You Are Doing Things Right When What You Do Is The Same As The Best

How does your safety performance stack up against the best in your industry? Looking to companies like yours, possibly your competitors, allows you to realize safety performance success is achievable. Another thing to look for is how your safety policies stack up to the best in your field.

It turns out that top performers in any field will discover the same processes and procedures that allow them to succeed. Over 30 years ago, I met with my most important mentor in the field of magic. I asked him if he had experienced a certain reaction or phenomenon when performing a particular effect. He said, “Absolutely, in fact, you can expect that since both of us perform in the same venues, restaurants and private parties, we would observe many similar situations and reactions.”  The same applies to safety. If you are becoming one of the best, you are likely to be doing the same activities as the best in your field.

One of my favorite moments is when I am sitting at a safety presentation when the person displays a slide of their company’s safety performance and the safety performance of others in their industry. The top performers on the chart are always a list of my clients. Am I implying that because of me they are top safety performers? No. What I am saying is that the top safety performers do the same behaviors and one of those is bringing in outside speakers to reinforce their safety message. It makes sense they know the power of having a specialist inspire and motivate their employees to embrace watching out for each other. Join the top performing companies and use safety motivational speakers to get your message across.

You Know You Are Getting Good At Something When People Attribute You To Certain Behaviors

Have you ever done something and had someone ask if you learned that at one company. As I have mentioned before, safety motivational speakers have the privilege of seeing many different operations. As I was setting up my laptop at a meeting the other day, someone observed me locking or tethering my computer to the table. They said, “Did you learn that at ExxonMobil?” I was impressed that ExxonMobil’s policy of tethering computers is so well known in their industry that others were aware of the policy.

Safety motivational speakers like me get to go from client to client. It is great when you hear your clients’ policies are known throughout their industry.

Are you a trendsetter? Do your policies, techniques, and procedures set the standard for others to follow?

Within one week, I had been called by someone in their retail division who wanted to talk to me about what I had observed. What I love about this is that it confirms to me the commitment to safety of this organization. It would have been easy for the safety person I called to put the note aside. After all, it wasn’t in their area of responsibility. They called because they hold safety as a value and they don’t want to see anyone sustain an injury.

Have you ever considered yourself a safety motivational speaker? Some people think safety motivational speakers are only people like me who you bring in for a special meeting or occasion. The reality is every person who shares a story, teaches a safety concept, or trains people the safe way to do a task is a safety motivational speaker.

What Challenges Do You Face As A Safety Motivational Speaker?

Every person who stands in front of others to give a presentation wants to be effective and get results. The challenge is most people were never trained as a speaker. I am sure I would not be able to do your job without training. Likewise, to be one of the effective safety motivational speakers in the workplace you need to get training.

Some of the things that training will help you with are:

- How to overcome a fear of speaking,

- How to tell a story effectively,

- How to keep an audience’s attention,

- How do you finish on time,

- How do you get audience participation,

- How to use creativity, and

- How to make topics relevant.

How to be Motivational

The challenge is when you are called on to do a safety presentation or tailgate meeting even though you might have the technical knowledge of the job and even the safety information that will protect your fellow workers, you might not have the speaking skills and confidence to communicate them effectively.

Speaking or presenting is much more than just giving people information. In fact, you and I both know that many times when someone is injured, they knew the safe way to do the task. They just chose not to do it the safest way possible. They did not have the proper motivation to get results. The great news is it is possible to learn the skills of giving an effective safety talk.

The solution! Check out my Dynamic Presentations Institute (Click Here For Information). For three, fun, content-packed days, I will give you the skills you need to effectively convey a message that gets results. Giving people the facts about how to work safely isn’t enough unless you include the motivational reasons why they would want to make use of what you have taught them.

Do you use specialized vehicles in your operation? Then you might consider a vehicle “rodeo.” When I was the safety speaker at Waste Management’s national event many years ago, they had gathered to compete in their annual garbage truck rodeo. I am sure they had a more elegant term for it but that is what I remembered.

They had a route to negotiate and they had to accomplish several tasks safely in order to get the maximum points.

You could set up a forklift rodeo. Imagine a course where the operator would have to move materials and do the types of jobs they would do everyday. Once again, involve as many people as possible as judges, score keepers, etc..

I was a safety speaker at PG&E’s Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Station and after going through security, we were in their large meeting room. I was the scheduled safety speaker for that year’s safety kickoff meeting. They always put on a great show with several different presentations during the day. As we walked into the meeting room, I saw scaffolding set up as a stage and a “runway” similar to what you would expect to see at a fashion show.

They opened the meeting with one of the most creative things I had ever seen. An announcer welcomed everyone to the first annual Personal Protective Equipment fashion show. Worker after worker came out on the catwalk and was introduced as they “modeled” a particular type of PPE. It was fabulous how each of them took on the stopping and posing fashion models do. The audience was cheering them on and having a great time.

They even had a humorous entry as one guy came out in surf shorts, flip flops and a t-shirt. His eye protection was sunglasses and he held a pole you would use in one of the hazardous areas of the plant. Obviously, he was the example of what not to do.

I can assure you when those employees got home they were telling family and friends al about it. Not only were they learning the message they were spreading it to others.

I am sure you have flown someplace in your lifetime. Remember the safety briefing the flight attendants do before take off?  Next safety meeting, have your safety team members stand in the aisle of your meeting room and have some one give the briefing  as they make all the motions just like the flight attendants. Instead of the airplane safety procedures, substitute your policies and procedures.

You can do it humorously as some flight attendants do or you can just play it straight. Either way, people are watching to see what is next.

Remember, if you want to be an effective safety speaker, make safety fun and interesting.

How to find and develop great safety stories that teach a point. Every member of your team can be a successful safety speaker. All they need is a good story and my experience tells me that they already have some great ones.

Get your safety team, leadership, or any group you can gather together. I would recommend giving everyone a pad of paper and pens or pencils.

Plan ahead and have one or two people with whom you have pre-arranged who can tell a story when the time comes. Get everyone sitting around a table or in a circle and tell them you want to find out how many safety stories people in your group know. They can be anything that tells of an experience that relates to safety. Don’t worry if the story has a point at this time. The first task is to elicit as many stories as possible. Use your two pre-arranged people to get the ball rolling. Ask each person to tell a safety story they have heard or that has happened to them.

Once you get started, be sure to take notes. If you believe it won’t keep people from sharing making a recording of the session is useful. You must get permission to record them so keep it on the up and up. In some states, such as California, it is actually illegal to record someone without their knowledge. Remind them the only purpose of the recording is to be able to review it later to look for key points that it teaches.

Make sure you are taking great notes. Record the person’s name for each story and the general topic or working title you want to use.  Also, at this point, only positive feedback is appropriate since you want to encourage participation.

Encourage people to write down additional story ideas as they listen to others. That way when one person finishes their mind won’t go blank. Just a key word or idea will remind them of the story they want to share. Keep going until you run out of time. It is unlikely you will run out of stories if your people have a lot of experience.

Remember to include safety stories from off the job. Safety motivational speakers learn to use many different events to teach safety.

I wonder how many great safety stories there are in your workplace?

Set An Outcome

My first suggestion is to set an outcome for yourself of writing a new safety story every week, every month or for whatever period you would like to challenge yourself. By making this outcome you have set your brain to work on how to achieve it. Keep it simple and make an outcome that you will tell the story to at least one person. This is valuable because it will get reactions and cause you to move forward.

Test It Out – Perfect It As You Go

As a magician, whenever I learn a new trick I quickly try it out on someone. I practice until it’s good enough to fool someone but I don’t perfect the fanciest patter and moves to go along with it at that point. Too often, we stop our success by setting our standard too high and constantly trying to improve something instead of using it. My dad had a great saying, “The better is the enemy of the good.”

My safety stories are constantly improving and my audience helps me accomplish that. If I worked on a story until it was “perfect,” it might never see the light of day. Instead, I tell it and improve it each time.

Stay Committed To Your Outcome

The key to this whole process is commitment. Once I committed to doing a daily blog and decided to focus for an entire month on safety topic ideas, they just seemed to jump out at me. A famous magician and magical inventor, Andre Kole, set a goal of 100 tricks in one year and he did it. I had the privilege of interviewing him once when he was performing for our church at a public event designed to bring in new members. He shared at first it started slow and then the ideas came faster and faster. I’m talking about innovative magic; this guy has designed many tricks for famous magician, David Copperfield.

So, how many safety stories will you come up with this year? Set your outcome and you are on your way. Watch my blog for a great way to come up with stories in a group setting.

Going from reactive to proactive. At a recent meeting, someone questioned a new policy that was being implemented. They wondered if something had occurred to trigger this. The question comes from someone who is used to companies that react and make changes when something has gone wrong. This company is committed to making sure nobody gets hurt. Instead of waiting for an incident they look at their processes and constantly look for ways to do them better and safely. Because of that the answer to the above question was the parent company was being proactive.

The Value of Follow Up

In this case, the new policy was to follow up on certain activities. Follow up sends a great message. It reminds those contractors what is expected from them includes some performance expectations. I believe this is important because sometimes people may assume you are just spouting a safety policy to keep OSHA or some other agency happy but you really don’t mean it. People also will use the above belief as an excuse saying, “I thought they really didn’t expect that.“

Either way, it reminds us how important feedback and paying attention are to the communication process. Just because you have communicated something very clearly to someone it doesn’t mean they understood it the way you meant it.  As a safety speaker, I have found that results are often the best measure.