Page 54 - OHS, November/December 2022

BREAKTHROUGH STRATEGIES
BY ROBERT PATER
Is a leader’s passion to pressure then enforce or to inspire and offer? Do they set the bar so high that they can’t fully do themselves what they’re expecting or demanding of others?
Unleashing Safety Energy
Safety leadership has energy problems, either of the “not enough”, “way too much” or “ineffffectively directed” kind. Thesamemessagesrepeatedthesamewayswithminor variations trying to stimulate enthusiasm for getting
peopletonotbecomplacentor,ontheotherhand,super-positively thinking/talking/reinforcing to try to ignite the flame of safety first when the tinder of worker receptivity is either sparse or dampened.
Everything comes down to energy, which can’t be created or destroyed, only changed, transmuted, reconfigured and recast. What appears to be solid matter is electrons orbiting so quickly around atomic nuclei that they appear solid when they’re almost entirely space. Empty.
In nature, energy is essential for catalyzing change in all chemical reactions. It’s similarly essential to transform the “chemistry” that ignites interest, motivation and movement within individuals and in organizations to change ingrained unsafe habits into vastly safer ones or significantly step up a long- plateaued safety culture.
This begs some questions: Is a leader’s passion to pressure then enforce or to inspire and offer? Do they set the bar so high even they themselves can’t fully do what they’re expecting or demanding of others?
Ironically, both spectrums of these leadership approaches accept energizing as critical—and that the way to accomplish this is for leaders to push it onto workers.
Too much or little in pretty much anything unbalances. As important, energy’s direction—externally or from within. Call- out communications often result in pushback, rarely the positive changes hoped for. Even positive responses fade with time.
But “energy” and “energizing” are not the same. Energizing implies externally adding energy from outside a person by a department, business unit or company trying to “get them to do what I want them to do—and enthusiastically liking it to boot.” It’s tiring for overly-stretched leaders and not sustainable to continually pour motivation into others. Help people turn up their own light and find workable ways to refuel their own lamps.
Much “old style safety” is based on workers being told externally by experts. But there’s no perpetual motion mechanism. The friction of morphing daily to-do’s, uprising concerns and other attention draws rubbing against us tend to neutralize one- shot or once-in-a-while energy injections.
Counterpoint: Former Unilever CEO Paul Polman contended, “Leadership is not just about giving energy...it’s unleashing other people’s energy.” This goes double for safety leadership. No matter how many explicit policies and procedures an organization has, despite the quality of PPE, training or messages, energy is required to make things happen. Best when it springs from within.
Unleashing implies people remove the overtight of trying to make others blindly or half-sleepily follow policies and procedures they may not fully understand or know how to specifically apply overly-general rules to real-life and unique situations. Policies and procedures are definitely needed directives, essential in process safety to avoid that boom, toxic leak or dangerous zap. When it comes to personal injuries, general directives rarely can adequately anticipate and avert all risk circumstances.
So what can leaders do? ThThey can, and should, help spark by offffering, not mandating, working options, carefully sifted through the sieve of being highly safe, useful/practical, easy to apply while often working at a high pace and interesting/compelling and embraceable to others.
The anthesis de-energizing and draining others’ personal batteries? When leaders assume they’ve done their job just by writing policies or exhorting workers with general-and- ultimately-meaningless messaging. Where workers believe their lives are made complicated without adequate reason/payback, useless extra effort, more to remember that makes little sense—and that they see doesn’t benefit their lives.
■ Ask (yourself as well as a group of representative workers) what are they interested in? What do they ultimately want? Of these things, what might leaders be able to offer that fits their existing needs and motivations? Do workers believe it makes their lives easier and better, even if only in a small way?
■ Move away from mandating there’s “one right way” to do things. Demanding adherence to “the only way” extinguishes mindfulness. There are guidelines and powerful principles for elevating soft-tissue safety, but the “one right way” might raise risk exposure for those who have pre-existing conditions or “energize” pushback from those who try it that way where it doesn’t work for them.
■ Share what energizes you. Leaders can talk about how they see the real purpose of their work. In the same way that ringing a tuning fork will vibrate and resonate with others nearby, I’ve heard strong leaders inspiring, sparking and reminding others by talking about personal excitement, growth and change.
■ Internalize safety. Offer methods that help people live and work better that they appreciate. We’ve found showing workers soft-tissue safety and slip/trip prevention methods can help them get better at their off-work hobbies and can zoom up their energy. This can last as they become interested in practicing these methods without concern about whether they are being monitored externally.
■ Employ multiplication by subtraction. Route out and reduce (or eliminate) existing de-energizers, such as prevalent mixed messages (e.g., “Safety’s #1” along with “Just get it out as fast as you can.”)
Lest you think this is theoretical, we’ve seen it in action and been applying this all over the world in all kinds of industries. Energy- balanced safety leaders are more likely to influence workers to personally embrace safety and then actively incorporate safe methods into their work and home activities.
Robert Pater is the Managing Director of SSA/MoveSMART®.
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