How to give a knockout safety talk

One of the challenges many senior leaders express to us is the ability to create a safety speech (or public address) that: isn’t boring, isn’t just a rehash of corporate philosophy or edicts, and demonstrates they genuinely value the safety of their workers ahead of financial, sales or production performance. Kevin Obermuller, Managing Partner, Leadership Dimensions explains how.

Most leaders recognise the need for clarity on why and what is expected, and to provide some opportunity for audience engagement and participation. However, the doing of it is often seen as challenging, particularly engaging and encouraging participation of the audience in a way that doesn’t lead to derision or hostility, especially where changes to work practice are required.

Based on social psychology research (Robert Cialdini - Psychology of Influence - Commitment and Consistency), when someone (a leader) publicly shares a particular view with those around them, they become much more likely to behave consistently with that point of view, even if they did not previously feel that way.

Having been privileged to watch and listen to many senior leaders, both good and bad, a key difference that can be observed is those who gain the best engagement from their audience and increased commitment towards the philosophies, values, actions and behaviours being presented are when they overtly demonstrate their personal conviction towards safety in their delivery.

They speak about what safety means to them, what it looks like to them and what they are doing about it at a very personal level and are clear on how they measure their performance. This helps them address the key credibility challenge and often well-deserved cynicism that they value excellence in safety performance ahead of financial, sales or production performance.

As leaders, they demonstrate a strong personal determination to be deeply invested in the safety activities that they speak about. They always address and speak about safety when addressing groups, even when that isn’t the main topic of their meeting. They talk about safety whenever they talk about overall business performance, warts and all, recent events, successes and failures. This helps safety come alive in the organisation. They also have a strong commitment to acknowledge and recognise those actively engaged in ensuring that safety continues to be as effective as it can be in the workplace. They know that ensuring that they act as a role model, like behaving safely at all times, complying with rules, watching others, helping identify at risk behaviour and addressing it immediately, identifying hazards, reporting on them and working with others to eliminate them - all these visible activities will do more than simply speaking about a safe culture in the workplace.

When speaking, they follow the KISS principle, Keep It Short and Simple. They create a consistent message that can be repeated throughout the business year, have goals that are tangible, meaningful and relevant; goals that can be measured and reported back; goals that people can understand; goals that are recognised as achievement towards a safer culture, not just statistics.

One of the biggest differences between leaders that capture the hearts and minds of their audiences and those going through the motions (the ‘expected speech’) is the framing and context of the purpose behind it.

It’s that hollow speech that talks about needing to improve safety performance, the need to meet the corporate vision or the need to change the culture without practical actions or performance measures that can be understood and followed. It’s about measures that concentrate purely on lag indicators such as LTIs or Near Misses with no context of how the safety program is addressing them which is likely to have people concentrating on the wrong things.

Safety is more than statistics, it is about people; it is personal - people need to know what they need to do, not just what they shouldn’t do. Those leaders who influence most positively ensure that such messages are integrated throughout their speech.

Great influencers (leaders) tell stories. The stories may be theirs or they may have come from others but they personalise them and share the effect the stories had on them, either directly or indirectly. Luckily for many senior leaders, they have never had a case where they have had to visit an employee’s family to tell them that their loved one won’t be home for a while, or ever. However, they can tell stories of others who have gone through that experience and through this show that it is something they never want to have workers, their families or them endure ‘on their watch’.

Other leaders tell of personal injury; one recently was a chief financial officer who shared a story about walking while texting in the office car park, twisting his ankle and not being able to walk. He ended up with a snapped tendon. His opening line was “people in offices believe the only injuries they are likely to receive are paper cuts. Let me tell you, they are wrong.” He had a whole organisation closely listening and by the end of it he had them recognising that mindfulness is more than something you do, it is a way of being. The story is still being told over water coolers, in the manufacturing plant and is further reinforced every time the CFO walks around as he still has a slight limp.

As one CEO of a major manufacturing business said recently: “The leader’s role in safety management goes far beyond any safety speech. It is the follow-up that really moves a safety culture. People and organisations respond to what they see the leader doing. As a leader, if I want results on safety then I have to spend time on it.”

In summary

• Present in a dynamic way, using language appropriate to the audience. Imagine that each person in the audience is covertly playing corporate bingo to see how many jargon or management/corporate speak words or phrases you are using. Quickly demonstrate it is not that sort of speech.
• Use emotionally engaging and participative words. Use the word ‘we’ rather than ‘you’ when outlining what has occurred and what needs to happen next. Save the word ‘you’ to the end of the session when you ask for their individual and personal commitment to the future and behavioural/operational/environmental changes associated with it.
• Make sure you have convincing reasons as to why you are sharing the information with them and invite them to talk, think, question and contribute either at the end or during the session. (If you choose to do this during the session, be prepared to have to go off script as other issues/concerns/topics may appear that need managing in the moment.)
• Find and congratulate the audience on some (specific site/workplace) improvement that they have made around safety in the workplace; thank those that are behaving safely for doing so; recognise any key champions in the audience that have played pivotal roles in these areas. For example, “We are thankful for the recent improvements in safety performance and the attention being put into improving safety into the organisation/team’s overall operation/issue area.” Look for opportunities to tell the story/stories in detail using specific names of people, places, equipment, etc to demonstrate that you know and care for each person as an individual.

Then give them the key structure of your talk. People like to know what is coming and if you tell them what it is and then follow it they are more likely to move along with you. For example, “In this session I am going to talk to you about ...”

1. How we ( as an organisation/division/department/team/crew) are going around our safety performance at the moment.
2. The current challenges/opportunities this brings us in the near- and long-term future in terms of us as individuals, the teams we are in, the whole organisation and our business goals. (Tell emotively charged stories where possible to give the message rather than simply giving out facts - look to focus on positives wherever possible ie, incident - how it won’t happen again because of ...)
3. What we believe we need to do to continually improve our safety performance; how and when we plan to do this.
4. What support and resources we need to put in place to help us achieve this.
5. I will then invite you to share what ideas, concerns, opportunities or questions you have around this to meet this challenge. We will discuss what this means for each of us as individuals and as part of the bigger team and the commitments we need to make. For example, I will be sharing commitment around  improving our safety performance. (For example, I am committing to ABC and this will be measured by 1, 2, 3. I will be following up on your progress by 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.)