Safety Motivational Speaker Communication Tip – Positive Directions or Warning

How many safety directions can you state in the positive? Back in 1976 before I became a safety motivational speaker, I learned a very important principle of effective communication. The most effective instructions or direction you can give someone is when you state it in the positive. I later learned the same rule applies to developing an outcome or goal. The reason this is true is that people tend to move in the direction of their predominate thought. For example a sign which says, “Don’t Slip.” The predominate thought is “slip.” This is because the unconscious mind doesn’t process the word don’t very well. Consciously someone might see or hear “Don’t Slip,” however unconsciously it hears only the word slip. Add to most signs like this the image of a person slipping and the subliminal message is mostly, “SLIP.”  A better sign would be, “Walk Carefully.”

The speaker who taught me this made the point that in the field of safety there is sometimes the need to use a warning or a non-positive direction in order to protect people. His point was that because we know warnings are the least effective way to communicate we must be aware that it is important to follow up. This follow up is to make sure people understood the directions based on their actions. As a safety motivational speaker my measure of success is results or actions.

Years ago on a Boy Scout camp out on the USS Hornet I experienced the verbal example of this. The aircraft carrier has no slip sand painted on many of the walk ways. Running and tripping on such a surface would result in scraping off quite a bit of skin. Those in charge could be heard loudly saying as Scouts ran by, “Don’t Run.” Over and over I heard this command. Ironically the primary word we were hearing was, “RUN.” I took the person in charge aside and asked them if they would appreciate a safety communication tip from a safety motivational speaker. They said yes and I made the following suggestion. I told them to change the command to, “WALK.” This way they are telling everybody the desired behavior and the word everyone was hearing was walk.

Whenever you are writing instructions, creating a safety sign or slogan ask yourself, “is there any way to state this in the positive?” When you can you will be using a much more effective form of communication.

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Until next week,
I’ll be, “Watching Out For Everyone’s Safety™”
John
© 2017 John Drebinger Presentations
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