Our old friend Robert Pater is at it again.

The guru of safety leadership has been one to provide great insights into developing safety leadership and safety leaders within organizations, and has been active in providing thought-provoking articles in Professional Safety magazine that explore safety leadership in a number of ways and helping us understand the value of safey thought-leaders and the need for leadership in the world of occupational safety.

Recently, Pater was working on a series of articles that focused around the great Japanese warrior Miyamoto Mushashi, who lived in the16th century and had an impeccable record in battles throughout his life – supposedly coming out of all the battles with nary a scar. He composed a book called The Book of Five Rings, which Pater says has nine guidelines to effective martial strategy, and those principles can be adapted to support safety leadership skills in a worksite or at a company.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Michael Coghlan via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Michael Coghlan via a Creative Commons license]

The Martial Art of Leadership

To win a war or a battle, you need a leader, or multiple leaders, to help organize a strategy, tactics and personnel in the right positions to bring about the best possible outcome. With no leadership, armies are chaotic and are more likely to retreat and lose ground to the enemy. While safety is not the enemy, and neither are injuries or illnesses on the worksite, establishing and enforcing a safety culture is a constant battle, especially in industries where turnover is high.

While every battlefield has to have leaders in order for a side to have a chance to win, not everyone on the battlefield can be a leader. It’s similar to martial arts in that respect – many people can go through the training to be a martial artist, but not very many end up being highly successful or accomplished. Not everyone earns a black belt in karate or tae kwon do. To be accomplished in a martial art takes discipline, patience, perseverance, and a conviction to continually develop and grow. Real leaders, whether in safety or in an overall company culture, get into leadership positions and are known as effective leaders using the same characteristics.

Mushashi’s 1st 3 Principles

Pater goes deep into Mushashi’s nine principles of effective martial or wartime strategy, and turns the principles into action plans for building safety leadership and a safety culture in a workplace. The first three of these principles are what Pater discusses in his first article of the series, which he describes as important for self-awareness and self-development. The first three principles are important because it is hard to lead others when you are not real sure about what you are capable of doing or what you are aware of in your environment.

With that in mind, here are Mushashi’s first three principles and how they can apply to developing yourself as a leader:

  1. Think Honestly. This is about knowing yourself well and not being in denial about weaknesses and not overblown on strengths. Knowing where you are good and where you are weak can help you find people to work with who have strengths that complement yours. The tough part of this self-discovery, though, is to actually be self-aware; it’s more likely that you will have to do the equally difficult job of seeking out those you trust to give you honest but constructive criticism about your strengths and weaknesses in such a way that you won’t feel threatened or defensive. If you were to ask eight to 10 people about yourself, you can focus on the trend that emerges, because chances are if these people all know you professionally, they will likely say at least a couple similar strengths and weaknesses for you, and this can give you a launching point in helping understand who you really are.
  2. Training is the Way. Very few people are naturally good at a sport, or at playing piano, or acting in movies, or being leaders. Everything takes practice; even walking. We all get better with practice, and the more we train and practice and challenge ourselves to grow, the better we will be. The development does not have to be limited to seminars or conference break-out sessions; learning and growing should occur every day with normal interactions among co-workers and supervisors. And the challenge at that point is not to become elf-satisfied; we should always strive to find ways to improve. The moment we feel we are as accomplished as we should or want to be, we will no longer want to train or learn and that will lead to a loss of development and apathy.
  3. Know All Angles. Surely part of your self-development and self-awareness is to know and understand a certain leadership style that fits your own personality, but the other key is knowing all of the various styles that may be in use in your worksite, and understanding those strengths and weaknesses. As in battle, a soldier and his general must know all of the possible scenarios and be prepared for any line of attack, and that is what you should do as a leader. You should understand the different leadership styles, know what your style is, and understand the other aspects of leadership that are on display and learn how to leverage those pros and cons to your advantage, and provide aan advantage to other leaders as well.  And don’t just focus within your own organization; pay attention to how leaders in other organizations lead, and learn about their culture – especially competitors. Those which are healthy competitors can teach you something about your own organizational strengths and weaknesses, and those who are failing can be a good warning to you to make sure you are not making the same mistakes.

I will follow up in future posts in discussing more of Mushashi’s nine principles to effective martial strategy and Pater’s interpretation of the principles in developing effective safety culture and leadership in your organization. Keep watching this space for these future tomes.