Greetings recording on the road this week in Cleveland, Ohio where Terry and I are leading some advanced safety public workshops. Last week while working in Omaha Nebraska I was interviewed by the host of Leadership-Action.com, Greg Krieser. Greg states on the site that “Leadership-Action came about through the study and application of various leadership principles.” He interviews several leaders in different areas and posts the video and audio files on the site for both streaming and download. You can also find Leadership-Action on iTunes.
I have personally worked with Greg, he is a great guy a fantastic leader as well. I was honored when he asked to interview me about my thoughts on leadership. This past Friday when we completed some work at his facility, we sat down for the interview. For the podcast this week, I would like to share that interview with you. If you would like to see the video portion of that site please visit http://leadership-action.com/?p=334 . Greg has some great thoughts on that site and I encourage you to take a look.
Have a great week!
Shawn Galloway
ProAct Safety
Read Full Post »
Greetings everyone! Recording this week in Belle Fourche, South Dakota just outside of Sturgis. When asked how long it takes to change a culture, the predominant answer most of our fellow experts provide, is anywhere from five to seven years. Moreover it is often said that it takes time because you have to implement resource intensive methodical change process and lots and lots of patience. From this you will be able to improve and change the safety aspects of a culture. Well, perhaps if you want to completely change every element of your culture, it could take quite a while, that is true. In this podcast we would like to offer some suggestions of how to go out and have a fast positive impact on and within your safety culture.
Now consider we are not talking about bad to perfect overnight. We are also not talking about band aid fixes or Hawthorne flashes in the pan. We are talking about getting turned around and facing the right direction and making progress in the direction in a relatively short amount of time. The business realities of today’s world dictate a results oriented approach to change. Respectfully, most business leaders do not have the luxury to recognize a return on investment after patiently waiting for multiple years. I have personally seen multiple sites experience dramatic improvements in both performance and culture within 6 months. Then sustain that improvement and success-seeking mentality, by developing cultural systems to do just that, sustain! If you think about it, early successes themselves creates the drive for continuous improvement, not programs. Programs after programs have effectively created the program of the month perception. Success after success creates what we are after, what we call a Results Driven Change Philosophy.
There is nothing wrong with the models of positive change over multiple years to create new cultural norms. We just think they need to be tweaked to fit the business realities. So today we would like to share with you what we have been using in practice in over a thousand projects to experience FAST culture and safety improvement. FAST is an acronym that stands for: Focus, Architectural Structure, Skills of Interpersonal Communication and Transformational Results Orientation. When we look at cultures we often find these four elements are lacking. This is the topic of the podcast this week. I hope you enjoy!
Have a great week!
Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety, Inc.
Read Full Post »
Greetings recording this podcast in Atlanta, Georgia. I’d like to share with you some information about an upcoming event. We are holding a public workshop titled “Safety Culture Excellence Seminar”. These are events that we have been holding privately for organizations for many years. After the request of many, we have decided to take these events on the road and open them for the public. This will be a three day series held at locations around the world, however you do not need to participate in all three days, you can pick and choose from the three different topics if you would like.
Day 1 will be Advanced Tactics for Behavior-Based Safety: Applying Lean Principles and Ensuring Results. This session will enable participants to create a customized plan, using the latest Lean Behavior-Based Safety (Lean BBS®) Technologies for spearheading safety process improvement. Lean Behavior-Based Safety is based on the philosophy of achieving faster accident reductions with the minimum internal resources and external cost requirements, ultimately achieving a more sustainable internalized continuous improvement process. Borrowing proven techniques from Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and experiences from over 1,000 successful implementations; Lean Behavior-Based Safety has proven to be the most efficient and practical approach to an already effective theoretical process. Utilizing the best of your existing Behavior-Based Safety (BBS) process, your site or committee leaders will explore the options and learn the lean techniques that will successfully breathe new life and efficiency into the existing structure.
Day 2 will be Leadership Safety Coaching: Teaching Your Supervisors to be Safety Coaches. This seminar will give managers and supervisors the background and tools to become effective safety coaches. They will learn how to focus workers on the most effective accident-prevention strategies, discover and manage influences on workplace behaviors, measure the progress of cultural changes, and coach and counsel effectively to address safety-related behavioral issues with workers. The use of these skills will greatly improve safety, but more importantly will, make managers and supervisors more effective in all dealings with workers and each other.
Day 3 will be Assessing and Developing Your Safety Culture: This session will enable participants to create a customized plan to assess and improve site and/or organizational safety culture. Common myths about safety culture will be dispelled and a good working definition will be developed to empower understanding and customization. Assessment methodologies will be discussed and compared and each participant will see how to best determine the cultural strengths and improvement opportunities. Based on the assessment findings, plans will be formulated to find the most practical and effective strategies to build on cultural strengths and address weaknesses. Opportunities will be investigated to utilize other site improvement initiatives to aid in the cultural improvement plans. All plans will conclude with measurement strategies to ensure long-term change viability and early identification of problems.
If you are interested in participating in one of these events please visit www.ProActSafety.com and click on events for the schedule. I’d like to close with this, if you only have time to do one thing in safety today, what would it be and how will it contribute to making this a safer world for us all? Thanks for tuning in…
Shawn Galloway
ProAct Safety
Read Full Post »
Greetings, this podcast recorded in Avon Lake, OH. “Most safety culture improvement initiatives either start at the top or the bottom of the organizational structure: executive coaching for senior managers or workforce teambuilding for the rank and file. Some experts believe that safety begins with leadership, others stress that worker behavior has the most impact on safety. Both approaches can achieve improvement. However, there are organizations with good reasons to delay these approaches and start safety improvement in the middle.” – Terry L. Mathis.
In the August 2009 edition of EHS Today, Terry Mathis, the Founder and CEO of our firm ProAct Safety, published an article that I would like to share with you today. If you would like to see the actual article, please visit EHS Today’s website at www.EHSToday.com or you can find it on our website at www.ProActSafety.com along with a lot of other free content to improve your safety focus.
Thanks and have a great week!
Shawn Galloway
ProAct Safety
Read Full Post »
Greetings, this podcast recorded in Indianapolis, Indiana. For this week, Terry and I would like to share with you seven principles to consider, when providing training to adults. We will discuss some of the theories and some of the myths, what to ensure and what to avoid. If you would like a copy of a slide that represents the seven principles of Adult Learning please email us. The email address can be found at the end of the podcast.
Have a great week!
Shawn Galloway
ProAct Safety
Read Full Post »
Greetings from Toronto, Canada and show number 84! This week I’d like to talk about what we call a Personal Safety Focus. The idea is: Do you have things that go beyond rules, policies and procedures that you can focus your people on that minimizes or prevents their exposure to risk? Now obviously if you do not have the basics in place, those three things should receive priority attention. I’m of the belief that safety has been truly successful when it can be taken with people, when it is portable. When we only think about safety as on the job, we miss out on helping our people where they are more likely today to get injured. Is most countries, it is not at work. When safety is successful that means that it was interesting and helpful enough and caused people to share the strategies with their families. If you are truly effective in safety, the people you’ll help the most are people you might not ever meet, their family members, and their neighbors. Do your people relay your safety messages? I hope you enjoy this topic, here we go!
Have a great week!
Shawn Galloway ProAct Safety
Read Full Post »
Greetings from Antwerp, Belgium and podcast number 81! Monthly we are asked to customize and lead workshops to teach supervisors how to be Safety Coaches, in countries throughout the world. For the podcast this week we would like to share and discuss in detail what we feel are the five main objectives for this important training, to teach leaders how to coach for performance, rather than strictly manage for compliance. The five (5) objectives we will cover are the following:
- Demonstrate dynamic leadership and support for safety at the management & supervisory level
- Take a proactive vs. reactive safety role
- Focus workers on effective accident-prevention strategies (precautions)
- Provide employees positive reinforcement for using these strategies
- Use coaching sessions to encourage precautions and address any risky behavior
I hope you enjoy the discussion!
Have a great week!
Shawn Galloway
ProAct Safety
Read Full Post »
Greetings from Cuijk, Netherlands. This week we will answer another subscriber’s question: “If you have mastered basic safety, where is the next opportunity and where do you start on the road to safety culture excellence? If you think about it there are three common cultural starting points, leadership, supervisors (middle management) and the employee population. This week we will discuss the rationale for starting in the middle.
Have a great week!
Shawn Galloway
ProAct Safety
Read Full Post »
Do your supervisors police or coach safety? Both can have their place, yet what is the predominant style most often used? This seminar will give managers and supervisors the background and tools to become effective safety coaches. They will learn how to focus workers on the most effective accident-prevention strategies, discover and manage influences on workplace behaviors, measure the progress of cultural changes, and coach and counsel effectively to address safety-related behavioral issues with workers. The use of these skills will greatly improve safety, but more importantly, make managers and supervisors more effective in all dealings with workers and with each other.
Attendees will be able to:
· Better understand and appreciate worker actions through behavioral analysis
· Identify the factors that influence workplace decisions and learn how to change them
· Differentiate between policing and coaching opportunities in safety
· Clearly distinguish work behaviors with low probability risks
· Focus employees on behavioral precautions that are highly effective and within their power to control
· Choose the best form of feedback to shape behaviors
· Motivate employees to encourage superior performance through positive feedback
· Coach employees effectively to change unsafe behaviors
· Align leadership coaching with progressive discipline when needed
· Synergize leadership coaching with employee-driven processes without conflict or redundancy
For more information including the dates, cost and locations please visit
www.ProActSafety.com
I hope to see you there!
Shawn M. Galloway
ProAct Safety, Inc.
Read Full Post »
Standard Podcasts [44:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download | Embeddable Player | Hits (90)
