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#63: Safety DNA
75 Plays5 years ago
In this episode of the podcast, series host Jill James interviews Dr. Esteban Tristan. Dr. Tristan holds a Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology and is a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology and the American Society of Safety Professionals. He's actively involved in applied research and has published articles in professional journals such as the International Journal of selection Assessment, the Journal of Organizational Psychology, the Journal of Safety Research, and EHS today. Listen to Jill and Dr. Tristan talk about safety DNA and much more!
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
00:00:10
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by the Health and Safety Institute. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer. Today I'm joined by Dr. Esteban Tristan. Dr. Tristan holds a PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Dr. Tristan is a member of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology
00:00:29
Speaker
and the American Society of Safety Professionals. He is actively involved in applied research and has published articles in professional journals such as the International Journal of Selection and Assessment, the Journal of Organizational Psychology, the Journal of Safety Research, and EHS Today.
Dr. Tristan's Background and Focus
00:00:47
Speaker
Dr. Tristan has been implementing pre-employment systems, conducting job analysis, designing validated assessments, and providing various training and coaching solutions for more than 15 years. One of those assessments is called Safety DNA, which we'll be hearing about today. Over the past decade, his primary focus has been helping organizations from multiple industries to improve workplace safety through hiring and training systems throughout the United States, Latin America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.
00:01:16
Speaker
During, currently, Dr. Tristan is Director of Corporate Safety Solutions with PSI Services and joins us today from Pennsylvania. Welcome to the program, Dr. Tristan.
Understanding IO Psychology
00:01:29
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me, Jill.
00:01:32
Speaker
Well, you know, it's not often, in fact, never. I believe you are the first person with a PhD in industrial and organizational psychology on the show. So I think maybe that's a good place to start. I have known one other creature like you in my professional career who was instrumental and a great mentor to me in my career.
00:01:58
Speaker
And I know the value of what it is that you do, but perhaps our audience doesn't know any creatures like you either. So wondering, what is an industrial organizational psychologist? Yes, it's the other type of psychology that most people don't hear about a whole lot. Typically, a lot of us start out wanting to go into clinical psychology and help people with their problems. And it's one that you tend to hear about later on.
00:02:28
Speaker
So we don't do therapy for buildings or things like that. It's one that I've heard a lot. That's funny. Yeah, industrial organizational psychology, or IO, psychology for short, is really, if you summarize it, psychology applied to the workplace. In other countries or regions, it might be referred to as occupational psychology, different types of organizational psychology. But really, we concern ourselves, Jill, with
00:02:57
Speaker
measuring and predicting behaviors and outcomes to help organizations perform better. A large part of it, and certainly my focus, but a major part in IO psychology, concerns itself with measurement. So testing, assessments, measuring of individual differences in anything, knowledge, expertise, capabilities, competencies,
00:03:21
Speaker
to be used for decisions about recruitment or pre-employment to see who might be most successful or a good fit in a particular type of job. It might get into training and development. A lot of work surrounds itself with leadership. And so that's one part of it, certainly, but it's actually a broad area. Like anything, once you look into it, there's a lot of different things you can kind of specialize in. But really helping companies through data-driven decisions and measurement
00:03:50
Speaker
have, you know, successful outcomes in the business world and organizations. Yeah. So how, how did you come to find that particular
Safety DNA Assessment Development
00:03:59
Speaker
practice? I mean, did you set your, you said, you know, you start out in psychology, maybe people think that's doing therapy kind of work, is that what you thought you were going to do? Or how did you, how did you come to this?
00:04:10
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good question. You know, going back, I think about in undergrad, I you know, that's what I was studying to go into clinical psychology. And I did a lot of, you know, try to get experience working in group homes and different environments in a clinical setting. And to be honest, this was date myself here a little bit, but this was kind of mid 90s. And I remember early mid 90s and getting some advice from advisors back then that HMOs were actually getting big and there was concerns about
00:04:40
Speaker
you know, you'll be struggling to get paid or fighting for reimbursement from insurance companies and things like that. And so I said, wow, I'm going to spend almost 10 years in school to be trying to get paid. And so, uh, but through that and through some advice, I found out about why don't you look, uh, at something called industrial organizational psychology. And as I looked into it more, it just seemed really interesting. Uh, and I took a few undergraduate courses in it and, uh,
00:05:08
Speaker
kind of went with it and soon after that I applied to a PhD program for graduate school and I was really blessed that I ended up enjoying it and doing well and you know it's worked out for me so far but like I said a lot of us start out with other tracks and some of us kind of end up here we don't learn about it you know before college age I think until you unless you know somebody that's done it.
00:05:28
Speaker
Right. Right. Right. Fabulous. Well, so fascinating. So one of the things that I really wanted to talk with you about today, which, you know, maybe some people who are listening have heard of this before I had not prior to meeting you, that one of the assessments you're talking about developing assessments, one of those assessments that you developed, you have coined
00:05:53
Speaker
safety DNA. And it sounds like such a fascinating name all by itself. Wondering if you can describe what is safety DNA? What isn't it? And how did you come about to developing what is an assessment tool, correct? Yes, correct. And maybe I can provide a little bit of background. So the company,
00:06:22
Speaker
I mad at PSI services, just a little bit about that we're a global provider of workforce solutions, very broad all over the world in terms of pre-employment, leadership development, certification and licensure testing, really about any kind of test or assessment you can think of in any industry and job type. So I had been working with a predecessor company called Select International prior to that. We joined the PSI team a couple of years ago.
00:06:52
Speaker
And using those assessments for different purposes, for selection. And we worked a lot in manufacturing settings and industrial settings. Safety was always something that we looked at. But through over the years and through some work abroad and some really high hazard settings like mining and oil and gas, one theme that came up a lot was, you know, it's nice that we have this test that, you know, that we can hire
00:07:22
Speaker
good productive employees and even it included something around a small component about working safely. But they said, what we really need is something to help coach people or the people that we have to help make us better, help make us safer with who is already here.
Insights into Safety DNA Traits
00:07:36
Speaker
At the time that was not a big focus. And this is going back a little over 10 years. And that kind of organically grew here, both here and I had spent some time in Australia actually working with a partner company there.
00:07:51
Speaker
But after the economic, the Great Recession, if you will, that was became something we're hearing about more and more. And so we set about to really, you know, okay, we are good at developing tests that are predictive of behavior and outcomes at work. And we've measured safety in some small capacity before to help people hire people that are safer, along with all the other things, productive and good attitude and problem solvers.
00:08:18
Speaker
Can we build an assessment that specifically takes a deep dive gist at all of the things that go into influencing safe behavior? And that's really where that grew out of. Yeah.
00:08:30
Speaker
Yeah, fascinating, fascinating. So can you tell us? Well, I mean, does it make if we're going to talk about the assessment and what it is and how it works, does it does it seem to make sense to start there? Like, what is the assessment? I know that you have two tracks for it. Can you talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. I think it makes sense.
00:08:54
Speaker
related to your first question, Jill, just talking a little bit about what we even mean by safety DNA. So an assessment is something that an industrial psychologist builds to measure anything you want it to measure. So the most important thing is what that construct is or what that competency is. So when we say safety DNA, what we really are talking about is a set of
00:09:18
Speaker
traits, individual characteristics, every person is uniquely different. You we all have different personality traits, experiences, mental abilities, things that come easily versus things that are a little bit more challenging for each person. It's kind of a constellation that's unique to each person, values, attitudes, that's all fits into that as well. And
00:09:39
Speaker
What the research in IO psychology had found was for a good 30 years or longer, there's been studies done that had found that certain traits and abilities, characteristics are predictive of safe behavior or at risk behaviors and injuries and safety incidents. Now this work kind of was kind of all over the place in different studies by different practitioners, academics, and then looked at maybe one trait at a time and, but never really pull them all together.
00:10:08
Speaker
So what we did was, and there have been some recent what we call meta-analyses studies that are many studies looking at those and some have been done around safety. And it's shown that these traits when measured properly and when you look at multiple traits in people, you can actually predict to a statistically significant degree of relationship
00:10:31
Speaker
people that are more likely to be involved in injuries or incidents. I'm not saying that's the only cause, but that's one contributing factor is the makeup of the individual. That's what we mean by that. When we say safety DNA and what that particular assessment measures is the traits and abilities and characteristics that are universal, everybody possesses them, but they have shown over time and in different studies, different industries,
00:10:58
Speaker
to be predictive or to show a significant relationship with safety related behaviors and with incidents on the job.
Leadership and Safety DNA
00:11:06
Speaker
So what kind of what kind of questions are asked in the assessment and how do you how do you measure them? Yeah, absolutely. So a good assessment is going to, you know, there's many out there behavioral assessments. So first of all, it's not about knowledge. One thing that people should know is that it's actually not at all about if you are a certified safety professional or
00:11:27
Speaker
OSHA knowledge or whatever it might be, HSE technical knowledge, it's not that. It's not a test. Yeah, we like to say it's an assessment, you know, and it's not a good or bad result, right? Everybody's different. And it's not a pass or fail, at least the way the way we use this particular one, it's more of a development kind of self awareness tool to help you know about yourself and how you respond in different scenarios and situations to help keep you and others around you safe. So
00:11:54
Speaker
The types of, back to your question, the types of questions, there's many. So some of them are personality questions. You might get a question, you know, on a scale of one to five, strongly disagree to agree. You might get a question like, you know, if there's a low amount of perceived risk, or if I think that there's a low chance of something happening, sometimes I will bend a safety rule. Or maybe it's something like people have told me I do some crazy and somewhat dangerous things, right? I mean, those are just some examples.
00:12:24
Speaker
Other questions that we have, I think one of the reasons our assessment has been pretty predictive is that we don't rely on just that kind of question. So we have what we call work samples of simulations where
00:12:35
Speaker
It's more of a show me you can do it. So we might show you a picture of a typical, maybe it's a warehouse or maybe it's a manufacturing plant or something on the road. And we might show you, have you look at the picture and then take that away and then ask you to recall what did you just see? Did you see one forklift or two? Or did you see three workers or one? Were they wearing this type of PPE? What did you see?
00:12:58
Speaker
For example, it tells us about your working memory, which has been an important factor in predicting risk likelihood. And then other questions yet might be to put you in a hypothetical scenario. We've got this going on. This machine's breaking down. This is the situation. Here's some different ways of responding. What do you think about each one of these response options? And so right there, that's three different, very different types of questions that we use in that assessment. And they're all kind of tried and true item or
00:13:28
Speaker
question types, if you will, in assessments that are used in the workplace.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yeah and full disclosure I took the assessment myself with Esteban a number of weeks ago along with a co-worker of mine and I in this scenario that you're setting up describing you know observe this observe this scene and then now recall what you saw. That was so hard and it was you know I felt like I was on this like am I looking for safety things? Am I not looking for safety things?
00:13:58
Speaker
what am I supposed to you know and then you know the questions come next i'm like oh man that's not even what i was looking for and then my co-worker and i compared notes and and and you know he was looking for absolutely different things than i was it was just it was just really it was it was really interesting to take that assessment
00:14:16
Speaker
So, and, you know, maybe we'll be able to talk about my results at some point. Sure. In our conversation today. But you had you had talked about your work with leadership. And so you use this assessment to also help identify leadership or leadership styles or how does how does that work when you're working with leaders? Yeah, no, great question, Jill. And what does leader mean? We should probably establish that too in with, you know, with whom you work.
00:14:45
Speaker
Absolutely. Yeah. We do a lot of work with, uh, pretty much anybody at any level of the company, right? But, uh, we do particularly focus probably more so even on leadership and to, to that question, what do we mean by leader? We mean anybody with supervisory or leadership responsibilities. And that might actually be someone with no direct reports. So basically you, uh, in a lot of companies, anybody who's a team lead or above, uh, especially first line supervision of Foreman or a supervisor.
00:15:14
Speaker
all the way up to the C-suite would constitute as
Impact of Safety DNA on Leadership
00:15:18
Speaker
a leader. And what's really cool about our work is that we work with a lot of companies in different industries with all those levels of leadership. That includes also people from the HSC side, HSC staff, safety professionals who might have formal or informal leadership. They're going to play an important role, even if it's informal leadership in terms of safety at that site. Sure. Influencers. Yes. And so what
00:15:44
Speaker
What we do with those is similar. We actually have an assessment that's a little bit more comprehensive for them that will look at their safety DNA as well as their leadership style and several important leadership behaviors or competencies. What we found is based on a lot of previous decades of leadership work and theory and draws upon some situational leadership theory.
00:16:09
Speaker
Everybody has a different natural leadership style. I like to call it your get out of bed in the morning style, right? Some people are more buddy, buddy and relational and how they lead other people more transactional, uh, in this different style. So we'll measure those. And then as well as various other competencies that get into things like, uh, how well they, they, you know, communication, uh, adapting to change feedback and coaching. Cause, uh, there's different personality traits that will,
00:16:37
Speaker
Help or hinder or make it comfortable or less comfortable for leaders to do those things They're learnable and coachable But depending on what it's important to know their profile to see where they will need to invest a little bit more time in terms of development And what we'll do Jill is you know The leaders will get those their profile and then there's different things you could do a training or some sort of learning experience to learn about what those things are and then mixing that with coaching and
00:17:04
Speaker
and debrief and explaining that to them and really making it, tying it to safety issues and the team members that they lead from a safety perspective. So basically, how has this profile enabled me to be a better safety leader, to reduce risk for that team, to use my strengths, and to also mitigate my blind spots? I like to call them blind spots. It's something that they may not be aware of, which we can help them increase awareness of and work on that.
00:17:34
Speaker
Yeah, so wondering, could you give maybe some, you know, tell some stories about perhaps some leaders that you've done this with and and what some of those strengths are what some of those blind spots are so we can kind of wrap our minds around application.
00:17:54
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And there's different pieces, you know, the safety DNA part, I don't know if it's helpful to talk a little bit about what that is. Yeah, as well as the leadership part, maybe taking a step back there. But yes, you know, with with the safety DNA, what we mean by that is basically four broad factors, I talked about what those traits are. So each one, there's a lot of small pieces, but one of them is control. So you're how emotional control under stress, as well as do you believe like you that you can influence future
00:18:24
Speaker
events through your behaviors and your decisions today. So kind of a fatalistic versus, you know, in, you know, can you, uh, do you feel ownership, um, uh, of your future and can you do something about your situation situation today? It comes from a trait called locus of control that's been around in psychology for a long time. Um, another factor, which is more of an ability is actually awareness. So that's why we have those types of items in the test that you were talking about Jill, you know, but,
00:18:52
Speaker
Just some people are able to have a greater natural resting level of attention to detail. They just kind of tend to, without trying a whole lot, notice a little bit more detail or movement or changes in their immediate surroundings than others, whether it's memory or it's noticing things. So that's an important part. Another trait is their personality as it relates to rules and policies. So if we're honest with each other, some of us like
00:19:19
Speaker
Rules or knowing a certain that there's a certain correct way to do something and that makes us accept rules as you know Kind of it's a happy place if you will other people tend to say you know what that's really restrictive I'd like to use my knowledge in my experience and and I think I can do it faster or better or do it differently and still Safely, right? So we all view rules differently and in the fourth factor We call it caution and that's kind of probably what a lot of people think of when in this discussion it's basically their level of risk tolerance and
00:19:48
Speaker
or risk aversion, just risk in general. You know, am I going to take that new job out there and move my family? Am I going to make that big purchase or some people check all the facts and other people go with more with their gut and they make quicker decisions. So, so again, it's a control awareness rules and caution are kind of the four factors. They can influence anybody doing any kind of job.
00:20:11
Speaker
But especially as a leader, you can start thinking about how those four factors are going to influence their decision making. You know, if I'm somebody who views is really comfortable with risk, I might say, you know what, we don't need four, four or five job people on that site today on that job. Maybe we can get by with two, the real experienced, or maybe I'm going to hire that contractor who did some risky things before, but boy, they could save us money and I'm comfortable with the risk that we can manage that. So now as a leader, I'm making a decision.
00:20:39
Speaker
that might be influenced by my greater comfort level with risk. So that's just one example from using the safety DNA factors. Right, right. Yeah, I have my results in front of me as you're talking about it and looking at the quadrants and I believe I scored like basically even in all of them if that makes sense.
Balanced Safety Profiles
00:21:02
Speaker
Yes, you had a very well-balanced profile there, Jill, I believe. No major blind spots. So I'm sort of normal, like sitting on the washing machine. Okay. Maybe it's more like my investment portfolio. You want it balanced. Exactly. Well, it's interesting because a lot of these traits are kind of, when I explain it to people,
00:21:30
Speaker
You know, it's a bit like a bell curve where you have the way we measure things and they're distributed in the population is that, you know, let's say risk aversion, like we talked about, or that, that caution factor. If we look at it, it's going to be generally by and large distributed, like a bell curve that most people will kind of score around an average or in the middle. And then it's going to be fewer people that are really risks comfortable with risks or really averse to risk. And so you kind of scored, yeah, more with the typical, I hate to say it, but the typical persons who are somewhere in that range.
00:22:04
Speaker
It actually surprised me because I think of myself as being very risk averse, and so I thought I would be on the other end of the bell curve. I hear that a lot, especially from folks in the safety world. I have to show these results to my son because he always calls me worst case scenario mom, which then in my mind lines up with risk aversion. So I have to say, look, I'm not that bad. Yeah, exactly.
00:22:25
Speaker
and on some of these.
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah. So you were talking about the leadership piece. So the safety DNA is an assessment that you would give to anyone, right?
Relevance to COVID-19 Pandemic
00:22:44
Speaker
I mean, regardless of where they are in a company, this piece of the assessment is something that you would do with everyone in an organization potentially.
00:22:52
Speaker
Yeah, correct. And the safety DNA part of those factors I just mentioned is really one that anybody would get. You can all benefit from it. And by the way, these are factors that can help you at home or with your family quite a bit. So next time you're planning a vacation or holidays or obviously on a more serious note right now with COVID-19 and the situation, which is so challenging,
00:23:13
Speaker
I mean, these factors, you know, your caution level, your attention detail, following rules, it's bringing out a lot of different traits in people. And so, but they're ones that can help you, whether you're at work or outside of work. But yes, so, but if it's a leader, like I said, we have an assessment that would then look at those things so that they know their safety DNA profile, but then also their leader style in those, some of those competencies I talked about. So I think you had asked just to mention an example.
00:23:43
Speaker
One of the leader styles we look at is, which is kind of traditional, is what we call a trans actor. So a trans actor is pretty much by the book from leadership perspective, they are very comfortable. This is the rules. This is what the expectation is. I'm not here to handhold you a whole lot. You know, you've been trained and doesn't feel the need to really be personable or very friendly or I should say maybe close with the employees. You know, they're the boss. They let you know that.
00:24:12
Speaker
And if it's a real strong transactor, it'll be this my way or the highway, right? It's all about balancing. So it's great because they can provide, especially around safety, they'll let people know, hey, this is not acceptable, breaking this rule or not wearing PPE. And they're going to help other people accountable.
00:24:34
Speaker
Exactly. Very black and white in terms of what's expected. And they're very clear. They tend to be clear. They like to plan things out and set milestones. So that's great for safety. The challenge can be with somebody that overuses that style is that they can seem a little bit less sensitive. They don't have those closer relationships. So, and it's worse if somebody really overusing that style can really not be approachable at times. And so that's always a concern for a safety leader.
00:25:01
Speaker
We want to be approachable so that if somebody has a concern, has a suggestion or, you know, hey, I just made a mistake, an honest mistake out there that's going to cost us some money or some of this. If I'm my boss as an extreme trans actor and I know they're not going to listen to me, they're just going to write me up and, you know, discipline me, I'm less likely to be forthright or go to them or approach them. Right. So it's about just being relatable and approachable. So, uh,
00:25:27
Speaker
I remember years ago in a food manufacturing site, we had an employee. He must have been Jill about eight. It seemed like he was eight feet tall. He was very tall. He had to be six, seven or something like that. Big tall guy, deep voice, very, you know, he came across and he said, look, I'm intimidating to people. They see me come in a mile away. And it was funny, they would have seasonal employees that came up a lot, largely from different countries or Latin America. And so they're very limited English, but they were great workers.
00:25:56
Speaker
Uh, they would come up and work during the summer season. And if you throw that in with the, uh, his lack of approachability along with the, some of the language barriers there, he basically said, they don't say anything to me. You know, I try with my safety meetings in the mornings. I asked him for, if they have concerns or if they know, you know, anything. And I never hear anything, right? Even though the folks that were right there from, you know, they've grown up in that town is that nobody ever says they did to me, but especially.
00:26:25
Speaker
With the seasonal employees because they were having submitted incidents there as you can imagine they were come up and and so it was interesting his Transactor leader style was interfacing with other things and it created this dynamic of I'm not gonna Say anything to this guy I can't you know if we had a somebody slipped and fell or if I had a concern about something He you know, they weren't gonna bring something to his attention So when we talked about that sure enough on the assessment
00:26:53
Speaker
he came up on his leader styles, a strong trans actor. And we talked about that. And one of the things we do is after we do a kind of a workshop to learn about these things and then a one-on-one coaching session, we feel it's really important to get personal with somebody one-on-one show them and go over that report and make it come alive and try to understand their situation and how it's relevant to their job as a safety leader and what they have going on. And so as an action plan of, Hey, how can I get better? One of the most,
00:27:21
Speaker
fun ones that I remember was this individual. And so his action plan was he was going to eat lunch, sit down in the cafeteria and eat lunch.
00:27:30
Speaker
a minimum of three times a week with the seasonal employees. And I said, okay, do you think this will help? He's like, well, maybe that'll get you to get to know these
Leadership Approachability and Safety Culture
00:27:39
Speaker
guys a little bit more. And so we talked about, Hey, ask them about, Hey, how's your family here? How's your kids? Yeah. What kind of questions? Yeah. So we armed with some arsenal of good little icebreakers at the, at the table. And, you know, I work on a Spanish a little bit. And so, uh,
00:27:54
Speaker
And it was really cool. I have to say about, I remember coming back, we would come back quarterly, but about six months into it, came back and just did a follow-up session and we said, Hey, um, you know, how's everything going? He said, Esteban, I gotta tell you, I've been in this job for about 15 years, 15, 16 years or something. And I have not once ever had a seasonal employee say anything to me or give me feedback on my safety. And it's, I, he said, I know I'm not perfect.
00:28:20
Speaker
I know sometimes I walk out without my PPE or whatever, but they would never think of saying anything to me. He's like, wouldn't you know it? A couple of weeks ago, I was out on a golf cart sitting in the back in some small truck and they were driving from one part of the plant to the other, which was a big no, no against, say you were supposed to be in the front with a seatbelt on. And he said, I couldn't believe it. We had one of our seasonal workers come up and he said, uh, we'll say his name was, was, uh, Greg, Greg, um,
00:28:48
Speaker
Do you think you should be sitting in the back of that truck with no seatbelt on? And at that point, or let's say Greg, it felt, you know, it was blushed red. And he said, you know what, uh, Raul, you know, I, I shouldn't be, I appreciate you saying something to me. You're absolutely right. I tell you guys not to do this. And I broke the rule today. Thank you for saying something. He said,
00:29:10
Speaker
In 15 years, none of them had ever said something to me to that. And it was, we think we actually, the action plan worked, right? We started getting to know these people. They were more comfortable and now uncomfortable bringing something to, even though he's the boss and he's six foot six or whatever. I now feel like I can approach you and you're kind of, you know, doing something that you told us not to do so. And they probably were caring about him as well because they had established a rapport and a relationship through all of those lunches.
00:29:38
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. Those lunches paid off and you know, there's just no substitute for, that's actually one of the things we talk about a lot with development for a safety leader is sometimes, you know how it is, Jill, you can get so caught up with whether it's in the office or putting out fires on the floor and running around. It's, it's hard to lead and it's hard to do the little things like stopping and, Hey, how are you doing at your workstation? Any concerns? What can I do to help you? Um, you know, uh, and it's just to be invisible, but yeah,
00:30:08
Speaker
A lot of companies in life, I think that's not a new topic, being visible on the floor. But what is unique is, did you know that your personality type is such that being visible is not comfortable. It's not the first thing you think of doing to go out and spend five minutes and ask people how they're doing, how they have questions, any concerns. Are you comfortable with running the new machine that you just started running on Monday? Little things like that. And so when we work with these leaders that have that more kind of at a distance type of leader style and
00:30:38
Speaker
maybe or combined with some other safety DNA traits, that's really powerful for them to be able to, I need to invest time and energy in that. Yeah, right. Yeah. And thank you for explaining. I mean, you talked about you help people shine a light on their strengths, but also on their blind spots, which is where this coaching comes in. And it sounds like it can definitely be transformative.
Relater Leadership Style
00:31:02
Speaker
Now, on the, I took this part of the assessment as well, in terms of my leadership style, and I came up as a relater. And so would that be almost the polar opposite of what you were describing with a trans actor? In a simple way, yes, it would be. So in a relater, you know, and it's interesting to get your feedback on that, Jill, but those that know you well, but relater is tends to be see, there's two
00:31:31
Speaker
Dimensions that we kind of put you on one is your focus on people and relationships and then your process focus in terms of Your main objectives and deadlines and the core part of your work and both are necessary to succeed, right? but certain traits relate to one and the other and a Relator the strengths there are that they're very tend to be very personable, you know, they they're
00:31:55
Speaker
Their first thought is not that they don't do process or, you know, have the deliverables or on in mind. It's just that they will more often prioritize or make sure that they cover the personal side. How does this person feel about this that I'm about to tell them? How are they going to take that? Am I going to inconvenience them or will this upset them or what are their needs? They will value that in their decision making a little bit more quickly or readily or often than somebody who's a trans actor where the
00:32:24
Speaker
It's not that the transactors are friendly or whatever, it's that they're gonna prioritize on average those other, we gotta get this done and then let's talk about how you're doing. Right? Yeah, yeah, and that is very accurate. I do lead always with people in mind first. We just finished as a leadership team, reaching out to all of our employees across the company and checking in with everyone as we're all working
00:32:51
Speaker
distant not in offices right now and so as a leadership team we committed to talking with all of our employees and so each of us were making phone calls for the last couple of weeks and talking with people and we got together as a group and we're we're sharing what our employees were telling us was happening with them and one of the people on our team said Jill how did you get all those stories out of people.
00:33:15
Speaker
I talked to people, but I didn't learn all the things that you learned. And I think it was because of this leadership style, you know, as a relater, like you had pointed out, but that means I have some different blind spots as you were saying with process, different than, yeah. Yeah, no, it's interesting. And I've met some of them. Sometimes we don't see it as often in certain industries like manufacturing, but the downside, so first of all,
00:33:43
Speaker
Great strengths. I think so many safety leaders, we wish we saw more of that relation. We try to develop it through the being visible, being approachable. Just get out on the floor and talk to people, ask them about how they're doing or how was the ball game this weekend or how's your wife or your husband doing that sort of stuff can really help. Now for you or someone like you, that would come easily.
00:34:06
Speaker
The downside sometimes is that people, as you can imagine, if I'm really the other way and I'm super friendly, super approachable and everything is like, yep, or I'm more of a friend than a boss, is that in some cases with some employees, they can take advantage of that. And they might say, Oh, Jill's working the shift today. It's okay if I don't have my hard head on, right? She's not going to say something, uh, you know, whatever it might be. She might not hold me accountable or,
00:34:31
Speaker
the relator might not be willing to have a difficult conversation or something. Hey, you know, I noticed that this is not up to par. And we've seen that it was, it's interesting. One, I remember asking just a couple of years ago, the company was a fairly middle to high level manager. And we're talking, you know, metals industry, we've got, you know, molten metal and manufacturing, very, you know, crane work, dangerous types of operations. And they had a strong safety culture. And by all
00:35:01
Speaker
Aspects were doing pretty well and safety was valid, but I asked him kind of after as I often do in a coaching session He was a relator and I said so if you saw someone on the floor Not wearing their PPE. Would you feel comfortable? How would you approach that? Would you give them feedback or say something and now Jill? I fully expected a canned quick. Absolutely. I'm gonna Yeah, and what was interesting was he paused he kind of looked around looked at me. He said well Esteban it depends it really depends on who it is and
00:35:30
Speaker
Oh and I found that very interesting and he said I don't know that I would tell that to the site the plant manager or somebody from corporate or the CEO and while that Absolutely, there's gonna be cultural and organizational factors there I understand that but it's interesting that he that's a classic kind of relational leader thing is that I may not be Comfortable having the difficult discussion especially if it's somebody higher level. I'm gonna hold off and pretend I maybe didn't see that and
00:35:58
Speaker
And that could be a problem, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. That particular one didn't stick with me. I can do that. But I think maybe it comes from my training as being an OSHA investigator for over 10 years. I found my voice and being able to... Because people's lives were on the line and so you just didn't have a choice.
00:36:19
Speaker
And so that has always translated and stuck with me, but some of the other things that you talked about with blind spots certainly stuck.
Continuous Leadership Development
00:36:28
Speaker
Yeah, what an incredible and interesting tool. You had alluded earlier to, you know, you said the example that you were giving before with the transactional, was that what you said? Yeah, transactional.
00:36:44
Speaker
Yeah, you had alluded to going back and doing follow ups. And so, you know, taking these assessments isn't the beginning and the end of this work, right? So what what sort of the process after people learn these things about themselves? What are you working with people on? Yeah, great question, Jill. So it's important to note that the way we use these tools and the way I would recommend and my experiences
00:37:08
Speaker
It can be a limited, if we're trying to do development and training and just help us improve as a leadership team, it can be a real limited use to just give someone, do the assessment and then here's your report and figure it out. I mean, you know, you could write a great report that's insightful, but that's not going to produce a lot much, you know, maybe with a few folks that are very diligent and always, you know, trying to get better.
00:37:32
Speaker
But the vast majority are going to say, okay, that's great. That was interesting. And then go, go about the business. So it's important to couple that. And what we typically just couple with an engaging learning experience, whether that's a workshop and onsite or something delivered online or some type of blended learning to, okay, what does this mean? Uh, am I understanding this correctly? Um, you know, and how, why is it important for safety?
00:37:55
Speaker
And then the other piece that I mentioned is very important is that some sort of one on one point, uh, debriefing and coaching kind of on a one on one point is really important to make it come alive for the person and say, you know, cause they may have questions or a certain score may not make sense to them. And so we got to bring that out and talk about it. Maybe it isn't that much of a relevant point. Uh, but then making it connect the dots to my team, where I work, the issues that are real to me. So.
00:38:23
Speaker
So that's important. And then as you said, but even that's not all of it. I think what's important from a leader development standpoint, and this is in general, not outside of safety, but touch points to have continuity and sustainability, you know, and there's, I think technology is improving in this area, but whether it's using micro learning and refreshers to kind of remind people about what they learned or ask them about to reflect on how they're using
00:38:52
Speaker
Whether they're implementing their action plan, that's one piece of it too, is an action plan that is followed up on. But then how are things going? We will often do follow-up sessions. Like I said, that individual, that was a result of us coming back and every time they master something or are doing well, then we say, great, that's a milestone achieved. What else can we do? What other area can we improve in or maybe leverage another strength that you have?
00:39:17
Speaker
that and then I think coupling with integrating with different parts of their safety management system. Maybe some of the things we've done is like linking it to things like SIF or serious injury and brutality prevention programs or initiatives like their fall prevention training or stop work authorities. So if you integrate it with something that's going on and relevant at the company outside of the safety DNA, it could really hopefully become something that helps them do those things better.
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, so it sounds it sounds definitely like an opportunity for individuals to be proactive in their work activity versus reactive. And you had just mentioned how you integrate with the company safety management system. And you quickly mentioned an example of fall protection. Can you maybe walk through what that might look like? You know what some you know, when someone knows more about themselves?
00:40:15
Speaker
or a manager knows more about their employees? Sure, in terms of for so for an action plan, for example, it might be, you know, one of the things we want to see a lot is
Predictive Safety Measures
00:40:26
Speaker
the leader style that's very hands off or not really on the floor a lot might be making time each day or certain points during the week to go out and talk to people specifically, you know, I have a minimum of talking to at least one person per day and or giving
00:40:43
Speaker
specific feedback or positive feedback on safety behavior. A lot of times, as you know, you know, people go out and it's easy to point out the negative, what people screwed up and didn't do right. And, but going out and catching somebody doing something safe or something right. Uh, and so sometimes we have a lot of action plans there. So, uh, that's, that's an example of one I'm going to once a day go out on the floor with the purpose of saying at least one thing that I giving positive feedback on that. Um,
00:41:12
Speaker
And then if it's tied to, if we have something around fall protection, an easy way to tie that in is, you know, I'm going to look for, I'm going to look for specific behaviors that demonstrate good, safe behavior around fall protection. Maybe it's an employee checking their, uh, their anchor point or inspecting their harness ahead of time. Maybe it's somebody providing an employee, a coworker with coaching. And if a leader makes a little check mental checklist of things to know and look for,
00:41:40
Speaker
they're more likely to spot those behaviors and then positively reinforce them when they're out on the floor or in meetings. Yeah, and and as a way to, well, I guess it's a, maybe a lead lead indicator. If they're noticing these things, sometimes are people collecting data on this as well? Yeah, yeah. And getting to, you know, you mentioned a moment ago, proactive versus reactive, you know, I think that that's a
00:42:09
Speaker
a good term to discuss because, you know, for years now, right? Munosha has been saying for years, it's important to try to look at lead indicators and not just lag indicators of safety. And what's kind of neat about this type of process or this type of tool is that can be definitely a lead indicator or almost a more proactive lead lead indicator. When you're getting at somebody's mind and their thoughts and decision making that the traits that guide their decision making behaviors,
00:42:38
Speaker
In a sense, you're getting one step earlier, there's one step before the behaviors take place. A lot of times, whether it's an audit data from an audit or a checklist or let's say training completed, you know, all your typical types of lead indicators, the things we're talking about here in terms of traits will be precursors to those behaviors that will get show up on a typical lead indicators checklist.
Safety DNA vs. Behavior-Based Safety
00:43:05
Speaker
So in a sense, you're being very proactive in that sense. And if used along with all your other typical components of a safety management system.
00:43:13
Speaker
it can help make it more comprehensive, more holistic, I think, more proactive. Yeah. Um, as to Bob, what, how is this different than what some people know as behavior based safety? What's assuming this is very different, but just to dispel any, any myths around that, how is this different?
00:43:36
Speaker
Yeah, boy, that's a could be a whole other conversation, right? BBS, behavioral based safety, it is different. And you know, I think all approaches out there, there's a lot of good things out there. Behavior based safety has a great history. And you know, I know it's gonna be controversial in some areas, but it is different than that. We're not doing behavioral based safety, BBS, in a sense, you know, BBS, we know, feels a lot with identifying critical behaviors and safe and
00:44:01
Speaker
at-risk or unsafe behaviors and then the checklist and then that key component that everybody seems to focus on and remember know is that those observations which should be you know performed and
00:44:11
Speaker
Uh, it could be tricky. There's just a lot of things that you've got to do really well and mindfully or else as we all know, you know, it won't go well as a lot of times we hear, oh, BBS, you know, if done correctly, you know, well, you know, we need to do it correctly. But so where this is different is we really focus on different things. Uh, and I think we're living a little bit more earlier in the process. Again, we're focusing on traits, characteristics that make up a person, whether it's personality, it's abilities or attitudes.
00:44:40
Speaker
that influence and shape the behavior. I'm not saying there again, we're not measuring behavior and personality trait is not the only thing that shapes behavior. Many other things do external factors, the environment, culture and things like that. But with BBS, they're really focusing on that observable behavior. So they try to be objective. We're, you know, understandably getting a little bit early in that process and in those traits that will influence the behavior. So I think that's a key difference.
00:45:09
Speaker
And naturally, that is going to be a little bit subjective because each person that's those traits and those behaviors look different. You know, we don't do anything to having to do with observations. We might we have certainly worked with companies that had BBS and safety DNA or safety DNA for leaders was a useful tool to help them do their BBS and various other things. Sure. Yeah, do it well or compliment it. And I think again, just to add to this, I think I said this earlier, but I think the key thing about
00:45:39
Speaker
Our approach of what we try to do is it's from this premise that everybody is unique. All individuals are at least somewhat unique and different. We're not all the same. And that's a good thing. Bringing diversity to the table, diversity in thinking, coming at it from different perspectives and valuing each other.
00:45:57
Speaker
And understanding at the same time that people are fallible, everybody has lots of strengths they bring to the table, everybody has potential blind spots or things that they may need to develop or that could put them at risk depending on the situation. Whereas again, it's not better or worse than, but I think that that's a different premise or pillar than BBS is coming from.
00:46:18
Speaker
Yeah. The, the, I mean, thus the DNA piece of what you're doing, right? Because you are looking at each individual. Correct. Correct. Yeah. And no two DNAs are the same. Yeah. On that note, Jill, I did want to say one thing earlier too, as we talked about date, when you hear the nerve, the term, you know, DNA or safety DNA also, uh, obviously it was something that it was kind of catchy and we thought got at the concept we were talking about, but I want to make it very clear to the audience.
00:46:47
Speaker
We are not saying and I'm not saying that safety team is something that you're completely born with and that never ever changes. It's not all you know, in the nature versus nurture debate, it's not all nature. Absolutely. Your upbringing, your experiences, especially childhood, early adulthood, even working if you worked at one company with a strong culture and way of doing things for a long time in your career, all of that will definitely shape your DNA. So yes, we know from psychology research that
00:47:17
Speaker
Uh, these traits are fairly stable over time. They do move a little bit, you know, over time it's been shown, thank goodness, you know, we learn from our mistakes and we tend to be a little bit more risk averse after this. So we get into our thirties, forties, fifties, you know, later in life, but overall the individual difference between you, myself, others are still there years later. But, uh, my point is it is something you can change your experience and things around your environment helps shape your safety DNA.
00:47:47
Speaker
Along with traits that are fairly, you know stable that you were to some extent born with but it is a mixture of both The other important point that I'll note is that just because you have a certain profile like yours Jill That is a good starting point, but it does not equal Behavior, you're not a slave to that profile. You don't have to you that we're not saying that you're gonna always behave in a way that's linked to that profile it's a data point and influences your behavior and your choices, but
00:48:14
Speaker
The whole point of our process, how we work with companies is to tell them, look, you can make decisions and behaviors and actions that are different from your profile, but in order to get better, you need to know a starting point or what your default tendencies are so that you could be better aware and change that. So I think that's just a really important point. You know, safety is not something about.
00:48:35
Speaker
I'm that way, and I can never make a choice. I can't help it. Exactly. I have to. Yeah, right. It's very much the other way. There's no budging. Exactly. Yeah.
Safety DNA and COVID-19 Behavior
00:48:44
Speaker
Makes sense. Makes sense. Esteban, from your background and training professionally, curious how in your mind you're applying what you know, or thinking and assessing about what you know as we watch our whole human
00:49:03
Speaker
our whole collective right now as, well, the globe is battling this pandemic and decisions that people are making around the virus and protecting themselves or not. Is this a very curious time for you? And are you thinking about, I mean, it seems like it would be an interesting study in humanity for someone in your position right now.
00:49:27
Speaker
It certainly has been I would be lying if I said that that wasn't something that we think about a lot or that there's not a lot of applications there for sure. First and foremost, let me say it's this is a challenging time for everybody. And you know, your heart goes out to a lot of people who this has, you know, been tough, whether it's a family with deaths and illnesses, or just with loss of jobs and so forth. And you know, I know a lot of people have been impacted. But
00:49:52
Speaker
You know, when we're thinking about, uh, they were thinking about these factors. Yeah. There's a lot of connections, you know, uh, when this happened, started really impacting people, uh, around late March. We're here in Pennsylvania, but you know, different States have had different levels of restrictions. Right. And so, um, I think it's brought out a lot of, when we go through situations like this, especially when, you know, wearing a mask is a great example, uh, going to stores or restaurants or what have you.
00:50:19
Speaker
is a great example, especially in the early days of COVID-19. So you think your late March, you know, April when it was really, how enforceable really is it? A lot of places I know, I don't know about you, but where I was here, there were supermarkets that were slow to adapt to that and people were walking with masks and not wearing them and so forth. You, when
00:50:42
Speaker
there is not a strong rule in place or a definite consequences. And when there's a little bit of a, what I call a gray area, um, people's safety DNA and their traits are going to be allowed to kind of flourish more and more come out more. It's going to drive behavior. And so I think with something, for example, like a rules or caution, somebody who was, and we've known them personally, I'm sure you know some, but some from day one,
00:51:09
Speaker
Uh, were careful to wear a mask and gloves and have, you know, high end sanitizer around them 24 seven in the car at home, everywhere they went. And, you know, that's an interesting, you're talking to her actually, except I haven't really gone anywhere at all because of my apparent risk aversion, though I'm in the middle quad, you know? Yeah. Well, you must be in the high middle of the, yeah. So.
00:51:33
Speaker
But it's an interesting one. So what level of risk is acceptable to you and are you comfortable with, especially when it's not super well-defined, it was early, it's a pandemic that's unique to, it's new for everyone globally. And also where you, so for someone like you and somebody who was very risk averse, all those behaviors come in without necessarily somebody forcing you or making you do that, right? And certainly with masks where it becomes about, you know, a sign to enter this,
00:52:02
Speaker
store, you must wear a mask and you get a lot of people that wear them. And then again, early on, a lot of people didn't, even though they were well aware and we all saw videos of things that got really contentious when somebody was asked to wear a mask and unfortunately violent events and things like that. But again, what is it about the simple act of wearing a mask? That's so upsetting to some of those individuals. I would have to say that's where again, that inner trait, that part of their personality of
00:52:31
Speaker
I don't like to have to follow a certain rule to find it restrictive. I don't see the risk here and I'm not even passing judgment. They might have had good reasons to do that. This is from an objective third party. It's interesting to see those individual differences with some people quickly, all the PPE and staying six feet away and then other people who that just wasn't as important or as urgent to them to wear a mask or to social distance.
00:52:58
Speaker
Um, and then you've got even other things too. It's like awareness. I know for me when a very different one that you might not think of is just your lateral level of awareness and memory and remembering things and noticing things. So for, for me personally, I admit that's not one of my strongest points. Sometimes I have my blind spot is literally just around awareness. And I a few times, you know, was in a, I put myself in a position which was at risk or I had to go back home because I did not have a mask and the temptation was there to maybe try to go in without a mask.
00:53:27
Speaker
Why it wasn't because I didn't want to follow the rule and it wasn't big. I saw the level of risk for me. It was pretty simple. I forgot to get a mask. I just forgot it at home and we've got different vehicles and I didn't put one in that vehicle. I wasn't good about organizing my stuff. And, but then that put me in a position later on fifth, 20 minute drive later where, Oh geez, I don't have a mass. I don't want to go all the way back home. I don't have time.
00:53:51
Speaker
And so, but very different starting point. It was from a lack of remembering or making a checklist or, you know, get a mask in the car and at home. Whereas for other people, they may have the means to use it, but you know what? I don't feel like wearing one.
Future of Safety DNA in Employment
00:54:04
Speaker
I think this is silly or, or I just, I'm only in for it. There's hardly any people in here and the risk level to me is low. So I'm not going to wear one. So same behavior potentially, but different reasons from a safety DNA standpoint, from a personality standpoint.
00:54:20
Speaker
Yeah, fascinating, fascinating. I mean, some of those things I hadn't, hadn't occurred to me, you know, like just simple forgetfulness. Because like you said, it's one of your blind spots. Yeah, interesting. One of the things that you said early on is in reference to pre employment. And do you use these assessments with employers for pre employment screenings as well? Or how does that work?
00:54:47
Speaker
Yeah, just to be clear on that, you know, we have a lot of different assessments, we use similar assessments in pre employment. But typically, and what I recommend is that when you're making a pre employment decision, whether it's a factory worker employee, or somebody at retail store, or an engineer, whatever, there's a lot of things you need to consider that are actually outside of safety or safety DNA. So even just, are you a good
00:55:11
Speaker
team collaborative or a team player? Do you have a good are you conscientious and dependable? And do you have a good work ethic? Do you are you a good problem solver? Can you learn quickly, whatever it might be based on the job requirements. So safety is critical, right? But these assessments we're talking about are a deep, deep dive into safety, but they're shallow. And they're not as wide in the sense of they're not looking at those other things like just problem solving or like teamwork or things like that.
00:55:41
Speaker
So usually, companies will use an assessment that measures all those other things and takes a shorter, more concise look at safety, but not such a deep dive as the things we're talking about here. So when we're talking about more training development and self-awareness and team building and culture, then we'll focus on the safety DNA assessment and one that does a deep dive into safety. But like I said, most of our clients
00:56:08
Speaker
Typically would look at an assessment that has a much shorter piece on safety enough to cover it so that we don't hire somebody who's a super high risk. Yeah, but also
00:56:19
Speaker
not such a deep dive into safety that we don't have enough time in the test to look at those other important components. Interesting. As we wrap up our time today, curious to ask you, in a great case scenario, if you can imagine the future for an employer who has
00:56:45
Speaker
who has worked on these assessments and implemented actions that you've that you were talking about and working with you on leadership styles what's what's kind of the ultimate result?
Integrating Assessments with Technology
00:56:58
Speaker
Yeah I think that there's a lot of exciting things to look at in the horizon in terms of the future and even you know technology that's already here that hopefully we could leverage and harness more and more but you know as psychometric you know assessments these type of assessments and surveys become more
00:57:14
Speaker
prevalent and better understood. You know, I think that they can be leveraged in a lot of different ways. But I kind of envision a future where really, again, more holistic and more comprehensive and where the safety leadership is more it's a journey, it's a path that goes on and it, you know, bends and turns and, and keeps going, right, as opposed to, you know, one time events. Yep, I
00:57:40
Speaker
got a report. I did our training and that was great. And again, we know that that has limited effectiveness. So, but some of the things that are out there, you know, again, these type of assessments, but, and then, especially right now, online learning and micro learning, but
00:57:59
Speaker
providing people with short snippets of digestible information. Yep, that was super helpful. I got it. That's about what I can hold in my mind for now. I go back to my day and I can apply it as opposed to, oh, I'm going to do a two, three hour training online or in person. But beyond that, I think there's an exciting advent of things like AI, which is really transforming our world in so many ways across industries.
00:58:25
Speaker
Being able to imagine, for example, a line worker in the utilities industry about to go do a job where they have to dig or there's a lot of safety risks there and being able to arrive at this location and being able to access, okay, here's my safety DNA profile, but that's tied to some quick coaching tips that maybe my coach or my trainer taught me and what my action plan was, and then readily available on a mobile device or whatever based on location and the job they're doing. Wow, I can bring up information about
00:58:55
Speaker
this how my level of awareness or be I typically forget or might miss a detail around XYZ on this job. And so here's a reminder specifically to not forget that or to double check this piece of equipment and along with tips about that site and that equipment and that customer all in one place. And so that it's fluid, available, kind of just in time.
00:59:19
Speaker
So again, these are not new things, but I think that to a lot of companies, a lot of areas of the workforce, putting that all in one kind of comprehensive solution could be very exciting and very useful and maybe help take safety to the next stage for a lot of people. And customize for that individual.
Closing Remarks and Resources
00:59:38
Speaker
Exactly.
00:59:39
Speaker
Yeah, fascinating. We'll be sure for our listeners to include in the show notes some avenues for people to learn more about safety DNA and what it is that you do Esteban. And so listeners, be sure to check out the show notes to be able to get those if you'd like to know more about this.
01:00:02
Speaker
As we come to a close today, is there anything else that you'd like to share with safety and health professionals who are listening today? Not a whole lot. I think I really appreciated the time. I think I guess I would also say to stick with it and during these tough times of COVID, just to I think the safety and health professional
01:00:24
Speaker
Arena is so important and to just keep doing what you're doing and I think better times are coming soon and You know just stick with it Thank you Estefan really appreciate it. Thank you so much for your generous time today. Yeah. Thank you so much Jill I really appreciated the chance to be on the show today
01:00:44
Speaker
And thank you all for spending your time with us. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution, making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you'd like to join the conversation about this episode, join the Accidental Safety Pro Community Group on Facebook. If you aren't subscribed, you can subscribe in Apple Apps, Google Play, or any other podcast player that you'd like. You can also find us on YouTube.
01:01:08
Speaker
All of the episodes with transcriptions can be found at vividlearningsystems.com slash podcast. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It helps us connect the show with more and more safety and health professionals like you and I. Special thanks to Will Moss, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.