Episode 166 - Back to Basics

The podcast emphasizes the importance of safety leadership in fostering a work culture that prioritizes employee well-being and risk management. Dr. Mark French, the host, shares personal experiences to illustrate the moral imperative behind safety initiatives, stressing that safety programs should not merely focus on compliance but aim to prevent catastrophic incidents. He highlights the need for strong leadership commitment to proactive safety measures and a vision that resonates on a personal level. French describes his approach to safety leadership, which centers on continuous risk reduction, learning from past incidents, and cultivating an organizational culture that prioritizes employee safety above profit. He argues against a reactive, metric-driven approach and advocates for developing systems that inherently protect workers. This perspective is bolstered by his personal safety statement, which reflects his desire to avoid situations where he must explain injuries to families. French encourages safety leaders to focus on actionable insights rather than blaming individuals, underscoring the need for a proactive, learning-centered approach to safety.

Transcript

Mark French: 0:01

This week on the podcast, we're back, and we're going to talk about getting back to basics. What is it that we as a health and safety leadership community? What's it all about? And how do we get back to what really drives good change this week on the podcast,

Announcer: 0:36

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,

Mark French: 1:30

hello and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. I am your host, and I'm so happy to be back with you. It has been a while, and I am sorry for that. Caught an illness around my birthday, which has been about a month ago, and my voice has just not been cooperative, and hadn't been for a while. I'm finally back to where I can talk a lot, and that may be good or bad, depending on depending on how you look at it, it could be a lot of things, but I'm so happy to be back behind the microphone with the podcast. And you know, hopefully we continue on with our journey of talking about safety, talking about leadership, and that's where I really want to focus. And this is something I've been thinking about for over a month, since I wasn't able to record the podcast for a while without sounding terrible. And so talk about leadership and how our safety processes in a program that launched for my regular work, we called it back to basics because we wanted to get back to the very fundamental of what does it mean to have a safety program. What does it mean? It means that we don't want anyone hurt. We want everyone to go home safe. And how do we get back to the very basics, the very essence of capturing a program in the safety world that does that? How do we engage our leadership in performing a program that does that. Let's get back to those things, and I will have to give a shout out here to the Kraus Bell group. And I'm sure you've probably heard of them. You've probably read some of the books published, but working with them on significant injuries and fatalities and the prevention thereof, ultimately, start with the things with the highest risk, the ones that have the most critical, terrible outcomes. Let's get something let's get the systems in place that prevent those things. Then we keep working our way through the risk. We want to make sure the catastrophic stuff doesn't happen. Then we move forward and we keep going. And it reminded me of a story kind of related, kind of unrelated, from years ago. I was working in an area, and in that area there was a company that made a very flammable product, and I was talking to the OSHA people, and they had talked about that organization and said, Oh yeah, they're good. About every five years we have a good burn from them, and we're able to go out there and inspect because of that critical issue. And sure enough, it wasn't long after that, they had a building blow up, burn down. There were, unfortunately, injuries, and OSHA was out there. And it made me think about it reminded me, as I was talking about these injuries and these prevention of the big items, the big catastrophic you don't come back from style. Know, injuries and incidents that story hit me like, at what point do you change what you're doing? I mean, when OSHA is openly going, oh, yeah, every five years they're good for this. We know it like clockwork. Somewhere between two and five years is going to happen again, because it happens over and over again, and it's never really fixed, it's never really corrected, and the change just isn't there. I mean, how can a company do that? Well, of course, it's because they're so profitable they can pay the fines and move on. And that's part of we calculate the fines as part of doing business. Oh, that's not a place that I feel like is representative of good leadership. Good leadership looks at how do we do the right thing? It's a moral imperative, and that ultimately what keeps coming to my mind when I read the news and I look at what's happening in the safety world, that it has to first be resonating a moral imperative of what we do as an organization, as we do as a human Being, and part of the program, part of the exercise that we started with, with leadership, was give me a your safety slope. Give me what is your safety value statement, what is your safety vision, what is your personal safety statement? And with a mix of people, you have those who say something very heartfelt, like you go home exactly the way you came back. You go home with 10 fingers, 10 toes, just like you came in with. You have those who write up a very beautiful, very technical sounding part that is very good, very factual, and again, no judgment there. There's no right or wrong answer. I don't want to ever think that, because the short ones are just as powerful and and get attention as the long ones. And the detail and the work that people put into that was really interesting. When you sit down and really ask and have people think about what what is your value statement for safety? What? What is your personal safety statement? And that isn't proprietary, by no means you. It's something interesting to ask leaders and people, what is it out of a safety program that means so much to you? Is it just something you have to do to keep your job, or does it really have meaning for you? And I was very happy. Of course, my the leaders that I work with certainly have all very powerful statements, and I do want to share mine. I think it's only important that if we're going to talk about that, that I make sure I share it in a very public way, and I continue to share it because it shapes. It has shaped, will shape. And I don't think I realized how much is shaped my career until I had to write it down and say it and it's very personal, because my personal safety statement is I never want to have to be in a position where I have to explain to a family or a friend of how someone got hurt. I don't want to be in that situation. I've been in that situation. I have been in a factory situation where an incident happened. I was the one that was there. I was the one that ended up out there, talking about it, having to explain it, and having to go through it, and it was uncomfortable. And I actually want to tell that story to you, and I will do that as we come back into the second half of the podcast, but as I'm setting up for the second half of the leaving you in suspense of the story I am going to tell that has kind of shaped my it happened long time ago, early, very early, in my career, but it shaped a lot of what I've I didn't realize until I thought about it, but it shaped my career and its moments, or its mentorship, or its culture that comes into someone's life that makes that change for them. Hopefully you're part of a leadership that's developing, that leadership group that is developing rather than waiting for the reaction where you have to live through it and see it and experience it before you you build that piece of yourself in a way that sometimes you learn that way. So let's come back on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. I'll tell you the story, and then we'll talk more about getting back to that essence of what it means to create a. That safety inherently in leadership. In an organization

Stinger: 10:06

you are listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast with Dr Mark French,

Commercial: 10:14

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

Mark French: 10:52

Welcome back to the second half of our leading and learning through safety podcast. As always, I want to thank you for joining me always, always happy to have you as part of the leading of safety team. And I just appreciate you being part of this journey. So now let me jump in. Two years ago, a young go getter, safety professional, green as can be safety person, we were doing a startup, and we had someone in a position that really, we didn't expect people to go there. But basically the line was, things were slowing down. People were moving around, getting ready to leave for the evening. Few people finishing up things. And the way the machinery worked, the production line worked is it had a little system that went up and down to adjust for ergonomics in certain spaces. The person was standing there talking to a friend as they're getting ready to leave, and had their hand in a place that we never anticipated that it would be. And when the machine was activated, it pinched their finger, and it was not catastrophic, did not, by no means sever the finger, but it was, there was it was not a great injury. There were a fracture. It was certainly not what I expected. Ambulance ride over leadership team was talking about, how do we respond? What do we do? We're like, okay, we should go to the we step one, we should go to the hospital. And so, of course, I jump in my car, I'm heading over there, and I get over there and and, you know, it's looking back. It's funny, but at the time, I'm looking around like I'm in my shirt, because I love wearing a company logo. That's one thing is, I'm always proud of the the business I'm associated with. So you'll, you'll normally in work attire. I'm wearing a company logo, because I just believe in the brand I'm working for. And I do it and it's, I don't, I love, I don't something about, something about logoed swag, just absolutely gets me just like, excited. Love it. Love low code slack. It's on there. I'm looking around for other people, like, where's all the other like, leaders that we're gonna like, come over and offer support and looking around, looking around, looking around, waiting, waiting, waiting, no one, and then the person who was injured, family starts showing up. I had a big family. She was a very important person in that family, as everyone should be to their family. But big, a big group, because basically, evidently, the message they received was that the person had been hurt and was being sent a hospital from an industrial injury, that they should be fine, but they were at the ER and they should go there. And so they rallied. And there was a lot of people, and I'm sitting in the waiting room watching them file in talking, and I'm the one wearing the company logo. And of course, the questions start coming from all ages, lots of different. I mean, how do you explain to a to a teenager or a kid that a family member of theirs was hurt at work? How do you then translate that over to an adult, a brother, a sister, an aunt, a spouse. Take your pick. How do you explain it to all those when the investigation hasn't been done? You don't know a whole lot other than what you saw during the the emergency medical process and getting them out and getting them taken care of, all you can do is stand there and say you're sorry and commit to fixing it. Sobering, sobering and so young, that's all I could think, is just sorry and I will do everything to fix this. Will never happen again. And what I didn't realize is myself never. Like, this will never happen again. What I was really thinking in my head is, I will, I will do everything now, not to say that it could never happen again. I get that, but thinking in my head like, yeah, I will do whatever to avoid this situation. It's horrible. It was not person recovered, and that's all so lucky, so great, but such a memory burned into my head of just being alone and being the the one to talk on behalf of the organization to a family. Never want to have to do that again. And so when I think about like how easy it is in our world of leadership and safety to get distracted by running the metrics, looking at the end goal, looking at the stuff that we have to do every day. To a friend of mine used to call it feeding the beast. The Corporate beast has to be fed. There's always the reports, there's always the data, whether it's meaningful to the local place, whether it's making a difference, you still have to feed the beast. The corporate beast churned. The corporate beast needs paper, the corporate beast needs data, and you have to feed it. And we feed the beast as safety people. In a lot of ways, we do that we can't forget what we're there, doing it for, and that's where I'm not just preaching because I'm better. I'm saying it because it became a revelation to me that I can't get caught up with all the other details, all the other stuff that goes on every day to forget why we're doing it in the first place. And it's developed systems that keep people from significant harm. And then we keep bringing it down. We keep pulling out the risk, reducing the risk, engineering, substitution, all the things that we talked about in the hierarchy of controls, we're doing those things to pull the risk down, to lower the risk, and to help educate on risk tolerance and not accepting potentially risk that has been around for a long time, and helping those around you see that now we have to recalibrate, not that they're wrong, not that we're we're trying to be the the person like, Oh, you were so silly to ever think that was accepted. No, no, no. We're not here to judge. We're here to open our eyes and go, You know what? We just learned something new today. We just learned, we just discovered we're being educated that that risk is actually bigger than we had previously thought, or whatever, whatever it takes to get that message. And now it's not about the fact that it went unseen. It's the fact now, thank goodness we see it. What do we do about it? What will be the action that we are going to take differently now that we know it's here. I think we get so hung up in defending the way we used to do things. And not I'm I'm talking from, like, General Big appearance of where I've, I've seen and talked to others, we get so wrapped up in defending, like, Oh, please don't blame me for this. Because in that, I think that's indicative of unfortunate business culture out there, of the blame game. Rather than just going, No, we're not here to blame, we're here now that we discovered it, to do something about that's the beauty of good leadership, is there's no blame, there's learning and there's action. That's how we move forward, and that's what we do as part of our leading and learning through safety podcast, is we learn together and we find the action we need to take to bring up our our own leadership, our own working processes. Thanks for joining me on this episode, and until next time we chat, stay safe.

Announcer: 19:02

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.