How Storytelling Can Play a Key Role in Safety Management

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Mary Stine, an EHS director, consultant and storytelling expert.

Mary combines her safety experience with her passion for telling stories to help HSE professionals leverage the power of narrative.

She explains why storytelling is so compelling for humans and how this can be harnessed to help organizations improve safety performance.

Mary discusses many elements of storytelling, including neuroscience, structure, timing, knowing your audience, and the key skills you need to create compelling narratives.

She stresses the importance of transparency, self-awareness, proficiency and authenticity when communicating in your workplace - and explains why listening is also key to collaborating with co-workers to improve organizational safety.

♪ [music] ♪ - [Mary C.] My name is Mary Conquest. I'm your host for "Safety Labs" by Slice, the podcast where we explore the human side of safety to support safety professionals. We move past regulations and reportables to talk about the core skills of safety leadership, empathy, influence, trust, rapport.

In other words, the soft skills that help you do the hard stuff. ♪ [music] ♪ Hi there. Welcome to "Safety Labs" by Slice. We hear our first stories as infants, whether they're songs that tell us about "Three Blind Mice," or picture books about "Goldilocks and the Three Bears."

We learn through narrative. This is true across cultures and time. It's clear that humans have a fundamental and even biological connection to narrative. What is the neuroscience of storytelling and what does narrative have to do with workplace safety? EHS professional and public speaker, Mary Stine, joins us today to answer those questions and share her wisdom about the power of narrative.

That's right, today you get two Mary's for the price of one. Instead of our usual biography, I'd like to try something a little more on theme for today's topic. I've asked Mary to tell us her biography in the form of a story. Welcome.

- [Mary S.] Hello. How are you doing, Mary?

- Hi. Good. Good. I'm looking forward to this. It's exciting. So I'll lead you in. Once upon a time...

- There was this wonderful, magnificent being, who was excited to explore the journey of earth and decided to focus on environmental health and safety. And you're thinking, "Wow, a small kid wants to do that?" It's true. I ran my platform on elementary school and one as the president of the student body because I wanted everyone to take care of the plants and the trees and everything.

It was really weird. But that person grew up to be a phenomenal human being, a strong mentor, relator, went to school to be educated in the sciences of both medicine and psychology, and finished with an environmental sciences degree, as well as an occupational health and safety degree. But in order to tie a nice bow on it, to communicate and to learn how to work with others, she completed her bachelors of science and her MBA in business.

That helped me to understand how to communicate with people. So hopefully, you'll get to get a good idea of who I am by the end of this topic.

- Awesome. Thanks so much. So Mary joins us from Carmel, California. So let's get into the meat of the interview. Once upon a time. That fairytale phrase grabs attention, even in a room full of adults. So what is so compelling about narrative and storytelling for humans?

- The effect of communication begins very early, Mary. In studies that were performed on different places and events regarding the development of children, they wanted to see how integral was interface? Can you develop the same sociopathy and the same social dynamics independently, or do you need a

[inaudible] and a sounding board? So it's very important. As a matter of fact, the study proved that if there were children, nourished and fed, but kept isolated, away from human contact and touch, they actually died. Like they died increasingly rapid, like three months to six months. They never made it to a year.

Communication, touch, tactile, as well as visual cues, are integral in helping someone to feel whole and valued.

- What does the neuroscience tell us about storytelling specifically?

- There are chemical reactions, Mary, that everyone should be aware of. We are human beings. We absorb information through our brain. We absorb information through, you know, verbal or oral materials in front of us and we kind of get excited about some things and we get kind of turned off by some things.

It's a visual cue in your brain that says, "I like this. I don't like this." And that particular juncture in your brain is built above chemicals and neurons and synapses and these processes help you to identify the release of dopamine, etc. And when you get those particular reactions, the first thing that your mind says is, "I want to go back to that again. I enjoy that."

Or if they get the adrenaline rush that results from a negative experience, they think, "Oh, I do not want to go back to that. That stressed me out." So your brain actually works like this. Your brain has different stops and cues and alleyways of information that comes to you. It adjusts so that you can survive an environment or an equation or an event.

You may have heard of fight or flight syndrome. You may have heard of the love brain, the person who's just thinking in this amorous state, that anything that person says and does is just fine with them until they come out of that love brain state. But then you have the brain that wants to focus and concentrate and learn topics.

In order for all of these things to work, the brain, the eyes, and the ears have to coordinate together. And if you are a person that is impaired visually or impaired auditorily, then you're going to have a different mechanism for learning, which is tactile, sensory, or visual cues. So most of the things that happen in your brain are like a recording system.

If you've ever placed your voice on record, and then you play it back, you don't think that's your voice. You feel kind of like disconnected. Well, your brain actually has a filtering system that funnels the information in so that when it comes through your timpani, you're able to hear it in a vibration.

And the vibration and the octave hears it differently than when you resonate it out to someone else and record it. The same with ideas. If someone gives you an idea or a subject that is congruent to what you're doing, you're going to be aligned with them and you're going to want to continue that conversation. But if someone is incongruent or someone that is going in another direction, you tend to put up a chemical defense that asks you to stop, pause, and discern whether or not you want to be invited.

So I'm going to be able to teach you guys today on how to be more receptive to people talking to you and how to get people to be more receptive to you.

- So then, dopamine, the neurotransmitter that's associated with pleasure...

- Oxytocin for the babies when they want to [crosstalk].

- Does it light up?

- It sure does. As a matter of fact, I had some visuals I was going to show you. You can look at them later. But the visual cues have different parts of your brain that refer to cognitive science as coherence. And so when we build knowledge, the brain automatically tries to fit that new information into the existing schemes or network. So when you're talking about the chemicals going through, they're setting those little shoots down the lines and saying, "I like this. I don't like that."

So that's what I mean by your brain working together.

- So then in a way, narrative, it's kind of a familiar structure, right? Like we understand narrative from a very early age, beginning, middle, conflict. And so are you saying that when we tell stories, people relate to them a bit better than just raw information because they've got those structures or because it's familiar in some sense?

- You're right. It is to do with the fact that the structure, the first part, beginning, middle, and end, the resolution is critical to the narrative. And if you were just to tell someone what you wanted them to do, for example, they're going to take that as a direct instruction.

Whereas, if you related to an experience you had where you enjoyed doing that, such as the Tom Sawyer Mark Twain story, people are now influenced to want to join in with you on that. So you have to consider all of the tools, not just the structure, but how does storytelling affect your brain. So inside of your brain, you have what's called a motor cortex.

Your motor cortex is for your movement. And if someone is relating to you and they use manipulations or head turns or nods, you're picking up visual cues, as well as that person begins to mirror you. It's a limbic response. So you end up becoming more involved in a conversation because you're in the same cadence physically with the motor cortex.

And then, of course, you have your emotions. Your emotions are drawn in through the storytelling because perhaps the person's visual cues or their conversation and their tonality changes. That either slows down and draws you deeper into the conversation or speeds up rapidly and makes you get excited along with them. So when you look at the fact that the emotions are involved in how to tell a story, you realize that your brain is working hard to help you comprehend what they're saying.

Your old factory sense comes into play. You're thinking, "What? Well, I don't think so." It does. Because if someone tells you a story about how they were making waffles or how they used this drizzle or the cinnamon or the spices from your particular place of comfort, you're going to associate that with a pleasant memory and you're going to cue that emotion and tie into the story better.

As the same if it's a repulsive thing. You do not want to know about the garbage man and his finds and the things that he's discovered and you don't want to see the gooey insides of a cup. Your brain is still immersed in that conversation so deeply that before you realize it, you're seeing exactly what they're saying because of the description.

Now, your amygdala is your emotional reaction sensor, and depending on how you've processed those two, the good sweet waffles or the garbage man, your brain is preparing you to either leave the conversation or to join into the conversation. And it's important for you to understand the Wernicke area, which is your language communication center, has to be sensitive to your audience.

In order to do a narrative for a small child, you cannot use a thesaurus letter word. You have to simplify your language. The same with cross-cultural languages. You cannot speak to someone with your vernacular because they may not be familiar with that and you'll lose the importance of your story. So you have to understand how your brain works in that one.

And, of course, there's your memory cortex. Your memories, which are chosen specifically to associate a commonality and a bond. Those are integral in your alignment and your congruence with that person to talk with you. If you want to bond with someone and you're narrating your story, you're going to begin with describing your story.

You're going to give a descriptor of your arena so that that person can now sequester themselves into your visual. Then you're going to give them the information in parts. And I will go into more detail of the actual structure because there are several formulas and paradigms on how you can actually structure a conversation and a narrative. But the important part is the linear conversation must have a resolution that is identical to your outcome.

Do you want this person to not do this behavior again? Or do you want this person to repeat this behavior again? That resolution and outcome has to align with that for you to make your point. If you were to tell someone a story and it ended poorly, and then you say, "Okay, now it's your turn," what do you think the likelihood is of them joining you?

So even if it was difficult for you and it was a poor outcome the first time for you, then you tell about your second attempt where you succeeded.

- So it sounds to me like, in general, we're wired for connection, but also we are wired to very quickly either lean into or lean away from whatever information is coming towards us. And I'm sure that our very smart listeners have already started to make connections, but I'll just ask you explicitly, if we've established that storytelling is fundamental, what specifically does it have to do with workplace safety?

Why should safety professionals care about storytelling?

- I like that you asked that question. If you were to ask me that question when I first began my journey, I wouldn't have the answer. I really wouldn't know because I think it's really... Back then, it will be a waste of time. I was very bullet point person. I was very statistical. I want to just know what you got, give it to me, goodbye.

And I have my self-motivation to get it done. So stories don't always work and especially if you need to do it in a minute. But now that we understand about the statistics of those who manage to do outstanding work and to take on new challenges, they were able to do it by leading the audience through interactive exercises or interactive communication.

And the only people in safety that would need that would be those who want to be leaders. You don't have to be a leader by title, but if you want to be a leader, you need to understand that you have to get what is called "buy-in." You have to get the agreement to be forward with someone else. And one of the things that the leaders would need to do is to be able to influence and shift the mindset of what people think that they need to be.

Sometimes you go to a job or a workplace and the first thing you want to do is the bare minimum because you're getting paid a certain wage and you figure this is your job description, these are your hours, I'm good and I'm gone. The problem with that mentality is there's no enjoyment. You feel no fulfillment.

You feel no accomplishment. You feel no pride. You feel no commitment or loyalty to the company because of the fact that you segregated your mind and just did what was the bare minimum. It's expressed and it resonates out to your peers, to your leaders, and to your superiors. They say, "Oh, well, that's a reliable employee.

I can always count on Joe," or "I can always count on Jane," but they also look at it as I don't think they have the capacity to grow. You show yourself as a limited individual when you do not engage and talk with people. For example, you're on the line, you're observing your routine. You notice that there's something that's flagrant, something that you can fix, but it's not your wheelhouse.

It's not your expertise. You hope someone else catches it. If that comes to light, you were doing your job, you were doing your hours, you were doing the best, but someone's going to say, "How come you didn't catch that, Joe? How come you didn't catch that, Jane?" Now your character comes into play. So you're saying, "Well, how does storytelling even affect that?" Storytelling affects it this way.

You become self-aware. You become proficient. You become yourself. You show your personality. You build that character. Or people would say, "Oh, no, I don't think Joe or Jane would've missed that. I'm sure they would've said something." Because now you've established a rapport.

You've established a personality. You've told stories to people. They know a little bit about your vernacular, they know a little bit about your character, and they bolster for you. They can validate your loyalty. So stories are integral in helping you to build, not only your reputation and character, but to align with others in your workplace so that it's no longer a 9:00 to 5:00 or an 8:00 to 12:00.

It is a place to go to be better and to learn more about yourself than you did before.

- Wow. So I had some ideas about how you might answer that, but I have to say you came up with a bunch more that I hadn't even thought about. So connection, rapport, trust, and the one that I really hadn't thought about that I'll have to go over is really career advancement, you know, getting noticed, being a leader, which is essentially, as you defined it, about persuading people, right?

Getting buy-in is persuasion.

- That's correct.

- Great. Awesome. So what situations in an OHS manager's daily work do you think are kind of well suited to incorporating narrative?

- Mary, there are several. I mean...

- I'm sure there are a few. Yeah.

- Let's take it from a perspective of an introvert versus an extrovert. How about that?

- Okay. Okay.

- All right.

- Yeah.

- Most safety professionals are introverts. You would be surprised, but they are. And the majority of them are introverts because they want to gather the data, the knowledge, and they want to give the data or knowledge to someone else to then communicate.

- Oh, Okay.

- When they are asked to communicate that information, they find it difficult to pass that on with a conviction or with an authenticity because they're not salesmen. They're driven by the data. They're driven by the facts. And if they were to express emotion, it would be in relation to an incident, how they were like, "I told you guys this. How does this happen?"

And that demonstration to them is always admonishment. So they begin to tie in the safety professional with the person who's the person with the ruler or the stick. And they do not associate that with trust. So the introverts, I would recommend, the best way to approach the conversations are offline, not necessarily in the line of an assignment.

But you're doing your walkabouts as we do, you know, in Australia. You want to do your walkabouts. You stand in front of someone and you look at them, and you turn to the side, and you ask, "What is it that you're doing? I've seen this machine and I'm looking at the JSA. I have no idea how you do what you're doing." And most of the time, they're focused.

Remember they're nine-to-fivers. They want to just get that job done and you're interrupting them. I'll just watch you because I don't understand it. And they are professionals at what they do. I mean, you can walk into a room, you can pick up a plate, you can multitask, you can leave the room, and you don't even think about it. You've done it rote.

Okay? You've just automatically done it. The same with a professional. They know what they're doing and they can do it by rote. They can just automatically process this. So they're watching you watching them and you're just hemming and hawing and wondering and guessing. So they'll start talking.

I guarantee it. They'll say, "Okay, well, here, this thing right here, I'm doing, I'm pulling this down here and it's going to affect that thing over there. And if I don't do this on time, all that's going to go to heck and then they're going to have to ask me to come back over here and put the stop on." And you're just listening to the... And the expression that you're putting on as an introvert is always eyebrows up, chest out, ears alert. You're looking as if you were Labrador Retriever about to get a biscuit.

Because when you get that effect on your face, when they turn to you, they no longer see you as this 18-foot tall stick-holding ruler measure person. They see you as someone who doesn't know anything about this equipment and they're the bigger person. They begin to drop their guard.

The next time you come through, they'll say, "Hey, hey, Mary, let me show you something we just found out. We need a guard. I was telling them about..." And you look at yourself, you get chills on your arm. You're like, "Really? You need a guard? I can do a guard." And you begin to talk to them about designing a guard. That did not involve a first, a second, or third phase in that, but it did involve storytelling.

They were the storytellers. Sometimes storytelling is reversed.

- Yeah, I was going to say that, you know, we're talking about telling stories, but it's also about listening to stories and understanding that. And the other thing that struck me as you were talking was that not that you're allowing the person to be an expert, they already are an expert, but maybe acknowledging their expertise and acknowledging your relative...

- Novice.

- Noviceness.

- Yeah.

- It's an act of vulnerability, which is an act of usually of building trust.

- It is. That's perfect, Mary. You rounded it up. Building trust in your team is crucial to developing the ability to be credible. If you haven't established credibility and if you haven't established active listening, you won't be there long because most people want someone that would love to let them tell their side of the story.

Now...

- Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead.

- Do you want to switch over to the extrovert?

- No, I was going to say one thing about introvert versus extrovert.

- For sure.

- I think the good thing... I don't know if most safety people are introverts. It makes sense that they might be, but one thing that... While that might seem a disadvantage, I think an advantage is that most people, safety people, care. They care a lot. They go into it because they care about other people. And so I think that might be something you could lean into if you're trying to work against your introversion and look like a Labrador waiting for a biscuit.

- That's funny. I mean, some of the visuals. See, storytelling is effective. Because of the memory you have of what a Labrador looks like, you already know what that is. But it's important to understand that the type of person that you are... If you've done your SWAT analysis, you know what your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities, and your threats are. You kind of identify where you fit in the queue of personalities.

Okay? So not introvert in the commercial sense of I am very reclusive. I do not want to communicate. Introvert means that you want to do things with less. You want to be succinct. You want to be focused. You want to be effective and concise.

Whereas, an extrovert, an extrovertial person tends to be flamboyant, tends to be charismatic, tends to be extraneous with conversation and flourish in attention getting. I don't know if that's something you see a lot in your safety personalities. You might see them more in a visitor. You might see them more in a subject matter expert.

That flourish doesn't necessarily come in safety because of the fact that we are guarded as individuals and we're wired in a way that always makes us think cautionary and within linear focus and restraint. There are outliers. The people who are considered extroverts are people who are interested in making a change in their career. People who want you to see them as now this beacon of information, this subject matter expert, this person who's an orator, the person who's going to be the one that when you go to a lecture for training, you get that person.

Okay? But when you talk about the run of the mill safety person, the person that's learning, they're pretty much book people. They want to focus on how they can fix that. And so this is why I'm teaching you guys and teaching my friends how to come out of that to become a storyteller and to understand how to build trust and how to establish credibility and rapport with your team so that you can lead them.

- I think another good feature about introversion that I just thought of is that people who are introverts, I think, tend to be really good observers and so they can notice. You know, like, for example, I would never have maybe made that connection with the Labrador Retriever, but you're absolutely right and it's a great image and I'm going to remember it now, but it takes someone who's observant to notice details like that that tell a good story, really.

- That is true. I like that you're able to immediately show the effect of how you can retain information and learn from it. One of the things that you might want to have the readers or the listeners go into is Kurt Vonnegut's eight tips on how to write a short story.

The information that would help them in that is you can teach them how to write 1-minute and 29-second story and it will give them the full 5-part story. If you are able to rehearse this story, this conversation that you want to have. Some people say, "Oh, they're going to give that speech."

You've ever heard that? Well, if you've rehearsed that speech to a way that gravitates people, they're going to ask you to tell it again because they want to hear it to see what they missed the first time. So you want to make sure that you show them the whole information in one swoop of what you're going to do. You give them a clearance.

I want to explain to you why we can no longer step on the ladder with only our hand and our feet. We need to understand why we need to have three point of contact. And then you want to go through and stop and hit each point with a commentary. I would love to be able to walk up with two buckets and just scale up like a a row baton. And you give them some kind of imaginary image within their genre, within their group of millennial, Gen Z, whatever their avatars are today.

I would love to just go up there like da, da, da, as is, but the problem is I have a big head or I have big feet or I'm clumsy, and you start to let them know the implausibility of defined physics. Right?

- Yes.

- Because you've now put this person into this robotic suit with this huge behind and this huge head and they're like, "Oh, gosh, okay." The visual is there. And then when you get down with it, you explain to them, now, if I decide to look to the left, I'm already top heavy. That's going to be a problem. And if I miss and my feet hit a bump because they're too big. And they start laughing and they enjoy it.

And they say, "So how do you solve it?" You go, "Okay. First of all, I can only say engineer it different way. Either have someone else come to the side and hand it to me as I get where I need to be safely, or give me an apparatus that allows me to hold on, as well as pull this item up, maybe a backpack, maybe a shoulder sling, something that helps me to carry it. Do you have any ideas what we can do?"

And that engagement, you've told a story in less than two minutes and now they're involved.

- And it sounds like... Yeah... So when we're thinking about story, it's not always... The way you're describing it, I think, it's not always, you know, beginning, middle, end. It's imagery, whether that's, you know... Yeah. Like you were talking about smells, sensory type of imagery.

- So there are different structures in storytelling and some people rely on the theoretical ones, which is Aristotle. They have three parts to a story and Horus has five parts, and, of course, Gustav Freytag has the five parts structures. So you want to make sure that when you tell a story, if you're going to do this as a real commitment and you don't have that skillset, think of it as a Super Bowl ad.

Super Bowl ads tell stories. Did you know that?

- Yes. Yeah. Yeah. For sure.

- And when they tell your story, they're visual, they're auditory, and if it's involving a food product, they're sensory. So whenever you tell a story to someone, you have to know where they're coming from. You have to know who they are. So you have to know your audience in order to tell a story effectively. So get to know the people you're working with. Ask about. Definitely ask HR, "Who do you think is a good leader in this group that hasn't been selected and identified? What are they like? What are they like when they're off work?"

You know. And that's the person that you want to talk to. Or if you want to get a promotion and you're new to the company, you may say, "I need to know more about my boss. I want to make sure that my boss recognizes my performance. I'm not very talkative, but I want them to know I do well. How do I improve that?" They will say, "Oh, your boss loves to golf. Your boss loves to eat chocolate cookies. Or your boss is a avid novel reader."

So whatever it is that you can then glean from that information when you coincidentally walk into that person, you have something to spin your story from, right, because you've got some commonality.

- Yeah. So it sounds like the rapport... You use stories to build the rapport, but you need to lay groundwork. Laying the groundwork, meaning just getting to know people, as you said, getting to know your audience. But I'm really interested, I'd like to hear more about the different story structures that you just mentioned.

- Okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Because the story structures that I mentioned before, and I would prefer that everyone, because I don't want to take credit from any of the authors, is that they look them up themselves. But the Aristotle portion is what you guys are familiar with, which is a story is beginning, middle, and end. And you're familiar with the stories of how there's a situation, then there's a climax to the situation, and then there's a resolution.

Most people think in that way. Whereas, Horus has five parts because it talks about the subtleties in between those stages. You may have to explain that context. Why are we in this situation, that we came to be in this critical condition? And how are we responding to this critical condition physically and environmentally? And then what are the people who are going to be affected by my decision because I've done this?

Okay? So it just does the same thing of the three-part structure, but it breaks it down into a mill use so that you can see little bit more intricate details. How that relates to you is if you have an audience that is sophisticated, you want to be able to do like what we're doing with you, is bring it all the way up to the top, explain every step along the way, and then go all the way down to the bottom.

If I were to entertain a child, I would just begin with, "Did you eat the cookie? Oh, my God. If you ate the cookie, I'm scared the cookie monster's going to be looking for it later on tonight. We got to make sure the cookies are back in the jar by 10:00. What are we going to do?" Now that's a story. That kid's going to be like, "Oh, okay, hold on. I did have the cookies." Or as an adult, you know, what are the cookies made of?

Are they gluten? Why were they placed where I could reach them, you know? You have to try and read your audience a little bit better. So for the cookie incident, you'd say, "I spent a lot of time baking these really great cranberry gluten-free cookies and I was excited about sharing them with everyone. I put them in this nice little pink cylinder box and I had it up on the top shelf and I think I may have knocked it behind the refrigerator. Do you think anyone can help me? Because they're going to be used for lunch today and we're entertaining guests."

Same story. Someone ate those cookies.

- Yes. I guess it's better than the note in the office, like whoever took my cookies, please. You know, please don't do that again or whatever.

- The structures are, once again, Aristotle, three-part, Horus, five parts of his storyline, and Gustav Freytag's five-part structure. And there's also the Campbell's hero story. As a matter of fact, Campbell soup always came out with ads in the beginning when they first wanted to let you know their soup was better than anyone else, besides being this new cylinder that you can cut open with a can opener.

By the way, we've been opening it wrong for years. I just learned that on TikTok. Anyway, they will come out with stories that talk about different journeys and I believe that they segued over into like whatever's popular culture. So sometimes when you get a story right away, you have to look at the way they're reading it and it's one of the different story types.

- Is there an ideal or a better time or place to use storytelling?

- Yes. There is always an awkward ability to have a pause in the conversation, especially if it's someone you're not comfortable with or if there's someone you're just meeting and they want to know more about you. So best time to tell a story is when you believe you know about this person or this event.

If you do not know anything about this person or this event, but you have identified similarities, let's say, you know, from their bio, they went to your alma mater. Like, for example, I came from UCLA and I've also come from Penn State. So people will see that in my LinkedIn and go, "Ah, okay, I can relate to something at UCLA. I can relate to something at Penn State."

Or you may look at my hair color and go, "Oh, her hair is kind of a reddish color. It's kind of a brunette, but it's not natural. I can talk to her about hair color." I mean, you have to try and pick up things that you can do with visual cues if you don't know that person, which means you have to have a lot of stories saved up. So the stories that will be congruent with the conversation have to do with the environment. Let's say you're in an elevator and it's stuck.

You want to talk about the safety of elevators, maybe you know something about Otis elevator, or you want to talk about how they work, or you want to look at the tags and make jokes to make them feel better. If you get stuck in a situation where you're in a cab with a stranger, someone says, "Okay, we're going to go on a group trip," and they lump everyone together, and you're looking at another person you don't know, you're awkwardly waiting, you're looking at your phone.

That's completely rude. I do it too. But you have to put it down and say, "Look at me being rude." When you ice break with that conversation, they immediately become, "Oh, my God, I was going to do the same thing." And they may laugh and say that. I was going to do the same thing. But you have to always start it if you want that person's information and you want to be a part of that person's life.

That's important, Mary. If you do not want to be a part of that person's life, do not bond with them through a story because storytelling builds bonds. So let's say you're stuck in a cab with this person. You have a 30-minute ride to the airport, whatnot, and you're just kind of embarrassed, like, oh, my gosh, I got stuck here. Before you begin speaking, just say, "Is this your first time here?" And they may say, "No."

And then they go through a whole conversation, they took the story, and you're done. They might say, "Yeah, it's my first time." And you go, "Oh, I came here before and it was like X, Y, Z." There's your story time cue. Midway through that ride, they're not only engaging with you. They're asking you more questions. Well, where did you eat?

I'm going to be doing this again. That's how quickly you can form a storytelling bond. If you're in a business meeting, before they come in, depending on the culture... Because in Asia, when I worked, the people do not want to talk business before the meeting and they do not want to talk business during a meal. And you're like, what? It's not American at all.

So you want to have a book of storytelling for them. Those that are based on compassion, respect, duty, honor, loyalty, etiquette. Whatever type of personality story you can tell them that built your character, they want to hear. Because innovation and all that comes.

They can teach you that. But they want to know who is Mary Stine. I want to know. So when you have a conversation before meeting with them, you may say, "Wow, that was a really nice hotel. Or it was really a quick drive." And just smile and look around. Then they'll engage you. "Well, what did you like about the hotel?"

And then you become a visual teacher. I noticed that there was like an 18-foot ceiling. I don't know I've ever seen anything this high. The structure seemed forbearing. And you just start talking about the materials and the workmanship and the crafts and the people coming forward and people going backward talking to you. And now they're there. And they say, "You know, I recommend that hotel to everyone that comes here, but I've never seen it that way."

So make sure your story is unique to you, like Mary said earlier. Observe when you go places. Observe everything. Observe the decor, observe the uniform, observe the way they use their hands and gestures. It doesn't mean you mimic them, but it will come up in the story. And when you begin to align with the behaviors and cultures that they have and they see you doing the same mirroring back to them, they bond.

Like the chemical reaction goes across the seams. You get the dopamine synapses. You got the serotonin synapses. Everyone's excited and wants to meet you. Now they're bonded. When you have a situation where you're out of the meeting and you're in a lobby or you're in a conference and you have your badges on and you're walking around with strangers and you don't have your group of people with you, you tend to feel isolated.

And you want to just schlump along, go through the exhibit hall and not talk to anyone. That's wrong. When you're in safety and you're leading others, manufacturers are your network. They are the people who are going to help you, not only build your customer base, but potentially your next job. So you want to make sure that you are as communicative as possible.

Giving eye contact. Not just snatching their swag and running, but literally talking to them, looking them in the eye, asking them questions, telling them what happened when you used their product. Or you make sure that the people who are around you, who are also just trying to snatch swag, will stop and listen and they'll follow over to you.

And next thing you know, you have just given a pitch to this company. This company is now interested in you and people are now interested in that company. Everywhere I've gone and every situation I've gone into, it seems like I bring a magnet of people behind me and I'm always wondering why is that? It's because of the presence. Once you become a storyteller, people don't even know why, but they want to gravitate towards you.

So storytelling is important if you want to get ahead in your career. It's important if you want to be known by other people, and it's especially important if you want to be believed and trusted by other people because they can rely on their history with you, even if it was a three-minute history.

- I'd like to do a bit of a roundup. Because you've mentioned some, there might be more of skills that a safety pro should develop if they would like to tell more effective stories. So we talked about observation, laying the groundwork. Is there anything I'm forgetting or anything more you want to add?

- No, no. I would like you to know that, once again, I said the three, that you have to be self-aware, be proficient, and be yourself. The authenticity factor is important. If you tell a personal story to someone of your failure, do not use that same story again and again and again because it'll get dry. So that's what I mean by being yourself.

Being proficient means that if you're going to tell someone something that they already know, you have to find something unique in that same information so that they go, "Aha." The moment comes for them, they to go, "I didn't see it that way." Even if it's something as simple as the cookie story. You have to be able to allow it to embrace the audience in a fact that says that's a very proficient decision. She made clarity in that statement that I had not picked up before.

You also want to be self-aware. You have to look back at your audience. It's hard for me to do that because I'm trying to stay cute into the camera, but you have to be able to pick up visual cues of your audience. In some game shows, you might see the meter goes from red to green, you know, depending on how good you're doing. If you're doing red, you're poor, and when you're green, you're really good.

So sometimes you can see visual cues in body language. So a leader would have to be able to recognize when they've lost their audience. Are you familiar with that? You've you lost me?

- Yeah. And actually, my next question was how can a speaker tell whether a story is well received by the audience or it's missing its mark? So carry on. You're ahead of me.

- I'm so glad to hear that. It's a gift. One of the things you can do to bring a person back, I'll teach you. But when you've lost someone, here are some indicators you've lost someone. Number one, don't go for the I'm looking at the watch because it's just 1950s that they looked at the watch.

- Now it's their phone.

- Now they look at their phone.

- Yeah.

- So a person will begin checking their phone or a person will look down and away from you. They'll look down and away from you. They're gone. They've checked out. If a person is checked out, they will look over your head or at your shoulders, over your head or at your shoulders. If a person is checked out, they will stare at you and then they'll snap back because they're not paying attention and you've

[inaudible] on too long.

- They've fallen asleep with their eyes open and then woken up.

- That's so sad. Or my favorite, a person will be, and they'll interrupt because you've gone too long and they want to now have their set. So the other thing is if a person has done any of those visual cues, they're also auditory cues. You'll hear them go, "Hmm, really? Hmm, see."

This tonality just goes down. That's a disapproving tone. If you hear them going, "Hmm, well," they're on the fence. They're not gone yet. But if they've completely checked out, they go, "Okay, look..." That sentence is not your story was great.

Your story was great, but they have to either run because it was too long or they're not going to come back to talk to you. So listen for those and watch out for those. Now, how do you reel them back? If a person is looking down at your shoes and then looks up at the sky, you start to think visuals with your hand. When you use your hands during a conversation, it draws them back into focus.

If a person is starting to lean in, you turn your head to the side like an owl as if you're listening to them and they'll begin to correct their perspective because they're no longer beating in on you in that one little close eye, and now they're adjusting because you've moved. If a person looks at your head and then your shoulders, then you take your hand to your face and you just glide it around, not in a sensual way, we're not doing that, guys, but you just drive your hand around your chin or you take it to your throat or you rub your forehead or you adjust your glasses because that'll draw them back into you.

All those will bring them back. Now, what do you do when you have them back? You acknowledge you lost them. You do that. You say, "Oh, my gosh. How long have I been talking? My faux pas." Or, "What was I saying? I kept going. I couldn't stop." That humor will levitate this conversation and they will now want to talk to you.

You'll say, "Oh, wait a minute. Did I tell you this before?" And they'll start to correct themselves because most people, most humans, are very sincere in trying to please as well. And they'll say, "No, I don't think you did, but I really have to go. Can we pick it up later?"

Give them a chance to know I took too long. I lost you. I apologize. Can we pick it up later? That helps you to get out of it. Now, what that does is this. You are accountable, you were authentic, but also, you now know how long that person's attention span is.

Let's go to how you can avoid that. Look at the personality of the person you're talking to. What do they consume? Are they a TikTok viewer who wants to have an attention span of seven seconds? Or are they a "Wall Street Journal" reader, you know, like me scrolling, continually scrolling, reading stuff that I wasn't intending to scroll?

Or are they a person that just wants the facts? Like a person who's really incrementally pressed for time and they don't really have time to waste leisurely as they think. People that you identify in those three categories have to be spoken to in these particular ways. For the TikTok user, you definitely want to make sure they talk the most. So you ask questions in your story.

Have you ever, did you see, I was thinking, how about this? I tried that. Here's what I did. What did you do? They'll engage longer than their TikTok sessions. Can you ask them questions? The person who's a "Wall Street Journal" reader, the person who will read at nauseum until finally say, "Oh, my God, where's the time gone?"

Those people, you want to cut them off. So you want to say things like, "I have two minutes. I want to ask you something and then I have to look at my watch or whatever I have, my time piece, and I'm going to have to go. I promise you. I just need to talk to you for a second." And they'll go, "Okay." Because they're engaged. They know they can't keep up time. They're ready to go. So they'll listen to you as long as you go.

Then you go, "Oh, gosh, time's up." No, wait, wait, wait, you weren't done. I'll be back with you. I promise we'll see each other again Friday. Those cliff hangers at the end of those people's conversations will have you have more people come back to that conversation with that "Wall Street Journal" reader. Now, the person who is interested in just not even being there, they're doing this job just for the paycheck, or they're a person of a superior level, and they really do not know you that well, you want to come to them with just the facts.

Not the one about the cookies missing and someone needs it, but more of we seem to have an issue that we can't resolve on our own. We're working together diligently to have it done by a certain time, but it looks like everyone is exhausted with ideas. And we came to you just to say, "Have you seen this before? Has this ever happened?" Now, number one, that would take your group and your guy's neck off the line because the person says you've exhausted everything before you came to me.

And you're thinking, Mary, is that a story? Yes, it is a story. Because you gave them a situation, you gave them anticipated results, and you also gave them ability to communicate back with you on it. Most people will say, "I have to put some schedule to gather time for you guys as I really want to know more about it. What is this exactly? Oh, it's line number two. We seem to have lost a radiation bulb and blah, blah, blah. I thought we had one and we went back to stock and it wasn't enough over the course of the season that we didn't supply. And so our probability is we're going to be down. So we really want to resolve this quickly. Do you think you can schedule it now?"

Now, that person did not hear you tell a story about who you were, where you're from, but they did learn this about you. You're a person of character and integrity. You're a person of accountability and transparency. You're a person of loyalty because you told them you value, not only the product, but the time and increments to get back up running. You've also told them about your audacity to even come to a person of this level because that's how urgent it is.

You didn't go to people who you knew could not solve the problem. That person learned about you in those three seconds faster than they would've learned about you by looking through your HR file. So those are the three examples of how to tell the story and when.

- Do you have any other... Like you've told us a ton of information. Do you have any other tips or is there anything else that you think that listeners, safety managers, might want to hear or that it's important for them to know?

- I believe safety managers are, in my opinion, the best job, best position to be in any company. And not until 2019 that people realized that. The safety professional is not only the glue and the cohesive unit, but it's the nurturer. It's the person that gets the information from one place to another.

And it's the person that hears both sides of the story as being an advocate, as being the relator, as being the mediator. This role is integral. So what I would leave or I would love to have someone have told me, this is why I mentor, is you need to make your job your happy place. Burnout is extremely high in our field because of the fact that we're leading with no authority.

We're expected to get results without any teeth in the game. We just have to use our skills of influence and communication, or some people use a stick and a ruler to get things done. I think that you should start asking more questions about your own vulnerability to gain trust.

What are you willing to give up to show that you're eager to learn? In my first example of the line worker, I exhibited my curiosity, my eagerness to learn in the metaphor of a Labrador Retriever visit because people want to be able to see that they can reach you too.

It's not a one-way street. You want to communicate with transparency. A lot of people would expect a person of my level, being a director, to have a Rolodex of the statutes. I've got 1910s, I've got, you know, 3203s, I've got IS, I've got ASO, you know. And believe it or not, we don't memorize those data to the T. We memorize the concept of the data.

We memorize what is going to happen if it's not complied with. So when you communicate with transparency, do not, and I encourage you this with a big thumb, do not quote a regulation to someone who is your superior or your inferior or your lateral, unless you're taking an exam.

Just don't. Communicate with transparency by saying, "You know, there's a rule for that and we should definitely get into it later. But for right now, let me just explain to you why it doesn't work." That transparency is letting them know you are leading with the information authority because you can back it up. Okay? But you do not want to come to them with something that gives them the feeling you're being condescending because then they're going to close their eyes.

Listening is integral to the safety professional. And my mom used to say, "God gave you one mouth and two ears." And I used to say, "Are you sure? I think I have two mouths." But anyway, she didn't like that joke. The point is you have to make sure that you listen to people in a way that they know you're listening. How do you listen so they know you're listening? Well, let me give it to you this way.

We've already explained how you can lose someone, right? Well, active listening is when you are fully committed. You stop, you turn off your phone, you do not look left or right, you pay attention to them, you definitely wait for them to finish speaking before you speak. And then you may even have those answers already in the conversation because you gave them the time to finish their sentence.

So listening means that you're not only paying attention to them, but you're acting as if you know nothing and they're telling you this for the first time. You know how hard that is? It's very hard for an adult to listen because they know everything. But if you listen with authenticity, you listen as if this person is coming to me and telling me how to make tea, I made tea 1,000 times, but then you actually want to just say, "Forget it. I don't know how they make tea. I'm going to pay attention."

You are listening to them and you're observing and you're learning new techniques. I didn't know you used that thing. I didn't know you stirred that way. I didn't know why it has to be that temperature. I didn't know you couldn't just pour from the bowl. You know, you have to listen as if you did not know something. And even if you do know it and they're repeating it, let them know, okay, that part, I know.

What else do we have? You can definitely interject because no one wants to waste their time either. Then you have to set left or right lateral limits, giving responsibility to your team or to your leader on what they can and cannot expect from you. And this promotes innovation and independence, which means they want you to give them the answer as the leader.

You're telling them the story, you're telling them this, you've bonded, now they want to now advocate for you and they want to speak to you, but they want to just pull you whenever they want to pull you. And you have to realize burnout, we discussed earlier, is real. So you have to say, "Okay, Jane. Sorry, Joe. Listen, I'm going to be on lunch and I'm going to be taking this for a bit. And when I'm down with lunch, I'm going to come find you."

You set those boundaries. Realistically, they will respect you. Okay? If it's a boss, a person above you, you say, "Okay, listen. I definitely want to answer your question, but you've scheduled me for this time for a break. I have this on my schedule. When can you fit in here? Or if it's urgent, I can stop what I'm eating and pick my lunch up later."

They're going to know about the HR laws and they're going to go, "Oh, no, no. To take your lunch. I'll circle back. It's not that serious." You'd be surprised. If you don't speak up, you will burn out. You also want to know that the innovation and the independence that comes from this is that now you realize you have not only made yourself feel more secure with your boundaries, you've already made sure that they understand that you're communicating with transparency, you've already told them your vulnerabilities and your statements of vulnerability are apparent, but now they are listening to you as a leader because you've become human.

Being a safety professional who tells stories makes you not only more credible, but then makes you human. And it's crazy because when I was growing up, I never thought anything of safety people. I just thought they just directed traffic or they were construction workers. Like the uniform was who they were.

But as I've gotten older and I've gotten into the profession this deep, I've found that most safety professionals, which are introversial, are very insecure about their roles. They have what's called imposter syndrome. They have what's called the inability to influence. So they feel that all of the information is just wasted and they end up switching careers, especially females, because they don't feel they can make that impact.

But once you learn how to build your storytelling skills, people will connect you with the way they felt because of the chemical reactions in their brain during the time they were with you. So whenever you're on your feet, safety person, you're in the presence of your people, you're in the presence of your family, you're in the presence of your grocery store people, be authentic.

Be yourself. Be happy. If you are a safety person and you can't help yourself, you're looking at the lines and the can is not turned the right way, you say that out loud. "Oh, my gosh, this reminds me of [inaudible]. I want to just put the labels to the front." And people will be behind you and they'll just start laughing and go, "Really?" Because that humanizes a safety professional. When they go back to their job, they go, "Now I see why Joe is like that. He can't turn it off. It's just who they are."

And that humanization makes it easier for people to grow into this role. This is a very difficult role. So that will be my advice to you, to ask questions from people, to listen actively, to demonstrate your vulnerability, and to definitely set your left and right lateral limits, making sure that they know what you will do for them and what you won't do for them to make sure you're a whole person at the end of the day.

- Fantastic. Thank you so much. I have some questions that I ask every guest that are not necessarily on the topic. So I'm going to ask you, if you were to develop your own safety management training curriculum, which maybe you have, but anyway, hypothetically, where would you start when it comes to the human skills?

So I'm guessing storytelling will be in there, but what other skills or what skills do you think are the most important to develop in tomorrow's safety professionals?

- Oh, Mary, I wasn't prepared for that question, and no, I don't have.

- It's okay.

- But I can do my best to answer. Aside from storytelling, the soft skills that any safety professional needs is the ability to personify themselves with the credibility and the presence of a leader. Now, you may think, well, what does that mean? You want to walk the walk and talk the talk. So if you're the safety person, you're going to make sure that your hair and your grooming is conducive to your environment.

You're wearing your PPE. You're wearing less of whatever you need to wear less of so that you're safe in your environment. Okay? So that's what I mean by your visual. Your visual personification is you are a safety person. When you walk into the room, they'll go, "Oh, gosh, the safety guy." And I don't mean wearing a flat vest.

It means that they can tell by the way that you are appropriately dressed, the right heels, the right shirt, the right jacket, that you know your risks and your environment and you segue into it. Okay? That's number one. Because your visual impression is your first impression in leaders. They always acknowledge that. I know you're like, "I want to wear jeans."

Well, think about, do you really want to wear jeans if you want to get ahead? Sometimes you can wear khakis and they look very professional. So very, very carefully consider your visual personification of who you are. You can do this by getting up in the morning, giving yourself a visual look over. You may ask your friend, your neighbor, your family, "Hey, how do I look? Do I look serious? Do it look important? Do I look like I can help you today?"

You give them the chance to give you feedback and you accept it. And the second one, I think aside from storytelling, is that you make a promise to yourself that you will do everything you can for that day, and at the end of the day, throw it in the trash. That day is over. Do not go to bed, turn to your family and say, "I wish I hadn't have told them that because now they're going to da, da."

No, that day is in the wraps. It's done. If you have to write down what you think you did wrong, cross it out, toss it. When you go back to work the next day, you'd be surprised. You're like, is this magic? You go back to work the next day, no one's going to bring it up. If they bring it up, they might say, "Something happened yesterday. We were thinking about it, but we can't put our finger on it. Do you have any idea?"

And you have already fixed it. You're like, "Yeah, but I think we fixed it. So we're good." And they just brush right over it. Let me give you an example how this happened. We had a person that was supposed to check a line for the refrigeration tanks. Every evening, do a line check. They definitely knew what they were doing, but they were tired.

So they wanted to go home early. Now, because they went home early, they didn't tell the second shift. The second shift didn't know there was any line tests that were skipped, but we had documents that tell you that that hadn't been done. So they saw it hadn't been signed out, so they did the check. Okay? It was a system in place. Whereas, this person who had gone home early was just tossing and turning because they had forgot to do it and they were running back to the job.

Now they've shown that they made a mistake. Whereas, they didn't trust the systems in place to catch it. They needlessly interrupted their rest, their sleep, their family cycle. They also showed distrust to their teammates because now their teammates going, "Did you really forget it? I thought you just didn't fill it in." So you have to be careful when you elicit your faults.

You have to make sure that they're good faults, you know. If anything, call someone to take it over if it's urgent. But definitely leave your work day at the end of your shift, at the end of your time, even if you are a safety person because safety can be 24/7 if you let it. Don't let it. Turn off your phone notification, turn off your ringer, set your time for when you want it to kick back on again, put your out-of-office recording on your mailbox so that the machine will say, "You've reached me at this time.

If it's urgent, then call this number," and have that number available. "If it's not urgent, then I will see you at this time tomorrow." And then rest and get yourself together for the next day because being a safety professional is high energy, focused, responsibility, you know. It's just really an exhausting job, almost like a medical doctor. So you definitely want to make sure that you focus yourself as healthy in order to help others.

Okay? Put your own oxygen mask on first.

- So I have two more questions and I didn't prepare you. I never prepare anyone for these, but they're not really got you's, anyway. So the next one is, if you could travel back in time and speak to yourself at the beginning of your career and you could only pick one piece of advice to give young Mary, what do you think that would be?

- One piece of advice I would give young Mary is that you need to trust your instincts more and not rely on others for approval because you are born to be a leader. You are born to be a good person and you're going to do the right thing at every chance anyway and you're going to make mistakes.

But if you trust your instincts, you'll build up enough confidence that you won't be lost in wandering around deciding what you want to do with your life. You'll just go straight for the prize. I think that will be the thing I would love to do.

- Awesome. Thank you. That's excellent. So my last question, and you did already mention Kurt Vonnegut's book, but do you have any other resources that you suggest to safety managers who are looking to improve their core skills, like maybe websites or books?

- Yeah. You didn't prepare me for that, so...

- Yeah, things they should look at.

- Yeah. But I will tell you the titles and then I'll have to look up the authors. Okay.

- No, no, you don't. Just say the titles. Just say the titles and we actually put up a screenshot of the book cover.

- Okay. Now I'm happy again. All right. So "Leadership from the Inside Out." Okay? That's a very important book. Okay?

And then "The Speed of Trust."

- Okay. I haven't read that one.

- Do you remember that one?

- That's good.

- Okay. And then there is "Building Virtual Teams." Now, there's different volumes. I believe this is volume seven. Virtual teams is how to interface with people now. And I learned this back in 2013 before we became a virtual world. So I would use that as a beginning book for a person who wants to be able to manage groups across the countries that they work.

So those are the three that I think is...

- Awesome - "Leadership from the Inside Out" made a shift in my entire career because I learned that in business school, but it was totally all about how to deal with people in safety.

- Great. Great. So where could our listeners find you on the web?

- All right. I can be found in two locations currently. One is with Global EHS Professionals, as you see the logo on the screen. And they are on Telegram, which is an app. It's a community of EHS professionals where I speak publicly. We share knowledge, platforms.

We have about 700 members right now. So you're welcome to join, get information, get slides, get data. Also, with the website of the American Society of Safety Professionals, formerly the American Society of Safety Engineers. You can find me on that website at www.sj.assp.org/wise. And that's spelled W-I-S-E for Women in Safety Engineering.

If you want to just hit an email out to me, you can hit me also at wise@sj.assp.org. And that will email me directly so that you can communicate with me regarding anything that has to do with safety or any of my upcoming events. I will be speaking in November at the OHSE XCEL conference for oil and gas for the Middle East and African Summit.

And that's going to be in November. I'll be speaking in October 21st and 22nd for the American Society of Safety Professionals Leadership Conference for young leaders who want to move forward. I'm the chairperson of that conference and I will be leading our keynote speaker onto the floor. So you get to see me again.

- Awesome. Thank you. Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks so much for joining us, Mary, and all the information you helped us out with.

- Thank you very much, Mary. I was honored and surprised. You have a great audience and a great platform.

- Thank you. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in and, as always, my thanks to the "Safety Labs" by Slice team, who know how to tell a great story. ♪ [music] ♪ - "Safety Labs" is created by Slice, the only safety knife on the market with a finger-friendly blade. Find us at sliceproducts.com.

Until next time, stay safe.