Episode 180: The Language of Safety

This episode of the Leading and Learning Through Safety podcast, hosted by Dr. Mark French, explores the use of euphemisms in leadership communication. Inspired by a recent article from the Journal of Applied Psychology, Dr. French discusses how euphemistic language—used to soften or reframe harsh realities—can diminish the perceived severity of serious issues like fraud, negligence, or safety violations. While euphemisms can serve a respectful purpose, overuse may lead to reduced accountability and weaker corrective actions.

Dr. French warns against leaders defaulting to either extreme: being overly blunt and personal, or excessively soft and indirect. Both styles, when misapplied, result in ineffective leadership. Instead, he advocates for balanced communication—one that names problems clearly while preserving respect and engagement. Using real-life safety and leadership examples, he emphasizes the importance of addressing problems, not people, and adapting communication to the audience and context. The ultimate goal is to foster constructive conversations that solve problems and improve safety without degrading team members.

The episode concludes with a reminder: effective leadership communication is situational. Sometimes, softening helps understanding. Other times, urgency demands clarity. Either way, always target the issue—not the individual.

Transcript

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This week on the leading and learning through safety podcast, we're going to continue some talk about communication. Came across a great journal, journal article that I want to share about how we communicate. How can we better communicate in all the pitfalls around it? This week on the podcast, welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr Mark French. Mark's passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people, safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode and now here is Dr Mark French, hello and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning Through safety podcast. So glad you've joined me. Always an honor to be part of your podcast download and your rotation this week, talking more in the leadership stance, but I see this a lot in safety, good communication conveying the truth about safety, and there's so much confusion around communication, and I can already feel, as I started walking through this idea that, you know, there's gonna be a lot of interesting sticking points that we're gonna come across, we're we're gonna see a lot of well, I've met someone who who has done this, and I've seen this happen, and this happens frequently. There's a lot of unfortunately, there's a lot of variation here that we're going to talk about, or try to talk about. I won't be able to cover it all, of course, but you know what, we'll try. So this came from the Journal of Applied Psychology, from the American Psychological Association. This is the May 2025, edition, and there's a great article that I came across called euphemism as a powerful framing device that influences moral judgments and punitive responses after wrongdoing. That's a lot great article, a lot of really interesting course of action that confirmed a lot of what I have thought in the world of safety, and now, even more, in the world of HR. Now let's start with the definition of euphemism. It's a way of softening, it's a way of talking to someone, and ultimately, it was meant to be an act of respect, an act of trying not to be just blunt in almost a disrespectful way, or blunt in a way that it comes across as insensitive or not understanding the other person's side. So it's things like, instead of saying someone died, do you say they passed away? So these are ways of instead of making it a harsh word, we soften it. Now this has become exceptionally common and a lot of business that we see this as a leadership tool of everything has to be softened to a degree that we want it to sound like it's easier or it's better than what it is and what this article looks like in particular, and what they evaluate is when you soften those words in something that is severe, like a business effort of fraud or bribery, or when I think about things in safety like that, something that could have really hurt someone, or something that was negligent, or something that was completely missed by a leader of some form, that when we soften it and we present it, it makes everything feel better, like it really wasn't that bad. And so the implications are that we treat it less severely, we may not go after it or try to solve it is as intensely as if we just call it what it is. So there where this goes in my mind, in the the practical reach and application is, when do we use euphemisms? When is the right time? When do we need just to call it what it is? Yes, and when is it appropriate, and how is it appropriate, and how do we apply it? But their scientific research goes through in brief, in a very high level summary. Here, they do some work to see if that by using these euphemisms, by softening the language around things that have significant business recourse, like severe things, again, bribery, fraud, things like that, that when the third party hears about it, do they go, oh, you know, it really wasn't that bad. It's okay. And ultimately, could that lead to more people committing that issue? Maybe it could. But again, that's me reaching. And so what we're looking at in this episode of the podcast is, I want to talk about the use of euphemisms, because we have seen this become more and more common, and I find it to be, and I don't mean this negatively, I see it as weak leadership only not because if you use it, you're a weak leader. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that a lot of companies don't invest in the soft leadership skills. They take someone who is good at what they do when they promote them. That's pretty common, and a lot of times there's not a lot of time or energy put into what I would call creating the bench for leaders, of creating people who are ready to step up and lead and know these things that know and practice good communication approaches. So it's not you're a bad leader. If you use these, I use them. There's a time and a place for all types of communication. A lot is knowing your audience and knowing what you're trying to convey in understanding the message. Now I'm going to start with some times that I've seen this go exceptionally wrong, and this is where we attack a person, where we defend ourselves with, oh, well, I'm just being a upfront communicator, or I'm just blunt with my words, or I don't believe in softening it. I just tell it like it is, and then that becomes the excuse for being rude, or being, I would say, not even rude. It's beyond that. In some ways, it's, it's, again, it's poor people leadership, because then they use that to go, well, that person is just dumb, or they're just stupid, or they're just clumsy. In the safety world, I've heard this a lot in the safety world, where that person's just just an idiot, they just get hurt all the time, or that person is clumsy, and that makes it okay. By calling them a name, by degrading them as a human being, it makes it okay. And then we go back and go, Well, I'm a good communicator, because I tell it like it is. No, that's not what we're talking about. One, we don't, we don't do that about people. We don't fix a person. We fix a problem. We engage a person to fix the problem. That's how we do it. There's a problem, and it goes deeper than the human almost. And again, this is inconclusive, but generally, anywhere from 95 to 99% of the time, there's other circumstances other than a person just being who they are, especially in safety. People don't come to work and go, You know what? Today is the day that I want to get hurt so bad that I need medical attention? No. Now have I met? Yes, yes. I'm not going to tell you there's not someone out there that sees it as an opportunity, but it's rare, and because we as professionals, I've been talking about this some to others and kind of brainstorming, it is that we end up spending way too much of our time on those that are on the exceptions of the bell curve, and usually the low end, it's usually those that give us the most trouble, that 234, hopefully less percent of people that bring out trouble that require a lot of time. And so we end up so much there that we forget, or it's easy to we don't forget, but it's easy to push aside all the good that's happening outside of that. And so we get so used to working in the exception that we don't have the opportunity to really see the other that's happening. And that's tough when you're spending most of your work day in the exceptions, in that rough that's what you learn. That's what you end up doing so much of. And you get used to talking in exceptions. And so here I want to move back out of that and go most of the time we're not dealing with the exception. We're having to deal with other times where things need to be said in an appropriate, manageable action. Actionable, actionable way. Let's talk more about that coming up on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. You are listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast with Dr Mark French, dsda Consulting. Learn you lead others. The Myers, Briggs Type Indicator is an amazing tool. Problem is that it can be easily misinterpreted. Dr Mark French is MBTI certified and ready to help you discover your inner strengths. The MBTI assessment can help with team building, stress management, communication, conflict management and so much more, individual and group sessions are available to help you discover what makes you great for more information, visit us on the web at tsda consulting.com and welcome back to the leading and learning through Safety podcast. This week, we're talking about communication specifically euphemisms. How do we soften language, sometimes appropriately or inappropriately? How do we do that? So I was talking about the exceptions, and how sometimes we're dealing with the leadership exceptions of people. I'm just blunt. I tell it like it is. They're an idiot, and that fixes it. No, it doesn't. But there are times where maybe we need to talk to someone and let them know that, you know, that was not a good choice, but it's not the end of the world. It's and that's where euphemisms are really powerful, and having those conversations of, hey, you know, constantly leaving your safety or forgetting them is not a good thing. You've you, I'm looking out for you and saying you need to be wearing these protect yourself. And then there's times where you get more serious and go, are you looking to lose your eyes? Because that's what you're trying to do. At this point, you can't do that. And I remember, I there was one, this is years ago, but I think I probably used this example once before, but it to me, it continues to resonate with me of just how something escalated from helpful to productive to it just it was what it was. And I go back to my automotive days, and we had a small lift assist, air powered crane, thing that would pick up a seat frame and move it from one line to the other. Now, some people got in the habit of just picking up like they would put their shoulder into the the v shape of a seat, like a car seat, where the the butt piece and the back piece connect, put your shoulder in there, roll it back over your shoulder, and you could pick it up and walk it where you needed to go. That was faster. Of course, it was rather than using this air power device that would come down and you would click the button, it would clamp down, pick it up and move it. But so much safer long term, to pick it up with the lift assist, especially when you're doing it every two minutes for an hour, twice a day, because you would rotate on the line. You'd see that station twice a day during your shift, and you'd do that five days a week. Eventually, it would wear on you, no matter how great, how strong you were. And I remember going, there was one person in particular that definitely was in decent shape could do it, but I needed them to not do that. The rule said you would use the lift assist. So we want you to I would go out, and then I would explain. I started off with the simple stuff like, Hey, you're gonna wear yourself out over time. This is could hurt you. I got the I'm not hurt. I'm not gonna get hurt. I'm strong. I'm all these reasons why. Okay, well, you want to be you would like to be promoted to a team lead and later on. Yeah, I'd love to get promoted someday. Well, I need you to set a good example for everyone else who may not be in as good as shape as you. Maybe they're watching you as someone who may be a potential leader someday, and you're lifting this inappropriately, and we need you to be better about that, so that you're setting the right example. Oh, okay, well, no, I'm still better than that. I'm not gonna get hurt. Oh, okay, now we have to get down to what it really means here. If I see you not using that lift assist again, you will be written up. It is a safety rule, and now we're to the point where I just simply say there will be punitive issue if you continue to do it that way and not use the lift assist. Do you understand? Oh, yeah. So dancing around, it didn't really work, and it wasn't really down. Was truly trying to soften it to be like, Hey, we're encouraging you to use this is a great thing about the company. It's a safety device. You should use it. And it ultimately came down to being very upfront in saying, Hey, you will use it or else. And in the article, what they talk about some of the more bigger business issues, is that when some. One in the company is committing a theft or committing fraud or doing a significant ethical issue, if we don't directly say it is what it is that that was fraud, that was unethical, that was illegal, and I know that's a tough thing for people to hear in the safety world, because we use that so frequently. And I try to explain that, hey, you know, the law is confusing. It can say these things. I soften it until I can't soften it anymore. And I simply say, I'm sorry, but what you're talking about, we can find a way to do it the right way, but the way that you're saying for us to do it is not and it is illegal, according to the OSHA law, that is where sometimes we have to bridge that gap of being encouraging and being proper and also just saying it what it is, but we can't just stop it calling it what it is. That is where I think a lot of leaders or potential leaders have the biggest stopping point is we call it and we go stop work. That's wrong. Don't do it anymore. We don't engage the people into problem solving to say, okay, it has to look like this to be legal and to be safe. How do we get it there. How do we bridge that gap together? How do we engage the problem? Again, I'm not engaging the act of the person, I'm engaging the problem. And that is where a lot of recent like radical candor and some other books are really approaching the idea of, how do we talk to people about the issue and not about themselves, and not make it personal, because it's so easy to to bridge things like well. And I remember one boss one time he was I made a mistake. I made a mistake. I admitted to it. I said I would fix it. I would take care of it. And his final word to me was, Mark, I'm so disappointed in you for this. What? Okay, I made a mistake. I admitted I made the mistake. I'm going to do everything I can to to write the mistake in disappointed. Okay, that sounded like good leadership, being blunt and upfront. No, you attacked a person. You that didn't help the problem at all. It didn't help me solve it. It didn't make me feel better about I already didn't feel good about it, and if anybody had known me, I don't like to make mistakes, but we all do it, so we might as well admit it and fix it together and move forward. But in this case, I remember that, and that really hit me is that we don't attack people. We don't want to go after the person. We go after the problem, and if the problem is there, we call it what it is, and we try to use that to fix it the right way. If it is something that's going to severely hurt someone, let's call it that way, and then let's go after it with the urgency that it deserves, rather than play around it. And I think this article, I'm again, giving a great stretch here based on what I'm reading, but it gives some really interesting background research that leads us down the road of, how do we create that better communication? And when I summarize all of that, what I will say is, we look at the situation and we say, Hey, can is this something that we need to kind of ease into so that we can all understand it better, or is it something we need to call it like it is and give it the urgency it deserves? There's the technique, and remember, it's not about calling out the person. It's about calling out the problem. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast, as always. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for downloading me, and until next time we chat, stay safe. Thank you for listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast. More content is available online at www dot tsda consulting.com all the opinions expressed on the podcast are solely attributed to the individual and not affiliated with any business entity. This podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes. It is not a substitute for proper policy, appropriate training or legal advice. You This has been the leading and learning through safety podcast. You.