Have you ever had a gut feeling that something isn't quite right and ignored it? That's exactly how Mike found himself with a dislocated and broken neck and paralyzed from the neck down. Join us to hear how his personal journey to recovery has shaped his understanding of risk-taking, human error, and complacency.
Host: Danny Smith
Guest: Mike Shaw
Have you ever had a gut feeling that something isn't quite right and ignored it? That's exactly how Mike found himself with a dislocated and broken neck and paralyzed from the neck down. Join us to hear how his personal journey to recovery has shaped his understanding of risk-taking, human error, and complacency.
Host: Danny Smith
Guest: Mike Shaw
Welcome back to Safe Talk with Safe Start. I'm Danny Smith. Today we continue our Flex Unit series with Reducing Conscious Risk Taking. Joining us today is my friend and fellow consultant, Mike Shaw. So, Mike, first of all, welcome back. It's been a while since you were on the podcast with us, right?
Mike Shaw:Yes, it has, and thanks for having me back, Danny. It's great to catch up with you and it's been too long, my friend.
Danny Smith:It really has, and folks if you haven't heard Mike before don't know his background. It's really quite fascinating. Mike became involved with Safe Start back in 2014, and his interest in safety peaked as he was recovering from a traumatic skiing accident that happened back in 2013. He'll share a bit more about that in just a few moments, and his just unbelievable recovery from that injury and that accident really provides him with great insight into human performance and also human error as well. Mike's shared this story in some TEDx talks, called Grief Happens, and before his accident, Mike went from skiing at provincial, national and international levels to coaching others, and his experience includes elite high level performance coaching. So he's a part of our virtual team. He's also a part of the International Safe Start International team, meaning that he has traveled the globe now with Larry Wilson in a number of countries, and he also holds a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration and understand you're working in grad school now too, right?
Mike Shaw:Yes, sir, I'm doing my Master's in Behavioral Sciences, Human Psychology, support, Safe Start. Very much, it's really cool to learn the science behind why it works.
Danny Smith:Absolutely yeah, and that's so he's busy, to say the least, right? Mike also is an author. He wrote the book Never Part of the Plan, the Story of Courage, Resilience and Gratitude. So, Mike, thinking about your book first of all, if you would share just a little bit about that as we get started.
Mike Shaw:Yeah, thank you. The book's called Never Part of the Plan and the story offers tools to help you overcome your biggest challenges, achieve your potential and it'll take you to the next level. And the idea is that it transcends the boundaries of safety or business and the sports and other parts of your life and the lessons contained in the pages. They apply to safety and performance absolutely. It's about cultivating a different perspective, and risk taking is certainly part of that, but my idea was to write something based on my experience that would apply to everyone and not just be another injury recovery story. It will give you tools to thrive in whatever you do, and it's on Amazon. It's an easy read too. I mean I wrote it, so it can't be overly difficult, right, but it's got a lot of great feedback about tangible takeaways and some people say it's even funny, so I hope you enjoy it. You can just, you know, find it on Amazon pretty easy. Never Part of the Plan.
Danny Smith:That's great. So anybody looking for inspiration and just valuable life lessons, I encourage you to pick up Mike's book. All right back to the business at hand here real quickly, which is Reducing Conscious Risk-Taking. The new Flex Unit Mike, if you would talk us through a bit of what folks can expect in this particular unit.
Mike Shaw:My pleasure. I actually like this. Out of many of the great Flex Units that we've come out, I think this come out with this one, I think, is my favorite. So how to Reduce Conscious Risk-Taking. That the Flex Unit takes a deeper dive into situations where there is obvious risk but identifies just how easy it is to rationalize that risk away. It's one of two units on the concept of risk-taking and it's about focusing on situations where you, where you could have mitigated a risk but chose to take the risk instead or follow through on an action. And the other unit is on fighting complacency in the moment or in critical moments, which also saves a lot of needless pain, sure and some may think, well, that sounds like a little bit of overkill on complacency.
Danny Smith:But I mean, when you stop and think about it, complacency is is just such a huge issue for so many of us. If you go back and you think about core units of SafeS tart, I mean that that's what so much focuses on. Certainly we focus on all three, all four of the states, but certainly, even looking at the Critical air Reduction Techniques, those are designed to help to to compensate for that complacency and that's a big part of what SafeS tart is about is getting that awareness up and helping to drive down that complacency, giving those tools to compensate for complacency right.
Mike Shaw:You're absolutely right. It does give tools for complacency and it's tremendous insight because, if you think about it, self triggering works really well for rushing frustration and fatigue and other physical active states. But complacency is a different beast Because we don't always notice when we become complacent. It's like shifting into autopilot mode and it goes to show just how challenging the state of complacency is for all of us, and nobody's immune to it either. We're all hardwired to default to that autopilot because it uses less blood glucose, it uses less energy.
Mike Shaw:Our brains are more efficient when they're in that state and in my experience, complacency has been involved in Most of, if not all, my accidents and incidents, but all the injuries and, trust me, you have a lot in freestyle skiing. Freestyle skiing is not free and when I look back, it's rarely the highest degree of difficulty maneuvers. There's always a bit of complacency there in the background or a lot of complacency, and whether it's something you've done over and over or simply letting your guard down in that moment with your risk perception, it seems as if complacency is always there in the background.
Danny Smith:It really is so. If you would take us to moment and, with this particular Flex nit, if you would just walk us through the unit and what people can expect with it.
Mike Shaw:Yeah, no problem, my my pleasure. The first part takes participants through personal risk assessment and analysis. So you're looking at your personal history with risk and then understanding when risk rationalizations happen is the first step in the unit, because human factors like complacency tend to take people or tend to think people, make people underestimate the risk, and it affects everyone. Like I said, we're all hardwired for that state. The second part it shows participants several effective strategies for removing risk-taking from everyday decisions and it it reframes how they think about the risk and some of the familiar concepts and techniques from SafeS tart, like self triggering or working on habits or some of the other Critical Error eduction Techniques you mentioned. They help participants be more successful with the strategies for removing risk-taking out of there every day.
Mike Shaw:And to put it another way, or in another terms, we're driving or you're driving. You get a text and you might rationalize looking at your phone or responding to the text by telling yourself I'm only gonna take my eyes off the road for a second, or because you think you have ample skills while texting and driving like it's It hasn't happened before, you haven't had a car accident because you texted and drove before. You're not likely gonna think you're gonna get into a car crash this time. So complacency causes us to rationalize that risk, when we know that texting while driving or looking at your phone while driving dramatically increases the risk.
Danny Smith:Sure, and it's almost like this reinforcement of a bad habit or a bad you know we're doing something we probably shouldn't, but at the same time it's that reinforcement that well, nothing bad happened this time and well nothing bad happened last time either.
Danny Smith:So it begins to just kind of feed that complacency monster in us.
Danny Smith:All right, and complacency gets us, and I think the more time we do something risky no negative outcomes well, complacency's grip just continues to get a stranglehold on us. If you will, you know, before we hit record with this, Mike, you were talking a bit about skiing and your competitive skiing and also while you were coaching as well, kind of leading up to what happened with your accident, you talked a bit of what we were talking before the podcast started that you know, sometimes we all get those kind of gut feelings that something just isn't right and we tend to well, at times we override those. We think, okay, it's fine, my skills will compensate for that. I guess all of that in the complacency aspect kind of feeds into your story a bit as well. If you don't mind, just share a bit about your story and maybe some of the red flags you saw there, some of those gut feelings you saw, but you chose, as we're talking about here, just to make that conscious decision that, okay, I've got this.
Mike Shaw:In other words, if you will, yeah, I really like this approach that you're talking about, like they're talking about the gut feelings. But also when nothing goes wrong or nothing's gone wrong for a long time, you're likely to have a lot of complacency, even in an activity where there's a lot of risk that's involved. You could think, like working at heights or anything where there's a high degree of hazardous energy, and in freestyle skiing we used to manage risk all the time. But most times you land it, or if you lose it and you crash, nothing that bad happens. You crash a lot more times and come out of it unscathed than you do with an injury, and so complacency is really difficult and increases risk.
Mike Shaw:But I won't get into the nitty-gritty details of my story too much, but I was coaching skiing 10 years ago as the national development team, so our Olympic talent pool team in Canada. I'm Canadian, in case you hadn't noticed with the accent, but I had a severe accident which resulted in breaking my neck and getting paralyzed from the neck down, albeit temporarily, and I've had a remarkable recovery, which I'm grateful for every single day. But in my accident I had a gut-sinking feeling right before the accident happened, which I rationalized away, and so in that moment, there were a couple of human factors at play. I was the last person to go, so I was standing at the top of the hill and all of my athletes were already gone. So I was thinking that I needed to catch up, and so, when I'd finished coaching them on, my last athlete landed their jump. I just set off.
Mike Shaw:I went from wearing my coaching hat to my skiing hat really quickly and set off down the hill, and I remember going through my routine that I normally would before starting moving, after I'd started moving, and as I started going into this particular jump, I got hit Boom, right in the solar plex. I got the gut-sinking feeling, and it was like a blatant red flag, that something was wrong, and I looked up and the whole crash is on camera and everything, but my cameraman was standing more or less where I wanted to take off this jump, and there were no parameters on the jump, though. There was no paint or flags or lines, so I just could go farther to the left, and by doing so I ended up landing 10 feet further to the left than I would have on previous jumps, and it wasn't a matter of skill. I did a trick that I'd done a thousand times. But on landing I landed in some really soft snow which caused me to pitch violently forward onto my head and neck. And then in an instant I knew how bad it was a sharp pain in my neck and then nothing and I slid to a stop and I couldn't move.
Mike Shaw:But if we go back to the top of the in-run for a moment, I've gone from wearing my coaching hat to my skiing hat awfully quickly. So I'm rushing through my routine that I would normally do at the top. But because this is a trick I have done a thousand times, it's no big deal. This is an easy one for me and it was the gut instinct that I it was like a blatant red flag and neon flashing sign saying something's wrong, but I chose to ignore it. In that moment and because of complacency and a bit of rushing thinking I needed to catch up. I ignored that feeling and it resulted in a really traumatic accident that has taken me years to recover from and I still have not fully recovered. I still have an incomplete spinal cord injury and a disability as a result of rationalizing that feeling away.
Danny Smith:Yeah, it's amazing, and as you were talking about that, I think about how many times we see similar things in industry, that we do things that we have done hundreds, if not thousands of times. We've, you know, done a particular lift, we've worked with a particular hazardous chemical, we've done all of those type things and we've gotten accustomed to the risk. And I think back to something that Larry mentioned is we were doing the updates on Safe Start Now for the core units. We were talking a bit about the idea of self-triggering on hazardous energy and he he made a statement to me one day. He said you know, if you are used to the hazardous energy, you're much less likely to actually self-trigger on the hazardous energy. And that made so much sense to me because you do get complacent about it, right? And that complacence just becomes almost instilled in you.
Mike Shaw:It could be high heat, high height, high speed chemicals could be any hazard that you're working around or this hazardous energy and getting comfortable around those hazards is a real big problem. And so it goes to show that, as you say, even when there's a lot of hazardous energy around, complacency can cause a lot of problems.
Danny Smith:Remind everybody the Flex Units that we're talking about, and this is one of them. Obviously, today some of these concepts actually came from some of the original Critical Decision units that Larry had with the older version of Safe Start. Internally we're calling it Safe Start Classic, although that's not the official term of it, but frankly there's just a lot of gold in those units and we wanted to make sure we pulled that forward into the new format of the Safe Start Now format. So if you're not familiar with Safe Start Now and the format with that, it's just updated for today's learner a bit uses, a bit of a different learning methodology. If you will, and if you're not a certified Safe Start Now trainer and would like more information on that, just reach out to your C lient Manager. They can give you some more information with that.
Danny Smith:These Flex Units also, by the way, give you a chance to break them down if necessary. All of our Flex Units are designed to be done in 90 minutes, but you do have the option to break that up into two 45-minute sessions, so that can be helpful as well if you're limited on to the amount of time that you can pull folks off the production floor that type thing for your monthly safety meetings and that type stuff Before we get out of here. Mike, if you would. I know you talked a little bit about your book earlier, but if you would just remind everybody of the title of your book and thanks for being here, I mean, just tell us about the book again and where they can get that. I know you said Amazon before, but make sure we got the title right for everybody.
Mike Shaw:Thanks, Danny, it's been my pleasure. I absolutely enjoy talking with you, whether it's on the mic or off the mic, and thanks for the plug. I mean, as far as the book goes, it's on Amazon. It's the easiest and only place you can get it online. But the title is Never Part of the Plan a Story of Courage, Resilience and Gratitude. And, Danny, here's some gratitude for you. Thank you so much for today. I really enjoyed this.
Danny Smith:Well, thank you for being here. It's always a pleasure to catch up with you. Been a few months since we talked. I guess we've emailed back and forth about some stuff, but I guess that's kind of it. It's the first time we've caught up live with each other in a while. So, folks, that's it for today. If you would be sure to share this episode with your co-workers and let them know about it, be sure to talk to them a bit about some of the Flex Units and we'll have more in this series coming along shortly. And for everyone that's been part of this one, thanks for listening. I'm Danny Smith for Safe Talk with Safe Start, reminding everybody that increased risk sometimes is a decision. Have a great day.