Episode 181: Leadership Onboarding

In this episode, Dr. Mark French explores the importance of onboarding new safety professionals through a leadership-focused lens. Reflecting on his experience guiding a newly hired safety team member, he emphasizes that onboarding should go beyond teaching technical safety skills. The real value lies in mentoring new professionals on how to apply their knowledge through effective leadership and influence, rather than relying on authority.

Mark shares his personal leadership development journey and underscores that true leadership success is realized when one can help develop others into capable leaders. He explains that his approach centers around influence, empathy, and understanding workplace culture before initiating action. Central to his onboarding philosophy is the 30-60-90 day framework: in the first 30 days, get to know the people; by 60 days, understand the risks; and by 90 days, begin crafting a risk-reduction plan.

He argues that these early days are critical for building trust and gathering context, not solving everything immediately. Leadership starts with listening, being present, and learning about the organization and its people before implementing change. Mark notes that even seasoned professionals typically require six months to a year to reach full effectiveness in a new role. By encouraging authentic relationship-building and observation early on, leaders set the stage for sustainable influence and long-term impact.

The episode closes with a reminder that leadership onboarding should be intentional, people-centered, and focused on developing both trust and strategic insight.

Transcript

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Welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. This week, we're going to talk about onboarding. How is it that a new safety professional comes into the environment and what's most important that we pass along? Let's talk about that this week on the podcast. You mark, 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, Bucha, hello and welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety Podcast. I'm so happy you've joined me this week, and actually, the past couple of weeks, I have had the distinct pleasure of onboarding a relatively new safety professional, and it opened my eyes to just how far I have come in my career, good or bad, it's been a distance I've traveled. And what is it that we do to really make good impact on the future of the safety profession through good leadership? Because it's one of those items that we often hear that you haven't really proven yourself as a leader until you have produced a leader who can produce a leader. And not sure I've ever done that to be perfectly, I'd like to think I maybe have had some impact there. But now that I'm actually doing it again for the first time, kind of a startup situation, new safety professional out in the field, been around, certainly completed their education, have done some internships. I mean, not completely new, new, but new enough. And spent two weeks doing some onboarding. And it made me think about what is important to us in the profession of leaders. Because what I discovered was I wasn't teaching safety, because the knowledge was there, the ability to find the information, the ability to figure out the information. What it was was, how do we apply that information in a way that creates good leadership, that creates influential leadership within the team? Because we all know, in a lot of cases, our power as influencers is way more effective than any authoritarian power we're ever given through an org chart. If we can influence people, then we truly have made the difference that we need to make as people who lead in an organization. And the question that I got stuck on, and it was a brilliant question. I'll be perfectly honest, it was a great question was, if you were in my situation, what would you need to know, or what would you learn? And there I got stuck, because in my career, when I go back and I've shared this many times, of what has my career looked like. It started off with being a clerk. It moved to a night shift position, where really understanding that dynamic of day shift and night shift and who's around who's not, and how do you create that? Now I really goofed it up early on, but kind of found my footing. I went into a startup situation. I went into a full fledged turnaround situation, another startup style, like restart up situation, clean up, into just maintaining, into creating again. So a lot of turnaround and startup and creation is kind of been my bread and butter in the safety world. And again, it's not about safety. It's about leadership. It's about how do you create the influence to get what needs to be done, to get it done. It's, I've spent a lot of time there, and a lot of it, yeah, I've been, I've worked. With a lot of really amazing and talented people. I have also been mentored by a lot of amazing and wonderful people. Both sides of it. I've been been very fortunate there to to have interacted with people like that continuously and but a lot of it has been where I have I'm a very strong individual contributor. When I feel like things need to get done, I need to be better at and I'm learning. We always keep learning. But I have a high sense of responsibility. I have a high sense of introversion, so therefore, I usually put my head down, dig in and figure out what needs to happen, and I get it done through that. But certainly do, I don't like I feel like I'm in an interview here where I have to give you the opposite to that. Like I understand delegation. I understand giving others the chance. Understood my my base way of doing things is to fall into my put your head down, get it done, and knock it out and just get done with it. Not not a lot of inclusiveness, my natural inclination, but I know that doesn't always work. Well. I felt like I needed the disclaimers there. I guess I don't. But why not when I'm doing that. I now, when I was asked that question, and I started really thinking, like, Okay, what is there's madness in that. There's a method within the madness. How do I describe it? How would I tell someone that maybe hasn't done that before or been in one of those situations, how do you explain what I'm doing and why I'm doing it the way I'm doing it? And of course, with any good onboarding, what do you do? You create a 3060, 90, maybe a 120, and I kind of stop at the 90. I feel like that. You know, by the time you get to 90 days, it's still a lot of learning and and doing like the learning doing curve starts to transition some you're really not and I'll be honest, even I don't start to really hit my stride and in a new position. I've done this for better or worse, I've been in a lot of new positions in my career. For better or worse, I see myself hitting my stride at around six months and really getting into what the truth is within a year. So even for someone that we would say have experiences like I have, it's not an immediate like I walk in in 30 days, and magic has happened and just pouring out everywhere, no six months to a year, and usually it's the year point where I'm really understanding and really starting to be highly effective and moving into really getting the sustainable processes in place. Six months I'm feeling good. A year, I'm in the groove. And so how do I explain that? Like, at 90 days, I'm really just getting into my I'm at 90 I'm really preparing for the six month mark. At the six month mark, I'm trying to find the right, like, really, really, super sweet spot at the year. And that sounds so easy when I say it. But how did I get there? How do I start to create a leadership program that pushes me into that methodology. And so again, a 90 day plan, to me, is most effective with leadership, because beyond the 90 days, you've either found where you want to go for your six month or you haven't. And now on the other side of it's mainly a doing task. You probably need a 120 a 180 review to real mid year, full year, to look at the skills and the technical part of what's going on, and are you performing up to the level. But when a leadership position, if at nine in again, my opinion, if you're hitting the 90 day mark and you're you're still on not sure of where you're heading to the to the six month mark, there's some concern there for sure of what is happening and where are you starting to really feel around and get yourself into where you need to be to be an effective leader. Because you're really spending the first 90 days of strong, strong learning. It's the great opportunity to truly feel out where you are. Put your fingers on the pulse of the culture, and I'm using a lot of buzz words, the pulse of the culture. You're feeling out where you're at. You're getting a sense of who is the leaders. What is the process, how is it flowing, and even the cadence of what is the normal cycle of processes and projects and work that's going on? But let's move into the leadership 3060, 90 plan and how to implement that, or at least, my opinion, in my. Feelings on that coming up in 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 T, S, D, A consulting.com and welcome back to the second half of our leading and learning through safety podcast this week, talking about onboarding in the leadership of that experience, of how do we not just set someone up for technical success? How do we set someone up for leadership success? And so here I've previewed this for as long as I can, and now I've actually got to put something here for you, the 3060, 90 plan. So when I wrote the words 3060, and the numbers on a board, and I said, here are the three goals that we have for these milestones. At the end of your 30 days, know the people at the end of the 60 days, know the risk. So know our job. Know the job of the safety professional, which is quantifying and working through risk. At the end of 90 days, the plan for how to reduce risk within the organization. So we think about a leadership role the first 30 days, what I asked for was know the people, and not just leadership, not just the top level leadership. Know, the people go out into the field get just have build a rapport to where there's open communication. You're not out there trying to solve world hunger, you're not boiling the ocean. You're not trying to do everything at once and get everything done. You're out there getting the early wins of building communication as simple as, hey, what's happening? What can I do? I'm new. What are some things you'd like to see different? What are some things you really love about being here? Do you mind if I just walk around and see what you're doing. I just want to observe, because I'm new and I don't know, and I'm not here to judge anything. I'm here to just do and listen and be here in this moment with you. Now it's not again. You'll hear that in someone, and I know I can envision the person, because I know them. I know this person. I've met them, and they go, Well, what about if something bad were to happen? Or what if they ask you for something? Do you just ignore it and you're just there to meet the people? Of course not. If we see something critical, just like any any key leader, if you saw something that was going to burn the business down, or a fire starting, you do something. You're not just there to learn. You do something. Or if someone needs something, and you can give some help, you give some help that that is basic. I'm not sure where that other piece would come. I know it's malicious compliance. I know what it is. Still don't understand why people, some people do that. But anyway, not the point distraction. The first 30 days, I think, are the most critical, because it's when you as a new person in any organization, as a leader, can really get in there. And the expectations of performance are there, of course, but there's a there's an understanding of learning, and so you have the ability to go in, sit with the team, and just be present. There's something Zen about that too, of just be in the moment, be there with them, wherever they are at that moment, and begin to create the understanding of who is here, who's out there, doing the work, who's leading the work, who's administrating the work, who's doing some of the even any job. What are they? How are they participating in this organization, within this this ecosystem of work, get to know them, understand who you are around, and that that 30 day plan easily rolls into your 60 day plan, because as you have been there in that moment for 30 days, and you've allowed yourself that time to be present with the people. Now with eyes and ears wide open, not spending a lot of time pontificating on safety, doing the right thing, saying some things, putting things out there, but just being and listening and seeing and observing you have brought in the information you need to be successful with whatever your plan is going to be. In the case of safety, it's risk. We focus. We're not here to to do a lot of the other things that we see ourselves get wrapped up into that seem to be organizational importances. Ultimately, we can quantify and we can reduce risk, and we can do that. Of course, there's no way you do it without people. We put the first things first the people, and then we look at how the risk interacts with the people. But by going into it, eyes and ears open, ready to learn, ready to observe, we walk away with the understanding of where we begin to build our plan. How else would you do it? That's where I've had, of course, times where I have been given tasks like, this is the most important thing. Get this done. Close these actions, all those things that come in with like, Hey, this is why we brought someone in. I remember the turnaround was like, one of them I did was, hey, we've had six safety managers in five years. The most important thing you should be doing is creating action against these findings. Okay? And one time it was handed to me, it was like, Oh, yeah. And by the way, here's the OSHA citations that we received before you arrived, and we think they might be overdue. So I understood. But even with that happening, the goal was I had to understand the people and how did this, where did these OSHA citations come from? What were the people involved? How did it evolve the way it did? Even to close the actions, it's not me going out there and fixing things. I don't know even who to talk to to get something fixed at that point. It's about engaging with the people in learning who's there and what they do and how you're going to interact with them for the rest of your your time. And that's the first fund like you're building, that foundation that you're going to keep building upon. It you're never going to stop learning about people, engaging with people, interacting with people. It fundamentally is right there, and you're going to just keep building off of that. At the same time, you're starting to get a feel for where do I need to really focus? Where are the biggest gaps? Is it communication? Is it risk? Is it process, flow? Is it quantification? Is it reporting? Is it data? There can be so many pieces that you then understand where you need to be, because you've heard it firsthand from the people that it will affect the most. You're building influence from day one. You're building it by going out and being a part of what they're a part of, of joining them at that moment of being there when they need you to be there. Isn't that what we need just as people, we need someone to be there with us and understand where we are, to build empathy, to create action. Oh yeah, that's where we're at. So when you're thinking about as a leader, building those 3060, 90 plans for the next, future leader that you're developing, I encourage you highly to think about those first 30 days as the opportunity of not only what they should be doing, who should they be meeting, where should they be going? Where should they just go and be? Not that it has to be an active back and forth, but where do we go to really get a feel for the organization? Thanks for joining me on this episode, and until next time we chat, stay safe. You. Announcer, 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 i This has been the leading and learning through. Safety podcast you.