Practitioner viewpoint – January 2026

How many times have you seen, heard or experienced something and either discarded it immediately or come to the end and thought “That was a waste of time”?

More often than not I’m guessing.

So, what about when we do engage, what is it that grabs our attention, that makes us feel connected?

Imagine you’re at a seminar and the speaker introduces themselves as the leader of a successful organisation and describes how their role involves flying around the world attending executive meetings. Depending on the audience of course, the majority of those in the room switch off.

But if the speaker continues by describing their journey from a working-class upbringing, through public education and their encounters with every day challenges that many of us will also have  faced. Immediately we listen. And that’s because we can relate to what’s being presented.

Relatability is about demonstrating to someone that you understand their world. Being relatable means that someone sees you as one of their own, even if it’s just in one specific area, they think “This person gets it”. It’s a powerful thing when you create that bond, and it acts as a conduit for communication, engagement and influence 

Relatability doesn’t just apply to people, it applies to ideas, methods and principles. Anything we do in business requires relatability to effectively engage others, to land a message or influence behaviour, views and outcomes.

What if everything we did and every message we sent within our working worlds landed with those that we’re attempting to influence? Wouldn’t it make our lives so much easier? 

In the professional world, where we are the driving force of health and safety, it’s imperative that our messages land successfully.

So how can we ensure that we as people are relatable, and that our actions and the messages we send out into our business are relatable? 

It starts with us!

We can start by putting the time in to understand our audience; what are their interests, what lights their fire, but also what concerns them and what holds them back. 

Then we can consider how our actions may affect their everyday lives and the things they care about.

If you make it your goal to connect with people and consciously relate yourself to your audience and their world, you set yourself up to succeed in communicating and influencing them effectively.

Part of my role as a competence manager within the rail freight industry involves delivering training courses on human factors. 

Around 18 months ago during a substantial training drive for our operational workforce, the significance of relatability really hit home for me. 

All of the feedback, in the room and from the surveys sent to those who attended carried the same message “I can relate to this and therefore it makes sense and feels relevant to my world”. In many instances it was literally spelt out on the feedback forms for all to see. 

Relatability is something that I’ve always naturally paid attention to, but this experience helped to emphasise the impact that we can have within our organisations when we build  that relatability amongst those we work with.

From then on, I’ve consciously made it a part of everything that I do and it’s become my focus. 

So think about some of the messages you want to deliver, whether it’s a new initiative or something that you’ve been struggling to land.

Ask yourself the question, “How can I make this relatable to my audience?”, “How can I, and the business I’m a part of, be relatable to those that we need to engage with?”

It’s ambitious (and realistically impossible) to think that 100% of the messages we deliver will land with 100% of the audience. 

But if we can put relatability at the centre of everything we do and create a relatability led approach to our communication, I believe we will succeed in creating a safer workplace.

Matthew Lysak is an established operational leader with over 10 years experience in the rail freight sector. He is currently operational training and standards manager at Freightliner Group Ltd. For more information, visit www.freightliner.co.uk