Authentic Leadership in Safety
Two books spring to mind immediately when I think about Authentic Leadership. One is Why Should Anyone be Led by You? By Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones (Harvard Business Review Press, 2006) and the other is Discover Your True North By Bill George (Wiley Press, 2015). Both of these fantastic books call on us to be ourselves, and more. Not simply to follow the style of some charismatic leader but to truly understand yourself and be that person in your leadership. George quotes Amgen’s Kevin Share with: “You are the mosaic of all your experiences.” Authentic Leadership is about being true to yourself and the past that has created you. So the question becomes one of what does Authentic Leadership look like in the safety arena and how have our pasts built up who we are in our approach to safety and our people?
Once again, a good starting point for any of these sorts of conversations is thinking about our mindset with respect to safety generally. The definition of ‘Safety’ as described by Sidney Dekker in Just Culture – Balancing Safety and Accountability is a really good way to go:
“‘Safety’ is the presence of positive capabilities, capacities and competencies that make things go right and not as the absence of things that go wrong”. Erik Hollnagel has a very similar definition.
This definition drove me to think deeply about safety and leadership in a different way. It is all about front-end-loading your business, of making sure the people who are at risk have the required capabilities, capacities and competencies to get the job done successfully. But the important thing is not so much what you do in your leadership around safety. But rather it is about how you do what you do. I am not suggesting a forced behavioural based approach here, but rather a way of being a leader that others know is real and driven from a set of values and way of being that is clear in the leader’s mind.
To do this effectively, I believe that you need to understand why you do what you do and you need to authentically care about your people. You cannot get away with lip service when it comes to safety. Safety comes from the heart. It is a passion that reflects your values and purpose.
Of course, we all have legislation that needs to be followed and our businesses have rules and systems that should be followed, but authentic leadership in this space is about being truly understanding of who you are, what safety means to you, why you think safety is important and then being yourself.
I have often talked about the conversations we have on a day-to-day basis needing to be the same conversations that we have after a workplace safety incident. This is exactly where Authentic Leadership in Safety can come in:
• Looking at what normally goes right to create safety instead of looking just at things which are currently not going right.
• Focusing on the differences between the way the work was done on the day (Work-As-Done) and the way the work was intended to be done by the procedure, work instruction et cetera (Work-As-Intended).
• Getting as many things as right as possible, rather than minimising the number of things that go wrong.
• Considering people as a solution to harness and develop, rather than a problem to control.
• Challenging ourselves and our thinking about whether we are truly helping people get the positive capabilities, capacities and competencies that they need to create safety.
Remember that our people consistently create safety in what they do while they do their work. It is from their capabilities, competencies and capacities that safe work is produced. They adapt to suit the conditions on the day. There are always explanations as to why the way the work is done in-the-field on a day-to-day basis does not always match the procedure. In fact, it rarely matches the procedure exactly. Yet, the vast majority of times it results in ‘safe work’. It is how you react to this fact, what conversations you have with your people in the field and the way you feel about the situations that define your leadership. All of these reactions are internally driven, not something you can just copy and paste onto yourself.
I agree with Bill George in that it takes considerable effort and introspection to understand your experiences, your past, what drives you and what you represent in the World. His book walks you through that and I believe that for anyone who aspires to be a Great Safety Leader, or a Great Leader more generally, then they should read both “Why Should Anyone be Led by You?” and “Discover your True North”. As you may well be aware, I am passionate about helping create Great Safety Leaders and I encourage you to comment on this blog or to start a conversation with me.