Kevin Burns Blog

Perhaps your company was doing great from a safety performance standpoint and then suddenly, you had an incident. As a reaction, you double-down on safety process and procedure: have more meetings, enforce the rules more, have more inspections. You know, the usual suspects. Maybe even hire an outside safety speaker to turn up the volume on safety. Your immediate thinking might be that somehow the collective eye of the company was taken off safety for just a moment when it all went south. And now, you feel that you’ve got to get the focus back on safety. Since the problem seems to be safety, the thinking goes, then the solution must be more safety. But nothing could be further from the truth. Safety isn’t the problem. Your safety protocols work. Safety procedures have been tested and passed. Rules and regulations have been discussed with employees ad nauseum. You've never had a better safety program. It works exactly the way it is supposed to. Well then, complacency must have somehow infiltrated the safety program, you might be thinking. If you can fix the complacency, then you can fix the problems that create the incidents in safety. That’s the traditional, linear thinking. And if only it worked that way. But, that’s not entirely where the problem exists. Besides, safety complacency isn’t fixed from the safety side. It’s fixed from the engagement side. So now you are asking how you do that from your front-line position? Read on and watch the video below.

Your favorite high-school teacher and the best boss you ever had have given you all of the clues you will ever need to become more influential in leading your people in safety. But what clues did they leave you? And how will you know which of the things they did will help you be a better leader in safety? Well, let’s start with your favorite boss. Out of all of the bosses you’ve ever had in your lifetime, what is it that makes this particular boss best? Was it particular character traits, mannerisms, the way they spoke to you, the way they approached meetings or coaching sessions? Was it the way they seemed to be focused on your success more than their own? Was it a gem of an idea or observation that you will carry with you as a real learning moment for the rest of your life? They are your favorite for a reason. Now, think about the best teacher you ever had and compare that person to the best boss you ever had. Study your favorite teacher for the same clues as your best boss. Where are they similar? Think about how each of them talked to you, coached you, valued you and pushed you to be a little better. The way they made you the center of the conversations with them. The way they connected with you. It will be no surprise to learn that the things your best boss did and the things your favorite teacher did were closely related. There are things that people do for us that we enjoy, and we warm up to. You have responded positively to the positive influences in your life. You remember those positive influences fondly and are probably grateful for the mark they made on you. How does that affect you in helping your people come to safety more easily? Read on and watch the video below.

Have you ever cleaned out an old box of papers only to discover some old seminar handouts? Maybe one of those cheesy fill-in-the-blanks workbooks or a stack of Powerpoint slide printouts? You can see your own handwritten words in the blanks, but you can’t recall the session nor much of the information. Funny how the meetings or seminars you attend where you take your own notes, you recall much more of the session. Handouts are useless. Qualify that: bad handouts are useless. Especially the fill-in-the-blank handouts. It’s paint-by-numbers for adults. You fill in the blanks as the seminar leader tells you to. You close the handout workbook at the end. You file it in a drawer or a box. The next time you see it, you’ll be cleaning out your desk at retirement. Now, as a point of note, I do actually use one handout - but only for my one-hour keynote presentations. And I've been doing it for twenty years. The ten points in the keynote are written on one side of a single large poster-style postcard. These handouts have value even if you have never attended the session. In fact, some of my old handouts still hang in offices years later. Want to see it? Get a copy of "You Are A Safety Leader" handout here. Now, unless your handouts can be posted in a single document the size of a book cover and can be relevant for years, then you may need to re-think your handouts.

Eat in your favorite restaurant and what you don’t see is all of the conditions and laws that the restaurant must comply with before they get a permit to handle food. Restaurants get regular visits from the Food Safety and Health Inspector. Most restaurants do a pretty good job of not only meeting the bare minimum of the Health Code but in actually surpassing it. Well, the good ones do. There are others that need much more encouragement. In his book, Front of the House: Restaurant Manners, Misbehaviors & Secrets, author Jeff Benjamin presented a key strategy for helping his restaurants to become successful. That strategy is to get every staff member, from front-of-house, to servers, to kitchen staff, to dishwashers, to buy-in to the mission of creating an exceptional experience that makes customers want to come back often. If any member of the staff does not buy-in, it jeopardizes the success of the restaurant. A restaurant isn’t just about food safety, or health guidelines. It’s about how they use those guidelines and protocols to deliver an exceptional experience for the customer. But you want to know how this relates to your safety program. Read on and watch the video below...

Have you ever noticed that no matter how many times you’ve felt that you’re out of gas, out of patience, out of energy, that when someone you care about needs your help, you suddenly have the energy? Bob Dylan said it best. “Just when you feel you have nothing left to give; you find out you were wrong.” After the toughest days or toughest circumstances, when someone who matters needs you, you find the strength to keep going. You give it one more try. You lend one more hand. You make a difference one more time. Because you always have something left to give especially when someone needs your help. The people you care about matter. The important people in your life deserve your best and you never want to disappoint them. So, you keep going, even when it hurts., Even when you’re tired. Even when you just want to rest.

When rules become more important. I read an article recently that offered this bit of wisdom: have you ever noticed that the less money you earn in your job, the more rules there are to follow? It seems that the higher up you go in an organization and the more money you earn, the fewer rules that seem to apply. A CEO appears to have to fewer rules to follow than a front-line employee.

When the information doesn't sink in Do you ever find yourself wondering what more you have to say to get your crews to consistently do safety right? Well, the answer might be easier than you think. Say less.

Focus on building an elite team to beat complacency. Let’s talk about a surefire way to make you far more effective as a leader and to reduce the chance of complacency sneaking in. Focus down. When you focus down, you concern yourself with only your team’s needs. Focus down is not a derogatory term meant to imply your team are beneath you. Focus down means “head down” and focus on the people who need you. Leaders who focus down concern themselves with only their team and making sure their team gets the leader’s full attention. Does it matter to your front-line crew that the long-time manager in Accounting doesn't seem terribly motivated for safety? Or that the new VP of Marketing doesn't seem to share your passion for safety? No, it doesn't. Because to concern yourself with the people outside of your purview, your areas of responsibility, means you are not focused on your team. You are allowing yourself to be distracted.

To perform at the highest levels of safety starts with a shift in mindset. How well does your crew work as a team? Let’s think about the context of that question in relation to safety. There isn’t a safety person or supervisor that doesn’t believe deep down that their crew could be working a little better as a team in safety. The key here, is in your willingness to do something about it. If you want your crew to be more effective in how they come together and look out for each other, then there is one thing you, as their leader, need to get them to do.

Provide a clear and concise vision of where your crew is headed. What's your vision for safety? And don't say "no one gets hurt." That's not a vision - it is a hope strategy - fingers crossed that no one actually does get hurt. Face it, if you're a supervisor, foreman, manager or executive, you're in a leadership role. You're in charge. That means the responsibility for the performance and safety of the team is yours. As a leader, there is one thing you need to get right, and it will solve problems in so many other areas: you need to provide your people with a clear vision and direction. You need to tell them where you're headed. Every member of your team wants to know where the team is going.