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How to Apply a Learning Mentality to Your Safety Conversations
Posted July 2, 2024
When it comes to safety, we need to rethink how we learn. The traditional approach involved inquiries following near-misses or incidents to determine root cause (or who to blame). But learning needs to be ongoing in order to improve, not something that only happens after something goes wrong. When we pay attention to how work is done, even when everything is going well and seemingly safely, we shift to a human and organizational performance mindset.
In some cases, this means our leaders are asking questions differently and more frequently. You can imagine how workers may respond to this change in leader behavior. Sometimes, they get antsy when they see us coming. Am I in trouble? Can I be honest? What will happen if I make a mistake? These are all common concerns borne from our old ways of learning. Creating comfort in the conversation – and preventing defensiveness – takes empathy and patience as people experience the new way. We must build trust that our intentions are sincere, and the outcomes will benefit everyone.
While there are many ways to build trust, one method is to structure our questions to be open-ended, curious, and context-seeking. We want to steer clear from close-ended, or check-the-box, questions, that could be answered with a simple “Yes” or “No.” Be careful to avoid subtly accusative questions, or tones that suggest disappointment or anger.
Using operational learning questions places the focus on gaining insight from the expert, the worker, and conveys that we’re interested in learning how “normal work” is completed. Normal work is a term to describe how work gets done; what people do according to what makes sense to them. This may be a more efficient way than what is detailed in the standard operating procedure, or it can be a risky deviation. Uncovering any risky deviations provides the employee with immediate learning opportunities from us, and provides us with immediate learning opportunities to create safeguards for the employee, as well as for the next worker operating in that role. Learning from the worker about potential gains in efficiency provides opportunities to showcase their wisdom and innovation.
Here are some ways to shift traditional questions that may spark defensiveness into an operational learning approach:
(Expect) DEFENSIVENESS
Why did you use the wrong tool? |
Did you follow the procedure? |
Why did you make this mistake? |
What is it that you’re not telling me? |
What did your teammate fail to do? |
What was it that they should have done? |
Why didn’t you tell me this before now?! |
Do you know the safety key points for this task? |
What training have you had? |
What was the last near miss in this area? |
Have you put a Continuous Improvement Card on the board this month? |
(Initiate) ENGAGEMENT
What makes this job difficult? |
How would you improve this process? |
Please help me understand your task. |
What could happen in your role that might lead to a safety risk? |
What your teammate did was [X]. Let’s ask what led them to do it that way. |
What was it that you expected them to do? |
What can I do to make it easier for you to tell me things like this sooner? |
What daily challenges do you address in your job that could impact safety? |
If I was doing this job for the first time, what would you want me to know to stay safe? |
What’s one thing your team does that makes your job safer that we should share with others? |
What more can we do to keep everyone safe? |
Be directional. Ask for what you want more of – proactive, thoughtful, solution-oriented insights that point to safety – as opposed to doubling down on what went wrong.
With operational learning questions based on human and organizational performance, we invite news that keeps us all going Safely Home. Everyone. Every day.™
Rossina Gil, MAIS, MSOD
Senior Consultant, Caterpillar Safety Services
Rossina Gil is a Senior Consultant for Caterpillar Safety Services. Her responsibilities include delivering workshops to Caterpillar customers and dealers, as well as our own facilities, distributors and subsidiaries. Rossina has spent over 20 years in leadership and organization development, and executive coaching across multiple industries and continents. She continues to serve as a lecturer for Pepperdine Graziadio School of Business (Malibu, Calif., USA), where her book on culture is required learning for its graduate course on global business strategy.