S8Ep7 We've Upped Our Supervisory Skills, Up Yours!

In this podcast, Deric Ostrum talks about how supervisors are the front line to culture change and how identifying hazards, coupled with great communication can help organizational reliability increase two-fold. Deric also discusses how the SafeLead is implemented and outlines the modules to the consultative process.

Host: Danny Smith
Guest: Deric Ostrum

Transcript

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Danny Smith
Host
00:06
Welcome back to SafeTalk with SafeStart. I'm your host, Danny Smith. A few years back, we as an organization started asking some of our top clients what some of their most challenging issues were, and ranking right at the top of the list was a concern over the lack of soft skills among their supervisors. And that really was the genesis of SafeLead. Thinking that some of you may be facing the same challenge with your supervisors, we thought it would be helpful on today's podcast to bring in Deric Ostrum. 

00:37
Derek has over 15 years of experience in the field of industrial safety. He is a University of Maryland graduate with a Bachelor of Science in Business Communications, also a master's of Science and Organizational Leadership from Indiana Tech, and he also served as a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps. Thank you very much for your service, sir. And perhaps more importantly, he's also walked a mile in the shoes of a safety professional, because he is one right. He's a member of our consulting team and he's an expert on all things SafeLead. So please welcome Deric. Deric, how are you? I'm good. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
01:18
I'm good, I'm good. 

Danny Smith
Host
01:20
Deric,  it's, it's, it's a. We're recording this on Zoom so you can take your mask off, it's okay. Yeah, oh, thank you, Danny. Yeah, we've got what. We've got several hundred miles separating us here, so we meet the social distance and guidelines, I think. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
01:36
Thank goodness, it's the sign of the times. 

Danny Smith
Host
01:38
I'm telling you, you put it on without thinking. Now I guess it's become habitual, right? 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
01:43
Yeah, I feel naked without it. Yeah. 

Danny Smith
Host
01:45
Okay, let me. Let me set the stage for our conversation. As you can imagine, we've talked to a lot of leaders, a lot of supervisors and a lot of managers over the years, and one of the things that we have heard well, we continue to hear it it's not a past tense kind of thing, is it? Supervisors don't always have the skills to match their job requirements. Now, as I say that, I'm not necessarily talking about technical skills although sometimes that happens, but that's not quite as as common. What we're really focused on, or what we were talking about earlier some of those soft skills, and it really goes beyond that even in the fact that some new or newer supervisors often don't have a lot of experience directly with industrial safety either. 

02:34
Perhaps the classic example is when you lose your welding supervisor, they get promoted, retire or just move on to greener pastures. So you promote your best welder into that supervisory slot. Technically, you know you can answer any question about welding that's out there. They've been doing it for years. But even in the best of organizations, they don't always get things like supervisory and communication skills that they desperately need. As someone put it recently congratulations, You've just lost your best welder and, by the way, you just gained your worst communicator and maybe your worst supervisor. So the purpose of SafeLead is really to get those supervisors the skills that they need to be successful. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
03:20
That's exactly right, and I do want to say, first of all, thank you for having me on. I've listened to several of the SafeTalk with SafeStart podcasts and they're all great. I learn something new every time and before we go further with SafeLead, I do want to say something about it and possibly clear up any misconceptions about this whole SafeLead process. As you mentioned, a lot of companies, a lot of organizations promote from within, which is a great thing to do. But your analogy about promoting the best welder, I think is spot on, because it happens way more than I think we think. 

03:53
We find that companies often identify the skills gap because they've told us what they've had, but they don't address the problem. They just I mean, there's so much going on each and every day. They just pop somebody in, they're shift, supervisor, shipping and let's keep getting product out the door. Instead, what we find and you hear things like after a while, this guy just didn't have it, he wouldn't cut out to be a supervisor or they weren't a good fit in that role. And the truth is they could have been successful, they could have been a great supervisor if they simply had the tools, if the folks in the organization was able to train and develop and give these new, young well, not young, but newer supervisors the skills that they needed. And that's where SafeLead comes in and we're able to fill that gap. We're able to say, look, we know what these, these new supervisors need, or the existing supervisors, and SafeLead comes in and gives them those skills, especially those skills that you talked about. 

Danny Smith
Host
04:53
Absolutely. And you know, and I think the key to this too is really looking at them not only as managers but also as leaders, and you know, as one of those, I got a fair bit of gray hair now. Well, what's still there is gray anyway. I put it that way. 

05:13
So it's kind of like the commercial. I think it's an insurance company commercial. Now it's on TV, everybody's probably seen it, so it's a. I know a thing or two because I've seen a thing or two and it's kind of the way I feel. 

05:26
And you know it's been my experience over the past few decades and I don't want to sound like the the crusty old guy, you know, but you know what I've been saying is that people are being turned out by organizations as managers and I think we're doing a pretty good job turning out managers. But gosh, I'm almost cookie-cutter a  fashion. But I think also, at the same time, we've done a pretty poor job of producing leaders. You know, and you know, I know some people would argue that leaders are born and not made, but I that kind of disagree with that. There are some people that have those almost inherent leadership skills and abilities, but in my career, I've met a lot of people who maybe didn't have that ability to start with, but they were mentored to work to be a great leader, and that's kind of what SafeLead about too. 

06:17
And there you mentioned some situations where new supervisors haven't been successful, and I'm sure everybody's probably heard of what's commonly called the Peter Prince Board. People have been promoted beyond their level of competence, but again, as you said, how many times is it simply that they haven't received the training they need in order to succeed? And how many people failed as supervisors Not because they personally lack the skills, but because the organization just didn't provide them with a structured learning opportunity? You know, put it another way they don't know what they don't know. You know? Or as one of our fellow consultants at SafeStart says it's Teena Blount, by the way. She made a statement the other day and I wrote it down because it was just so profound Never assume people know everything. You know right. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
07:08
Oh yeah, that's so great and I've heard her say that and I think of that often is you want to coach or be a manager of someone else and you think they know everything you know. And that's not the case Absolutely. And I'm glad you talked about leadership because you're right, some people are born with it, like you said, and then some people what was it I heard my grandfather used to say you know, some people have, some people are just a little more full of it than others. 

Danny Smith
Host
07:38
Are you sure he was talking about leadership? 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
07:40
Yeah, he was talking about some. That's usually what I'm talking about with me. But I feel very lucky and, you know, not everybody was in the Boy Scouts, not everybody was able to be in the military, where they make leaders. And so we have these folks that are great welders and great operators at what they do. But with the right coaching and the development like what SafeLead offers, they can become very strong leaders and really change the organization and move it in the direction that everyone wants to go right, not just with safety but production and quality and all of those and you know the great companies out there have great leaders that do that, and so that's what I loved about Safe SafeLead when I first was introduced to it. 

08:24
I came from manufacturing. I've been in manufacturing since 2003, 2004, when I got out of the Marines, and I quickly found out that the toughest job at any plant is that frontline leadership. They're they're getting it from below, they're getting it from above and they're trying to manage every single day. And I saw so many good frontline leaders just say I can't take it anymore, Deric, I'm out the door and I'm losing my mind. And we never gave them the skill set that they needed to be successful. And then when I saw SafeLead, I said, oh, I wish I had this 15 years ago. I could have maybe changed some lives. And you know you talk about those gaps that the skill set it's not just the soft but it's even the hard skill set. And the way SafeLead is designed is one I love the efficiency of it we're not taking these folks off the floor for any great length of time, but we're side by side with them, coaching and and working with them to help develop them. And of course, it's divided into these six or seven modules. 

09:25
But SafeLead is really this, the skeleton model that we put together, and it helps me, the consultant, and the supervisors that I work with, to kind of flesh out what is needed. And a very prescriptive manner. And it's very individual. There's not big classes that usually there's only two or three four at the most supervisors that we work with, and that way we have that personal time to really talk about the things that are happening, the challenges that they're faced with, and then I can bring my experience, along with the SafeLead structure, and come in and say this is how we're going to make you a better leader, a better supervisor. It is one-on-one coaching and there's a lot of great things that come out of that and I'll probably talk about that later. But it is not classroom training. Traditional SafeStart is the power points and engaging the class and teaching them the concepts. 

10:17
But SafeLead is all right. Let's talk with this supervisor what are the challenges that you're having and what are some of the best practices that you're having that you're finding success with and we can implement and integrate those into our discussion and share them with other leaders. And there's just the SafeLead. Implementations I've done have been very successful and I haven't heard a negative thing come from any of the supervisors involved and in fact, almost all of them are saying where was this training? 

10:46
When I became a supervisor, I really needed this. And the cool thing is the folks, the consultants like me that come out and do the SafeLead. We've all been in safety. We're all. We walked in there. You said earlier on when introducing me that I'm a professional, that's walked the mile in those safety shoes. Well, these the consultants that do SafeLead have all been in those plants. They know what it's like dealing with third shift, 12-hour,  shifts, weekends, frustrating circumstances and conditions and that's what's great is to have that's the person you want coaching you when it comes to something like SafeLead. 

Danny Smith
Host
11:22
Absolutely. Yeah, I was thinking about this as morning just in preparation for this, this podcast, and thinking back to when I first got involved as a supervisor and became a supervisor, and this goes back to back into the 1900s Literally it was. It was probably it was the late 1900s, let me specify. But I mean I became a supervisor really early in my professional career, I mean right out of school. I got involved and I guess I kind of cut my teeth and restaurant management of all places and that would have been, you know, mid to late 80s, like yes and uh, did some time in radio before I got into manufacturing and then, you know, kind of went from there is involved into safety. But you know, gosh, I think back to when I was first a supervisor. I mean, yeah, they provided me a lot of the technical training about, you know, the food safety and stuff like that from the restaurant environment, how to take care of the customer and all of that. 

12:29
But there wasn't a lot of things teaching me how to take care of the employees and how to relate to the employees. So thinking about this even in that environment wow, I could have used some of this. You know, even in a restaurant environment as opposed to an industrial environment, certainly would have helped. And you know, you mentioned something else a minute ago that I really love about SafeLead, and that is that it is very prescriptive in nature and, as you said, it's not classroom training. It's designed to be one-on-one. The supervisor is out on the shop floor, whatever the environment is in. Sounds like we're doing something on Discovery Channel here, but they're in their natural environment, right, but it's one-on-one training as they're going through their normal activities and the consultant has the opportunity to interact with them and to spend time with them and, you know, see what the problems are that they're experiencing, and the consultant who, as you said, not only knows the human factors and safety but also has that background in manufacturing and management, they get to share some of the experiences and then kind of help the participants learn with real-life, real-time at as well, right, so you mentioned a few minutes ago SafeLead is divided into six units. 

13:54
There is a seventh unit at the client as a SafeStart user already, and what we wanted to do was we wanted to design a process that would benefit everyone, but for those who do use SafeStart already, we wanted that seventh unit to kind of tie it all back together. So let's talk about some of the units first of all, and let's start with some kind of the foundational units. As I look at it, that's the first few units there. We start out with human factors and safety and performance, then we move into human factors in regard to hazard and risk, and then the third one deals with human factors and reporting. So take a minute and just kind of explain a bit about each one of these and why it is that we look at each one of these different subjects through the lens of human factors and what each one of those units is really about. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
14:47
Yeah, that's a great point to make is all of SafeLead is based on the fact that we're all humans and we all have these human factors that impact the decisions and choices that we make. That in turn, impact the climate, which then, over the long haul, has something to do with the culture, whether it's a good or bad thing. And one of these I did want to just touch on before when you talked real-time when I've done SafeLead, we go out on the floor. We're actually out on the floor, working side by side with the supervisor, more than in a classroom setting. And you said real-time, 

15:25
I was with one client and we were on the floor talking about one of these elements, one of these modules, and there was a near miss that happened right in front of us by an actual serious near miss that could have ended in a fatality, and it ended up becoming a great learning for everyone involved. And the supervisor literally said to me at the time says I've walked by that a million times and I've never seen that. And it was just one of those moments where it was unfortunate that it happened, but great that it happened before something horrible occurred. And so that real-time component being with these supervisors and right next to them. And when they get a situation, a machine down, they get that phone call that you want to go do this today. But it's traditional you have a list of five things you want to get done today and at the end of the day, not only did you get none of those five done, but you have five more things you have to go get done Exactly. 

16:22
You're with them the whole time, and so I really like how SafeLead broke down the modules to attack all of those elements that those opportunities or gaps that these supervisors need, and it's all based on the human factors framework that SafeStart has come up with, and the first one is safety and performance. That's the first time we really sit down with the supervisor and say what are the factors that impact you on a daily basis? How do you feel when you come to work? Are you tired? Are you angry? Every morning when you clock in, what's going on outside of work that it could influence you personally, and emotionally, and we talk about those factors. And then we talk about, well, what internal factors do your employees have? What are they dealing with? And then we kind of expand to those are all the individual. We call this the individual loop and the human factors framework. But then we expand to say, well, what are some of the organizational factors that impact you doing your job? 

17:20
People say all the time well, it is what it is and that's not an answer to anything. I worked for a facility that actually they had these stickers all over the plant and all over their hard hats and it said I-I-W-I-I, and it had a line through it, no more. And I was like I-I-W-I-I, I think of World War II. I couldn't figure out what the heck it was. And it was, it is what it is. And the plant director said he doesn't want to hear that from anyone anymore. That's not an answer. So you have this organizational structure decision-making impacting and the direction that the company is going, whether it's safety or quality. So the first module is all about recognizing these individual factors within yourself, the people that report to you, the folks that you report to as well, because we do spend a lot of time with managers and what the heck they're doing. And then, what is the organization, what is the overall culture like and how can we work on these climates to help impact that giant culture? Absolutely, and a lot we start. That's the first unit where we really start talking about communication as well and that gets communication as key and that's kind of a thread throughout a lot of SafeLead. 

18:35
The second module is probably one of my if it's not my favorite. It's in the top two, but we really dig deep into hazard and risk assessment and mitigation and I will tell you that when I've done SafeLead, when you show these supervisors, these frontline leaders they're the risk matrix and how to score and assess a risk that it's like the light bulb just goes on. Wait a minute, you could score this and figure out. I'm challenged with all these things every day, and so we talk about, well, what's the priority? Where is your next person going to get hurt? So we introduce the risk matrix, and then not all of the supervisors I worked with but then we have seen it, but most of them have not is the hierarchy of controls, and it's what a great tool. And ever since I learned the hierarchy of controls, I use it every single day. Even in normal life situations. 

19:32
You find yourself, if you use it enough, that you ask yourself okay, here I'm faced with a problem. How am I going to just eliminate it? I should eliminate it. If I can't do that, substitution engineering. Then you get into administrative and then the last thing, PPE. 

19:47
As a matter of fact, I live next to a very busy road in the country and I'm trying to think these cars can fly by, and I have two girls, a 12-year-old and an 11-year-old, and I don't want any pets as well, and I'm thinking, you know, I'm faced with the challenge of risk is the cars flying down this road? 

20:04
And I'm like I could eliminate all cars. I could just get rid of the road. Well, that's not an option. I'm sure the county would like that, but then what could I substitute the road with? And there's really no option. So I'm looking at, I thought about what if I went out and put rumble strips in the road? You know, I don't know how you can do that either, but you know I'm trying to problem solve, and so the administrative solution that I got down to is I'm going to put up some signs that say I know you've seen these, but you know children at play go slow because these drivers may not know that I have kids and pets. So I'm going to use an administrative control like signage, and maybe that will. It won't take the risk to zero, but if it causes some of these drivers to slow down and prevent an accident increases awareness, right yeah. 

20:50
Exactly. And so I use that analogy and then, talking to the supervisors, I'm like well, what are some of your challenges? Let's apply this hierarchy of controls. And so module two is really powerful. And the other thing is we go out and look at we don't make up unsafe scenarios or you know, try to imagine we go out on the floor and say, okay, here's the challenge that I have today with the drink wrapper and the shipping department, or with the sanitation crew on third shift, here's the situation we're running with, running into with chemicals. Well, let's look at this hierarchy of controls. So module two is the supervisors get so much out of it. And then the panel leads into the third one, which is reporting. It's amazing how many supervisors I've worked with that really do not know what a near miss is. 

Danny Smith
Host
21:33
Yeah. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
21:34
And when we get to sit down one-on-one and go over and really explain what is a close call, what is a near miss, what is a near hit some folks in it, depending on the organization what is an OSHA recordable? You kind of go back and say, well, this is. They think all of them are OSHA recordables or you know it's not their job, they're not safety professionals. So we educate them and we talk about what is a near miss. But we go one step further is how do we encourage near-miss reporting? Yeah, how do we get the employees to raise their hand and come to you, because you can't fix an issue if we don't know about it? And Absolutely, and you know as well as I do the plants that have great near-miss reporting. If the culture is good at reporting close calls and those could have beens those are the folks that are usually successful at reducing all injuries across the board. 

22:25
I try to be nuts when I go to a plant and they're like oh, we're really great in near-miss reporting. We had two near misses last month and there's 500 people there. I think you have two near misses. You know every shift. You need to get better at reporting. So those are the first three. I kind of got long-winded there, but no, that's okay. 

22:43
They're great, and when we go in and the supervisors, you know when we get to the end of this conversation. The biggest thing is these supervisors are so grateful because they're. This is all the training I needed. I've been asking for this for a long time and it's finally here. 

Danny Smith
Host
22:58
Yeah, you know it's interesting. You talk about the, you know, not having the near misses reported. There's a lot of reasons why people don't report near misses and we'll get into that. It actually leads into, kind of the next three units that we're going to talk about from SafeLead. 

23:13
But if you think about that, if we can look at the near misses that happen with an individual or a couple of individuals and then we can start seeing that as a trend or something that we need to examine, then we can take that and going back to the human factor framework once again, and we can take that then from the individual learning loop, where they personally had something and maybe they just internalize it oh wow, I don't need to do that again now, they come back and we share that with the organization through the supervisors. Now suddenly we can bring that over from the individual learning loop into the organization learning loop and it becomes something where it can benefit the whole and not just the one or the two. And that's really another piece of what we're talking about with SafeLead and that's kind of where the next three units go into some really specific skills, that about some things that are really foundational to being a good leader. So with those I mean they started out with trust and engagement. So tell us about some of these. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
24:20
Yeah, you're exactly right. You talk about near-miss about reporting and some I remember employees when I was safety manager myself I said why didn't you say something? Well, because if you report in your miss, you get fired or you're gonna get written up, and there's nothing further from the truth. But what that comes down to is you got to build trust and engagement. Employees need to be able to approach you and say this is unsafe, without fear of retaliation or anything negative happening. And that's what the fourth module is trust and engagement. We sit down and we go over how to talk to others. 

24:54
There are some leaders that, like you, talked about the Peter principle. They're the great welder, but we just not a good communicator. So we talk about how to receive feedback, how to give feedback. What's the? We talk about body language, nonverbal skills, whether that's a one-on-one discussion, a supervisor's having in their office or if they're doing the pre-job safety talk their toolbox talk. What is the? They have 10 employees that are reporting to them. What are those? What's that? nonverbal body language? So we do spend time going over using language and communication skills to build that trust and engagement, and one of the things I really like is that not only are we have the supervisors they're tasked with. There's always an action item, this isn't just sitting around a table and talking. Every module, these supervisors have things. They have to go, do and get done and then report back to us. And so one of the action items from this module is you have to go out and give positive feedback to two of your employees, but then you also have Positive feedback, positive feedback yes. 

25:59
Positive feedback yeah. Sometimes that's hard. It's easy to get somebody doing something wrong, but it could be challenging to compliment them when they're doing something right. But they also have to talk to their boss. We say, okay, we need you to have, we need you to go to your boss and ask for feedback and give feedback to your manager and, of course, in all of the SafLead rollout we talk to managers so they know what's coming as well. So this is not a surprise, but it's amazing how many supervisors don't even know how to talk to their boss, and it's I think you talked about this once, or might've been even a different podcast but if you only talk to your direct reports like once a year during your review, then you're not a very good manager. 

Danny Smith
Host
26:43
Absolutely. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
26:44
So SafeLead also kind of holds the manager's feet to the fire saying, look, we're going through SafeLead. You're investing a lot in this training and development program. We wanna make sure you're on board. So that fourth module, trust and engagement, is a good one, especially when you talk about the soft skills Then you go into we kind of continue that conversation, how to have good conversations into the fifth one, that personal commitment and that one we talk about how to have hard conversations. So we talked about positive feedback. Well, now let's talk about how do we get the results that we want as a supervisor from our direct reports. And I remember being in the Marines. I remember a gunnery sergeant yelling at us and he tells you said, look, if you don't get your stuff together, yeah yeah, it was different, it was the 90s, it was a different time back then. 

27:39
But he said if you don't get your act together, then you and I are going to have a conversation that neither of us want to have. And I you know, I use that in my training and said but a manager, a supervisor, a leader, has to have those difficult conversations. Absolutely. We practice that in the classroom setting. And then the action item is they have to go out and if there is an employee that's not performing, or they don't have to go find things wrong, they just have to go out and have a conversation. That might be difficult and something they don't regularly have. And then again we throw in the manager. So, yeah, a lot, of, a lot of work on communication there. 

28:17
And then the last one, where the sixth one is the active leadership, and that one, I think, really brings it home, because then we start talking about Okay, you're a leader of people, what's your value statement when it comes to safety? Well, I know you got to get this product out the door and you have all of these things going on every shift. What is your commitment to safety? Where do you? How do you care about your people, and so we have the supervisors write out and develop their own personal value statement. And then we also work on things like storytelling, because we end up tying it into SafeStart with the seven module. 

28:54
But one of the best ways to inspire change and any individual is by storytelling, and so we spend a lot of time going over you know when you have a chance to talk to your employees, when you talk about a near miss that happened in a different department or a different plant. You know how is the way you tell that story or share that incident, even if it's a personal story, how can it cause others to change their behavior. And that's what we do and we've done our whole lives is when you hear stories. Even we were kids. To this day, we remember stories or things that have happened that still influence us and changed our lives in positive ways, and that's what that that six module about. 

Danny Smith
Host
29:34
Very good, and you talked a little bit about how that ties into the seventh unit which is specific for the SafeStart clients. So, again, this is designed where, whether someone is a SafeStart client or not, SafeLead is applicable. It's just that when we have that seventh unit, we can obviously tie in that for those folks who are already SafeStart clients. You know, you mentioned several times in that the idea of communication and feedback, and you're right. You've heard me say it and even mentioned it a minute ago. 

30:08
I've seen managers that the only time that they interact with their people is during annual review time and people are always dreading the annual review, right, and but you know, if you're shocking your people at annual review time or you say something to them that's a surprise to them, that's not leadership. You know you should be having those open lines of communications all year long. Now I'll say this I mean, I have seen the rare person and had a few work for me that, for you know, despite your communication efforts, shall we say, they were just a bit delusional, and how their performance was, that's an entirely different story. Most people, if you provide them feedback throughout the year on how you need to work on this or how you're doing a great job on this. As long as you're given that feedback and it's appropriate feedback and it's done in a timely manner, that's going to steer in the right direction and that's what we're looking for. You shouldn't be doing a former HR director I used to work with. I used to say there shouldn't be any gunny sacking. 

31:14
What she meant by that was, you know, just taking everything and sticking it in a bag to be unveiled at annual review time, you know. So be open and honest throughout the whole thing there, and I think that's really, really great and a great way to do this. We've talked a little bit about how this all feeds back into the organization from the individual side of things, with the human factors framework, with both the organizational and the individual side of things and the individual loops. But before we start wrapping up here, I want to jump forward a little bit and think about something that we talked about back before we started recording the podcast, and that was you were sharing with me some just some practical feedback and just some as we were kind of chatting earlier about this before we hit the record button kind of the aha moments that some people have had here. Tell me about a few of those that you've had out there and just how the folks have reacted to the SafeLead process. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
32:20
The thing is is all of the SafeLead implementations or the trainings or the processes that I've worked with. They're all very positive. The supervisors are one very gracious that they were given the time to develop. And when a company says, well, we're going to give you supervisory training, and it's not computer-based training, it's by a real person, they know that they care for them, they're going to invest them and they want them to be successful. So it's been a positive throughout my experience with SafeLead. But a couple that come to mind. 

32:56
I go back to the Hierarchy of Controls. One of the supervisors in my class was a third shift sanitation. This was at a food plant and during the night shift is when they cleaned all of the equipment. We know how important that is and he had a lot of different challenges because he was managing the maintenance at night and I don't think there was even a maintenance manager on third shift. So he was kind of the leader for them and it was very challenging. But when we introduced the, when I told him about the Hierarchy of Controls, it just blew his mind. I mean, it was something that he was like man, this is really awesome. I've never seen this. And he was taken back by it and the next. So the sessions are spread out over so many days. The next time we met for the next session, he had gone online and found a poster of the Hierarchy of Controls and printed it out and had it hanging in his office that's incredible right there in front of his computer as big as can be. And I mean he, he just it was one of those moments where you know he got it and so he is going to approach all these challenges, certainly at work, even at home, with looking at okay, what's the best way to problem solve? Where can I find the right solution that's going to get us the results that we want and the Hierarchy of Controls works. It's been around a long time and so that was one of you know that was an aha moment to see a supervisor really take that to heart and make a difference in what they do as a leader going forward. 

34:26
And one of my the other big takeaway, Danny, is the one I mentioned earlier is when you have three supervisors in a room for the clients. That I've worked with some of these supervisors one's in maintenance, one's in shipping. Someone might be in the front office. They don't normally see each other, let alone work with each other. But when we start sharing these real-life stories and talk about near misses or feedback or whatever the module may be, we end up sharing best practices, and that is a takeaway. 

34:57
That is a big one within itself because you literally see the supervisors start to talk to each other about well, this is what I do with my team, and they seem to be responding very well to that, and the other two supervisors well, heck, that's a great idea. I'm going to start doing that. So you know, there's so many positives that come out of these SafeLead classes and those are two that just came to my mind. Those are great that I think those were moments that I and knew getting into SafeLead, that it was a great program. I saw from inside the opportunities and gaps that we needed, that you talked about the beginning of the podcast and SafeLead comes in and says here, we're going to fix these for you, right? It's fantastic. 

Danny Smith
Host
35:36
Yeah, and just gives the people the tools that they need, which is what really they've been missing. Right, I love that. I really like the program because it does. It gives them well, as you say, kind of going back to the end where we started. You know, the supervisor that may have the technical skills, but maybe not the other skills, the hard safety skills and the soft interpersonal skills, particularly as it relates to building the trust and building the relationships and things of that nature just can help them along a go a long way towards that, and that's really what we're trying to do here, yeah. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
36:14
Yeah, I mean, you find that these, these really are great folks. They just like those skills to be great leaders. 

Danny Smith
Host
36:22
Absolutely, yeah. Yeah Well, Deric, thanks for spending some time with us today. If you don't mind, share your email address with everybody, just in case our listeners have some specific questions for you about SafeLead, about any other subject here, okay? 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
36:38
That's Mr Safety, my phone number is 19. 

Danny Smith
Host
36:41
Mr Safety. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
36:43
Oh, you want my email. 

Danny Smith
Host
36:45
Email yeah. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
36:47
Okay, it's very easy. It's my first name, Deric, and I know it's spelled very uniquely, but it's D-E-R-I-C. It's Eric with the D in front of it at safestartcom. So it's Deric at safestartcom, and anybody has any questions or wants to talk about SafeLead further, I'll be more than happy to do that. 

Danny Smith
Host
37:06
So you are D-Eric. 

Deric Ostrum
Guest
37:08
Yeah, de-ric, I've been called everything I can imagine. I can imagine. I tell folks it's spelled the right way. Right, yeah, d-e-r-i-c. But yeah, it's been a pleasure talking to you today. 

Danny Smith
Host
37:21
This is great, this is really good, really really solid, and I appreciate your time here For our listeners. If you would like more information we talked a lot about the Human Factors Framework you can visit safestart.com forward slash the Human Factors Framework, forward slash, and or you can just type it in the search box up top there. Or if you'd like more information specifically on SafeLead, you can find that on our website as well, and that's underneath the training tab. Of course, you can always reach out to one of your account managers at SafeStart as well. They can get you more information. Or you can email Deric or myself and we can get you in touch with the right person. My email is really really hard too. It's Danny at safestart.com, so you can hit me or Deric up and we'll make sure you get to the right spot. Thanks again, Deric, for joining us today, and for everybody at SafeTalk with SafeStart. Thanks for listening today. I'm Danny Smith. Until next time. 

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