Leading with Safety

Foreword by John L Henshaw xiii

Preface xvii

Acknowledgments xxi

Introduction

Safety as metaphor for organizational excellence 1

Section 1: The Organizational Safety Model 5

1. The Organizational Safety Model 7

How safety leadership assures improvement 8

The primary importance of the Working Interface 10

Understanding the relationship of exposure events to injury events 11

The necessity of leading indicators 14

Enabling safety systems 15

Sustaining safety systems 16

Leadership creates organizational culture and safety climate 16

What motivates leaders to improve safely? 18

Influencing the behavior of safety leaders 19

Sustaining organizational change: Two critical elements 20

Section 2: The Safety Leadership Model 23

2. The Safety Leadership Model, Part 1

The personality, values, emotional commitment, and leadership style of the effective safety leader 25

The core elements: personality, values, and emotional commitment 27

Measurement of the Big Five 30

Applications of Big Five research to safety leadership 31

Using the findings to improve safely leadership 32

How leaders use the Big Five to improve safety effectiveness 34

The leader’s values and emotional commitment to safety 35

Leadership style: transactional and transformational 38

Cultivating style 43

3. The Safety Leadership Model, Part 2

Best practices in safety leadership 45

Tire central role of leadership in safety 46

Leadership vs. management 47

Best practices in safety leadership 48

Measuring leadership best practices 57

4. The Safety Leadership Model, Part 3

Understanding organizational culture and safety climate 59

Primary dimensions of organizational culture and safety climate 61 Why some organizations respond to change more readily 62

The Organizational Culture Diagonostic Instrument (OCDI) 67

The Organization Dimension 68

The Team Dimension 75

The Safety-Specific Dimension 77

Section 3: The Leader's Role: Understanding two crucial aspects of human performance 83

5. Changing Behavior Using Applied Behavior Analysis 85

Applied behavior analysis in organizational settings 86

How applied behavior analysis supports safety improvement 87

Central concepts: antecedents, behavior, consequences 88

ABC Analysis as a tool 91

Example 1: Changing behavior at the leadership level 91

Considerations for identifying new consequences 93

Example 2: Changing behavior at the middle management level 97

Putting behavior analysis to work 101

6. The Effect of Cognitive Bias on Safety Decisions 103

Research findings on cognitive bias 104

Tragedy on Mount Everest in 1996 105

Applications to the organizational safety leader 107

Understanding cognitive bias 108

A manufacturing safety example 109

Putting knowledge of cognitive bias to work 110

Section 4: Engaging Employees H3

7. The Role of Executive Coaching in Leadership Development 115

Executive coaching: from remedial to developmental 116

A behavioral approach to leadership 116

The coaching process: Behavioral and contextual 118

Step One: Understanding the context 118

Step Two: Clarifying the client’s unique point of view 119

Step Three: Gathering the data and writing a report 120

Step four: The plan 122

Step Five: Implementing the plan 123

Step Six: Assessing the impact 123

Coaching for safety leadership 124

8. The Role of the Supervisor in Leading with Safety 129

The pivotal role of the first-line supervisor 130

Communication skills — the foundation 131

The power of strong working relationships 133

Fair decision-making and its effects 135

Alignment: Incorporating organizational values and priorities into day-to-day activities 137

Safety contacts: Getting an accurate picture of performance 138

9. A Systematic Process for Reducing Exposure to Hazards:

What the safety improvement process looks like at the worker level 141

Engagement and cooperation 142

Getting engaged in safety 145

The safety improvement mechanism 147

Implementing the process: team makeup and charier 151

Roles at every level 153

Leadership and reduction of exposure to hazards 154

Best practices 156

Getting started 157

Section 5: Applications 161

10. Planning for Change: Designing Intervention Strategies for Safety Improvement 163

The importance of having an effective strategy for safety improvement 164

Developing a strategic plan for safety improvement 165

Examples of the development of strategic plans for safety improvement 171

Armed services branch 171

International metals and mining company 176

International energy and utilities company 179

Gulf coast chemical company 183

Puerto Rican consumer products company 186

11. Case Histories in Leading with Safety 189

Shell Chemical, LP 192

Petro-Canada 199

PotashCorp 207

Puerto Rican consumer products company 213

12. NASA's Approach to Transforming its Organizational Culture and Safety Climate 219

Assessing the existing culture and climate 222

Findings 227

The intervention 230

The culture change plan 232

Results 240

Glenn Research Center & Stennis Space Center 243

Johnson Space Center 246

Bibliography 251

Index 259