Episode 203: Changing Behaviors

In this episode of the Leading and Learning Through Safety Podcast, Dr. Mark French explores how leaders can turn good intentions into real behavioral change in the workplace. Drawing on research from the December 2025 issue of the Consulting Psychology Journal, the discussion focuses on practical, evidence-based strategies for helping people move beyond simply understanding safety practices to actually applying them consistently. 

At the center of the conversation is the “Three E’s” model of behavioral change: Enlighten, Encourage, and Enable. Enlightening people is the first step—providing knowledge, awareness, and the rationale behind a policy or process. In safety, this often comes through training or communication about procedures and risks. However, information alone rarely leads to sustained behavior change.

The real impact occurs when leaders move into the next two stages. Encouraging involves setting clear goals, building confidence, and motivating individuals to take action. Leaders help people understand what success looks like and support them in developing the skills needed to reach it.

The final step, Enabling, focuses on making the desired behavior easier to perform. This includes providing tools, reinforcing progress, tracking outcomes, and creating opportunities for practice and social support.

Together, encouragement and enablement form a reinforcing cycle that helps behaviors stick and evolve into long-term cultural change. Dr. French emphasizes that real transformation takes time and consistency, but even small actions can build momentum toward safer, stronger workplaces.

Ultimately, the episode highlights a key leadership challenge: teaching is important—but driving action is what truly changes culture.

Transcript

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This week on the podcast, we're talking about creating successful change. How do we create the behaviors we want? There's some new research that may give us some insight on how to create the changes we want. This week on the podcast, you Mark, 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 Matt, welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. So happy you could join me. Thank you for letting me be part of your podcast rotation this week, I'm excited to move away from some of the doom and gloom of the news about safety like last episode. I'm looking forward to moving back into more of the proactive looking at current journal articles out there that help us become better leaders. And of course, my passion is around learning. Is, how do we mentor? How do we teach? How do we get out and help spread the message of safety, but safety so much more. It's just kind of the way in to really engaging people. But this week looking at the quarterly edition of the consulting psychology journal. This is from December 2025, and in this one, there is a great article called Turning intentions into action, practical evidence based tips for facilitating individual behavioral change. Right in my wheelhouse of the things I absolutely love, and it's basically, how do we find ways to really help people change so we bring them in in. Let's use the example of safety learning, because it's one of the one things that if you're doing any type of learning, you're probably doing safety learning because it's a regulatory requirement. Now, doesn't necessarily mean that it's working great, but as from before, we talked about any safety training is better than none, because still to this day, there are organizations who provide zero safety training. And so if you're doing something, it's better than nothing. And but how do we take it, if you're given the time, if you're given that sliver to go out and do that safety training, how do we maximize every minute? How do we really try to create meaningful behavioral change? Because that's what we want. We want people to hear the message, understand the message, and then being being able to practice that message, and then when they get really good at it, being able to help others share and practice that message. That's what learning is about. It's the same thing when we're even in out and when we learn something new, we love to share it. There's the word of the day calendar, for example, where people learn a new word and try to use it every day, or they hear a really interesting news article, or see something on TV, or even watch a really good TV show, it creates such a change and emotional reaction that they want to share. Wouldn't it be great if they we did, could do the same thing with safety or with any people based tool of leadership or or even teamwork or something of that sort. And in this case, I love the word safety, because if we can help protect people in the workplace, we're doing something above and beyond what's really going on. Because the truth of the matter is, it's still a big issue, and it's, it's bigger than than, really what the news lets it out to be of how many people get hurt or lose their life at a workplace in the United States every day. So if we can get people as five. Up to share about safety as they do about their favorite show. We're doing something now that is certainly a pie in the sky goal. It is something I get. It probably not going to be that unless something really happens. But let's get back to the point here, and that is that this article looks at some really practical based information on how we turn that intention of putting someone in a classroom or putting out information to learn, and how do we turn it into action? How do we actually, not only did they hear it, but they do something with it, which is important, I can learn doesn't mean that I'm going to do anything about it. It's It's empathy and action. It is the process of execution. It's going out and doing, which is truly the real work that has to be done, is not that most people understand the safety processes. You ask the question, do you know that people shouldn't walk under a piece of equipment? Yeah, well, why is that person walking underneath it? Oh, there they go again. It's not turning it into action. Yeah, I know the rule. I've heard the rule, how do I action it so that it actually happens? Well, let's move into the article a little bit here. And what I really like is what they look at in this behavioral change theory, and they look at the threes, the individual behavioral change. How does it happen? How do they find these what is the theory of their learning process behind it, and what it's what they call the three E's, or the science of behavioral change in the 3e are, enlighten, encourage, and enable. So enlighten someone, give them the information, encourage them. Show them that it can be done. Motivate them, go, go, you can do this. And then we give them the right tools. We make it easier to do the right thing, we make it easier or empower them, enable them to go and do it. And what I love about this model is that encourage and enable self, sustain each other. Enlighten is step one, and it's a good first step, but it sets out on its own. It is an individual thing that once you do it, there's really not a whole lot. You do more with that. You give the information. So what does enlighten mean? It means that it's awareness, it's the readiness for change, it's the application for intentional change. So we're going to make a change. Here's how we're going to do it sounds just like a safety policy. Sounds just like a safety training. Here's what it is, here's how you do it in a very rough example, lockout tagout. Here's what lockout tagout means. Here's what you're going to do. Here's the steps that are involved in a lockout tagout. Very, very simple example there. But when we move into encourage and enable, that's when we actually get into these items that sustain the behavior. They work together, and they have to continually drive each other into progressive improvement, and that's where the real action is for us as the facilitators, us as the person who's coming in, doing the learning. And in some ways, why I use the consulting psychology journal is one, safety feels like a lot of time. We're consultants. We don't have any real authority. It's influential authority. Yeah, we work for the company. We're there, but we're really consulting all the time. We're in the field, talking to people, giving them advice. Yeah, we have some teeth. Of course we do. We have some motivation. But if you really step back and look at the similarities between a consultant and how a lot of our work in the field with education, now, I know a lot of the work is not but when I look at just the if you take one piece of the safety professional. That's the learning and development piece. It does feel like a little bit of consulting. We're looking at the research. We're creating it, we're delivering it, we're following up on it, but it really requires someone else to really have the teeth for it, like the supervisor, to enforce. So what we can do is we can enlighten, we can encourage and we can help enable. We have the ability to do those things as influencers of the safety program, as people who are there leading it now, as a leader or a safety professional, if you're wanting someone to make an intentional behavioral change at work, maybe it's a quality issue, maybe it's productivity, maybe it's cost savings, it's it functions the same way we're trying to get an intentional behavioral change from someone, and there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. There's we can't rule by fear. What we can do, though, in this case, is we're going to. Teach, we're going to encourage them. We're going to enable them. Let's take a deeper look at that cycle of encourage and enable. That's where the real work comes in. That's where we really drive and really create a long term because cultural change doesn't happen overnight. This long term process of intentional behavioral change. Let's talk more about that on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast, humanizing the workplace. It is 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 TS da consulting.com Welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. This week, we're looking at the consulting psychology journal, December 2025, and in this is a great article about successful behavior change. And once we enlighten the three E's, enlighten, encourage, enable, we move into encourage. We set what the goal is. What goal do we want to accomplish? What are the specific plans that target this change? What can we do to really drive it, and how do we build the skills necessary to make the change? Enable rewarding for successful change, tracking it and follow up on the progress. Social support and practice deliberate practice of the new behavior. Go out and see it, go out and practice it together, talk about it. Where do we? Where do we do the lockout? Where? How do we turn it? Which is part of the law anyway, of having to demonstrate, but it fits when done right. It actually fits very well into a learning model and behavior change model and influence. So when we start to do encouraging and enabling, when we have the goals and help people go toward the goals, when done correctly, when done positively, when done with good, positive intent and intention to the work itself sustains. It starts to create a continuous improvement cycle, because you're not re enlightening, you've given the information, and the information may tweak, but generally, there's one way you want to go. We want this de energized, continuing with my very rudimentary LockOut Tag out example. In that case, we we're not going to re enlighten. We're going to continue to give that information, but it doesn't change once they've got the point. They've got the point. Now we still have to train on it, but it's not going to re enlighten. They have the information where the real work begins is encouraging and enabling. How do we set the goals? How do we intentionally go out and help people go out and learn and do it and perform it over and over again and continue to make it better and better and better. And with this part of it, when the second stage comes up, we want to make sure that we're using good goals, that we're setting strong goals for people to understand how we want them to accomplish it, making sure we're clear on not just the what we want, but how we're going to get there, and also the why is creating these changes and creating this behavior part that we want to ultimately create stability in what they're doing, so that we can create long term change. And that I love about looking at this model of, how do we intentionally make those actions? Because a lot of times when we talk about in, and I step back into more of an academic safety psychology, looking at things of that sort, it's really interesting when we talk about empathy, and we talk about building empathy, is that it doesn't mean that we have action and so we can understand the items that are happening in safety. And I use the word empathy because it comes up when we try to do the look, it can happen. Here's someone. Did happen to and that does work, because it does create that reality of that it's all risk, it's all a roll of the dice, it's all chance. And so with empathy does not come the inherent part of action. Action is created in this enlighten, encourage and able. When we do that, we're hopefully creating action. That's the whole the whole point behind it is to create pieces of action that will drive momentum. And that's a lot of words there. Teaching alone is not as effective as getting the action. And we know that. We know that we can stand up in front of a class in front of workers, we can deliver it online. We can deliver it live. We can put it on a screen. We can make a video. We can teach all day long, and they can learn. And we can go back and ask, did you understand we can give them a quiz. Do you understand it? The real work that we have in the safety profession and leadership world is, how do we, once we teach it and they understand it, how do we make sure it's actually happening? And a lot of the times, what I have seen is this is where it falls apart, because it's hard one to go out and actually make sure that the changes are happening and to strategically have that change become effective and actionable, to be able to put work, real work, behind it, it's hard. I'm not. I make it sound so easy because it excites me to think about this perfect world of where this would work so well if we had all the time and all the things to be able to do it. But we're not. We're all always resource strapped, whether it be money, time, effort. How many people we have? We can't just cut ourselves in half over and over again and run out there as 100 of us and do it, it? There's limitations to the effort that we can put into it, and so what we have to rely on is a system, or at least a process, that hopefully begins to drive action. It's small. Actions can lead to bigger actions. It's the snowball effect. If we have a good continuous improvement cycle, if we start small, it's better than not starting at all again. Some safety training is better than no safety training. It's a we at least are going the right direction, right there, we're doing good work, and then we look at how we encourage people to keep doing the right work, and then we enable them to do the right work, and we start to have that cycle that really deep and slow moving. But again, we're talking about culture. We're talking about behavior, and at the very least, at the very fastest of research, I've found that's at minimum six months, but usually it's so much longer to create real change in behavior. So we have to be patient. We have to let it work. We have to give the enlightenment. We have to give the encouragement. We have to make it easier to do the right thing. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. As always, I am thrilled to have you with me. Super excited about this article. I was glad to be able to share some of the research that's coming out of the psychological bodies to help us really drive great change, change that saves people, change that makes a difference in people's lives. Again. Thanks for joining me, and until next time we chat, stay safe. You. Matt, 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.