Lesson five, influencing your team to intervene on each other. So this area is possibly one of the more advanced safety culture behaviors, but it's when a team member approaches a colleague, you or another manager or supervisor, to stop some safety violation. So I want to talk about how you might get to that place. So I have seen cultures like that before. And it's actually a really interesting culture to observe. And that's where I would say you're getting to a really genuine culture of safety when people feel a little uncomfortable intervening on each other.

So let's talk about how you get to that, how you can influence your team members to be able to do that. So how do you encourage people to approach others to prevent us Safety violation. What we're talking about here is a culture of positive intervention. The first thing you need to do is educate people into what that means. So what does intervention mean? Or whatever you're going to call it.

This ability, this assumption that if I do something or I'm about to do something that could put me at risk or somebody else at risk, I can expect a colleague or someone else to intervene or just say something to stop me doing it. We might want to do something like an intervention training workshop. We're going to look at that in more detail in a moment. You need to communicate that you expect to see it that you expect it to happen to you and how you respond to interventions on yourself how you're intervening on others, and preparing other managers to respond positively when it happens to them. So we're going to look at each one of these in more detail now. So the first thing that I think I would do is somehow communicate this message to the team to help them to first of all, get some understanding of what's happening.

So if you don't communicate the concept of interventions, if you suddenly start doing interventions or involving other people, which would be more difficult to do that on each other, then people are going to be surprised by that. They perhaps won't be surprised by you as their manager intervening, but they will, if one of their colleagues does it, so we need to educate them and get them used to this idea. So first thing to do is have some sort of workshop or you could use a Team briefing where you've already got your team together. In that team briefing or that workshop, you're going to explain the concept of intervention. You'll also communicate that you're going to be expecting to see people doing it. So what it is, and you're going to be expecting those people, members of your team to start practicing it.

You're going to communicate during that workshop, that you expect it to happen to you. So if you make a mistake, if you forget to do something, that's a safety related issue. Then you expect somebody to come to you and remind you about what you should be doing. And you'll actually train people in how to do an intervention perhaps even more important is training people in how to receive an intervention? So let's take these one by one. So what is an intervention, so you really need to explain this in some way that makes sense to them.

Now, this is a definition that I've put here, but you can use whatever definition you want. But from a safety point of view, an intervention is when you intervene or stop someone before doing something that might be risky behavior. Or it could be behavior that's going to put themselves at risk, or, and other people. So that's what we mean by an intervention. You can explain during this briefing, that this is a well established practice in many industries. Now, it's true.

It's not so well known in other industries, but certainly in some of the ones that I've worked in, such as in manufacturing, particularly in high risk industries. like oil and gas, the nuclear industries aligns all those sorts of areas. They're very used to this concept. So it's not as though you're inventing something out of nowhere. It's actually a really well established practice that works. So your team need to understand that it's not some wacky idea you've come up with actually a common practice in many industries.

Also, part of that briefing or workshop will be you communicating that you expect to see it you expect to see members of your team intervening when something is being done. That is risky behavior. So you communicate that I expect to see you doing interventions, say it. You also expect it to happen to you. I expect you to intervene on me say it. Let people know They have permission to intervene when they see you about to do something, maybe without thinking, go into that area without those ear defenders, or forget to put that hard hat on, you're expecting your team members intervene on you, if you forget to do that.

So during this workshop, you'd want to do a bit of practice. So actually get people to practice how interventions are done. An example could be Hi there, I noticed you're about to walk through that high vis area, can I help you find a high vis vest? That could be one way that you intervene and that you train somebody else to intervene. So what we're looking for with our team members is not some aggressive, marching up somebody and shoving a vest in their hand but something more like that. So a way that the person's dignity is maintained.

But that the intervention is happening. Hi there, I'm worried that you're about to stand on that chair, to change that light bulb. Pocket maintenance to come and have a look at that. Now, I'm not saying that you have to do it this way, you may feel more comfortable with a different set of words. And when I've done these sorts of workshops with teams, I really think it's important to kind of leave it up to them to think about the exact form of words, but what you want is a friendly, helpful, non aggressive type of intervention where everybody feels okay about that conversation. So the actual words you use will very much depend upon your personality, and the individual personalities of your team.

And there may be other wider cultural considerations. So we've talked a lot about culture on this course, when it relates to the world. organization. But of course, wider cultures can involve whole regions or countries. So there may be cultural differences in different cultures about what's expected. So you have to work with that and obviously your best place to know how that works within your particular region.

But if it's done, sensitively, thoughtfully, I believe that any culture can work with this sort of thing, if it's thought through. The other thing, of course, you need to consider when you're doing these workshops with your team, is you might change some of the way you do that intervention depending on who you're talking to. So some people are more sensitive than others. Some people will know exactly what you mean before you even speak, and other people will need to be told quite bluntly what the issue is. So expect people to adjust what they're saying and how they say it depending on the situation. who they're talking to.

But I mentioned this before. And for me, the most important person in the intervention is not really the person doing the intervention, but actually the receiver of the intervention. So that's why this workshop is so important. Because really what you're doing is you're preparing the individuals within your team to get used to being intervened upon. So whilst we want to train people how to do it, actually, the biggest most important element is people getting used to being intervened upon. So when it happens, it's not a sudden shock.

And they don't know how to respond. They know it's coming. They know what's happening, and everybody feels okay about it.