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Are you priming your employees to be safe or to take risks?

Priming with wordsImagine you are part of a team that has been assigned a particularly difficult maintenance job.  It will take three craftsmen at least eight hours to complete this task.  Your supervisor (Jeff) is coordinating a long list of planned jobs as part of a large shutdown.  Before you go to the work site, Jeff provides a pre-job brief:

“OK, guys – listen up.  We have to replace the large pump in the northwest corner of the basement.  As you know, it’s in a very tight space with no head room and there isn’t much ventilation or lighting down there – so make sure you hook up a fan and some temporary lighting.  This is a critical path job, so I need you guys to get started on it ASAP.  The guys on the production line will be waiting on this job before they can start back up.  We’re behind on shipping customer orders, so there’s some heat from upper management to get in, get out, and get running. Don’t take any more time than is necessary to get the pump changed out.  Keep any breaks to a minimum.  I know you guys always work at a good pace.  That’s why I teamed you up on this job – to get it done quickly.  I’ll be checking on the job every hour to see if we are on schedule.  If you need anything, get me on the radio and I will rush whatever you need to the work site.  If you run into any problems and aren’t sure what to do – use your judgment and do whatever takes the least amount of time.  I know I can count on you guys to get this job done right and on time. I gotta go … but don’t hesitate to yell if you need anything! 

Oh…. and be safe.” Continue Reading

Safety Conversations: Preventive or Diagnostic Care?

stethoscopeFamily doctor visits usually have one of two purposes: either you are having a routine check-up to make sure that everything is okay with your health (preventive care) or you have an illness and your doctor wants to find the cause (diagnostic care).  We can use health care as a metaphor to consider the approaches that we take when having a safety conversation.

A doctor who is diagnosing an illness or disease relies upon a series of questions and tests.  If she suspects heart disease, for example, she may inquire about the patient’s smoking, eating, and exercise habits.  She will also want to understand the patient’s family health history.  These provide clues that may support her initial diagnosis, which can be confirmed with further testing.

Using this analogy, many supervisors and managers focus on providing diagnostic services when it comes to safety.  After someone has an injury, they ask a series of diagnostic questions, aimed at determining why the injury occurred.

  • What were the factors that may have contributed to the injury?
  • Did they have a history of other injuries?
  • Did they make choices that increased their risk of injury? Continue Reading

Five Ways to Get Useful Feedback

FeedbackAll of us know about the importance of giving and receiving feedback.  If the goal is improved behavior or performance, effective and timely feedback is essential.  Most of what we read on this topic is focused on how to give feedback.  There is considerably less advice on how to get useful feedback from others.

Most of us are not well equipped to receive feedback in a way that encourages people to be truthful.  The person giving the feedback can easily be dissuaded from sharing the truth with you.  The difference between receiving qualified feedback versus unvarnished feedback is determined by your reactions to the person who is giving the feedback.  Without an honest assessment, it is difficult to change our personal behaviors that target our weaknesses.

Peter Bergman recently summarized some key actions that the receiver of feedback can take which will significantly increase the likelihood that the feedback will be useful.  According to Bergman, there are five ways that we can improve the way that we receive feedback.

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How can we increase creativity and engagement?

Many ideasHave you ever been a victim of this circumstance?

Senior leadership issues a clarion call for new ideas.  “We need to generate more revenue!”  Or more likely, “Our costs are too high and we want your input on how to cut our expenses!”  But this is not just any request to submit some ideas into a suggestion box or idea database.  Instead, there is a sense of urgency and perhaps even an expectation that every person contributes.  Groups across the organization are assembled for brainstorming sessions. Perhaps edicts are issued.  “No one can leave the room unless they submit at least 5 ideas.”

What’s the outcome of these sessions?  Often it is disappointing.  Sure, the quantity of ideas is impressive.  But what about the quality?  The same recycled ideas are offered, with nothing offered outside existing paradigms. Continue Reading

Fear! Social phobias can cripple talented people

“Do one thing every day that scares you.”   ―     Eleanor Roosevelt

 

fearAll of us have a fear of some kind.  It is only a matter of what causes our fear and to what degree we are affected.  We are acutely aware of the presence of these fears in our lives.  As leaders, we should also be mindful of potential fears as we encourage others to engage in learning, self-discovery, and continuous improvement.  The following story brought this to life for me.

 

I was working with a group and helping them to learn how to use a structured approach for leading a project team.  One of the elements of using this specific approach (Rapid Action) is that the team leader and all the team members take turns reading aloud a script that walks them through the process.  While unorthodox, it has proven to be a very effective method for getting everyone engaged and in using basic project management techniques.  As the three-day workshop was winding down, one of the participants came forward and wanted to speak with me privately.

Clarence was an operator who had signed up for the class with the intent of using this method to work on a problem with a small team.  I had noticed that he was not participating in the class exercises and I wanted to speak to him about this anyway.  His body language clearly indicated that he was uncomfortable.  I soon learned why Clarence was not engaged.  It was fear.  As he spoke, his words came out in halting phrases…

“I just…just wanted to let…you know that…I really…really want to do this…but…but…I have problems with…with reading…in front of people…and…and…I’m not sure…that…that I can do this,” Clarence stuttered.

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Do you find Joy in your work?

JoyIt’s a sad truth about the workplace: Just 30% of employees are actively committed to doing a good job.

According to Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace report, 50% of employees merely put their time in, while the remaining 20% act out their discontent in counterproductive ways.  These employees are negatively influencing their coworkers, missing days on the job, and driving customers away through poor service. Gallup estimates that the 20% group alone costs the U.S. economy around half a trillion dollars each year.

What’s the reason for the widespread employee disengagement? According to Gallup, poor leadership is a key cause.

Richard Sheridan, Founder of Menlo Innovations, describes an antidote for this lack of enthusiasm.  He claims that “joy” is what is missing from the workplace.  In a recent interview, Sheridan spoke about some of the ways that he purposely designed joy into the way that people work.

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