Safety leadership must be challenged

Many times our employees wait in need of important safety validation, information and inspiration. Meanwhile, it takes a multi-metaphoric two-by-four across the head before most leaders open up to progressive possibilities or management practices.

The troops need to know what management stands for.

One driver laments: “I get mixed signals from management about safety. I’m afraid to share stuff on issues that add to my manager’s already full plate. Besides, who wants to challenge the boss?”

Sending mixed signals to employees about safety is like playing Russian roulette with liability bullets. Plaintiff attorneys lie in the weeds like a CSI team, waiting to put your safety practices to the test. Your leadership prints will be on the smoking gun.

How is your company doing in the leadership department? Are you challenging procedures and open to being challenged from the field on important issues? It you look up now, you just may see that two-by-four in time to block or duck the blow. Better yet, you may see it coming and move to safer corporate ground.

We all know what leadership means. But what does it look like? What are the fundamental principles that bring real life safety practices to consistent practice?

In November of last year, I received a letter from the president and owner of a larger independent marketer. He referenced an article I had written for LP Gas Magazine titled “The Practice of Safety is Just That.” He copied the article to over 20 managers and asked them to summarize in their own words. The response was over 20 separate letters defining the importance of safety from their own perspective. It was a mutual validation society that left no room for compromise.

It took vision to appreciate the message in that article and it took courage and conviction to both accept the challenge and challenge his employees to communicate about the importance of safety. Safety leadership looks like that.

The fundamental principle that brought real life to the process was this leader’s ability to accept a safety challenge and, in turn, challenge those directly related to safety operations.
I think we all avoid a challenge or at least cringe at the suggestion of room for leadership improvement. It’s a natural defensive reflex that has kept us feeling safe when we don’t want to look under the rug.

It’s good to be challenged as well as to recognize a call to leadership when it comes to safety. It’s also vitally important that leadership is open to being challenged from within. A king who slays the messenger will discourage all future communication.

Lack of communication and trust shuts down the safety process. Without awareness, we miss alternatives that can be camouflaged by prideful firewalls thrown up at the very time we need to act to achieve safe growth.

The important challenge for all business leaders is to expand our awareness. The art of expanding our leadership awareness depends on our ability to hunger for alternatives that impact the bottom line. Better to challenge and be challenged than to suffer the slings and arrows of ignorance.

Ignorance : Lacking knowledge, being unaware or uninformed. To refuse to take notice, to overlook, slight or neglect.

We are talking about a failure to acquire information required to meet the safety leadership challenge. When we are hungry for alternatives, acts of courage can feel like a roller coaster ride after eating two chili dogs. But with that queasy stomach comes hands-on information that is vital to the survival of your company.

Such challenges are scary at first. But your plate will be full of information from which you can digest and act. So ask lots of questions. Challenge those with whom you work and encourage them to challenge you as if company assets are on the line – because they are.
It’s what we do with awareness and alternatives when we have them that can make the difference to protect your business. You will suffer fewer hardships when you accept the challenge of safety and it’s impact on the bottom line.

Are you up for the safety leadership challenge?