Episode 158: Be Present

The podcast episode from Dr. Mark French focuses on the importance of leadership in safety, emphasizing the need for leaders to be directly involved and present where the work happens. French argues that safety is a key indicator of good leadership, as it reflects a fundamental concern for the well-being of employees. He discusses the concept of leading from the front, highlighting the necessity for leaders to observe and understand the work environment to identify potential risks and make informed decisions.

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around the importance of "gemba," a term from Lean management that refers to going to the actual place where work occurs to see firsthand if expectations align with reality. French stresses that leaders must regularly inspect what they expect to ensure that safety protocols are being followed and that the work environment is conducive to both productivity and safety.

He also touches on the psychological aspect of safety, where employees must feel empowered to protect themselves from harm. He criticizes environments where workers are afraid to make safety-related decisions due to potential pushback from management. Overall, French advocates for a hands-on, empathetic approach to leadership that prioritizes the safety and well-being of employees, which in turn leads to better productivity and long-term success for organizations.

Transcript

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This week on the leading and learning through safety podcast, we're talking about leading from the front. How do we get involved? How do we see what's happening? What more can we do to see the work in action? This week on the podcast? You Music. Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr Mark French. Mark's 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. You mark, hello and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. I am your host, Mark. And as always, thank you for joining me for this 20 minute chat about leadership and about how safety is what I would like to call the litmus test of good leadership. If there's not good safety, I have never seen that translate to good leadership. There has to be that fundamental caring about people. And where does it begin? Except in most cases, in absolutely every case, it begins with making sure your people go home in a very safe way. So what I want to talk about this week that has really caught my attention and made me think about a lot of things, is being in the place where the work happens of actually leading from the front. And I had some discussions around this. I read some news stories, and got to really thinking about, what is it in these in this organization that leads to these injuries, the fatalities that I see in the news that when you do a new search for occupational or Google search or different blogs post those to see when, if you were to walk out there and take the 50,000 foot view and see the work going on right before the incident, or, let's say, a day before or a week before or a month before, what would you see? Where would it begin? What would what would be the indicators that something could happen there, that the risk is unacceptable, that there's a chance of human life being lost, that there's a chance of catastrophic injury happening. And I wonder if there was a real a true leader, not a manager, but a true leader that would be able to identify that and do something about it, because I've been reading some interesting books on leadership and management, and the difference is that you need both. You need someone who's setting a vision. You need someone who's doing and holding it steady and making it work. Is it that the decision maker is the ability, in the hands of a key decision maker, to make a choice for safety, to make a choice to be able to say with good confidence that we must stop, we must do something different in some of the greatest catastrophes that that have been case study time and time again, comes down that the key decision maker didn't know or wasn't available, or the people who could have possibly made the decision were scared to because they knew that if they slowed things down or did things different, that it would cause nothing but pain as It went up the management chain, and that's not real leadership, because real leadership first looks at how does it impact our people? And I think sometimes we get confused that good leadership means exceptional profitability, or only caring about money or only caring about productivity, and time and time again when you trust the process and you read the case studies, real, sustainable progress of companies growing, companies being ultra profitable, it begins with a fundamental look at their P. People. How do you empower your people on the front lines to make good decisions? And a good decision starts with protecting yourself from harm. Let's be honest. The very first step for good decision making is, do I feel comfortable? And this is crazy. I have to say this. I can't believe I'm going to say it. The first decision that someone should be able to make in any workplace is, can I protect myself today? Can I actually say something that would Can I stop what I'm doing so I don't get critically injured or killed at work? Do I feel comfortable making a decision to protect myself from death at work? Right? Unbelievable, right? That we can think about that people would prioritize rather than stopping or asking or doing that there's organizations, there's companies, there's places that make people feel that they can't make those decisions and that they don't aren't even empowered enough to make that choice. And then you move up to the next level of supervision. How do you think they feel about that? And you move up to the next, and you move up to the next, and you ask those questions. But I'm getting away from what I really wanted to talk about and that, let's go back to the idea of leading within, being there with the team. And what do we see? I read about trenching during the summer time. There's always so much trenching and so much tragedy that comes with trenching. And trenching, by no means is easy. There's a lot of work that goes into protecting a trench it's necessary. There's time invested in having to make sure that it's done the correct way that it's set up the correct way. And even I am, by far not an expert in entrenching. And I'll admit that I usually reach out to someone who's been doing it a long time. If I ever have to do something like that, I want an expert with me, one teaching me a little bit more, but also being there right beside me and making sure it's right. Because I don't do it enough, but I know enough to look at a trench and go, not right. Good, not good. I can at least do that that it looks like stuff is falling back in, or it looks unsafe, or it the sloping and the shoring, or they don't have a trench box in place to protect the people inside. There's no doubt that that trench in this theoretical, but not super theoretical, honestly, that the day before, the week before, if they were working a month before, it's not like they were probably doing it right and empowered to say, no, it started that way, and the job before that, and the job before, where is the leader that can make the decision, or where is the leader that cares? Let's start there. I think fundamentally, you can be there watching it, and if you don't care, then whatever, it's not going to work, which is, again, that that's a human problem. I think that's not something I'm going to solve on a leadership and safety podcast. That's a human problem when we don't care enough to look at someone and go, you know, don't really care. Just get her done. Yeah, let's, let's skip that part. I don't think we want to dive into to that little piece of of humankind. But let, let's go back and let's say that maybe no one has looked maybe they feel, you know, I have a great team. I have a competent team. They're going to get it done. And I got I'm busy. I've got things to do, I've got calls to make. I've got partners to meet. I've got other sales to make. I got to get out and see these things to make sure that the company continues on without ever taking that time to go and take a few moments in the field to see what's really happening. And that's a critical piece, and it's so easy to overlook, and that's what I started thinking about, like, what makes a solid safety program? What pieces have to come together? What are all the puzzle pieces that come together that make a holistic program? And when you think about a plan, do check, act the check? What is the check? Is it data? Is it information that comes in? Is it suggestions injuries? It also is that qualitative piece of going out and seeing the work happening, to really understand the processes, to understand what is happening, to see exactly where it isn't if there is a disconnect between what is expected and what is actually happening. Now that's a that right there is the piece. What do we expect? What is actually happening? Is there a disconnect? You can't see that unless you're there in the work seeing it happen in. In real time, in real situations, with the team, with the people doing the work. Let's talk more about that on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. You are listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast with Dr Mark French, dsda Consulting. Learn you lead others. The Myers, Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. Problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building, stress management, communication, conflict management, and so much more, individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great. For more information, visit us on the web at tsda consulting.com and welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. This week, we're talking about leading from the front, leading from within, being there and seeing the work actually happening. So there's a lean term, and I almost could predict you were guessing I was going to go there. In the Lean world, there's a word called the gemba, and it translates to the real place, or the actual place, the place that is working. And if you read books that are based in lean the Toyota way is a great one that's been around for a while, but any other of the books that really explain that leadership in an environment like that, it's a piece of that that you go to where it's happening, you actually go to where the concept comes to reality with the work that is being happening. So the work is happening, you're there with it, watching it happen. That is critical. That's where we know if our expectations are actually meeting reality, how otherwise would we know? There's no better tool out there than our own eyes and ears, seeing it, experiencing it, and feeling it as it happens, to truly understand the implications, not only from safety, but safety is number one to me. Like, if you go out there and you're not caring about how the people are working, how do they expect you to Why does anything else matter? But it also matters for productivity, quality, all of those things, like, is the work happening the way we expect it to reading other items of roofers without fall protection, who's looking and going out there and occasionally checking to see if the PPE is being used. When we think about other accidents that happen in the workplace, and there's just so many to pick from. When you look at unfortunately, when you look at what's happening in the news and every day in the United States, and you see these incidents, and the piece I wonder about is, did someone know that was happening? Because I'm sure the company and a lot of their statements are they act like they're amazed that this could happen at their site. Now, sometimes that's some really bad press, because you can look back at their history and see that they didn't care. They didn't care, they still don't care. It shows, and I've talked about a few of those on previous podcasts. And then there's those, those companies that maybe didn't realize they had a gap there. Hadn't put the pieces together of we have to go out there. And here's a great little piece of jargon for you. You have to inspect what you expect. You have to go see it. You have to go do the gemba the as I was preparing for this podcast, there was a picture that kept coming to my mind, and I think it was more motivational for me to go, am I on the right path of what I'm thinking about, and is there something motivational than this technical looking at lean and expressing it? And the one thing that kept coming to mind, and I have to thank my wife for that. She's an artist. She helps me understand art better. And so this picture came to my mind, and it was the painting, the classic painting of Washington, General Washington, first president the United States, crossing the Delaware, and it's icy, and they're crossing in on great story behind it. He's in the lead boat. He's standing up right, almost on the front of the boat, looking forward. He is right there. He is leading right from within his group. He is leading the from the front. He's going to be the first one there. Now, historically accurate, yeah. Debate there. But. But it's so true, the leadership that they talked about when, when we read some of the history, and of course, again, there's probably some bias there, but that's what motivated those under his charge, is the fact that he was among them, that he was in the mix. He knew what was happening. He didn't just think that, Oh, they're following the orders. They're doing what they should be doing. He was there. He understood it. He saw it. I think that same kind of like true, high caliber leadership in the practice of today, of where the work is happening with the team, where they're out doing what they should be doing, and are we seeing how it connects? There's a principle in the quality world called a process audit, where they are a standard work audit, where they go out and they look, and they pull a piece of the work instruction, or the standard work that happens, and they follow it, and they go, Okay, step one was this, did the person do it? Step two, did they do it? And they look for changes that may have either adapted or just happened over time, that changed the way that the product is being created or or built in a manufacturing site. Is to help catch quality concerns. You know? What else that does it, catches safety concerns, partnering with the quality department. I've done this before, highly successfully, mainly because there was a great quality manager who got it, and I appreciated that there was only a few extra questions to ask that, hey, there were critical safety steps in the work instruction. Were those followed, and, if not, why? So there was a lot of people out doing the gemba for a quality is to make sure we produced a quality product for our customer at the same time. Because we're looking at how is the work happening in the real place. We were able to see if there were safety issues emerging, because there was deviations in the work we expected a standard work process. We expected it to follow from step 12345, in those steps to have what they needed to do to do the job. We then went out and watched and made sure and verified that it happened that way. So let's take any of the big ones, the big things that happen in the world of safety. I think that I have bought them and hope they are using fall protection. Go to the field and see it. I expect that they're turning the equipment off de energizing and working on de energized equipment. Go see it. I think that they're using their trench boxes and trenching appropriately, because we invested in the training and we we've made sure that the people have all the equipment go make sure it's happening that way. We've trained them on confined space. They know how to identify, they know how to ventilate. They know how to do the air monitoring. Go out and see it. Even the smaller things we've provided Brandt. We have a whole cabinet full of brand new PPE that anyone can get whenever they need it. They just have to go get it, take it with them, go in the field and take a look and see the quality of what they're wearing. I had a great conversation with a supervisor, and what he was saying was, his big thing is boots. He understands how important a good pair of boots are in the work they were doing. He said, I always look at their boots. That tells me a lot about what's happening. It does. Are they worn out? Are they hurting? Are they falling apart? Go get new pair. It's time see it in the real See how it's happening in real time, in real life, to help understand how we in real time, protect our team, leading from the front, being there. No thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Couple of quick administrative things, hey, Kentucky safety conference next week. Then after that, the week after is the Kentucky Society of Human Resource Management seminar or conference. I will be at both. If you're going to be there, I'd love to meet up say hello, and until next time we chat, stay safe. Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online at www dot tsda consulting.com all the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice you. This has been the leading and learning through safety podcast. You.