Fearless Conversations or Fearful Conciliation’s?

Using Unrelated Stories to Overcome
Unreasonable Defensiveness

I was recently asked to come up with an approach to safety concerns at one of the largest concrete structures in our country. 

The request, as usual, was to be funny, fix the problem, and get out.  You have 45 minutes.  An impossible objective, but it is entirely my own fault.  I am a victim of my own creation.  For two decades I have been most widely known as a keynote humorist.  I use humor to open the door to address very serious issues.  The problem was that I would often open the door and leave without a well defined planned for addressing the problems.  It was great fun, but for complex and deeply embedded habits there must be a long term, inclusive plan to help participants discover and address their own “unspeakables”.  Those are the elephants in the room that every culture agrees to pretend around.  These are tools to address those elephants.

I am not new to safety.  For several years I was the “Safety Guy” when I was at the Coeur d’Alene Resort.  The way we were structured every dollar saved by preventing employee injuries went right to the bottom line.  Despite these direct benefits and my senior position atop the rooms division, many safety issues addressed by me were met with resistance.  The solution is the basis for all the speaking and training I do today.

If you’re going to encounter resistance use this simple five-step process for improving your outcomes:

1. Always start with an unrelated industry.

2. Always use engaging stories.

3. Always build up a positive affect before presenting a lesson.

4. Use humorous props or illustrations whenever possible.

5. Never, Never, Never lecture

These three real life examples provide a learning opportunity for virtually any business.  The key is not in the retelling of the disasters but applying the lessons to our own opportunities.  Each terrible accident was magnified by coercive systems valuing positional power over individual intelligence.  Mountains of manuals and piles of policies overruled the irreplaceable benefits of open honest conversations. 

Each of these events could be described as accidents or acts of nature
but at the core the tragic losses were man-made disasters.

The Labor Day hurricane of 1935

The Safety (and business) transformation of ALCOA

The King’s Cross subway station fire of 1987 (video)

All three, and the last in particular, could be used to uncover the unspoken expectations that guide your organization. 

Does your culture encourage fearless conversations or fearful conciliation’s?  How do you KNOW?

How any of these stories could be used requires an assessment of where you really are right now.  The process is not only creative it is cathartic releasing energy and insights that are transformational.  Using these kind of examples as an impetus for Appreciative Inquiry heals wounds and reveals resources that you would have never believed possible.   

We would like to believe that we are a product of altruistic intent but the in truth our motivations are far more primitive and territorial than we would like to admit.  

Once we accept our imperfections the best that is in us has room to grow and thrive.
It all begins with real honest caring conversations.