Episode 204: TN Safety Conference 2026

In this episode of Leading and Learning through Safety, Dr. Mark French reflects on his recent experience at the Tennessee Safety Conference in Nashville, a premiere event he has attended for numerous years. As a multi-time speaker, he emphasizes the high caliber of research and expertise shared at the conference, noting the value of learning from those who live these safety experiences daily. 

Leadership: Competence and Commitment

The core of Dr. French’s talk centered on the leadership principle of "meeting people where they are". He introduces a framework focused on two pillars: 

Competence: Defined by the APA as a repertoire of skills applied specifically to a task. Dr. French clarifies that having a general skill (like using a tool) does not automatically translate to competence in a specific setting or material. 

Commitment: An obligation or devotion to a task. This involves understanding not just how to do something, but feeling the obligation to perform it correctly despite shortcuts or differing standards. 

He argues that leaders should diagnose performance based on these two factors relative to a singular task rather than generalizing an employee's overall character. 

AI in Safety

Dr. French also explores the emerging role of Artificial Intelligence in the field. While skeptical of AI as a total workforce replacement, he highlights a transformative tool he witnessed at the conference: an EHS management system that uses vocal transcription to create Job Safety Analyses (JSAs) on the fly. By recording a supervisor’s morning debrief, the AI can transcribe the conversation, identify specific hazards like electrical work or heights, and provide real-time policy advice and documentation, significantly reducing tedious paperwork while adding value to field safety. 

Transcript

Mark French: 0:01

This week on the podcast, I'm back for one two. I was at the Tennessee safety conference, and, of course, always a wonderful time of learning, getting to see people being out there. I want to debrief on that a little bit this week on the podcast,

Unknown: 0:18

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. You

Mark French: 1:27

Matt, welcome to this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Have you missed me? I've missed me. It's been a while. You know, it's funny how fast time passes when things and life get busy, but I'm glad to be back. Had a really great week in particular, because it was earlier this week, the Tennessee safety conference in Nashville. This is, to me, hands down, one of the best state conferences I've ever attended, and I keep going back year over year. I started 20 years ago attending this when I was first in my career. And I've seen it grow. I've seen it develop. But every year one, I am truly amazed by the quality of speakers that are there every year, and here recently, I've I've been a multi time speaker there, and I feel honored every single time, because there's such an amazing caliber of thought experts and research experts and people who do it Every day. They they've lived that experience that they're sharing. It's such a wonderful conference and such a great honor to have been there again this year. This year, I spent a lot of time talking about leadership. My My talk was on, how do you meet people where they are, where do you go into the field, and how do you acknowledge and meet people and see them in the field? So I want to start there, and I think I'll close out with some of the cool things I learned while there. But this opens up a great item for just leadership in general. And there are the can do and the will do like, do I have the ability? And if I have the ability, am I willing to use that ability to accomplish something? And so in what I teach in particular is a very specific tool that I am certified in that looks at competence and commitment. And do you have the knowledge that is required, and are you committed to using it to get the job accomplished? Now what I like about this tool is when, when we say, meet them where they are, meet your person, meet your leadership, meet that supervisor, meet that person where they are. It's not based on the person. It's based on the person's interaction with a goal or a task or a something they are doing. It's so easy to create the generalization of just someone being a not good employee or a not good supervisor when the truth is really more complicated. Now in some cases, there is always the exception to the rule. Of course there is. We're people. We're highly complex. That's the way that is. But in this case, we're going to use this as a very strong guiding principle that usually the person is competent or committed to the goal itself. So is it? I use a very simple example, and let's say it's wearing cut resistant gloves when cutting so you're cutting something, and you're supposed to wear your cut resistant gloves so you don't get hurt. Does the person understand? And when to use them, where to get them and when, how to inspect them to make sure they're in good shape. Like do they understand really, that the company expects it, that it's required. How do I get them? How do I go and get this piece of PPE, and if I don't have it or it's damaged, how do I stop the work I'm doing and report that to get new ones. So do I understand the process? Then it comes into the commitment. Am I willing to go get the gloves? Am I willing to ask for new ones? Am I willing to wear them? And why or why not? And hopefully, in a lot of cases, there's, there is the want to but that's where you diagnose. So I've encountered someone who's doing it either right or wrong, and the question is, if I'm do, I do? They understand what they're supposed to do and why they're supposed to do it, and why or why not, are they doing it? What is their commitment to it. That's the most important part of what we look at every day, is safety people and as leaders, there's always that idea that, okay, did you understand what I needed you to do and why or why not? Did you or not do it or encounter it and be motivated, and then, once we understand what they need, we're able to meet them. We're able to go to where they need us the most. Do we need to impart knowledge? Do we need to teach? Do we need to mentor, or do we just need to delegate? Or do we need to just give them a little bit of coaching or inspiration, or some sort of motivation to become committed to that necessary thing. And so I want to look at a little bit of the definition there. I think that there's a really neat definition for these two items that come right out of the APA. So the the American Psychological Association, this is usually when we're talking about behaviors and motivation. I like to go there to get the definition, to fully understand what are we talking about when we talk about competence and commitment. And so competence is a developed repertoire of skills, especially as it is applied to the task. So just because I know how to use a knife does not mean that I know how to use a knife for whatever purpose I'm using it for in the field. Does that make sense? I'm asking you, that's interesting. What I'm meaning is that I may have used this type of cutter, this type of grinder, this type of tool on this subset before. It is different when you're using that same tool. So instead of cutting metal, you're now cutting wood. There is a difference in how you work that there's a difference between concrete and metal and wood and how you're going to cut it. And even though you may be familiar with the tool set, have you used them in that manner? Now that is way over simplified and probably very technically wrong in a lot of ways, but it is a very generalized example of that. I may have a branch of skills, but have I applied them here in a leadership role in HR, we do this all the time. In look at your normal job description, job postings that are out there, they say we want experience with these topics, D, O T, OSHA. And then they get down further, and they go, we'd really like somebody with 10 years of experience in drilling for oil in sand, off the I mean, they get very specific of like, yeah, we want 10 years of you knowing how to use all those skills in this area, like 10 years of experience in a hospital setting, 10 years of experience in a warehouse, setting, industrial setting, construction, setting, high rise construction setting, we do it all the time, and we're expected that. But why is it when we coach people, when we get engaged with them in the field, we forget that just because they have the skill, the skill has to be applied to that task, and have they received the information, the competence that is necessary for them to be able to commit to that, to do that? Because step one is understanding, do we even know what we're doing? Now, some would question, I don't know what I'm doing. Hey, that's cool, too. There's a lot of times I feel that way, but it first begins with this idea of competence. And if we have the skills, may we need to develop the skills, but even with the skills, do I know how to apply them to the task I'm working on? Let's look a little bit at commitment on the next half.

Unknown: 10:00

Of the podcast, humanizing the workplace. It is the leading and learning through safety podcast, 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 tsda consulting.com

Mark French: 10:47

and welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. Let's talk about commitment. So commitment is defined as an obligation, or devotion to a task. So it's an obligation to a task in a very simple form for what we need it for in our usage. And so does the person feel obligated to do that task that they've been given the knowledge for? They've been given the knowledge to wear their gloves. Do they feel obligated to do so? Why? Or why not? That is the fundamental of the motivation in the workplace for any item is, do we understand it, and do we feel the obligation to perform it the way we've been taught? And there's a lot of things that interfere with that obligation. There can be differing standards. There can be seeing things done wrong, being taught wrong, learning the shortcuts, all the things that come up. But again, we engage them with the task, both of these very task oriented so remember, as we're engaging our team in the field, when we're engaging our supervisors to do coaching, to do learning, to help them even better diagnose how their team is performing, we first look at that that skill, and is the skill being applied properly to the task. Then, does the person feel the obligation to do the task correctly? That is vital in getting involved in meeting the person where they are and then matching what they need. It's one thing to understand what our people need in the field, to go and talk to them and hear it. There has to be an action. There has to be that building of trust, and ultimately, trust is empathy and action. I understand and I take action. This is where we do that, and we do it in a very meaningful way, either through teaching of knowledge or helping them understand that obligation to the task, helping them reach and accomplish that obligation to the task. So I think the key talk that I came away with what I was teaching during this this session that I I really appreciate everyone who was there, and it was such a good time that the real key is to when we engage with someone on some task, don't think of it as the total person doing something right or wrong. When you look only at the singular task. Do they have the skills? Can they apply the skills to that task? And then, how is their obligation to that task? By doing that, we really increase that very root cause, motivational moment to be able to make a real change for that person, which is where we really want to make that happen. So I'm going to take a pause from that, because I always love walking through the Expo Center and seeing new tools, new devices, new items in the talk of the town, anywhere we look now, is artificial intelligence, AI, everyone is that is the newest buzzword that I am kind of tired of, in a way, because I think we've it has a great capability. No doubt it also has a lot of flaws. And when I hear all these big tech companies just doing preemptive layoffs for what AI could be, oh, as an as an HR person, that drives me crazy, because I don't think it's going to be the revolution we think it is. I think it's going to make a lot of things potentially better when used the right way. But I also don't believe it's going to be the great life changing put everybody out of work that they think it's going to be, my opinion, we'll see, only time will tell. But what is neat is some of the AI practices now that. Coming into safety. And one tool in particular that really caught my attention as I was walking around and just browsing and looking, was, it was essentially an incident, an EHS management system, but it used, kind of the virtual AI vocal technology of transcription and learning to develop. And what was demonstrated was essentially creation of a JSA on the fly. And I thought it was amazing, because that is probably one of the most important things that need, that needs to happen in the field, but can also be one of the most tedious pieces of paper that we hand out, because it can be repetitive. It can be some of the questions may not be applicable time and time again, but we try to cover everything. We try to create this interactive process with jsas that sometimes just get bogged down in paper, and I get it they need to be done, but it's also been one of those tough things that just keep happening. So what was demonstrated was someone said, well, let's imagine we're having a group talk about what we're about to do today. And he just hit the the AI button on the his tablet, which it could be also on a phone, and he just basically put it in between the group and talked, and he gave a debrief of like, Hey, we're going to be doing this work today. We're at this location. We see over here that the weather is going to be blah, blah, blah. I know that we're going to do this work, and it might I see that that's electric. And I see this other group is on. He basically just around his so essentially, imagine a supervisor getting his team together for the morning debrief, or the pre shift debrief that they should be doing anyway, to talk about the work they're about to do. You just turn on your phone, hit a button to record it and start basically doing this debrief. And you talk about all the things you see you have the other guys talk about any the team members to talk about any issues they may be saying it all of a sudden, transcribed everything into text, but then it developed a JSA, or even leading JSA questions, like, based on what you said, Did you consider that this also might be present? Is it question mark? Yes or no? Touch the button like it sounds like you're going to work at heights. Here's the work at heights JSA procedure you need to verify with your team. Oh, sounds like a lockout situation. Here's what you should do. It starts giving you real time advice and real time policy and real time JSA stuff right there, and then, as it populates and creates it and you finish filling it out, everyone has, like a little place where everybody put their finger signature in for and done like you created the JSA simply by doing the morning debrief and then looking at the safety items that it says, look at these things you should consider, or even possibly consider based on the information you just provided. And of course, it continually learns and develops from that, I thought that was absolutely amazing, because I've heard some really good pre job briefs, and then I read the JSA, and I'm like, wow, there's a lot of extra here. Like, if why I'm Why do I have this whole excavation section if I know I'm not doing excavation, or why do I have this huge fall protection section if I know I'm not going at hides, but if it happens to come up, then how does it automatically? And it's one of those extra steps that may not just be as value added, and suddenly, here's the value back in simply through artificial intelligence learning to develop a JSA. It was great. I thought it was amazing. I'm so happy to be back behind the mic. I'm happy you've joined me. Thank you for joining me. Had a wonderful time at the Tennessee safety conference, and of course, remember competence and commitment. That's where we meet our team. Until next time, stay safe. You.

Unknown: 19:02

Matt, 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.