Ep195 Tune-in to feedback, with Andrew Barrett

LISTEN:

What words do you know people use to describe you, or your team? Not words you’d like them to say, but words they have actually said and you’ve heard directly or second hand?

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.

Tune in carefully to feedback….

There’s this email I got not long ago. 

It was an introduction from a client to someone in their network.

The intro is nice.

The intro has a purpose.

But what caught my attention was a few words that are really valuable feedback for me:

– Humble.

– He won’t try to sell you stuff at all.

– He will quickly tell you if he can’t help you.

These three tid-bits of feedback are super helpful for me because they reinforce what I have been explicitly and implicitly trying to do for the past 2 years after I read Ed Schein’s Humble Inquiry and Humble Consulting.

I hope Ed would smile to hear this.

But his smile isn’t nearly as big as mine, to hear other people talking about me like that confirms that my intentional focus on those things is becoming explicit in the way I arrive in the world, and that propagates a reputation using language I deliberately crafted.

Back to you…

What kinds of specific goals or aspirations have you been working on? Do you have any?

I mean things to do with your professional practice, the subtle and nuanced things.

(Not ‘This year I want to do a Grad. Cert. in XYZ).

And finally, do you listen and watch carefully for the small signals from others, the feedback which tells you whether you are making progress towards those goals?

An enormous amount of the health and safety professionals I work with lament the lack of feedback.

Maybe what’s lacking is clarity of goals, intentional action, and carefully attention to what others are already saying about you.

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?

Before you go, keep listening, I have a gift for you.  Seeya!

You’ve probably heard me talk about learning teams, and might be wondering what’s that all about. Learning teams are an increasingly popular practical activity to help your organisation to learn better, in order to improve performance.

It’s not an investigation, it’s not a risk assessment, and it’s not a committee meeting – but a learning team approach can help to learn from the past, to anticipate the future, and to engage effectively with people all over your organisation or supply chain.

There’s not one way to do learning teams but some critical principles which will enable you to facilitate better learning whatever your situation.

I’ve created a few short videos which explain What is a learning team? If you’re interested visit safetyontap.com/what