Always start your safety meeting on time
Let's begin with starting on time. As a safety speaker you should always start on time. No matter what the circumstances, I always start on time. It doesn't matter what's going on. For instance if you live in a major metropolitan area such as Los Angeles or San Diego a reality of life in those areas is what? Traffic, right? There's going to be situations where no matter how early someone leaves, there's a possibility they are going to be late. I don't think it is fair to people who have arrived on time to have to just sit there for 30 minutes while the last people show up.
It's wasting their time. I really treasure other people’s time. As a safety speaker I take what I do with other people’s time as sacred. None of us know how many days left we have in this life and my audience is giving up that time to listen to me. I owe it to them to do the absolute best I can do and make the best use of their time as possible.
Starting on time is critical. A challenge is that in safety business there are times where you've got to cover particular material. Subject matter that must be covered and you want to make sure everybody receives it. What do you do? Wait for them? Reschedule the meeting? Meet with the latecomers separately? None of those are the best options.
The best option is to start on time using a technique I developed early in my career as a safety speaker. I have what I call bonus material. I use subject matter that I can share with the audience that's of value to them and allows me to start on time. It isn’t the critical material, which I have on my outline. That way I start on time and give value to the people who arrived on time while saving the material that must be covered for later in my presentation.
It's also material that I'm not going to be referring back to later in the presentation. If I did that I would be causing people who arrived late to wonder what I was talking about.
Have fun as a safety speaker using this effective technique.
Until next week,
I'll be, "Watching Out For Everyone's Safety™"
John
