Less than two months after the let down of not being offered the behavior-based safety facilitator position, I noticed a new opportunity posted on the internal job board. This was for a “5S Trainer” position, one of four throughout the facility, that would have responsibility for implementing a foun...
I’ll be completely transparent here, the only things I had going for me leading up to that interview for the behavior-based safety facilitator role was that I was willing to work hard and I had been actively involved in a few aspects of the process. I hadn’t touched a text book since high school, an...
Working from 3:30p to 1:40a, at least Monday through Thursday with frequent Fridays and Saturdays scheduled for mandatory overtime, for most of my first two years in manufacturing was clearly part of God’s plan; I certainly wasn’t doing much planning of my own and that point. Any planning I had a ha...
I’ve mentioned barely graduating high school several times to this point. I also shared that neither Cindy or I had graduated college when we started our leadership journey (and still haven’t). While my less than stellar performance in high school was more a factor of me being bored, our lack of col...
The 33rd president of the United States, Harry S. Truman once said, “It is amazing what you can accomplish when you don’t care who gets the credit.” Putting that statement into practice is a key difference between the humble confidence and all out arrogance I referenced before. Let’s face it, we can...
As we looked at investing in mentorship for exponential returns, I shared how Kevin Arnold frequently taught me things that he had learned from his mentors. I can’t remember a single time where Kevin took credit for how much he knew about workplace safety or the results he achieved. He was always qu...
In What’s KILLING Your Profitability? I referenced how I frequently caught flack from our plant operations manager because employees across his areas routinely bypassed the chain of command by taking issues to behavior-based team members for resolution rather than their immediate supervisors. Throug...
By the time I had accepted the full time role facilitating the behavior-based safety process locally, I had become one of the most effective in the facility at conducting the observations involved and providing the necessary feedback to my peers. I had also developed a reasonable level of competence...
So far, we’ve looked at why relationships are the key to unlocking our potential (there’s no such thing as a self-made leader), how harnessing the power of candid conversations builds strong foundations for those relationships, and steps we can take to maximize the return on investment from each rel...
Since we looked at the role of trust in candid conversations earlier and we just worked through how trust is crucial for solidifying any relationship we care about, let’s tie the two together to ensure each candid conversation we’re engaged in has a shot at fueling growth in the relationship as well...
Just in case you’re slow to catch on, like I am far too often, there’s no such thing as a self-made leader. The relationships we build, personally and professionally, are key to unlocking our potential. That said, we’ll need to be as intentional about maximizing the return on investment in relations...
To have any hope of taking advantage of the untapped power of honest feedback, we absolutely must develop the skill set of accepting that feedback without justifying our existing performance or allowing the feedback to eat away at our confidence. I mentioned earlier how much it stung, especially ear...
