Ep074: Is behaviour change a dirty word in health and safety? With Darren Hill

Today I’m joined by Darren Hill.  This episode is brought to you by….me! Did you know that I absolutely love getting into a room with individuals, small teams, large teams, and even more people than that, to help every single person grow and improve? Well, I do! My live events, facilitation, speaking and Master of Ceremoning is trusted by some of Australia’s biggest brands, including Telstra, the OHS Leaders Summit, the Safety Institute of Australia, Probuild, creators of the iAuditor app Safety Culture, and more.  If you want to take your team’s learning to the next level with your next team meeting, internal conference, strategy session or something else entirely, press pause, send me an email now to andrew@safetyontap.com, and let’s see what we can do to grow you and your team even further intro greatness.

 Today’s episode:

 Darren is a behavioural scientist, whose mission in life is to make a difference to the difference makers.  He is a   critical part of the team at Pragmatic Thinking, a behaviour and motivation strategy company.

 Darren will be speaking at the 2018 Safetyscape conference, part of the new events offering from the Safety   Institute of Australia on from the 22nd to 24th of May in Melbourne.  The inaugural #SAFETYSCAPE   Convention will enable an array of organisations to assemble as the largest gathering of Health & Safety   Industry professionals across a program of events, workshops, forums and the Safety Institute of Australia’s   own two day National Health & Safety Conference: In Practice along with the Workplace Health & Safety Show.   But don’t forget, as I’ve been saying for a while – most of your learning and in turn performance will come from   social and experiential learning – so whilst the knowledge you will gain will be great, it’s even better to meet new   peers and strengthen relationships with your network, share stories and reflections from your own experience.

 Visit safetyscape.com.au to find out more and get your ticket.

 Let’s jump into the chat with Darren:

Here’s my three takeaways from that chat with Darren Hill:

Takeaway #1: When have you suffered from the Dunning Kruger effect? Having a little bit of knowledge which leads you to think you know a lot about something? If you are a generalist health and safety person, I suspect you’ll have this challenge like I have had in the past.  We’re expected to know a lot about a lot, which isn’t always possible – most of the time we know a little about a lot.  Which begs two questions – first, do you know the limit of your knowledge, your competence? And second, what do you do when you reach that limit? Do you learn more, do you defer to others, do you engage an expert? The fact is, no one can be an expert in lots things, so being aware of our limits and knowing what to do when we hit those limits is a sign of great professionalism – the opposite is, well, being unprofessional.

Takeaway #2: Behaviour, beliefs, culture.  It’s interesting to understand the contrast, almost contradictions, that we face in working out what to do when it comes to cultural change  – Patrick Hudson on Ep 71 talks about focussing on behaviour, Darren very much focusses on beliefs before behaviour.  So when the experts are at odds, what do we do? Do something.  Darren talked about the importance of building trust.  He also mentioned using frameworks.  Take a framework that has some evidence or track record behind it, and use that as your plan to convince senior management to try a different approach to what isn’t working so well for your organisation.  It doesn’t matter whether its Darrens framework or Patrick Hudson’s or something else entirely – what most of these approaches have in common is harnessing the amazing power of every person in your organisation – you don’t need to be the expert with all the answers.

Takeaway #3: Get started with a conversation.  Even before we do all that stuff I just mentioned, you can start a conversation in your business by asking “what do we really want to achieve at work? What is our purpose?”.  You can do that today.  You don’t need to be an expert.  Get started with that question, and see what emerges to guide your next steps.

If you want help to turn this sort of thing into action in your business, or with your team, we should talk.  Send me an email now to andrew@safetyontap.com

Until next time, what’s the one thing you’ll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Seeya!