7h (edited) • General discussion
Practice Library · Lesson 2.1 Conversation
A worked example from my own practice
Before any of you post, I want to do the practice myself. So you can see what I am asking of you, and so you have something to follow rather than a blank page to fill.
This is my own answer to the brief above. It is the moment I keep coming back to.
The site was in the north of England. The job was a confined space entry, midway through a planned shutdown. The worker was a man named Jim — I will not use his full name — who had been on tools for the best part of forty years. Quiet. Steady. Not a complainer.
On the Wednesday morning of the shutdown, Jim approached me by the access point. He said — and I am paraphrasing only because the exact words have softened in my memory — he said something like "Paul, the brief on this one has changed three times this week. I am not sure anyone is actually leading this entry."
I defended.
I told him the brief had changed because the conditions on the line had changed, that the iteration was a sign of the system working, that the supervisor team were in close coordination. All of which was technically accurate. None of which was what Jim had asked.
What he was telling me was that the worker who was about to make the entry could not feel a coherent leadership presence behind the plan. He was telling me that the man going into the confined space did not know whose call this was. He was, in his quiet way, telling me that something had drifted in the leadership of the job — and he was hoping I would do something about it before the entry happened.
I did not. Not in the conversation. Not in the forty-eight hours afterwards. I clarified the brief in writing, I sent an updated permit, and I moved on to the next priority on my list.
The entry happened safely. Nothing went wrong. Which is the worst possible outcome of a missed conversation, because it teaches the leader that the defence was vindicated by the result.
Here is what I would do now.
The silence. When Jim spoke, I would stop walking. I would put down whatever I was carrying. I would turn fully toward him. I would say nothing for three or four seconds — not a calculated pause, just enough that he knew I had heard the seriousness of what he had taken the trouble to come and tell me. He had walked thirty metres out of his way to find me before the entry. The silence acknowledges the deliberateness of that walk.
The question. I would ask him — "Jim, tell me what you would need to see, in the next hour, that would tell you this entry was being properly led." Not "are you worried about safety," which is closed and defensive. Not "what is your concern," which makes him do the diagnostic work I should be doing. The question I would ask places the next hour in his hands. It treats him as the senior practitioner he is. And it gives him permission to say what he came over to say.
The forty-eight-hour follow-through. Within the next hour — not within forty-eight hours, but immediately, because this is operationally live — I would convene the three supervisors who had touched the brief that week and resolve, in front of Jim, who was leading this entry from this point. Then I would go and find Jim before the entry happened and tell him what had been done. Specifically. By name. Within forty-eight hours after the entry was complete, I would have a longer, calmer conversation with him about what had drifted and what the leadership team would do to prevent the same drift on the next entry of the shutdown.
I think about Jim more than I think about most of the workers I have known. Not because of what happened — nothing happened — but because of what I did not do. He gave me a piece of feedback that took courage to deliver, and I gave him an explanation in return when I should have given him a conversation.
That is the work this module is asking you to do. Find your version of Jim. Write the conversation you would have with him now. Post it below.
I will read what you write.
Paul.
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Practice Library · Lesson 2.1 Conversation
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