Friday afternoon, the “TGIF jitters” are starting to
settle in and we’re wrapping up the last tasks before the weekend. Our
leadership gathers all the members for the usual safety brief. It is common
practice for a safety brief prior to the weekend; the problem is the
storytellers have become complacent and monotone to the audience. The same
topics are covered: drinking and driving, family issues, financial awareness,
backyard or water safety. The audience is left to digest the regurgitated topics
from the leadership weekly with no spontaneity or fresh flavor.
The
story does promote the goals and ideals of the organization with respect to
safety however the failed delivery hardly meets the intent of the leadership.
The lack of audience participation is a direct result of several barriers emplaced
by the various storytellers. The attempt made by the story teller is on stride
with attempting to cure cancer or world hunger with a single swoop of the hand.
The leadership does not live up to the role of a storyteller. You can tell that
there was no forethought given to the story and the delivery is usually a half
moon about the storyteller. I could reenact the speech with a sock puppet and
have more audience participation.
The impact on the organization
is dismal. I think more preparation and a better delivery will leave the audience
remembering safety throughout the weekend rather than taking a brain vacation
for the 15 minute ordeal. Having belabored drinking and driving speech after
speech I still recall our organization having on average on incident per week. Perhaps
the mind numbing campaign is keeping the numbers down but it still doesn’t
prevent the occurrence. We have almost 800 individuals within my organization
so I’m not sure how that matches against the rest of the population. Now, after
having reviewed this piece I will speak with my leadership tomorrow to discuss
my perception of a botched delivery. I think I could offer some ideas to make
this weekly gathering worthwhile and productive.
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