Communication is central to our everyday life as humans. As such, we can sometimes underestimate the importance of communicating accurately and the need to ensure our conversation partner has developed the understanding we wanted them to have. In the workplace, miscommunications are common. However in high risk industries, they have the potential to be more than an annoying waste of time, they can lead to serious incidents and accidents. Likewise, giving appropriate feedback to staff, peers and managers can be difficult and daunting and is often avoided. This can result in people not understanding what they need to fix about how they work in order to do it safely.
Positive safety communication involves recognising the difficulty in holding safety conversations and builds upon research and a framework from social neuroscience to explore how to communicate successfully. By understanding some of the drivers behind why we struggle to engage in these conversations, we can then develop the necessary skills to improve communication and ultimately, safety.
The benefit is not only limited to safety conversations, but also more broadly, as these skills will enable clearer, more accurate communications in the workplace. This will lower the chance of miscommunications and help to ensure that both the sender and receiver have the same information.
Our UK team: Email enquiries or call +44 (0) 131 229 6140