Choosing the Right Gear

“ Life is like a ten-speed bicycle.

Most of us have gears we never use.”

— Charles M. Schulz

I was happy to be invited to speak at a monthly safety council meeting in Cleveland. I am always up for a conversation about safety. Though, you might wonder why a consultant in the field of organizational development / change management is interested and even experienced in safety.

I don’t work in or run a manufacturing firm. Or healthcare, hospitality, emergency services, public works, retail, or any organization that should be fostering discipline around safe habits.

However, I do dance with all these industries and need to know what is important to them and what should be intentionally woven into their cultures and reinforced by managers and leaders. Safety is a foundational set of competencies.

In my world of Human Behaviors, the framework of Maslow’s Hierarchy (are you familiar?) establishes that before you can grow into more enlightened, high-trust, servant-leadership behaviors you must attend to the fundamental needs of safety and security — physical, social, and psychological.

Climbing up the hierarchy requires us to grow our abilities or capacity.

When I think about the skills and competencies, values and behaviors, and consistency with which I need to apply what I know, I think about myself and others as metaphorically driving through life and work responsibilities in the right gear. If you are in the right gear for the right situation, things seem to run better.

When I coach and observe work and working relationships, I observe individuals and groups finding their gears, shifting their gears, and expanding the range of their gears to have traction in any situation.

Grinding gears is not so good. It might be the metaphor for spinning one’s tires, being stuck, or even in conflict.

• What other representations of the gear metaphor can you think of?

My experience in working with groups and growing gear capacity is two-fold: individuals often know what they need, and the group is far wiser than me. The rest of this blog entertains some questions for reflection and even uses the questions to start a safety conversation.

1. What gears do you need to lead a safety initiative and create a safety culture?
2. What gears do we need to develop others in having to grow the sharing of safety?
3. How do you shift your peers out of compliance and into caring about the safety of your organization's workforce, customers, facility, and equipment?
4. How do you stay tuned into safety without becoming obsessive, autocratic, or simply routine?
5. Do you have all your gears for the day-to-day work of safe living?
6. Are you prepared and practiced for the crisis moment? What gears will you need? What equipment, resources, training, and support?
7. Are you growing gears in other individuals so that you are not the only person in gear around safety? How are you doing this?
8. What clogs the gears of effective safety efforts? How have you navigated past clogged gears?

We use gears to climb the incline of our lives, work, and goals. Steer and get in gear to raise your team and organization into safety and company enlightenment. Start a conversation today.

Have a safe and fun Halloween!

Leslie

"Before we can move our mind forward,

we must shift its gears out of reverse."

— Curtis Tyrone Jones