Episode 179: Listen More

In this episode, Dr. Mark French dives deeper into the psychology of listening, reflecting on how powerful it is to be truly heard—and the responsibility that comes with listening effectively. He explores how our personal biases, distractions, and assumptions can distort communication, and stresses the value of active listening, including recapping and confirming understanding to ensure clarity.

French highlights the importance of meeting people "where they are" in conversations, especially when emotions or urgency are involved. Drawing from a tragic safety incident in North Carolina, he shifts focus to organizational listening—questioning whether warning signs or complaints were previously overlooked and whether leaders truly listen to feedback from internal and external sources. He emphasizes that listening must be paired with action and closure—even if the action is simply acknowledging the concern.

The episode continues with a candid story about a minor workplace complaint (a fish oil smell) to underscore the need to validate all feedback, even if the issue doesn’t warrant major change. French reflects on the importance of closure—not just acting on feedback, but following up to ensure people feel heard and see results. He admits personal missteps in communication follow-through and discusses rebuilding trust.

Ultimately, the episode encourages leaders to view listening as a two-way commitment: hearing, understanding, taking appropriate action, and looping back to ensure closure—all while striving to improve through imperfection and empathy.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:01

This week on the leading and learning through safety podcast, we're continuing our discussion on listening because I felt like we should listen some more to me talking about listening. So we're going to take it a little deeper this time, the psychology of listening. This week on the leading and learning through safety 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 this week, we're continuing our discussion on listening, so I am honored that you are listening to my podcast right now. Oh, the buns, the puns. Oh, but what is why am I taking so much time talking about listening, because it really in the past few weeks, has hit me very strongly about how powerful it is to be heard, and also then that power you have in return of listening to when someone else is communicating. I look back and I realized there are so many times that I could have done better. I could have turned things off, I could have shut things down, and I could have listened better, and I could have recapped and like I said, part of listening is just confirmation, because we all come in to any conversation. We each bring our biases. And unless you know the person exceptionally well, you may not know what biases they're bringing. Even if you know them exceptionally well, you may not know the biases that they are bringing in, the cognitive issues that are coming in with that conversation. Have you ever felt like you're talking to someone and you kind of join them, like they start talking, or even you like I have done this, I'll start telling someone something, and they'll go, whoa. I feels like I've joined mid, like, mid conversation here, because you're already, like, four steps ahead and, oh yeah, you didn't experience that with me. I just came from this big, traumatic or big, exciting event. I'm telling you about it. I didn't even fill you in on what you need to know to be able to catch up to why I'm so excited, it feels like you've joined the midway. So when we're communicating, being able to recap, being able to hear what is being said, to truly listen and then go, here is what I think you're telling me. Here is what I am hearing. Is that right? I want to make sure I get it right, because it's important, and I know I've never seen anyone get upset when I do that, that I go, Hey, that's what I'm hearing. Is that true? Did I answer your question appropriately, or did I miss the mark? Or if I truly think I know and I answer, I'll ask is, is, does that make sense? Did I actually answer your question? Did I hear what you were trying to convey to me? Did I give you reasoning of why I made the decision that I made, or doing the thing I'm going to do that's when I do it right now that that's not as awesome at all. It's not as it doesn't happen as often as it should when I'm doing that. So we come in with this bias. Sometimes we're looking for something that confirms what we're seeing. Sometimes we're already thinking about other things or letting our influence bias us with what we're hearing. And we need to, again, as we ended the podcast last week, we need to meet the person where they are. What are you bringing to me in this moment, let me meet you there, hear you for what you were bringing, and address it that way. I came across a news story, and it was of course, safety fatality that caught. My attention, and I got to thinking about just a few things, and more than individual listening, but organizational listening. And this one here was in North Carolina, and there was a dump truck that ran a stop sign, evidently didn't even slow down. It killed four people and injured three others. There were some men working on power lines in the area, and this dump truck just blew right. Never saw them, blew right through a stop sign, and just ran into their work area and killed four. And so what does that have to do with listening? Mark, yeah, I'm sure you're asking that question. I the first question I ask is ask myself. I mean, the first one was like, was there drugs or anything like that involved, of course. But from a bigger perspective, I wonder, has did this driver ever have a history of poor driving record? What was the history? And I'll tell a story of one time we had some fleet vehicles, and someone was so upset over one of the drivers that they looked up our phone number in the phone book, gave us a call first went into main secretaries and eventually came to me super angry about our drivers, and I got to thinking about, well, how do we open up the chain of communication for when, if our people are in the public, how does the public be able to communicate back effectively? Are we opening it up? And then, of course, not, thought about, what do I see on the road? Of some trucks is the like one 800 number, how's my driving? Give them my code. And so we did that so that we could get effective open community the best way we could to understand if we had an issue. Now, there's other things you can do nowadays. You do telematics, you can do dash cams, you can do a lot of things to evaluate driving, but one of the biggest pieces of feedback is to hear what's happening in the public, what is happening out there on the roads. Are there things that are happening and if, if there's certain someone, or a certain driver that continually, continually has calls about aspects of their driving. I have to say there may be something there. It very crude and rudimentary, but if there's smoke, there's fire, if you're hearing all of this noise about someone, there is a likelihood that there is some truth in there somewhere. And so I wonder, was it, did the organization want to hear? Did they hear and had they taken any action? Or was this the first time? I don't know, but when I read these stories and these faith, I ask myself questions of what could have been done, what should have been done, and am I actually, if I do, I have similar risk that I should be addressing. And last week, I told about a story where I heard about a hazard, but I didn't know what to do, and so I didn't take action. And then had to go back eventually and rethink, like when I kept hearing, and it finally hit me that I didn't take action that and I wrote down in my notes during a training, I see, I hear, I am told I am given, I am written to. And then I put a big arrow and I said, What was the outcome, what was the action? And then from that I took it. What does closure look like for that person who brought it? For that person that said, I saw this, I heard this, I wrote you this, I brought you this, I did this for you. There will be an action that should come from it. Even if it's a communication, there should be an action. If you were brought a piece of communication, I know I'm talking about in a very abstract way, if someone writes emails, talks to you, sends you a message, puts in a an event into your reporting system. It's communication. It isn't. It's coming to you. It's it's hearing it, it's reading it, it's taking it in meeting them where they are. I think that's the best way I can put it, is that you're meeting them where they are. There needs to be an action, an evaluation, something. Maybe it's something bigger. Maybe you do really need to go do something about this. But then the other thing I realized that I'm not good at and I've got to figure out how to do this, and we're going to take this journey together, because we're a team, you and I, we're a team, and we're going to do this together. We are going to find a way to define closure. Her and what that would mean. Let's talk more about that on the next half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. You are listening to the leading and learning through safety podcast with Dr Mark French tsda Consulting. Learn you lead others. Traditional development focuses too much on weaknesses. They make you believe that the only way to find success is through improving your faults. Strengths based coaching instead focuses on creating success through using your natural talents. Dr Mark French at tsda Consulting is an authorized Clifton Strengths Coach, your customized report and a personalized approach help bring out the best in you and your team. For more information, visit us on the web at tsta consulting.com Welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. This week, we're continuing our conversation on what I'm calling listening, but it's actually communication, and it's closing the communication. So in the case of I hear, I see, I'm brought I have this communication, I need to take an action, and from that action there should be a defined closure. What is it that would bring closure to the other person? Is it something being fixed? Is it a training event? Is it just communication back saying we hear you, but we're not really sure there's anything we can do, or maybe there's nothing we will do, because that's maybe not a concern we really need to hear about. And I always laugh about hearing the story of where there was a safety meeting and, and this was actually my safety committee meeting, and it was a big, big deal. And, and we were there, and the safety committee person stood up and said, Here is the biggest concern I have. This is what is the most this is, this is the thing that is going to revolutionize safety for this organization. I mean, they really did play it up. I'm not being sarcastic here. It was, like, a big deal. Like, I'd prepped in Monster the right people there, because they had this information. I was very young, so I didn't ask you ahead of time, like, Hey, what are you going to bring up? Like, if I bring the plant manager and all these other people to hear this big concern that you want to talk about, what is it? I didn't do that? Well, boy, did I learn a lesson. And we got there, and the person stood up and said, You know what? So and so on our line takes a lot of fish oil supplements, and they smell like fish, and it's driving me nuts. Hmm? Hear you loud and clear, that is not going to revolutionize safety for this organization, but thank you. Thank you for bringing that up. So yeah, there are times where the communication is has to be just addressed that I hear you and and, but yet I'm just going to tell you that we're we're just closing it, and if there's additional information later, I want you bring it to me. I don't want you to stop talking to me. But for this item, for this event, for this thing, that's what we're going to do when there is something, when there actually is an item, that we should do. I I have never considered the idea of what does closure look like for the other person? I've always thought of it as that. I feel like I heard you. I know the action I need to take we've talked about it, but what would that really close? It is that real closure? Did that satisfy what you brought to me, and now I'm starting to think more and more about what is closure criteria? What does it mean to take the to hear the person make the action and then actually bring it to closure. And even closure can be closing the loop, going back to the person and saying, Hey, did you see the new safety glasses? Did you see the new safety material? Did you see the new practice we put into place? Did you see those things that we're doing? And do you feel like that helped? What do you think about it? Now, some organizations do that exceptionally well, but it takes a lot of practice and a lot of systems to sometimes do that. And even with that, it doesn't it still can have issues, because there's just so many ways that we communicate, and there's always so much communication, I'm sure you as a leader or a safety person, or whatever it is that you're out there, I'm sure you are getting all kinds of communication all day long, and even trying to think about prioritizing and. Actioning and closure becomes very overwhelming, no doubt in my mind, and we are going to have misses. And that's okay too, because we are human, we will not be perfect. We we are nowhere near that. As human beings. We can always try to improve, and that's our goal. Together, we underst understand where we are, where do we stand right now, and which path is it that will help us make some improvement? It's one step at a time. It's one thing at a time. And so even as I say all this, and I make it sound so simple, hey, if you get a piece of communication, write down the action, and then write down what it would take to close that action that sounds so wonderful and so easy and magical and oh my gosh, I've waved my magic wand, and all of our organizational issues have disappeared because of good communication. Yeah, that's a magical world, and we are constantly going to battle it, but we can get better, and we're going to try to get better. That's what I love about what we do every day, that we walk in together and we figure it out, and we try to drive a little bit of improvement in some of the ways that we do that is by looking for the ways that we can the one really promoting the wins when we're able to, hey, we heard and we fixed, or even that one person who felt like they weren't heard before, or maybe, and I have done this, I've had to do this where I didn't hear them first time after apologizing, you know, I I didn't hear it right? I misunderstood. I thought I did what you needed. I was completely wrong, or maybe I completely forgot. And more likely than not, there have been many times, many times that someone has come back to me and said, Hey, what's the status of this item I brought you? And I go and huh, they'll say it, and they'll say it, and I'll say, I am so sorry. I know exactly what you're talking about now I remember it. And guess what I have to do. I like, kind of like in a in a restaurant, when something's forgotten, they, they put that one as the they, they move it to the front. We're going to get that one faster. That's the one I have to now get faster because I have, I have depleted some trust, and now I've got to salvage or rebuild it, which is also an item that I always bring to and I'm talking to to partners of any kind of business partners or like, when I'm going to enter a service agreement or something like that, it's always about, hey, everything sounds great, But how do you react when it when something's not so great? How fast are you able to do something when we have problems, because there will be problems, and where we really test the ability to hear and to do is when we have an issue, because we're going to have one. And all I want is to know that we're in it together, and we're going to go after it together, and we're going to find the best find the best path together to fix it. That's what a good business partnership looks like when we work well. We work well. When we have an issue, we go after it and we fight for it and fix it. So thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast, I've really enjoyed talking about listening and hearing communication. It's clarifying for me to say it out loud and to be able to share experiences about just what we do every day in trying to manage the volume of communication and the people interaction, but also how important it is and how safety is that front line. If your team is willing to communicate about safety and we're willing to take action, it builds the bridge to all the other communication within the organization. So once again, thanks for joining 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.