other experts where we can, and to utilize some method of verification. A lot of the times it's a written test, I use those I have used those, I continue to use those. A lot of the time, it's legal prevention. Because if the OSHA officer comes in, ask for those training records, I can show a training documents signed and I can show a test that they passed. Does that work to meet the intent of the law? Yes, it does. And number one, we are keepers of that. Number two, is the harder part is getting the time necessary to do it the right way to engage our teams. And again, I do not have the answer for how we get more time to do it. To assure that we're doing it the right way. I congratulate organizations that have a dedicated learning team that helped hold that standard high. I really enjoy seeing that because they're able to go through a model of process of saying, if it didn't work, why, and how can we improve it? Is it maybe a video that really shows something? Is it better photographs of the work environment? Is it a a short q&a session of some form or another, which is something that OSHA said during new hire training that it can't be fully virtual? You have to have someone present that can answer questions live, as the training is happening that was few years ago that happened where they made that clarification of the standard saying, Hey, you just can't sit them in front of a computer in some remote place and not give them access to someone that can do it. So either you need to do it live, you need to have a phone that they can pick up and immediately ask a question there has to be a there has to be the two way communication even with new hire safety training. There has to be a clear and concise verification. With that, I've said a lot so far about that two way piece of communication but the fundamental understanding the very big picture, when we look up and say what is communication, it is one person saying something, another person understanding it and responding appropriately. And then the responses go back and forth appropriately. There are different styles of communication that we use every single day. It can be a casual, it can be a goal setting. It can be simply a coaching of trying to bring someone up to what they're doing. I want to talk about some tools and tricks. that help when developing that communication. In the second half of our leading and learning through safety podcast, you are listening to the leading learning through safety podcast with Dr. Mark French.
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Mark French:And welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So one of the tools that I'm actually certified to use and I really love it is the Blanchard S L two system. It is it is a way of using leadership to set goals. And to be very clear on what you were delivering to people. And when it's this is in a communication process, there's usually an intent, especially in work, there is an intent in the communication, it is to get someone to do something or to communicate someone that they should do. Or ultimately there is some kind of goal that needs to be set in that system. And the reason I like it is addresses two factors of the system. How motivated is the person to do it? And how much knowledge do they have to accomplish the task? Early on, if you've not had new hire safety training before you may be really motivated to work safe, and please be motivated to work safe? Let me I want to clarify that. I want you to be motivated to work safe. And I hope you are and I hope we're helping other people be that way too. But the first step is how much knowledge do they have in the topic in this, when you're giving that new hire training, it's hard to gauge who is the seasoned professionals that have done this a lot, who are new to the role, or even they may be seasoned in the workforce, like out been done different styles of jobs, first time with your company, but they may not have received that knowledge. And you have to gain that understanding. You're going to teach certain things no matter what you have to Yeah. But how do we do it in a way that can engage them better if we know our audience? And Step one is to know who you're talking to? Or ask and be very not just asking, keep going but asking really take a moment to do it. I love the idea that when you need to pause you, you count to 10 in your head or you spell the word question to give people plenty of time because the longer the silence goes to a certain point, there's a law of diminishing returns with silence. But if you leave some uncomfortable silence, eventually someone is going to fill it in. Sometimes it's just filler. And you can tell that when you're having that communication, you can kind of see that that was a filler, because they didn't. Or it can create that opportunity for someone to say something that they weren't really sure they wanted to say. But finally they did. And that's the that's the gym. That is what you're looking for. That's that diamond you're you're digging around for and you find it and you use it. So when you're using that system, and you're thinking about when I'm talking to someone or a group of people, you need to know, are they motivated to do it? And do they have the knowledge to do it. And wherever is something missing? Maybe they're highly motivated and highly knowledgeable. You know what you do there? You acknowledge it. You tell them thank you for being motivated and knowledgeable and you set them loose, you go great. And this isn't just for safety. This is leadership. So if I'm talking to a colleague, or if I'm talking to someone, and we're talking and creating a plan or a strategy, and we bring it up and we're talking and I find out that they are motivated, and they're highly knowledgeable, the best thing I can do is give them my approval the things I agree with the direction go. What's important is that we both understand the direction that I've gotten the clarity to validate the motivation. I've got the clarity to evaluate the knowledge. If I haven't evaluated that if I've spent too much time talking and not enough time listening or if I didn't ask the right question. or I didn't use the tus two way street approach of communication. I'm going to miss something. And I could send them running east when I really wanted them running north. Close, but not what I wanted. Because I didn't acknowledge or get the acknowledgement. And that's where setting a goal and doing something in a systemic way of having that communication as acknowledgement. My favorite question, and I do not use this enough when I'm doing this, because, honestly, African, I get so wrapped up and conveying information or planning it that I forget to ask. And so I'm bad at this. I'm learning we're learning together being vulnerable. I forget to ask, Did that make sense? Could you? Could you recap what I asked so that I make sure that I really did ask it the right way. That's good communication, especially when they repeat it their own way back to you. And you're like, oh, yeah, you got it. Being a father is taught me that I should do that more often than I explain, hey, here's how I want you to do this chore. Or here's the way to do something that I'm trying to teach. And I don't take the moment to go Did that make sense to you? Can you tell me, in your own words, what you're going to do, based on what you heard from me. Without that, I may be sending them to do something that is not going to work, or it's going to be wrong, or not really what I was looking for. This same thing happens in the workplace all the time, I am sure you can think of probably 10 examples, immediately of where someone thought they gave a very clear, and maybe you received the clear youth that you were the one receiving the direction, and you thought you had it, only to find out that you didn't have it that you were doing something completely different, the flip the person wanted you to do. Or maybe you've communicated something once and you go oh, that was awful. I completely goofed. looking back and seeing the result you Yeah, didn't tell you everything I didn't wasn't I forgot to tell you this critical thing I needed. And now I have this in my hand in. I've also I want to avoid this we have weaponized communication at times. I once had a supervisor that was given imparting me some knowledge, some coaching on how to deal with troubled people, or how to deal with people who maybe take too much of my time. And the advice was, whenever they come to your office to start talking to you give them a task immediately go, Oh, I agree to see you. I need a chart made for whatever, whether I need or not, and just go send them off on a task. So they wouldn't talk to me. Instead of me coaching the person on their communication we were going to avoid. I didn't really like that piece of communicate that that coaching. And so I don't subscribe to that. But that's weaponizing communication. We don't want to do that. We want our people to feel like that they can come and talk to us. And we want to do it effectively, though. We want to understand what how much motivation do you have to get it done? How much knowledge do you have? Where can I as a leader, help fill in the gaps? How can I get you the knowledge? How can I help you understand this better so that you are somewhat not that everything is just like powerful motivation. But how do I make it to where you understand why I needed or why we needed as an organization was gonna do it together. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and alerting through safety podcast. It's been all about communication. And hopefully, hopefully, I've made a clear point about what good communication is and how we as leaders and influencers can use communication to really accelerate our team. Until next time we chat. Stay safe.
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