While vacationing with my family in the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I decided to try something new: hang-gliding. I admit that as a Safety Coordinator, I worried about the impression I would make if I returned to work broken and bandaged. But I decided to go for it. And I'm glad I did! In those exhilarating moments, I gained some knowledge about myself and the safety training experience. What I learned made me a better safety trainer. I'd like to share the insight and hopefully enable you to use it to improve your own training efforts.

Pre-Flight Safety Training

Needless to say, hang-gliding is dangerous and it requires training. I paid for at least three hours of training delivered by an instructor who was passionate about hang-gliding and ensuring that his trainees did it safely.

Now, you would think that being a safety trainer myself, I would be thrilled to know that my instructor was concerned with my safety. But, no! I found the trainer's cautions very irritating.

Before heading to the sand dunes to fly, the class watched a video and listened to the trainer's lecture. I barely heard a thing. All I could think about was getting out there and flying. Drowning out my instructor's advice was my inner voice excitedly repeating, "I've got this! How hard can it be?"

Finally Flying

At the dunes, the class of 5 students readied themselves for 5 flights each, leading up to the last flight from the highest dune when we would soar to nearly 80 feet. (Actually, we never took off from the higher dune because, due to wind shift and in the interest of safety, the instructor kept us on the smaller dune.) We started from the smaller sand dune, which would only let us reach heights of 40 to 50 feet.

Standing beside me, the trainer checked my harness to be sure I was safely attached to the kite. He asked if I was ready. He talked me through each stage of the flight - from first running across the sand, to the point at which the wind would pick me up and, ultimately, to landing.

When I landed, the instructor ran over to me to make sure I was alright. He reviewed my flight and listed what I needed to improve on. He also helped me carry the kite back uphill.

He did this for each flight for each student.

Conflicting Messages

I didn't really mind my instructor's concern about my harness and my safety upon landing. But it was all that talk in-between that bothered me. It was like babble in my ears. My inner voice kept saying, "Just let me go out and enjoy this experience. I can do this!"

Shutting out the instructor was a mistake. If I had listened to the instructor's advice and taken full advantage of his expertise, those early lessons would have been safer and more enjoyable. You see, during those first few lessons, I crashed twice, landed on my belly four times, stalled in midair and belly flopped on the sand.

The Turning Point

But then that inner voice that was blocking my reception of the instructor's message went silent. It happened when my wife, daughter and son-in-law showed up to watch me. I knew I had to make it good. Not only did I want to impress them, but I didn't want them to worry about my safety. It was the incentive I needed to finally listen to my instructor's advice rather than to my own inner voice.

It was the turning point. As I took off, I did everything right. I glided until I felt I was starting to go down, I pulled back up and then landed on my feet. I was looking good! You should have been there!

Putting the Lesson to Work

My experience with hang-gliding and hang-gliding safety training made me take a closer look at the practices I use to deliver safety training. I'm sure that many of my trainees have their own internal voices telling them during training that they've "got" this and don't need to listen to what I'm saying. And those ever present safety reminders - the stickers, labels, quizzes and training - must all seem like a lot of babble in their ears.

Safety reminders are great and training is essential. But if the message is to get through, we need to find a way to silence the inner voices of our trainees. To do that, we need to appeal to a higher motive. I suspect that the ultimate motivation for everyone is not to look good or to produce quality work, but to get home safely to our loved ones and have them return to us the same way.

Conclusion

Until I learned to silence my inner voice, I belly flopped and stalled. Safety trainers must combine safety information with the right motivation, to ensure that our trainees have a smooth takeoff, flight and landing in whatever endeavors they follow - at home, work and recreation.

Story Tools:  Email This Post  Print This Post Top