[Editor’s Note: Apologies for the long hiatus on this blog, but I was very much under the weather lately, for those of you who didn’t know. I am grateful to be back on my feet and working toward  better safety for all workers, and I thank you for your patience. Now, on to our regularly scheduled programming.]

Leadership can often be an intangible, but important, quality in any office setting. But we must remember that leadership is not necessarily innate in someone who has a leadership title. Leadership qualities can be expressed by anyone in the company, and in some companies even the executives could be lacking in the leeadership that workers or supervisors have.

[Image courtesy of Bill Strain of Flickr via a Creative Commons license]To be a change agent, like late Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs, means not only open others’ minds to change, but it may also mean opening our oown minds in changing ourselves – especially how we lead – in order to create a world-class safety culture in our workplace.

This reminded me a lot of a cartoon I saw once that showed the difference between a boss and a leader. The cartoon showed a group of men in silhouette pulling on a rope that seems to be dragging a charior or some sort of car in which the “boss” was sitting, and he was shown pointing in the direction the men should be pulling and was clearly barking out orders.  In the second panel was the “leader” – the same guy in the first panel who was sitting in the chariot, now was at the front of the line at the end of the rope, pulling the chariot in the desired direction.

We could ask 100 people their definition of “leadership,” and we may get nearly 100 different answers. However, one thing that can be an important leadership quality is having a willingness to change – change the status quo in the office, change leadership styles, and even be the ultimate change agent. Robert Pater wrote an interesting article about this in the April 2015 issue of Professional Safety magazine, published by ASSE. The article starts with a premise that seems simple but is often hard to grasp.

There are lots of world-class safety professionals in companies around the world, but relatively few world-class safety organizations. Why? Here is a thought that Pater puts forth, with some accuracy – as the resident safety officer, many officers  assume a “default setting” as an expert in occupational heath and safety, and egos tend to get ib the way of them actually leading in terms of safety and instead relegates them to being policemen or lecturers about safety. Pater  says that the leadership trait that works in these situations is the one where a safety officer become a “champion” for safety throughout the worksite. How is this done? By example.

This is not about patrolling the worksite and catching and scolding those who conduct safety violations. That is a negative-reinforcement approach, which often does notwork like it’s supposed to (in our heads, anyway). Pater suggests that rather than “preaching,” we safety officers should be on the floor with the workers and supervisors, “teaching” the skills they need to be safe in their work environments. Instead of harping on a worker’s attention span that is shorter than a … look! Squirrel!

Sorry. Rather than being critical of a worker’s attention span, the safety officer should provide workers with the skills and tools they need for them to keep their attention focused so they lessen their chances of an incident. With some safety officers, though, let’s face it … it’s easier to change the culture in the workplace than it is to change one’s leadership style. But in reality, the change in style will have to come first, or the culture won’t really change  whatever improvement might be made initially will be short-lived without an obvious change by you, the safety officer. If you are unwilling to drop your “expert” persona and become more of a “safety facilitator” in yoru workplace, then your workers will be unwilling to stick with any changes in safety protocols and they will eventually default to whatever they did before – because you, as the safety officer, have not gone away from your default setting.

If you want to change the status quo, you have to be willing to change yoruself first. Being an agent of change, Pater notes, is also about being humble to know that “change agent” can and should apply internally as well. If you want to have a world-class safety record for your company, then you should not only evaluate  your protocols and training and find your gaps, but you should take an inventory of yourself. Understand how you have been leading, and consider very strongly taking a different approach. The workers, supervisors, managers and executives will notice. And if they see you with a different approach as you introduce improvements and upgrades to safety protocols, it’s more likely that everyone will have more receptive buy-in and thus can become “champions” for safety on their own behalf and on the behalf of those with whom they work directly.

And that can lead to a complete culture change – and you, the safety officer, can become the leader of that change.

For more information, I would strongly suggest Robert Pater’s article, “Recasting Leadership to Change Culture” in the April issue of Professional safety magazine. You can look it up at www.asse.org.