The document discusses enabling leadership and shifting from traditional safety leadership models. It advocates moving from constraints to facilitation, from reactive approaches to creative problem solving, from telling to listening, and from viewing the leader as a hero to seeing them as a host. This enabling leadership approach focuses on understanding performance, removing constraints, and collaborating with others instead of imposing controls. The goal is to harness people's motivation and creativity to address safety.
2. “Safety performance is driven by the leadership of the
organization. Leaders establish values, develop procedures, and
enforce accountability for their safety programs.
Put another way, safety leaders set the standards of safe behavior
within their companies.
We would obviously expect a safety leader to be someone who
exhibits high Safety DNA, but leadership is more than just
managing one’s own safety behaviors. A true safety leader also
motivates his or her coworkers to strive for minimal risk exposure.”
Select International - Craig White
4. “Strong and Visible Leadership”
“Reactive, behavioural interventions mediated
by role modelling and use of extrinsic motivation
to urge people to comply with pre-defined
behaviours.”
5. Behavioural Checklist
• Be the example, by knowing and following the rules
• Avoid complacency
• Report safety hazards, violations, and incidents
• Encourage co-workers to exhibit safe behaviors
• Show coworkers small tokens of appreciation for a safe job well
done
• Make co-workers aware that unsafe behavior is unacceptable
• Be involved in safety initiatives and committees
• Maintain open communication with coworkers and management
about safety concerns
• Implement change to improve safety and working conditions
Adapted from Select International - Craig White
6. Traditional Safety Leadership Assumptions
1. Bimodal view of safety - objective safe vs unsafe behaviours and
conditions
1. Safety is the absence of negatives - about hunting for and
managing deviations
1. People are the problem - safety is threatened by people not
following the procedures
1. Safety is bureaucratic accountability managed upwards - safety is
ensured through people adhering to the standards
7. Safety is not about the
absence of something,
but the presence.
“ “
8. Things go
right most
of the time
Safety I uses a
small portion of
the total
experience base
What about the
99.999% of the
time in which
things go right?
Do we understand
why success is the
rule and not the
exception?
9. What if leadership isn't about being
great? What if it is about enabling
others to be great?
12. 1st Shift - From hunting deviations to
understanding performance
What tools, resources and strategies do people rely on
to achieve successful outcomes, and what constraints
and conditions make work difficult?
13. Enabling leadership - new questions
● How is success created, challenged and broken?
● What helps and hinders performance?
● What tools, resources and strategies do people rely on
to achieve desired outcomes, and what conditions and
constraints make this difficult?
● What mechanism do you have in place to understand
how success is created/challenged?
18. Work as Imagined
What should happen
(to do list)
Ordered
By the book
Static/slow
Work as Done
What actually
happens (did list)
Messy
By what is
Adaptive/quick
19. 2nd Shift - Welcome not fully knowing
● what is going on here?
● how do things get done?
● what is it that I don’t understand or know?
● what’s a mystery to me?
● what can I learn here?
20. Questions to ask
● What are people most dependent on?
● What makes their work difficult?
● What surprises do they face?
● How can we remove roadblocks, constraints, bottlenecks, provide more
suitable tools, resources and methods?
● How is success/safety created, challenged and broken?
● What helps and hinders performance?
● How can your people be the solution, rather than a problem to control?
27. Safety and productivity benefits of the
telescopic canopy
27
Risk
Conventional Canopy
used earlier
Telescopic Column Canopy
Working at Height
Exposure Hour
3,250 Hrs 50 Hrs
Time frame to carry out
activity
25 to 30 Days 6 to 8 Days
29. Transactional
● Non compliance is the
problem
● Strong and visible
leaders
● Answers
● Reactive
● People need to be
(more) motivated
● Accountabilities
● Compliance is the
solution
● Leader as hero
Transformational
● Contribution is the
problem
● Charismatic leaders
● Vision
● Intrinsic motivation
● Why based
● People need to be
motivated differently
● Empowerment is the
solution
● Leader as hero
Adaptive
● Complexity is the
problem
● Inquisitive
● Collaborative
● Learning and
improving is the
solution
● Leader as host
30. 4th Shift - from imposing to collaborating
● Who else should be involved in this conversation?
● Who else knows something about this issue?
● Who cares about this issue?
● How can I harness people’s motivation and creativity?
● What skills and insights are available inside and outside the organisations to
understand and address this question?
● How can I connect the necessary people and resources?
31. What enabling leaders can do ...
● provide/facilitate conditions, resources and group processes for people to work together
● provide time, the scarcest commodity of all
● look inwards for solutions rather than outwards only
● frequently encourage people and the system to learn from experience
● keep the bureaucracy at bay
● play defence with other leaders who want to take back control
● reflect back to people on a regular basis how they’re doing, what they’re accomplishing, how far they’ve
journeyed
● work with people to develop relevant measures of progress
● value esprit de corps
