Episode 178: Listen to Hear

In this episode of the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast, Dr. Mark French explores the critical role of listening in leadership, particularly within safety-focused environments. The episode opens with a reflection on how genuine listening is often overlooked yet essential to inclusive and effective leadership. Dr. French emphasizes that active listening fosters open communication, trust, and ultimately, safer workplaces.

He shares a personal story about his child’s long-standing eye issues, which were finally addressed when a provider truly listened—leading to a proper diagnosis and treatment. This moment sparked deeper reflection on how often concerns are voiced but dismissed or inadequately addressed, especially in professional settings. He recounts a safety leadership debrief where communication gaps became apparent, reinforcing the idea that hearing without action is not truly listening.

French discusses a tragic incident where a worker voiced feeling unsafe, only to be ignored by a supervisor—resulting in a fatality. This example underscores the moral and operational importance of responsive listening in safety leadership.

He introduces the concept of "closing the communication loop," where leaders acknowledge concerns, clarify understanding, and take visible action—even if the outcome isn’t perfect. Through humorous and humble examples, he illustrates both successful and failed listening efforts from his own career.

The episode concludes with a call to action: leaders must intentionally listen without bias, verify understanding, and engage meaningfully. True leadership begins with making others feel heard and safe, creating a foundation for trust and organizational growth.

Transcript

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This week on the leading and learning through safety podcast, we're going to talk about listening both the art and the science, and how important it is for us as leaders in the Lost methods that don't seem to be there as often as it should be. This week on the podcast. 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, hello and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety Podcast. So happy you've joined me. Welcome again. I'm always so thrilled to know I'm part of your podcast rotation. So thank you. This is one of my great, wonderful hobbies, that this is so much fun. I love it. I'm just talking, and we're having a great time together, and it's all good times this week. What's interesting is that you're listening to a podcast, and I'm going to talk about listening, the psychology behind it, the methodology, the reasons it's so critical, and it appears to be so lost in so many ways. And I think it's there's a lot of reasons why. I want to talk about a few of those reasons why, and that's what we're going to explore. Because, to me, that is the first step of really inclusive, strong leadership, is the ability to listen, the ability to hear what's actually being said and respond appropriately to it. And now there's a lot to that. We're not going to unpack nearly everything we need to in that, but we're going to try. We're going to unpack as much as we can in this wonderful time that we have together. What brought this on? Why did I start thinking about listening. Well, I was in part of a safety leadership kind of debrief, and of course, my theory has been, I think there's a lot of science that can support it, is that good leadership is good safety. And I hear that from other people, and I've seen it, and I've seen it work, and I've read research articles on it, that if you want to really start building strong leadership, start with safety. It's a moral imperative. Everybody should care. It's an easy in and it creates so many other opportunities for good leadership if you do safety right. And one of the first fundamentals that I see that gets missed is good listening is actually hearing what's being said and taking the time to hear what is being said. Now, actually, it was a personal item that made me think and appreciate more and more good listening. And I'm I'll be honest, I'm gonna put that out there. First of all, I am, I'm good. I could be a lot better at listening and focusing. And I think about the I think about Mr. Rogers, and I think about listening and the importance of that communication. And there was, I'm gonna butcher this, but he was talking to someone. They asked something along the lines of, who's most important to you right now? And it was something along the lines of, you are because me and you are having the interaction right now. So you're the most important thing in my world at this moment, because me and you are having that connection. Yes, it should feel that way, it should feel that when you're having that small group, that one on one, that they are important, that we all are important, that our voices are being heard, that we are being seen for who we are and what we're trying to accomplish in this time, in this moment. And so now I'm going to go back and tell the. Story I keep missing that, don't i? So this week, my child had an eye appointment. They had been having some trouble with their eyes for quite some time, and they've been trying to explain it to other people, that there's double vision, that there's issues, that there's an optometrist after optometrist, or like, I use any glasses or empty glasses or check your eyes. We're gonna do this and just boom, boom, boom, boom, you're out. Bang, here's your glasses. Move on. Move on with your life. And the issues continued and continued, and we finally found one that I liked. I had to get my first pair of glasses this past year, and I really liked the people I went to, so when they were eligible for their next appointment, we took them there, because I tried some new people, and I felt like they were they took a lot of time, more time than I expected them to take with me, which was really nice. My first time. I didn't like okay, they were heard. They asked good questions. I wasn't there. I heard the story through my wife and my child of just how good it was, of how good it was that someone took a little bit of extra time to hear and to listen. And you know what happened? They needed prisms instead of regular lenses. Now, whatever that is, but it's supposed to help with all the symptoms, the way that things are happening. And of course, being my child, the funniest thing they dead panned when they were asked, Do you wear your glasses all the time? And of course, they answered, except when I sleep. Oh, man, it runs strong and with the with the genetics here, doesn't it? When do you not wear your glasses? Well, I'll wear them all the time, unless I'm sleeping, and then I don't really need them anymore. Anyway. What was so important? There? It was a listening. Now there's been some other things, personally and that we've had some trouble with, with different communities, medical and such, of just not hearing and during this week, of getting a debrief on some leadership surveys and data that was coming back to us, what I realized is what we were trying to transform first is listening open communication channels. Effective. Open communication channels. It's one thing to allow communication to flow. That's a great start. It's flowing. Great. What are you doing with it? And I even found a couple of examples that kind of embarrassed me when they were talking about, hey, we hear people talking about when we ask them, What is the thing that you worry about the most? And they name something, and I go, I don't that's not a traditional safety thing that I that's not lockout, that's not traffic control, that's not needing guarding that in and so I kind of hesitated when I heard it, and I Not that I ever forgot it, but I didn't act and and I didn't really think, I wasn't really sure even how to act. So it's probably why, because I didn't know what to do in that situation, or or what remedy I could offer, and what did I really hear it if I didn't acknowledge and then maybe try something, or even even close a loop of going, I'm not sure I know what to do. Do you have any ideas? Instead, I accepted the information, I logged the information, and basically moved on. I heard, that's not bad, at least I heard I didn't completely ignore it, but it didn't close that communication loop. And so is that really effective listening if I didn't register it, if I didn't do something with it like I should. And so here we are. I'm talking about listening. I'm talking about hearing and what it matters for good leadership, and how many times we don't see it in safety. And I go back to the one example from months ago of a fatality, of where a worker was in a trench, came out of the trench, told the supervisor he felt unsafe. Supervisor said, it's fine, get back in there, and then it collapsed and killed the worker. Now that that feels criminal for one but do you think that anyone has heard there that there's any communication, or is it fundamentally, absolutely broken? It is ineffective and it's broken. And that is not leadership that is not even close to what leadership should be. And it begins with listening. What is it that is happening in this organization that is working, that is not working, and how do we address it now? Not everything is going to be addressed. I will be perfectly honest. Sometimes there is communication that comes to me that I do everything I can not to roll my eyes and let my eyebrows crawl up into my hairline where I'm like, what? There's no way we can do that, and we're not going to do that. It. And even now in HR, it even takes it further, like in safety, I remember, Hey, Mark, the the toilet paper problem, or the any, take your pick, it was a safety issue, and we had to fix it. HR, it expands. I didn't think that was possible, but it does, and it expands. But we listen and we how do we show that we've heard that is the key. How do we demonstrate that I have heard your concern and either A, I'm going to do something, or B, I'm not. I'm going to close this and move on. Let's talk about the action that comes from hearing, and some tips and tricks on better listening, on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast 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 at you are listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast with Dr Mark French, and here we are at the second half already in the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. This week, we're talking about listening and actively listening, taking the time to take the message, written, verbal, anything, however communication will come, taking it and being able to do something with it actively. When information is conveyed, we may make some assumptions based on our own. Whatever is happening in our day, whatever has been going on will affect the message we hear, unless it's exceptionally, exceptionally clear. We'll put some bias on that. We'll put our own spin on it. Where is this coming from? Maybe they're having same things. Maybe there's something happening when someone comes to us. I'll use a very simple safety example. Maybe there need some different PPE. And what we hear is, I need PPE, so you give them the same old PPE that we've always given. Here's your safety glasses. Well, what they're trying to tell you is, maybe they're foggy, maybe they don't fit. Maybe there's an issue with that style. Maybe they need over glasses, something else could be there and again. Simple example, if we're already making our decisions for already having that bias in our listening, we will react quickly. And we see this in a lot of places where we try to find the simplest answer, the quickest answer, to get it going and to move on, and in this case, repeating, or when you hear it coming back and going, what I'm hearing is that you need new PPE, and the person may go, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is what I have isn't working, or what I have is is not good for me, or what I have could be different by acknowledging that I hear what you're saying. What I am hearing you say is that you just need PPE, when the truth is, when you repeat it and you go, here's what I'm about to try to fix for you, you repeat it, and the person goes, No, what I'm really needing is that. And he Oh, okay, now we understand. You know what? That's active listening. I hear your concern. I hear that you are not happy about that. So I'll give you a great example from back in my food days, working at a facility, and I had a group of ladies come into my office, and I could see they were very, very agitated. And basically what was happening is they had an really old couch in the bathroom that they could sit on during, I guess, if they needed a break, if they needed to rest, they could go off into the bathroom and sit on this couch. We sanitation was getting rid of it, and they were not happy about their resting couch just disappearing. And I could have i One was stunned, but the good news is I listened because I didn't know what else to do when all else fails. Nod your head and listen and really keep listening and taking it in to feed me to figure at least to get you some time to figure out what you should do about it. So I asked questions. Why was it there? When did it show up? Why are they telling you that it's leaving? And I would recap that, so you're telling me that they're saying it's a sanitation hazard. You're telling me that it's you. Old and needs to be getting rotten rid of you're saying that you need a place to rest. And you're saying you need these things. Is that, what am I hearing you correctly, that you're unhappy because of these things. They're happening because of this event sequence. And then what you're really wanting, like, what do you want is somewhere to sit comfortably and rest? And I don't think I solved it. I'm almost certain I didn't solve it to what they wanted, because they wanted their couch or a new couch, and what they ended up with was a little bit more comfortable break room chairs. Because I explained. I said, you know, there's, not really, as a safety manager, there's not much I can do there. There's really not a law or guidance or a policy or even a best practice. Actually, I said that sounds kind of rough, that we don't really want you sitting on this old, dirty couch in a food plant, and honestly, I don't think it's approved, and I'd be worried what if it broke. I don't want you to get hurt while you're on this thing, and so we still got rid of it, and I don't think they were happy. What I did do was try to find some better break room and some better just places for them to read. Make sure it was Is it too hot, too cold? What would give it more comfort, so that you would have a better place to do that, rather than on that couch in the bathroom. And not, not that it was, it was certainly not to there, but it was the closing of the loop that I at least felt that I had done well. And it's one of the these are one of the few examples I can give where I actually did this the right way. I actually listened, recapped, took action, so I got a winning example. I can also cite so many that I look back on and go, you know, I didn't hear that right, and I didn't do that right, and I didn't even didn't put the time I should have to it. But in this case, it's an example of where I knew I couldn't do anything. There was they were, in my opinion, and I think in the opinion of the company, in an opinion of a lot of things, they weren't going to win that one, it was not they, they were not in the right there. But there were other things we could do based on what is it that made that special and and of course, there was a little bit of the like, it was a place to go and kind of hide, if you could step off and away for a little bit. But we didn't dress that. I didn't go there. What is it about listening that makes it so powerful is the fact that you you've met the person where they are and safety is, is absolutely the best way to be getting what what else makes such a powerful statement in anyone's life. Then I hear you about the ways that you can get hurt. I hear you about the things that you need to make you feel safe in this workplace. And I am going to do something. I am going to take an action because of what you have said. I have met you in this place of vulnerability. I have met you where you're standing, where you were most vulnerable and willing to say something. And it sends a message, if I do nothing, why bring it forward? If I actually do something, or actually respond and hear them where they are and meet them where they are. They will meet me there again, and we will have conversations. We will learn about our organization, and ultimately, we will improve our organization. And if we improve communication, we learn about the very roots of safety in our culture, and we're able to address them at the very fundamental point of where they happen in the organization. It's so important that we take the time to truly hear, to truly listen. And so when people come to us and they start talking to us, take the time physically focus. Turn the other things off, look, listen, recap, be able to engage, and these are tips I'm taking with me too. So 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.