Know Your Why: The Environmental, Health & Safety Professionals Guide to Being Successful (50m Lecture)

Do you know your why? Do you know why you are in the profession and what drives you to be successful? So many EH&S professionals have lost the passion for their field, or maybe they never even found it in the first place. The aim of this session is to help you find that passion and to identify the areas that you need to strengthen in order to be successful in the field. First, we will discuss some of the most important characteristics in the EH&S field,

such as knowledge (knowing your stuff), a customer service attitude (being a people person), and follow-through (showing you care). After we have discussed these characteristics (and others) in detail, we will do a self-evaluation (one minute write) that will be provided by the instructor. The self-evaluation will have some yes/no box answers, as well as some questions that will require a short written answer. The purpose of this portion is to get you thinking about what you currently do in your profession, what drives you, and where you think you can do better. I will then ask for some of you to submit your self-evaluations for critiquing in the class setting. If some are submitted then we will go through those and critique them, if not, I will do a generic review of the self-evaluations and ask for some answers that you got for the short answer questions. Once the self-evaluation portion is over, I will then focus on reinvigorating you and helping you to find your passion for the profession. I will explain how self-satisfaction is the best motivator. As safety professionals we may not always be viewed as the cool folks, or the most helpful, but we should be driven by the fact that we are making a difference. It’s how we go about making that difference that can make or break us as professionals.