Not On or To Them, but FOR Them!

I got my first taste of behavior-based safety in late spring or early summer of 1998. Cindy and I had only been dating a few months at that point so I was still teetering on the edge to say the least… By the time I went through the two day training process required to conduct behavioral observations in January ‘99, we were nearly a year into a pretty solid relationship so some of my extremely rough edges were beginning to get at least a little bit smoother. Looking back, I can see so many places where God’s hand was moving in my life at that time but I’ll save those stories for another time.

For now, I’d like to share a subtle but crucial lesson that I probably should have pulled away from those two days of training. Truth be told, it took a few years for me to really get it!

You may have heard me reference this before but I’ll hash it out here again. One of the core tenets of behavior-based safety is that employees are trained to watch their peers work for 10-15 minutes, record what they see on a sheet of paper, then provide feedback to the employee they’ve been watching with regards to what they believe helps them avoid injury as well as anything they’ve noticed that may put the employee at risk of injury. Since these observations were announced and completely confidential, the thought process was that the employee being watched wouldn’t intentionally deviate from their normal routine. While that likely seems odd, I’ll fight the urge to go into significant detail about why the very strategic approach we were using was actually very effective in achieving this…

The part I’ll call your attention to here really ties back to the verbiage we were using and how that had a tangible impact on how we approached those observations as well as the process as a whole.

In the first few years I was involved in that process, my primary role was running a stamping press in the facility’s parts fabrication department. Performing the observations was somewhat voluntary but I was expected to complete several each month since I had volunteered. By the time I accepted a position with responsibility for leading the entire process for our plant in early ‘01, I had probably done 100 or so observations. It wasn’t until a year or two into that role where something finally clicked for me.

To that point, every observation I had done personally or assigned to one of the volunteers working with me was done ON or TO the employee who was being observed. Doing those observations ON or TO someone drove an emphasis of it being a task that needed to be completed in order to achieve a specified result. And quite frankly, that result was almost always tied to meeting our monthly target total observation sheets submitted and logged at the site and reported back to our corporate office.

If you had to guess, how much value would you think someone who had one of those observations done ON them or TO them gained from the experience?

When most every observer approached the task as a transaction that had to be completed, I can’t point to much tangible value that anyone received directly. If reasonable data was collected during the observation, there was a chance that it could be used in a formal action plan later on but that was a slim chance and even then it may be months down the road.

When we changed our approach from doing observations ON or TO our coworkers to doing them FOR our coworkers, our entire perspective changed - and so did the results of the entire process! Our mindset for that 10-15 observation went from checking a box for the task being complete to providing a service for a peer that could quite possibly prevent them from being injured. This small change in the words we used made a tremendous impact on how we viewed what we were doing!

Over the last few posts, we’ve dug into ways we can be sure we’re exceeding expectations for each individual we serve. Even after being extremely clear about what we intend to provide and asking questions to get a solid understanding of what they truly expect, we can still miss the mark if we approach the process as a transaction rather than a way we can serve them. I continue to study material from a gentleman I was introduced to recently, Jeff Henderson, where he emphasizes the importance of showing what we’re FOR rather than everything we may be AGAINST.

It’s extremely important for us to do all we can to make sure our intentions align with the perception of the person we’re serving if there’s any chance of genuinely exceeding expectations. Through the next few posts, we’ll take a look at how we can each perceive things different based on our primary behavioral styles. For now though, I’d challenge you to really think about how you can be more intentional in showing each person you serve that you’re FOR them. When we do this, we should be well on our way to exceeding their expectations!