Positive safety talk

Safety-related conversations often come across as confrontational. This points out that people expect the worst when safety feedback is offered. Here are five ways to avoid potential problems.

1. Stress that feedback is necessary. Only with specific behavior-based feedback can we improve and eventually "make perfect."
2. Be positive. When your feedback sessions are positive and constructive, they set the tone and change the association of feedback with negativity.
3. Use "trial-and-success" learning. Behavioral scientists have shown quite convincingly that we learn more from focusing on our successes than our failures. It's positive feedback from our successes that produces the most learning.
4. Be careful with public praise. Whether positive or negative, individual feedback should not be delivered publicly without the recipient's permission.
5. Sometimes give feedback first. It often makes sense to give individual feedback immediately before the next opportunity to perform the target behavior.