October 30, 2015

Safety coach takes deep dive into leadership issues

Safety leadership is a hot-button issue these days. The focus of numerous articles, webinars,
and presentations, leadership is considered an essential element in driving safety culture.

In this Compliance Report, we explore this timely topic with Certified Safety Professional
David Sarkus, an internationally recognized consultant, coach, and speaker. We asked
Sarkus to share insights and experience about leadership at three levels—in the C-suite,
among safety professionals, and within the general workforce.

Q. Please tell us about yourself and your work.

A. I’ve been in business for 20 years and have a broad base of over 30 years of experience,
including work with TRW, United Airlines, and the Kennedy Space Center. I currently
serve industry, primarily through associations and large organizations that want to improve
their safety performance and reduce costs, and that have a great vision for safety
excellence.

Q. We know that leadership is trending these days. What are you seeing in
organizations you work with?
A. We’re beginning to see leaders near and at the top recognizing that safety is inextricably
linked to success, both business/financial success, and success in building the kind of
culture they want. They’re seeing safety closely linked to values, and an expression of
values, and increasingly, as part of their plan to improve various types of sustainability. I’m
also seeing that leaders are learning what Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric,
talked about—the importance of wallowing with your people—getting dirty on the shop
floor. Leaders may not need to know every detail about safety processes, but they need to
ask the right questions and listen, and then get the needle moving through the people below
them.

Q. You use the term “leading with safety.” What do you mean by that?
A. Improving safety metrics and the rigor of managing them opens the door to managing
other metrics around productivity and quality. It’s a matter of moving from overt
compliance to deeper and more lasting forms of commitment. I was working with a rail
company years ago whose senior VP saw the potential of safety to move the corporate
culture forward.

The company improved its safety performance dramatically and won a national award.
Once they began to show care and concern for workers and develop a culture of caring and
listening, they saw not only improved morale, but also a 50 percent reduction in
derailments.

Because safety is so personal, it helps lead organizations into deeper levels of change. I tell
people that they should be selfish about safety. If they don’t want to work safely for their
companies, they should do it for themselves. If you are angry at your supervisor or at the
company, go ahead and be angry, but work safely for yourself and your family.

Q. What does safety leadership at the C-suite level look like?

A. At these companies, you see people doing the obvious things like wearing fall protection
and eye protection. You also hear them talking about safety regularly and openly.
Executives at the VP level are talking about safety in a sophisticated way—they know the
terminology, and they talk the way safety professionals talk.

They understand the need for reporting and sharing near misses. On the shop floor, you see
measures and metrics posted and visible in bigger and better ways because big data and
predictive analytics have become part of safety. These could be metrics related to reporting,
to behavior-based safety, or to hazard assessment and review. And if the metrics show a
particular issue of concern, top leaders know how to intervene and make the changes
needed to improve the downstream measures. Leaders at the top are also aware of and
support metrics used to hold managers accountable to execute the kinds of activities that
will move their EHS needle in the right direction—toward fewer incidents and related
losses.

HOW DO YOUR LEADERS MEASURE UP?

The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers (OGP) has produced a report titled
Shaping Safety Culture through Leadership. It offers a detailed formula for leadership
based on characteristics described by T.R. Krause, well-known for his work in the field of
behavior-based safety. Do your leaders consistently exhibit these characteristics?

Credibility. Leaders develop trust by acting in ways that benefit their employees.
Perception of trustworthiness is influenced by attributes like consistency, integrity, sharing
of control, open communication, and the ability to admit mistakes. Strong safety leaders
have a high level of credibility. People believe what they say, and trust them to tell the
truth.
Action orientation. Leaders do more than direct work and monitor regulatory compliance.
They encourage suggestions, motivate their staff, and engage with the workforce to solve
safety issues. Being action-oriented means that leaders integrate safety into business
planning and decision making, and create opportunities to talk to employees and
contractors about safety and their concerns.
Vision. Leaders visualize excellent safety performance and communicate that vision in a
compelling way. The vision forms the foundation for an organizational strategy. While the
vision is expressed in words, actions are what really matter—for example, showing a
willingness to consider and accept new ideas, encouraging people to consider the impact of
their actions on others, and using the safety vision to challenge and inspire.
Accountability. Accountability links responsibility to consequences. It’s the job of safety
leaders to establish an effective accountability system that covers every position in the
organization. Some behaviors related to accountability include defining and communicating
clear safety roles, responsibilities, goals, and objectives; providing adequate resources and
tools to support safety performance; and reinforcing desired performance.
Communication. Leader communication helps create and maintain the organization’s
safety culture and has a noticeable impact on performance. Leaders influence the behavior
of their teams by communicating their expectations for safety, then explaining how they
and their teams will be held accountable for the behavior. Leaders also need to
communicate the bigger picture: how the team contributes to the overall goals of the
organization.
Collaboration. Safety leaders collaborate by encouraging teamwork. They ask for and act
upon others’ input to resolve safety issues and create a greater sense of ownership.
Collaborative behaviors include listening to and showing they value others’ views; being
open and honest about performance; and showing genuine concern for others’ well-being.
Collaboration should operate across departments. For example, closer cooperation between
maintenance and operations leads to a shared understanding of problems and solutions.
Feedback and recognition. When leaders provide feedback and recognition, they
encourage safe behavior, and discourage unsafe behavior. Timely, honest, and constructive
feedback should be based on indisputable facts, and is best delivered one-on-one. Good
feedback lets the individual link positive aspects of the recognition to the behavior they
have demonstrated. Leaders should also recognize team collaboration and ownership of
safety issues.

Safety leaders at the chief officer level often start off meetings talking about their goals and
vision for safety. They talk about best practices and performance across the system, sharing
it so they can exert a kind of peer pressure on those below them. This helps get everybody
on the same page and is part of holding senior managers and plant managers accountable.
These individuals know what is expected of them and have a plan that matches that
executive-level vision. We’re not talking about after-the-fact actions here; we’re talking
about getting dirty and active with people on the floor.

Executives are often really good at telling stories that make safety personal. These may be
stories about something that happened to them, like losing a friend or family member, or
injuries they witnessed when they were young and working on a construction site. They’re
good at telling these stories and they want them to trickle down and be told in a similar
fashion by others. Stories help us align values with actions, and they can tug on the
heartstrings in a very open and transparent way. When leaders tell personal stories in an all-
hands meeting, or even one-on-one with workers, they set the tone for safety and help bring
the leaders’ vision for safety to life. They help paint a picture of the safety excellence they
want.

C-suite safety leaders are also good at listening. They get out on the floor and show the
kind of warmth, openness, and transparency they want others to model. While they may not
know the intrinsic details of a safety audit like a safety professional would, they know how
to listen patiently and ask questions. They support the use of culture surveys because they
want to know workers’ perceptions and get upward feedback. They know that if they stop
listening, people will stop providing information.

That’s actually what happened this summer with Blue Bell Ice Cream. [The company was
forced to shut down production and recall product when it was reportedly linked to 10
cases of listeria, three of them fatal.] People on the floor said they were having
housekeeping issues, condensation was leaking into the product, and other issues, but either
somebody chose not to listen or act, or they had a terrible reporting structure. Really good
leaders want to hear the bad stuff; it’s the poor leaders who only want to hear the good
stuff. But you can’t get better unless you act on the bad stuff and close the gaps.

It’s the idea of “getting naked for safety,” which will be part of my next book. It’s nice to
look in the mirror when you’re all dressed up, but when you take your clothes off, you may
not look as good as you’d like. Leaders have to be willing to bare their souls and say, “We
aren’t as good as we want to be.” Some organizations operate with transparency, while
others are great at hiding things and remain in some form of denial.

Q. We’ve talked about safety leadership among executives. So what does leadership
look like at the safety professional level?
A. In less mature organizations, safety professionals try to do everything themselves, but in
more mature companies, safety professionals are giving away their power. They’re letting
employees take ownership—not just collaborating, but taking ownership by doing the
compliance training and delivering it to their peers, running important safety meetings on
the floor, and leading the way in developing programs and processes. The idea of giving
away power scares some people because they believe it is related to weakness.

To lead, safety professionals need to build relationships with people above and below them
as a way to share goals and expectations. They need to be insightful—able to look 2 or 3
years out and decide where the executive team wants them to be and refine those programs
and processes. They have to look ahead to the needs of the organization to ensure that
safety will be considered as important as quality and productivity.

SARKUS WARNS GREAT LEADERS AGAINST THE PERILS OF SUCCESSS

Sarkus advises, “Great leaders in great organizations don’t rest on safety success for too
long. Great coaches and great leaders know that being too comfortable with one’s success
and enjoying prolonged celebrations get in the way of sustainable excellence.”

The goal, he says is to avoid “going soft” and allowing standards to decline by dwelling on
perceived success. “A little housekeeping issue left unattended, a visitor walking by
without PPE, or not communicating a clear safety concern in a timely manner—all these
reveal that our sense of urgency and standards for safety may be slipping. Yes, success will
do that!”

The safety professional should be part of developing the executive vision and is a go-
between who shares that vision with employees. He or she is a coach, consultant, facilitator,
moderator, go-to person, and subject matter expert. I tell safety professionals that if they
don’t have a leadership model they embrace as their own, they are missing out.

My own model is that of a servant leader, which I first wrote about in 1996. Servant
leadership is largely about developing and helping others first—allowing them to become
leaders, too. I think for front-line leaders, and even for leaders in the middle, servant
leadership offers the best chance to win—to create an exceptional culture for safety.
The servant leader is one who has vision, who gives away power, who listens, collaborates,
and has empathy. [Management consultant and author] Peter Drucker said that one of the
biggest voids we see in leaders is a lack of empathy. Empathy allows us to see and
understand people in a way that we avoid if we remain in our own shoes.

Another role for the safety professional is to create the kind of organizational tension that
causes top leaders to align their behaviors and actions in a new way. Sometimes hubris can
get in the way for those at the top, for example when they express pride in after-the-fact
numbers that may not be the numbers that really matter. The savvy safety leader builds
relationships and alliances with people in operations and throughout the facility. That
support helps them stand up to top leaders. Executives trust safety professionals with good
track records; without it, senior leaders are not going to listen to you.

Q. What about safety leadership from workers themselves? What should we expect at
that level?
A. Workers should be well-educated and trained. You should expect to see a menu of
activities for them to be involved with provided by the company. Management may offer a
coach or champion, but you want to see employees [in charge]. That can be as simple as
conducting forklift training for their peers, running meetings related to behavior-based
safety, and coaching one another to work more safely.

Leadership at this level is about people who want to step up to the plate because they have
the knowledge and they understand the reasons that safety is important to them. And we’re
seeing much more of this. When I first started out 30 years ago, you had to fight for a 10-
minute safety meeting and for every nickel and dime in your safety budget, if you even had
one.

I’m working with a manufacturer now whose employees are delivering most of the
compliance training. This is so different from years ago when the safety professional or
manager handled all the training. Nobody receives information better than when it is
delivered by peers who are most like them. That personal power goes a long way in training
and in influencing coworkers through daily contact. When this happens, the safety
professional has basically cloned him or herself.

[Sarkus adds that some individuals are eager to get involved and lead, while others prefer
to serve in less visible ways. But ultimately, the team develops its strength through
diversity. Younger workers who have grown up with a more mature safety culture may be
more willing to get involved than older workers who prefer to do their jobs as they always
have, and not take on new responsibilities related to safety.]

Q. Thank you for these valuable insights. Could you sum up your views on safety
leadership for our readers?
A. Sure. Leaders at the top need to share and express their vision for safety so that others
can embrace it and start to live it. The vision needs to be made real by being out there with
the people—wallowing with them and getting dirt on their shoes. Leaders need to listen
well, and they need to give away power so others can take ownership and, hand-in-hand,
create a mature safety process.