You Don't Need to Be Superman!

You don't have to be Superman to be a great safety leader.  But let's face it, some leaders bring out the best in people and others bring out the very worst.  We need to make choices every day regarding the kind of leader we are going to be, especially for those who are following. 

On our worst days, we bring about anxiety, fear, and a loss of focus.  Sometimes we are unapproachable, confrontational, and don't care to listen to the concerns of others.  At times, we can be detached and withdrawn.  Not the kind of leader others want to be around or follow.

At our best, we bring out more energy and excitement in our people.  We are approachable, and want to be engaged in the safety-related efforts of others.  We want to facilitate, coach, listen, and support the work of our people.  This is the kind of leader that attracts and influences others to be their very best and to reach new levels of safety engagement and performance. This is the type of leader who turns followers into the very kinds of leaders that we want to be - a reflection of our best qualities and characteristics.

Here's a couple of quotes from some organizational leaders who I have worked with recently.  I spoke about bringing out the best in others to improve safety performance.  Near the end, I follow with some questions that you may need to ask of yourselves and your leaders.  
 

David gave a presentation to the SILBA lumber owners, and employees that was terrific. David had their rapt attention, engaging them throughout the talk. It was definitely a heartfelt talk about each of them becoming active participants in their own company's safety process. It was directed at the owners/principals as we hoped it would be and asked them if they thought they could just take 20 minutes of their day to walk around, talk to staff, promote a positive, involved image of a caring manager/owner. This was about observing employees working and about providing positive feedback, educating them along the way. He has a very unassuming air about himself that seems to resonate with all he speaks to.

I find him a very likeable, thoughtful, engaging person and he probably has something to offer to any audience. He speaks to the little steps that an organization can take action on right now. I would definitely use David again!

Terry Buckhout, CSP
Regional AVP Risk Control Services
Meadowbrook TPA Associates

Just a quick note of thanks for the tremendous job you did at our four Leadership Conferences.  As background, Eagle Materials needed a motivational safety speaker for our Leadership Conferences.  David was an easy choice since he had spoken at one of Eagle’s Annual Safety conferences two years ago and as a result was widely accepted and recognized within our organization. 

Our Leadership Conferences were focused on enhancing the leadership skills of our first line supervisors and department heads with an emphasis on safety leadership.  David’s role was a half day segment of motivational speaking on leadership safety – specifically leading from the heart and caring about those you work with.  David’s material dovetailed perfectly with speakers before and after and energized the Leadership Conference participants.  Our participant evaluations told the story – our participants graded us out above the 97^th percentile in achieving the conference goals. 

David we will be calling on you in the future, as a key element in our leadership development program.  Again, thanks for your contribution to our Leadership Conferences.

Rodney E. Cummickel, Vice President – Risk Management
Eagle Materials

The very best organizations invest in their people to make them better safety leaders so they can bring out the best in others.    

What kinds of safety leadership opportunities are you helping to create for others?

Are you helping individuals to become better listeners?

Are you helping to develop the coaching skills of your workers?

Do you provide opportunities to learn various psychological strategies and tactics?


Well, I would love to hear from you and help you make your leaders better safety leaders. We don't need to be Superman, but we need to have the desire to be better safety leaders and we need the tools to make our cultures for safety the kinds of cultures we can be proud to talk about. 

Your Vision for Safety and Closing the Gaps?

“The first step toward creating an improved future is developing the ability to envision it. VISION will ignite the fire of passion that fuels our commitment to do WHATEVER IT TAKES to achieve excellence. Only VISION allows us to transform dreams of greatness into the reality of achievement through human action. VISION has no boundaries and knows no limits…”  ― Tony Dungy, Former Head Coach, Super Bowl Winning Coach and Player, Indianapolis Colts / Pittsburgh Steelers

You and I know that having a vision for safety begins in your mind’s eye and is critical to taking safety performance to an entirely new level.  We also know that your vision for safety has to be a clear and compelling one.  It has to move people towards a future state of excellence – a great place to be but not one to rest within.  And having a creative vision for safety that is embraced is an important part of improving your culture for safety.

You and your leaders need to have a vision that brings everyone together in ways that recognize individuals as a valued member of your work community. But, part of helping people to understand their value requires obtaining their opinions towards critical dimensions of safety that support your vision. 

Great organizations realize that objective leading indicators obtained through survey tools are critical to sustainable EHS success.  In particular, various safety climate measures help to support the vision in very real ways.  And when I talk about measuring the vision gap, I’m speaking about the specific ways your vision is supported and the variety of differences in viewpoints (and actions) at various organizational levels.   These very important gaps need to be assessed through well-designed metrics and acted upon.

Where Are Your Gaps?

Think about the statements below and how they support your vision.  Try to understand the perception gaps that may exist between your senior management, mid-level managers, supervisors, and your workers.  Each individual will have a different view towards the question being asked.  Obviously, the greater the separation in views, the more risk you may be accepting.    

What gaps currently exist when it comes to required resources such as materials, tools, equipment, and facilities?

How broad are your gaps when it comes to the control of workplace hazards, job pace, and acceptability of risk?

What kinds of views are relevant to supervisory support and regular forms of communications?

When there are production and scheduling demands, is safety just as important as when things are steady, unhurried, and without crises?

What views exist with regard to the overall support and commitment from your top organizational leaders?

Moving Forward

With nearly 30 years of safety climate research and experience, I can tell you with great certainty that each of the above types of questions often reveals important gaps that have to be closed through hard work and more engagement. 

When I measure these and other perception gaps, it’s important to realize that the larger ones will often harm organizational trust, focus, open communications, and the everyday motivation of your workers.

Supporting your vision for safety can be done in very practical ways.  However, what your people think and do, at different organizational levels is also very important to understand. 

Sadly, I’m wondering if the West Fertilizer plant near Waco, Texas had a serious vision for safety.  And I’m now thinking, their catastrophe may have never occurred if their leaders fully understood the importance of safety and the kinds of proactive metrics that would have allowed them to close their own vision gap.

Do you have a clear and compelling vision for safety?  Are you measuring, assessing, and closing your safety perception gaps? Tony Dungy had a vision for great success and worked tirelessly to close his gaps.

The Golden Goose Egg - Is It Worth the Chase?

There are various schools of thought when it comes to the golden goose egg of EHS performance.   Maybe you’ve been talking about zero lost-time or zero-recordable incidents.  Possibly, you’ve been discussing zero harm, zero waste or zero spills.   Even more, if we could get enough zeros on the left side of the decimal point in our personal bank accounts – we’d be wealthy. 

But let’s be open and honest.  Zero recordable and lost-time incidents are possible, and are being achieved across the globe, in greater numbers than ever before.  However, does the push for zero increase cover-ups and inhibit necessary communications when it comes to incident reporting or critical safety concerns?  Can it heighten anxiety and lead to increasingly serious harm producing events?  When it comes to EHS performance, is zero simply a bad number to pursue in any form?
 

The Zero-Incident Dilemma

The whole zero-incident argument is a delicate and difficult subject to tackle. I have clients that have gone several years without a recordable incident and still others that have had more than 12 years without a recordable.  Another client has over 150 facilities world-wide that have achieved more than a year without a recordable incident.  Are these poor performing companies when it comes to productivity or safety?  Not hardly.  And if the pursuit of zero is so dangerous, should they scrap the very thought of maintaining that kind of success?  

The mature zero-incident organizations that I’ve cited are some of the most respected companies in the world – Fortune 500 firms that are the envy of many.    But they’re not perfect, they know it, and continually strive for improvement.  That’s part of the reason they’re so successful.  These organizations also realize that the absence of injuries never reveals an absence of risk.  They also understand that hazards and their related risks are always present, but must be continually assessed and controlled, ensuring those same risks become increasingly acceptable.  It’s no secret, these firms have exceptional leadership and resources, excellent BBS processes; great front line leadership, open communications, accountability and coaching, and each have great safety management systems.  The list is nearly endless, but you name it – they’ve got it!  In effect, they have “all the right stuff.”   So is the entire zero-incident pursuit a poor investment and dangerous path for these organizations?  Or does zero make their vision for success clearer and more relevant?
 

More than Semantics

Leading airlines don’t include zero crashes as part of a formal goal but more as a part of their vision for excellence.  Zero may be included in their conversations but not in a way that could harm communications and continual improvement.  When zero helps to make their vision for excellence increasingly clear and strikingly relevant, it becomes an ingrained component of their daily rituals and routines.  It helps them fly without egregious consequences and public scrutiny.  It also becomes a part of their culture.  But here’s the key - they rely on various process measures and work practices that will help them achieve zero crashes.  Their critical measures may relate to pilot training and work protocol, maintenance issues, and flight safety standards that can be reasonably broad in application.  And these high-risk organizations maintain a guarded approach to each mission which helps to create a high-performance flight safety culture.  If their vision is anything less than zero – expectations will drop, intentions weaken, critical measures might be revised, and so too will their realization of zero crashes.  Is every flight without error?  Are there near misses and concerns prior to push back or with regard to inflight processes?  Airlines and their aerospace counterparts (aircraft manufacturers and support contractors) are not perfect and you can bet there are issues and concerns before, during, and after many flights.  But that’s where their collective resources and improvements are focused – on the risks and on critical practices and measures that help them to realize zero crashes.  Their performance is ultimately sustained by a flight safety culture driven by excellence.

Outside of aerospace, there are many mature organizations with a broad spectrum of risks and challenges that are getting to zero.  These companies have process measures that are meaningful, relevant, thoughtfully applied, and used with rigor.   Their risks may be different but the way they manage and lead is quite similar.  For example, mature zero-incident companies have robust management systems that measure the quality and quantity of BBS coaching contacts, improvements in near miss reporting, abatement of hazards, and engagement of the workforce and management.  These are just a few proactive measures that are critical to sustainable EHS performance excellence.  And these same companies know that if they control their risks, train the right people, measure what’s expected, and hold people accountable to those measures, downstream numbers will fall into place.  Although zero may not be a formal goal, it’s a soft number – a part of their everyday work expectations and a larger portion of their vision for EHS excellence.  Everything that supports their success becomes a way of life, the personality of the organization – their culture for safety.
 

What’s the Struggle and Where’s the Comfort Zone?

A part of the struggle and problem exists when leaders are not held appropriately accountable or are held accountable for the wrong measures.  If leaders obtain bonuses and promotions arbitrarily, or because zero is the most formidable part of their performance reviews, problems will evolve, sooner or later.   Leadership performance measures, and the organization’s scorecard, need to be balanced and that requires the use of safety measures that relate to a variety of actions and activities.  Much like those I have already addressed.  And what’s the old adage?  What’s gets measured gets done! 

Mature zero-incident companies battle their way through the safety comfort zone.  They understand that wallowing in this place often becomes dangerous when leaders speak about and embrace the wrong measures, too often and for far too long!  They naively believe that this singular safety measure is the Holy Grail of EHS success.  Subsequently, individuals throughout the organization become comfortable and complacent.  Some managers and supervisors remove themselves from open and honest safety-related communications.  At times, they’re no longer approachable.  And some leaders begin to feel that there’s nothing left to discuss – they’ve arrived!   Transparent discussions become uncomfortable and threatening.  Employees are afraid to speak up about serious concerns.  Employees are viewed as complainers, a part of the problem – and near misses are swept under the carpet. Finally, the small stuff becomes the large stuff.  Precursors and warning signs to serious accidents are perceived as off limits for dialogue, and subsequently, a catastrophe follows.   Isn’t this at least part of the evolution that some of us have experienced in our careers?

Many organizations emphasize, embrace, and enjoy the wrong measures of success - believing that they’ve reached the Promised Land!  In contrast, mature zero-incident organizations rigorously apply multiple performance measures that serve as their foundation for sustainable achievement.  And they don’t allow anyone to rest or remain in the Promised Land, especially not their leaders. 

Zero is Possible but Are You Asking the Right Questions?

What are some of the questions that you and your leaders need to ask of each other?  Do your leaders believe that a vision for zero is worth the investment or pursuit?  Are the benefits such as improved morale, quality, and productivity worth the cost?  Are your current leaders open, honest, and approachable when it comes to safety-related concerns?   Are you using the right process measures that will help to align your leaders’ actions with a vision for zero?  And how will you refine your EHS practices and measures once zero has been achieved and sustained? 

Anatole France, the great author once said, “To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream, not only plan, but also believe.” 

The zero-incident argument is not an easy one to discuss or apply.  If it were, everyone would be getting to zero and staying there for a long, long time.

This article / blog cannot be reproduced in any form without prior written consent from David J. Sarkus.  If consent is provided, the below bio, in its entirety must be used along with the above written work.  

David J. Sarkus, MS, CSP is president and founder of David Sarkus International, Inc.  He has over 30 years of experience as a speaker, consultant, and leadership coach who works with some of the biggest and best run organizations in the world.  For more information regarding his services please visit www.DavidSarkus.com.