By John Hidley

Last week, I discussed the first of three basics steps an organization can take to improve the effectiveness of its safety leadership - evaluating where you are and determining where you need to be. Today, I'll discuss the second step - identifying critical leadership behaviors.

7 Leadership Best Practices

First an organization has to define the kind of culture it wants to create. Then it has to identify the specific behaviors each leader needs to engage in to create that culture. This step seeks to build on leaders' existing strengths. While it's also important to identify unique safety-supportive behaviors of individual leaders, our research has a identified a number of common leadership best practices that consistently yield high performance across all organizations:

1. Vision

The effective leader is able to "see" what safety performance excellence looks like and convey that vision in a compelling way to people throughout the organization.

2. Credibility

The effective leader is credible. Such leaders are willing to admit their mistakes and to "go to bat" for direct reports and the interests of the group. They give honest information about safety even if it's not well received.

3. Collaboration

The effective leader works well with other people, promotes cooperation and collaboration in safety, actively seeks input and encourages others to implement safety-related decisions and solutions.

4. Feedback & Recognition

The effective leader is good at providing feedback and recognizing the accomplishments and performance of others. He or she uses praise more often than criticism.

5. Accountability

The effective leader gives fair appraisals, clearly communicates to people about their individual role in the safety effort and fosters a sense of personal responsibility for safety across each unit of the organization.

6. Communication

The effective leader is a great communicator, one who encourages people to give honest and complete information about safety even if the information is unfavorable. He or she keeps people informed about the big picture and communicates frequently and effectively up, down and across the organization.

7. Action-Orientation

The effective leader addresses safety proactively, not reactively. The leader gives timely, considered responses for safety concerns, demonstrates a sense of personal urgency and energy to achieve safety results and displays a performance-driven focus by delivering results with speed and excellence.

Translating Best Practices into Action

The key to building effective leadership is getting your own leaders to practice all of these best practices. Which combination of best practices an organization's leadership has to work on will differ from organization to organization and even from leader to leader within it.

For example, many organizations struggle with vision. Demonstrating vision is a challenge that involves effective articulation of the vision, keeping that articulated vision in the front of people's minds, keeping people committed to achieving the vision and, most importantly, determining how safety is integral to the vision of the organization's strategic objectives.

The strengths and weaknesses of individual leaders also varies across the organization. For example, one leader might be good at keeping people engaged in safety goals but not at explaining how safety helps the organization strategically. Another leader within the same organization might have precisely the opposite strengths and weaknesses.

It's because of such variations that each organization needs to undertake a rigorous evaluation method for planning an appropriate safety leadership improvement strategy tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of its own leaders. Minimally, this method should look at each leader's responsibilities and impacts (areas of influence) and define specific measurable targets for the leader around the organization's safety objectives.

Conclusion

Next week, we'll discuss the final step in improving an organization's safety leadership: Implementing a Leadership Development System.

This article is based on one that originally appeared in the January/February 2004 issue of Perspective Magazine and is reprinted with permission.

TRAINING BLOOPERS

I began my safety career with a major Midwestern railroad. Despite having our 16,000-plus employees scattered over nine states, anything unusual - good or bad - was quickly communicated throughout the company. Imagine my chagrin, as a young Safety Manager instructing employees on the safe way to swing on and off moving freight cars, to learn that a senior Safety Manager had earlier that day broken his leg getting off a STANDING caboose! It took us a while to live that one down.

Gerald A. Edgar
Environmental Health & Safety Manager
Skyjack Mfg. Inc.
Emmetsburg, IA

LEADERSHIP IN ACTION

Mayor Giuliani: A symbol of fortitude and resilience.

A short quote from the great men and women of history.

"In a crisis you have to be optimistic. When I said the spirit of the City would be stronger [after 9/11], I didn't know that. I just hoped it. There are parts of you that say, Maybe we're not going to get through this. You don't listen to them."

Rudolph Giuliani
Former Mayor of New York City
Source: "Person of the Year 2001," Time Magazine, December 31, 2001

Story Tools:  Email This Post  Print This Post Top