Behavior
Looking for something specific? The following topics address a wide range of business needs and challenges.
Two Consultants on Leadership: Setting Clear Expectations
Providing clarity of what desired performance looks like is a foundational leadership skill. Pinpointing, task clarification, or simply being clearer about what excellence looks like and what…
Two Consultants on Leadership: Accountability in HOP
Human and Organizational Performance (HOP) is becoming an increasingly popular approach to safety. HOP’s five principles offer an interesting framework for thinking about human error or behavior in…
Flip-Flopping Leaders?
Frustrated by leaders who seem to flip-flop on their decisions? When leaders have a habit of making a decision and then reversing course soon after, those affected often start taking a wait-and-see…
Two Consultants on Leadership: Establishing Influence
Two Consultants on Leadership: Establishing InfluenceLeadership means having an influence on the people around you. Beyond relying on position of power or fear-based management, leadership is about…
Two Consultants on Leadership: Managing Conflict
Unhealthy conflict will be something that every leader has to address at some point. As leaders, helping team members address conflict is good for business. When team members are experiencing…
The Impact of Stress on Return-to-Work from Injury
The negative impact of stress in the workplace is well documented. Long-term stress can cause physical health issues (high blood pressure, headaches), mental health issues (irritability, depression,…
Deregulation, OSHA, and the Battle of Short- vs. Long-Term Consequences
Given the current administration’s focus on deregulation and deep personnel reductions in government agencies, it’s hard not to be concerned about the long-term impact of these actions on safety. It’…
Two Consultants on Leadership: What Are The Most Important Skills for New Supervisors
Welcome to the 2025 blog series! In 2025, I am taking a slightly different approach to my newest blog series. I’ll continue to focus on leadership best practices and leader behaviors that will…
An Example of Leadership Success: Leading through Core Values and Mission
The tenth and final blog in this series is dedicated to one leader’s commitment to supporting one of his life’s missions—ensuring people live their best lives. Many leaders go through life…
Preventing Pencil Whipping of Safety Checklists
Safety is filled with checklists. Pre-task checklists, equipment checklists, start-up and shut-down checklists to name a few. Unfortunately, it is all too common for people to “pencil whip”…
Early Warning Signs that Systems are Impacting Safety
About 20 years ago I conducted a safety culture assessment for a large paper products company. They had been working hard on improving their safety performance and like many organizations, had…
Balancing the Carrot and Stick: The Role of Negative Approaches in Leadership
Over the past several years, I’ve noticed that people and organizations are shifting away from using primarily negative approaches to influence behavior. Instead, they are embracing more positive…
An Example of (Safety) Leadership Success: Narrowing Focus to Create Results
The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. This eighth blog discusses one leader’s intentional push to move away from everything is important right now to a narrowed, organization-…
Culture, Language, and Positive Reinforcement
Increasing cultural diversity is adding a richness to the work world. Immigrants (like many non-immigrants) are often hardworking, loyal employees, however cultural diversity can present safety…
Sustaining a Culture of Engagement with Behavioral Science
If you manage a team or hold a leadership role in an organization, you may already know the benefits of maintaining high engagement. Highly engaged teams are correlated with lower rates of attrition…
An Example of Leadership Success: Creating Bench Strength
Want to go fast, go alone. Want to go far, go as a team. This sixth blog is dedicated to a leader’s determination to develop the bench strength of her team. Pat’s effort led to an organization-wide…
Teaching Persistence Without Overdoing the Pain
A headline about Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang, wishing pain and suffering upon Stanford students caught my attention recently. I took the bait and clicked to find out what he might be getting at.…
The Case for Conducting a Behavioral Lean Maturity Assessment
Organizations that embody continuous improvement are exemplars within and outside of their respective industries. Ironically, we measure nearly every key metric critical to the forward progress of…
