The juiciest challenge of Safety Management is driving organizational culture towards excellence. As systems and processes mature, people’s attitudes and behaviors shift, eventually reaching the pinnacle demonstrated by a strong sense of community and consistent positive outcomes.
When one occupies a position of hierarchical leadership in an organization, certain aspects of this challenge seem to be simplified. By accessing the organization from the middle out, influencing peers, subordinates and managers, it appears easier to increase one’s sphere of influence.
As an individual contributor, it can be tempting to fall in the trap of believing one has less influence. This is simply not true.
Over the years, I’ve come to understand Leadership is what you do and how you think, not so much where you are. And developing my own Leadership skills, I discovered the joy of helping others develop their own. In so doing, it became clear that my sphere of influence was as wide, or narrow, as I believed it to be. So, I made it wide. Plenty wide, like the Universe.
This is why my career path will continue towards developing Leadership skills and practicing emotional intelligence. Day to day, it translates into balancing the focus on people and processes to create the Safety culture I know can exist.
Wondering how you can move further towards this end? As Simon Sinek likes to say, #StartWithWhy and foster these areas of focus:
- Communication
- Interpersonal
- Coaching
- Influencing
- Inclusion
- Critical Thinking
- Innovation
These are further unfolded on my handy Leadership Skills Inventory. Go ahead, download and peruse before you finish reading this article.
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Please be candid with your feedback. It is meant to help guide a Safety culture from any point in the organization and it is a living document. A true testament to my holistic approach as I refine it from time to time using feedback from readers like you.
My challenge to you is to find the perspective that most expands your sphere of influence, regardless of your position in the organization. Start with your own self-knowledge and connect with others from a place of empathy. Safety happens when we’re all pulling in the same direction. Leadership happens the same way.
Listen
Focus first on the three rules of Leadership, as I like to put it, “Communication, Communication, Communication”. Of the various skills you can develop to communicate better, listening is by far the one that will most improve your ability to influence. Don’t believe me? Think of the last time you felt frustrated, but then shifted to a positive tone when someone heard you out. It happens to all humans: we need to be heard, it’s a basic human need.
- Listen
- Help
- Include
- Change
Help
Next, aim to be of service. Don’t worry about what’s in it for you, I know, it’s hard to do. Concern yourself with the simple pleasure of helping others. A possible way to do this is to help without being even acknowledged, like when you move an item at the store to its rightful place on the shelf, so the next person can find it.
Include
Celebrate diversity. And I don’t only mean ethnic diversity. I mean every dimension of human existence. Include people in your teams from all backgrounds, age groups, subject matter expertise, learning style, etc. Time and again humans prove that there is great strength in numbers, but even better strength in diversity.
Change
Last, but hardly ever least, be the agent of change. Whether you saw it coming or not, place yourself smack dab in the middle of the action and flow with it. Become the change as it is happening. Or, even better, promote the change before it does. Life is always changing, and struggling to prevent or slow it down will only bring you more frustration.
I’ll leave you with a final thought, in the words crafted by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard: if you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself, then make that change.