Listen in to hear how one of the thickest Scottish accents you’ll ever hear is also one of the most effective communicators.  

Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.

Since you’re listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Welcome to you, you’re in the right place. If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.

Steve Harvey is a an operations-focused Health & Safety professional who is a proud pragmatist.  He is a master of work insights and operational learning, obsessed about understanding the gap between work as imagined and work as done, and he has even featured in a documentary called ‘Doing Safety Differently’.  And he loves having a laugh!

Here’s Steve:


 

Did you catch all of that? What a juicy conversation.  Before my three takeaways, here’s a message from our sponsor:

I have been helping organisations introduce and facilitate learning teams, and other kinds of modern learning practices, for quite some time, with lots of success. The success comes from the right combination of principles (which is knowing why we do something), and practices (which is the who, the what, and the how).

The trouble is that there are PLENTY of people who are really interested and excited about learning teams, for good reason, they can be awesome. Or you might be someone who is just frustrated not getting the engagement you want in risk assessments, with investigations saying the same things and not improving much, or safety committee’s that are, frankly, shitty.

Making change can be hard, especially without a map to guide you.

This is bread and butter for me and the Safety on Tap team. We build the capability in people like you and organisations like yours to learn how to learn better, which improves performance.

We do this through things like our Learning Teams Implementation Case Study Group is a small group of people who I coach to implement learning practices inside their organisation. We have masterminds to help senior leaders embed learning strategies into their overall safety and operational strategy. I facilitate learning teams, and do some 1:1 coaching too.

But you might not be ready for any of that.

Which is why we make epic videos and webinars, so I can help you gradually learn, and grow, and get ready to take action. And if you want help to take that action, to accelerate your impact, then I’ll be here to help. But in the mean time, why not check out our most current webinar. We do these every month or so, so you can join our next one or check out the recording of the last one. Head over to safetyontap.com/learning to get access for free.

Here’s my three takeaways from that chat with Steve Harvey:

Takeaway #1: What if you thought about your work as enabled by and enabling conversations? Steve talked about conversations underpinning so much of his work: asking questions to stimulate conversations.  Sharing photos, for the purpose of starting conversations.  Seeking out stories and telling stories as part of conversations.  Just chatting is not what we were talking about.  It was purposeful, intentional, and useful conversations that lead to learning, and change.  Are conversations an important means of you doing your work? Maybe they should be. 

Takeaway #2: Change is not like bamboo which you can see growing if you look closely.  Change is very hard to see happening in front of your own eyes, and sometimes we set the scene for chance but it happens without any notice, or even without us knowing.  To use Steve’s analogy, change is a million seeds, planted patiently and consistently, ready to germinate when the conditions are right. 

Takeaway #3: Like Steve reflected at the end, ask yourself, ‘Who should I know?’.  Our relationships are our currency, the things of value which make you and everyone else successful.  In my experience we are far less connected, relationship wise, than we have the opportunity to be in our organisations.  So ask yourself, who should I know? And write a list of people who are about you have you join their life. 

Thanks so much for listening.  Until next time, what’s the one thing you’ll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way? Seeya!

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