Can a Safety Motivational Speaker Really Make a Difference?
In effective communication asking the right question will get you a better and more accurate answer. The best communication professor I had in college spent many hours teaching us that the question you ask can determine the answer. This is considered very important when doing surveys or discovering from employees what improvements would make their job better, more efficient, etc.
The better question is:
“Can the right safety motivational speaker really make a difference? The answer is:
The Right Safety Speaker Will Absolutely Improve Your Safety Performance
The right safety speaker understands that all motivation must come from the audience members themselves. An effective speaker must know the desired outcome or behavior they want for their audience. In my career of over 31 years, I have often told people, my job is to get people to do what the safety team has taught them.
You and I know an overwhelming number of injuries happen to people who have been fully trained in the safe way to do their job. Even with this training or knowledge they still chose to violate a safety procedure, or failed to use their personal protective equipment. You almost never hear someone say, “I didn’t know that wasn’t the way I was supposed to do that task.”
We Must Teach The “Why?” of Safety
How is it that we have a workforce that spends hours in safety training each year yet still suffers injury after injury. The reason is simple. Safety regulations require you to teach the “How To” of safety. The solution is that we also must teach the “Why” of safety. The challenge is that people need to have a personal reason as to why they should always choose the safest actions or behaviors.
Negative Motivation is Less Effective
Experiential safety speakers tell a cautionary tale of how they suffered an injury and the impact it had on them, their family and others. The problem is, that isn’t a good reason for other people to work safely. It fails mainly because most, if not all of the audience holds the belief that, “It wouldn’t happen to me,” or, they believe, “I would have been more careful or skilled, so it wouldn’t have happened to me.” Either way, no matter how emotional the speaker’s story is, the audience believes it won’t happen to them. If they believe that it wouldn’t happen to them, they haven’t been given a big enough reason, WHY? they should work safely. If your outcome from having a safety motivational speaker is to have the audience moved to tears or give a standing ovation, the experiential speaker will do just fine. If you want your people to make better safety choices, you need a safety speaker skilled in effective communication. For over 31 years I have been a speaking to employees of over 400 different companies and trained thousands of safety team members on how to effectively communicate their safety message. I give each member of your audience a positive reason why they personally would want to be safe on and off the job. Positive reasons get much better results than negative stories of safety failures.
If you’ve ever seen or read about the once popular, “Scared Straight” programs, the premise was to expose young offenders to hardened criminals in a prison setting so they would be so scared from the experience they would cease their bad behavior. It is a very emotional show with dramatic emotional responses from the youth in the program. The problem is that they just don’t work. In fact, there was growing evidence they were actually causing the opposite result. Because of this police departments shut down the programs. Safety is no different. Scaring people into working safely is ineffective. Giving people positive beliefs, skills and actions they can use does work.
How Do I Give Employees The Best “Why?” From Their Perspective?
First an effective safety speaker must know the desired outcome they want to achieve from the presentation. I determine my outcome by talking with my client. One of my fundamental programs, “Ensure Your Safety” is used by clients who want their employees to understand the personal value of safety, to take personal responsibility for their own safety and know that the company and it’s leadership cares about them. Specific safety results would be for them to avoid taking shortcuts and to always use the best personal protective equipment available to them.
Once I know my outcome, I can do step two, which is to understand the needs and wants of the audience. In my presentation “Ensure Your Safety” I begin by asking them, “Why do you want to work safely?” This direct method tells me and reminds them why safety is important to them. There is also power hearing the reasons from their fellow workers that safety is important to them. If they hear reasons different from their own, they may consider adding those reasons.
Unlike hearing a story of safety failure, they are reinforcing and building positive reasons to work safely. There is much evidence that positive reasons and outcomes are more acceptable to the unconscious mind.
I love this exercise as it involves everyone in the audience. How do I involve everyone, without calling on each and every person in the audience? Simple, I pose the question and then begin calling on people randomly. Because people don’t want to be caught off guard without an answer, they begin to think of an answer just in case I call on them. Even those who didn’t initially buy into the process to start with are now thinking of an answer, just in case I call on them. Once they started thinking of an answer they are actively participating.
The exercise also uses the principle of presupposition. Asking the question, “Why do you want to work safely?” presupposes they in fact want to work safely. Presuppositions are accepted by the unconscious mind without objection or filtering. I don’t have to spend time persuading them that they want to work safely, it is presumed that’s the case.
Does Everyone Want To Get Home Safe?
You might ask, “Doesn’t everyone want to work safely?” I believe the answer is yes. Even with their wanting to work safely, they need to have good reasons to act on that belief. Without powerful personal reasons, their commitment to safe behaviors is not as strong as it needs to be. Answering the question, “Why do you want to work safely?” guides them to finding those reasons for themselves, which is much more powerful.
Incredibly, all of this takes less than 10 minutes of a one-hour presentation and they have provided the reasons instead of me giving them a list. A personal reason they have come up with or one they’ve heard from a friend or peer is much better.
Once I have built the foundation for them wanting to work safely, I build on it with positive memorable stories, that give them even more reasons to take personal responsibility for their own safety and the safety of those around them.
Encouraging Experienced Workers to Help New Workers
In studying people’s values over the years, I have discovered people are great at helping others in need. Whenever there is an emergency or people are in trouble, volunteers to help are plentiful. Because we know most people will go out of their way to help someone else, I use that as the primary reason they would want to avoid shortcuts. I do a magic trick that introduces the idea and then I show them how avoiding shortcuts helps protect others. I allow experienced workers to give themselves a positive reason to embrace the newest safety policy or procedure. The reason is helping to protect the younger less experienced people get home safely. Even if that experienced worker believes they themselves could continue using the old processes and procedures without being injured, they are willing to be helpful to others and choose the new behavior.
All of these positive messages give audience members their own personal motivation to work safely. When they internalize those reasons, they are very likely to choose to work safely.
When someone tells your audience their moving story of how they were injured, they unintentionally reinforce the belief that, “It won’t happen to me.” After all, most injury stories include the poor safety choice the injured person made at the time. Unconsciously, it tells the audience that the speaker didn’t believe it would happen to them. Additionally, their injury or disability and how it impacted their family are negative motivators and people don’t like to internalize the negative. You will get a great audience reaction from an emotional speech but less results in the workplace. The lack of results is due to the audience not internalizing any positive reasons for themselves.
For over 31 years, I have been doing presentations that facilitate people to self-motivate themselves to choose safety on an off the job. So, the answer is, “Yes,” the right safety motivational speaker can change how people work safely!”
Give Diane Weiss a call at 209-745-9419 so I can tailor a presentation that will immediately help your employees watch out for their own safety as well as for others. Also, if you want to teach your leadership and safety team the best communication skills from an expert in the field give us a call. I do single and multi-day communication and presentation skills seminars and coaching all around the world. My book, “Mastering Safety Communication” has sold over 80,000 copies, more than any other book in the field of safety.
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