Kevin Burns Blog

You'll approve $50,000 for a CEO executive coach without blinking. The same $50,000 could develop 100 frontline supervisors with the people and leadership skills they need to be successful. So why doesn't it?

Seven out of eight people don't believe their employers care about them. That's not a soft number. That's the statistic that convinced the CEO of a $3.3 billion company to write a book about it. And the same problem is sitting inside your operation right now. Here's the part nobody in your industry talks about: the word "care" makes senior managers nervous. Say it in a safety meeting and watch the room tighten up. Suddenly everyone's worried they're going to have to look each other in the eyes and talk about their feelings. But you already feel it instantly when someone doesn't care. About you, about the work, about anything. It makes you bristle. So why are we pretending care has no place on the floor? In this week's video, I get into what care actually is. And it's not soft, it's not touchy-feely, and it's not optional. I also get into the three kinds of care every CareFull Supervisor brings to the job. And why the one kind that gets left out of every training program is the one that moves every metric you measure.

There's a high cost of personal relationships you're asking a newly promoted supervisor to give up, but you're not compensating them for it. And it may be the one thing that costs you the most in productivity, safety, and engagement.

Almost every operation has said it at some point. It's probably on a poster in the break room. It gets implied in the Monday meeting, in the safety huddle, in the onboarding package. We're like a family here.

If your safety meetings are falling apart - employees interrupting, side conversations, someone hijacking the agenda - you've probably already tried the obvious fix.

Your company has wellness programs. EAPs, stress reduction platforms, mental health resources, maybe even resilience training.

If your safety numbers aren't moving, your safety program probably isn't the problem.

If you ask most operations managers why they can't find anyone ready to promote, they'll tell you it's a people problem.

Ask most senior managers whether their employees trust their supervisors, and you'll get one of two answers. Either a confident yes or a long pause.

In nearly 30 years of working with industrial companies, almost every single one has admitted the same thing. They have a communications problem, a departmental silo problem, or heaven help them, both.