Kevin Burns Blog

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...

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.

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.

You may cover the check-boxes but you need to ensure employees are going to give safety their attention and focus. Is yours a check-box safety culture? Or a check-in safety culture? What’s the difference? A check-box safety culture is just what the name implies. You go through the checklists and check off the items that you have completed.

Have you fallen into the trap of making statements instead of asking questions? Selling safety to crews can seem overwhelming. Getting your people to see and understand what you see and understand can be frustrating, especially when you don’t achieve the success you think you should have.

You need to connect with employees in driving the things that are important to them. You feel like you’re saying the right things in safety. Some days your safety performance is great. Other days, you wonder if your team was listening at all. And it frustrates you that just when you seem to be making steps forward, a dumb little incident shows up. This is where you can change it up. You need a safety message that resonates, at the right time, saying the right thing so that every employee is working toward common goals in safety. And the goals are not numbers. Stop pitching numbers to your people. Numbers don’t inspire better performance.