Episode 193: Inspect What You Expect

In this episode of Leading and Learning Through Safety, Dr. Mark French explores the timeless leadership principle of “inspect what you expect,” rooted in the lean concept of gemba—going to where the work is actually done. Safety and lean thinking should be natural partners, but too often leaders set expectations without validating them through presence and follow-up.

Mark recounts observing a construction crew working without proper PPE, despite safety glasses being available. One worker wore them on the back of his head, another tossed new ones aside after seeing no one else using them. This real-world example underscored how expectations without inspection quickly dissolve into unsafe behaviors.

He emphasizes that genuine safety performance is proactive, consistent, and reinforced by leadership presence. When leaders actively validate expectations—whether for safety, quality, or productivity—they create accountability and consistency, while modeling the behaviors they wish to see. Conversely, when leaders only appear during crises or productivity shortfalls, employees learn that safety isn’t truly prioritized.

Mark also highlights the importance of peer influence and “leading up.” Younger leaders look to experienced peers, while supervisors may eventually shift when they see frontline consistency. The process may be slow, but leadership presence builds trust, reinforces values, and fosters long-term cultural improvement.

Ultimately, leadership isn’t about words—it’s about being present, validating expectations, and showing people that safety and values come first. A leader’s presence on the floor is both the simplest and most powerful tool for sustainable performance.

Episode Transcript

Unknown (00:01):
This week on the podcast, I'm going back to a
very basic principle of thegimba. Inspect what you expect.
Go out and see, go to where theaction is, go to where the work
is. I want to talk about that ina real life scenario. This week
on the podcast.

(00:37):
Welcome to the leading andlearning through safety podcast.
Your host is Dr Mark French.
Mark's passion is helpingorganizations motivate their
teams. This podcast is focusedon bringing out the best in
leadership through creatingstrong values, learning
opportunities, teamwork andsafety, nothing is more

(00:59):
important than protecting yourpeople. Safety creates an
environment for empathy,innovation and empowerment.
Together, we'll discover meaningand purpose through shaping our
safety culture. Thanks forjoining us this episode and now
here is Dr Mark French,welcome to this Episode of the

(01:37):
leading and learning throughsafety podcast, so happy you
could join me. Thank you forallowing me to be part of your
podcast rotation. I am trulyhonored to be a part of it. This
week, I wanted to talk a littlebit more about some lean theory
and safety, and sometimes leantheory and safety, they should

(02:00):
go hand in hand. They should bebest friends. They should be
partners in everything they do.
But sometimes it doesn't go thatway. But again, kind of
continuing our theme hererecently of leading safety
first, letting safety be thatleadership tool that gets

(02:21):
everything started.
That's where true lean principlecomes in. And the idea of the
gimba, the idea of, go to thelocation, go to where the work
is done. The same thing you hearthe word go. Inspect what you
expect. And if you're notinspecting it, you get what you

(02:43):
expect. It just comes however itwants, which is absolutely 100%
true in everything we do,safety, quality, delivery, cost,
if we don't look at it, if wedon't inspect it, if we don't
give feedback to it, then it issimply just not going to work.

(03:04):
It won't happen the way we wantit to. And so I'll tell a story.
This is recent that I saw thishappen. Found it interesting.
It was a construction site thatI was near and was just waiting
basically for something else.
And I saw construction going on,not my construction. It was
fully gated. Couldn't get intoit, but I could see what was

(03:26):
happening. And seemed like theywere doing something pretty
simple. They were pouring someconcrete. They were making a
sidewalk and a concrete pad foran organization. And I was
watching the work, and it justit didn't feel right from the
beginning and then, so ofcourse, then I couldn't help but
watch a little closer, and itstarted off with, you know, the

(03:46):
lack of PPE.
There were some gloves. Theylooked like they were wearing
boots, but again, at first, theywere just pouring concrete. So I
kind of all right, that makessense. Then they brought out the
big concrete hand saw,and they started cutting, either
scoring some of the concrete,but also cutting blocks to make

(04:07):
them fit, to make it look like apretty pad. They were making
sure it was look nice. So theywere cutting blocks. And there
was a whole there was quite afew workers there doing the
work, and the guy's using thesaw, and there's dust
everywhere, and it's cloudy, andthey they take some water

(04:29):
bottles, start spraying the areawith their with their drinking
water bottles, trying to keepthe dust down. And I look over,
and I go, why isn't that guywearing safety glasses? He was
wearing. Them. They were just onthe back of his head.
He had put them there, I guess,for safe keeping. And then when

(04:50):
he started cutting the block,never put them back on. And I
was thinking, oh my gosh, what'sgoing on? And then, then I
thought, okay, here we go.
Someone.
Showing up, and they were allwearing brightly colored gear,
like kind of high vis. It wasyellow and orange and blue, and
it looked like that. Thedifferent classification of
workers had different color.
Well, here comes blue shirt. Itlooked like he was probably

(05:13):
looked like a supervisor. AndI'm like, All right, maybe this
is gonna take care of it. Thisis what's gonna happen. Realized
it wasn't a supervisor, justanother worker. But he walks up
and he looks around and he hesees he's got a pair of safety
glasses, new in package in hishand. I'm like, Ah, okay, he's
gonna hand these out. He's gonnatry to get people involved

(05:33):
protect their eyes from thisdust and concrete
that's being cut. He walks over.
He looks around, he looks at allthe others, and he realizes that
nobody else is wearing safetyglasses. So he takes the new
impact, he tosses them over intothe into the pile of other gear
that they're currently notusing, and just continues on his

(05:55):
way.
So that made me think of why isthis happening? It can't be lack
of knowledge. It might be. Butthey had the safety they knew
they probably needed safetyglasses because they had them.
So at some point, somebodyhanded them new and packaged
safety glasses. The one guycutting knew he needed them. He

(06:16):
had them on the back of hishead. He knew he needed them. He
didn't quite go all the way withputting them on.
I guess he felt very comfortablerunning the saw very comfortable
not wearing those safetyglasses.
And I wondered further. Istarted thinking, why would
someone, why would a groupdecide to take such

(06:41):
blatant, dangerous in a lot ofaccounts, decision making, and I
wonder what the expectation was.
Was there truly an expectationto wear PPE, if there
was, there was definitely noinspection. No one was showing
up to validate, to verify, tolook at the fact that are they

(07:06):
doing what I expect. Now,occasionally it looked like
there was a design engineer thatwould come around and make sure
the concrete was being pouredaccording to his his
specifications, because he had aclipboard. Lucky had some
drawings. Again, I'm a distanceaway. I'm observing, observing
from a little bit of a distance,and I can tell that they're

(07:26):
looking at like, how are theypouring? Is it smooth? Is it
going the direction they want? Ican see some of that, but again,
no expectation, no inspectionfor safety, for the basic
critical nature of looking forsomething safety first, and one
of the items, and this comesfrom the Kraus spell research,

(07:47):
this comes from other researchthat's out there, but that was
the most prominent is that whenyou have good safety
performance, and that's not aZero injury rate, it's truly
proactive, measured,real safety performance, caring
to safety, putting energy intosafety, that performance also
creates performance in all othercategories. A good safety

(08:10):
organization is a goodperforming organization every
time that data is there. And whyis that? And I come back to the
inspect what you expect. If I amgoing out to verify that my
people are okay, that they'redoing what I expect for safety,
then there's a very highlikelihood, very high

(08:33):
likelihood, that I am going toalso check out the work
conditions, make sure thequality is there. Make sure
they're performing and working,to make sure that they're out
there doing the work that shouldbe done, and maybe not doing
other things they shouldn't bedoing,
or all the things that come withgood leadership and good

(08:55):
management, being available,being out there, being at the
work, seeing exactly what weexpect. How do we inspect
exactly what we expect? And Ikeep saying that, but that's the
easiest term to use about whatis the expectation. As a leader,
we have expectations every dayof the people who work for us,

(09:17):
around us and who we work for,we have an expectation of how
they should perform and what weneed to be able to perform that
work. And I'll back up and saythat again. So we have an
expectation, if we are true, ifwe are leaders, we're managers,
and we have people who work forus, we have an expectation of

(09:38):
what they're going to do everyday. We have an expectation of
the work, the work quality, thework safety, all of the things
that come with being a goodmanager. We have expectations of
our peers. We need to work as ateam. We need to work cross
laterally. We need to be able tosee what is happening there.

(10:00):
We need that connection, and weneed that teamwork, and we have
an expectation of those that wework for. All of us in some form
or fashion, have a have a boss,unless you're at the very, very
tip top, and then you probablystill report to a board
potentially. So you still have aboss. There's an expectation of
what we need from them everyday. There is that expectation.

(10:23):
There is a strong expectationthere. So let's move into the
how do we inspect? How do wemake sure that we're getting
what we need when we haveexpectations on the second half
of the leading and learningthrough safety podcast you are
listening tothe leading and learning through
safety podcast with Dr MarkFrench

(10:49):
tsda Consulting, learn you leadothers. The Myers, Briggs Type
Indicator is an amazing tool.
Problem is that it can be easilymisinterpreted. Dr Mark French
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(11:11):
management, and so much more,individual and group sessions
are available to help youdiscover what makes you great.
For more information, visit uson the web at TS da
consulting.comand welcome back to the second
half of the leading and learningthrough safety podcast. This
week, we're talking about theact of the Gemba, the going out

(11:34):
and doing and why do we do it?
Is because we have to inspectwhat we expect, we have to be
able to somehow measure, view,evaluate, is it meeting our
expectations? And so in the caseI spoke about earlier, the
construction site that Iobserved, I think deeper about

(11:56):
the idea of, was anyoneinspecting the expectation,
probably not. AndI also will go back to some of
the investigations I've beeninvolved in, some of the other
research I've done of some verytough injuries, very like Sif
events, so significant incidentor fatality events, and while

(12:20):
doing the the investigation,when asking the hard questions,
there's a lot of times whereabsolutely the expectation, oh
yeah, I asked them to do thelockout. Every time I asked them
to wear their PPE, I pass outPPE.
But you also found out that thex the inspection was not there.

(12:42):
Did you ever go evaluate? Didyou ever go out there and have
the chance to go look to see ifthey were actually doing it the
way that you expected they weredoing it? And unfortunately,
there were a lot of times thatthat was not true, that the the
expectation was there, but itwas loose, because if you don't

(13:03):
go out and validate, and youdon't go out and create
accountability, you don't go outand create consistency, you
don't go out and model thosebehaviors, it won't happen. It's
absolutely human behavior,psychology, management theory.
It's absolutely true that if youdon't go in and inspect and set

(13:24):
the set and validate and verifyyour expectation, there will be
no accountability, there'll beno consistency. And they looking
at you to lead. They're lookingat your model as a leader, and
that that's everyone again. Sowe going back to the idea of
your people, the people thatwork for you. If you're in a

(13:45):
position of management, whereyou're a leader of that style,
your team is looking at you tomodel that behavior. If you
never come out and look at thework site, or the only time you
show up is when there's aproblem, or if there's a cost or
delivery issue they understand.
You can talk about safety, youcan talk about culture, you can
talk about all the other things.

(14:09):
They catch on. People see it,they feel it. They may not be
able to like bring themselves upto the meta, to really
understand it, but they feel it,and they know it, and they know
suddenly now what theexpectation really is. And
that's when you do the you dosome of those interviews, and
I've done a lot of thesethroughout my career, where you

(14:30):
talk to people about, hey, whatdo you what do you hear about?
Say, oh yeah. We talk aboutsafety all the time here. I'm
like, Well, tell me the truth.
Then tell me what's really goingout. And sometimes you get a
really great story of like, ohyeah, they come out here, they
they've bought us things,they've improved things. You get
the good stories. But of course,the fun stories, the stories
that really shock us are theones where it doesn't go well.

(14:51):
When you hear about oh yeah,they tell us all that. But the
only time the supervisor reallyshows up out here is when our
numbers are dropping and.
We're not making productionquotas. Suddenly, they're out
here in force, taking care ofbusiness. Okay? We know the
truth. Now we know what gets thereinforcement. We see the

(15:11):
modeling. We see what is gettingmotivated? What is the
motivation? Productivity onlyuntil safety is a problem, and
then safety is a problem. Peerto Peer, our peers look at us to
see how we're going to performif we they understand if we're
the ones who always set the highexpectation. And sometimes

(15:34):
that's a relief for some, maybeyounger leaders, maybe leaders
who are learning for the firsttime how things are. They look
to the older ones who are theirpeers, and they look at those
that are senior or those thathave done it before, and they
look to model that behavior. Andif it's a safe behavior, if it's
one that is constantly gettingout, doing the inspections,

(15:56):
setting the expectations, makingit real, making it
accountability, making it model,making it the way it should be.
They're going to pick up onthat.
Our supervisors see the samething. Now that's harder.
Leading up is a very difficultprocess. It sounds so easy, but

(16:16):
we know it's not. But it issomething we do, and it's
something we set the expectationto if our if we stay in our own
and we hold true to our values,hold true to our core of who we
are. And we set the expectationthat we are going to be a
frontline leader on the floor.
We're going to be a leader whoshows that when we lead safety

(16:37):
first, it is setting the rightexpectation, because we perform
better overall in the long termbecause of how we do that, our
supervisor catches on. They maynot change the way they lead,
they may not change the way theyhold accountability to others,
but they'll recognize what we'reabout and what we do and how we

(17:00):
do it, and a lot of times itdoes spread. Now it's a lot
slower, in my experience thatthat type of leadership does
slow. It does influence. It doescreate influence. It creates a
lot of interesting trust. And inkind of human grouping

(17:27):
processes, it creates that otherpeople will either start to be
attracted to that pack, thatidea of like, Hey, this is the
way we're all going to do it.
We're all going to start doingit because we see it that way.
It may even change the way theleader leads to get more
involved in those processes.

(17:47):
And ultimately, what it comesdown to is that we have to be
leaders who were present. Wehave to be present to the people
that we work with and workaround. Is in that actually is
quite simple. I do have to saythat being present in the space,

(18:07):
it takes energy, but it's not ahard process. Just go to where
the work is. Where is the workgo there. You don't have to
spend a lot of time to make itmeaningful, but you do have to
be there. It has to be you haveto be present. Be present in
that moment. That's even amindfulness idea

(18:30):
in all the other processes, theway we deliver it, the way we
Yeah, that gets morecomplicated. But this first
step, the very first step, theone we can absolutely control,
100%right now, at this moment, is to
go out there, be present atwhere the work is happening
and start that inspection. Bethere. Thanks for joining me on

(18:53):
this episode of the leading andlearning through safety podcast.
Until next time we chat, staysafe. You.
Life. Thank you for listening tothe leading and learning through
safety podcast. More content isavailable online at www dot tsda

(19:15):
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(19:56):
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