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Emotionally Intelligent Safety Leadership: The Critical Ingredient

If you’re anything like most companies, your leaders are probably chosen first and foremost because they were good ‘on the tools’, they were high performing operators and were promoted primarily due to this fact alone.

The trouble with this approach becomes quickly apparent. Tools don’t have feelings. That is, while the newly promoted leader may have been a master on the job they may have no idea how to motivate and influence real people with real emotions, strengths and flaws. And for safety to work, emotional engagement is paramount.

One of the biggest issues we consistently see on sites with a weak or dysfunctional safety culture is that they have not commissioned their leaders properly and as a consequence, the behaviour of their workforce is directly reflecting the quality of their leadership.

Quite simply, if you don’t commission your leaders properly, by giving them the skills and tools they need to development their leadership ability, then it is entirely unreasonable to expect them to lead effectively. Likewise, if your leadership group doesn’t understand what their role is they’re going to have a rather hard time satisfying your expectations.

In this paper we provide a clear and simply definition of the role of a safety leader, focus in on one particular leadership skill that will give you the best bang for your buck and describe a valuable leadership tool for strengthening your safety culture and increasing motivation and productivity.

Safety Leadership is about Managing the Message

Defining the role of a leader in the safety space is simple. It’s all about managing the message.

Now, before you say this is a load of rubbish, just hear me out. As a leader you are constantly managing the direction, flow and content of messages.

Messages come from above you, are translated and edited and then transmitted to those beside and below you. You also regularly collect messages from those who work for you. These messages are collated, summarised and prioritised and then sent back up the chain of command to achieve a certain outcome or effect.

Every time you prioritise one task over another you are effectively sending a message to your workers that one thing is more important than another thing. Whether they are aware of it or not your workers are affected by this act of prioritisation as they are receiving a message about the things that you, as their leader, think are important.

Arguably even more powerful messages are constantly being transmitted by your appearance, demeanour and actions than by those you write, type or speak.

Let’s take a simple example here. Let’s say one of your workers has come to speak to you about a safety matter that is personally very important to them. You are a manager and therefore busy. What message do you think you are broadcasting to your employee if, while they are telling their story, you are intermittently checking your emails or constantly glancing down at your phone? I’d wager they’re going to walk away from that encounter deflated, thinking you care more about your inbox than their safety.

Emotionally Intelligent Safety Leadership

This is where Emotional Intelligence really comes into play. To be a good manager you need to be able to organise and allocate resources effectively, recognise patterns, plan and execute your plan; skills which are heavily reliant on IQ.

To be a good leader though you need to be able to identify and manage your emotions and the emotions of others, effectively regulate your emotions and use your emotions to convey the right message when, how and to whom it matters most. In short you must have high Emotional Intelligence (otherwise known as, EQ).

Emotional Intelligence is a fundamental building block of any strong, positive and resilient culture. If the leadership team, actively commit to developing their Emotional Intelligence you are not only going to see an increase in morale and productivity you will also see a similarly significant decrease in safety incidents across the site.

There is now a large body of research demonstrating that everybody’s moods and emotions are, quite literally, contagious in the workplace. But a leader’s mood spreads the fastest and has the greatest effect (Goleman et al, 2001).

When a leader is in a happy mood the people around them view everything in a more positive light. This subsequently makes your workers more optimistic about their ability to achieve their objectives, increases creativity and the efficiency of their decision-making and makes them more inclined to be helpful.

An emotionally intelligent leader can monitor their mood through self-awareness, change their emotional response to achieve more favourable outcomes, understand the impact of their emotions and deliberately choose to act in ways that create positive moods in others (Goleman et al, 2001).

Emotional Intelligence is a powerful and influential factor when it comes to building a strong and enduring safety culture and is a fundamental skill for all leaders. The good news is that, unlike IQ which is essentially static, you can increase your EQ with the right direction and deliberate practice.

In Summary

Ensuring that our leaders are correctly commissioned and able to perform their role, is a critical (and arguably, non-negotiable!) first step in ensuring you have the effective, high-performing safety culture you want. When looking to commission your next cadre of leaders an excellent place to start is to ensure they know what the message is, how they are to manage it, that they have the Emotional Intelligence to execute with maturity, empathy, positivity and a keen sense of self-awareness.

References

CPP Global, Human Capital Report, (2008), Workplace Conflict and how Businesses can Harness it to Thrive, available at, https://shop.themyersbriggs.com/Pdfs/CPP_Global_Human_Capital_Report_Workplace_Conflict.pdf

Freedman, J., (2012), At the Heart of Leadership: How to get Results with Emotional Intelligence (3rd Edition), Six Seconds.

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A., (2001), Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance, Harvard Business Review, December 2001, pp.41-51.

Quinn, R.E., Faerman, S.R., Thompson, M.P. & McGrath, M., (2010), Becoming a Master Manager, Wiley, New York.

Rosenberg, M.B., (1983), A Model for Nonviolent Communication, Pennsylvania: New Society Publishers.

Rosenberg, M.B., (2003), Nonviolent communication: A Language of Life, Encinitas, Puddledancer Press.

Salovey, P. & Mayer, J. D., (1990), Emotional Intelligence, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

Thomas, K. W., (1976), Chapter 7: Organizational Conflict, in, Kerr, S. (ed.) (1979), Organizational Behavior, Grid Publishing Inc., Columbus, Ohio, pp. 151-181.

If you’re anything like most companies, your leaders are probably chosen first and foremost because they were good ‘on the tools’, they were high performing operators and were promoted primarily due to this fact alone.

The trouble with this approach becomes quickly apparent. Tools don’t have feelings. That is, while the newly promoted leader may have been a master on the job they may have no idea how to motivate and influence real people with real emotions, strengths and flaws.

In the mid-twentieth century management style was seen as primarily about how managers exercised authority to get stuff done and successfully meet their objectives. There was also a perception that there was one best way to manage which would achieve the best results in every situation. Before the 1980s a ‘command and control’ style was generally seen as the ideal.

Later, more collaborative and coaching styles began to be favoured with the aim of promoting motivation and engagement among employees. Today there is certainly a stronger emphasis on management style as the way in which managers relate to people, especially those who report to them.

There is now also a growing belief that managers need to find a style which is authentic for them and that they will need to adjust their style according to the context, including, the culture of their organisation, the nature of the tasks to be completed and the characteristics and expectations of their team members.

Leadership is about Managing the Message

I like this quote, though I’m not sure who was the author:

“The behaviour of your workforce is a direct reflection of your leadership”

Seems a little hard and direct, but it’s true. So perhaps a positive view on this is that we need to help our leaders understand what is their role is and how do they execute on this.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the key job of any leader in the safety space – and in particular, those in mid-level management positions – is in ‘managing the message’.

Now, before you say this is a load of rubbish, just hear me out for a few more sentences. As a leader you are constantly managing the direction, flow and content of messages. Messages come from above you, are translated and edited and transmitted to those beside and below you. You also regularly collect messages from those who work for you. These messages are collated, summarised and prioritised and then sent back up the chain of command to achieve a certain outcome or effect. Every time you prioritise one task over another you are effectively sending a message to your workers that one thing is more important than another thing. Whether they are aware of it or not your workers are affected by this act of prioritisation as they are receiving a message about the things that you, as their leader, think are important.

Let’s take a simple example here. Let’s say one of your workers has come to speak to you about a matter that is personally very important to them. Now you are a manager and therefore busy. What message do you think you are broadcasting to your employee if while they are telling their story you are intermittently checking your emails or constantly glancing down at your phone? I’d wager they’re going to walk away from that encounter deflated, thinking you care more about your inbox than their life.

Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

This is where emotional intelligence really comes into play. To be a good manager you need to be able to organise and allocate resources effectively, recognise patterns, plan and execute your plan, skills which are heavily reliant on IQ. To be a good leader though you need to be able to identify and manage your emotions and the emotions of others, effectively regulate your emotions and use your emotions in the most effective and productive manner. In short you must have high Emotional Intelligence (or often referred to a simply, EQ).

In its most basic form, management is about manipulating resources. Leadership on the other hand is about building and developing those resources and knowing when, where and how to apply the resources to achieve a desired effect.

Emotional intelligence is a powerful and influential factor when it comes to building a strong and enduring safety culture and is a fundamental skill for all leaders.

Emotional intelligence is a fundamental building block of any strong, positive and resilient culture. If we, as the leadership team, can actively work on developing our emotional intelligence we are not only going to see an increase in morale and productivity but there will be a similarly significant decrease in safety incidents across the site.

There is now a large body of research demonstrating that when a leader is in a happy mood the people around them view everything in a more positive light. This subsequently makes them more optimistic about their ability to achieve their objectives, increases creativity and the efficiency of their decision-making and makes them more inclined to be helpful (Goleman et al, 2001).

“Great leadership requires excellence in many areas – strategy, execution, discipline, innovation, analysis. Being smart about feelings may not even be the most important one of these, but it certainly is the one that’s gotten the least attention and so causes many of the biggest problems.” (Freedman, 2012)

In the workplace moods and emotions are contagious. But a leader’s mood spreads the fastest. An emotionally intelligent leader can monitor their mood through self-awareness, change their emotional response to achieve more favourable outcomes, understand the impact of their emotions and deliberately choose to act in ways that create positive moods in others (Goleman et al, 2001).

Managing Workplace Conflict

Which brings us to conflict. First and foremost, conflict in natural, inevitable and can stimulate positive outcomes if managed correctly. As leaders in the safety space it is absolutely fundamental that your approach to managing conflict is mature, forward leaning and collaborative.

Most people have a natural aversion to conflict because it involves confrontation with someone who wants something different to what you want and as I’m sure we’ve all witnessed, it can seemingly escalate quickly into rather dangerous territory with damaging outcomes.

Non-Violent Communication (NVC) is a useful approach to difficult conversations developed by Marshall B. Rosenberg (Rosenberg, 1983 & 2003). The goal of NVC is to establish a relationship with others based on honesty and empathy. NVC involves both mindful awareness and compassion, towards ourselves and others.

Rather than reacting by instinct or automatically, NVC helps us reframe our verbal messages by focussing on what we are perceiving, feeling and wanting. When we interact with others and focus on working out what is being observed, felt, and needed rather than on diagnosing and judging, we can increase compassion. In essence, NVC is communicating our needs and listening to the needs of others.

There are four basic steps in learning to use NVC:

1. Observe without judgement

This is simply reporting the facts of your observations (i.e. data from your sensory inputs!) without judgement, diagnosis or evaluation. Simply say what people are doing that we either like or don’t like.

• Explore and express your feelings that emerge from these observations

Communicate about how you feel (emotion or sensation rather than thought) in relation to what you observe: are you hurt, scared, joyful, amused, irritated, etc.

It is important to remember that your feelings are completely separate from other people’s actions. Other people’s actions certainly stimulate feelings but your feelings are uniquely yours and relate to how you perceive the world.

Make sure to differentiate between words that express feelings and those that describe how you think others are behaving towards (or around) you. E.g. “I feel you are disrespectful” is not expressing a feeling, this is stating an opinion or interpretation.

• Express your needs

Communicate the particular needs / values connected to the particular feelings you have expressed. These are always about you and your needs, not the needs of someone else.

A useful way of identifying your need is to remember that negative feelings typically arise when our needs are not met and each feeling has a specific purpose. For example, if you feel anger this could be in response to a perceived injustice and the need to see the injustice resolved. Likewise the feeling of loneliness arises when your need for social connection is not being met.

• Request action from others to resolve conflict

Communicate an action that would get your needs met in that moment. When phrasing your request keep it positive, speak kindly but firmly and avoid sarcasm or unnecessary humour. Your request should be:

• Framed as a focus on what we want to do rather than what went wrong
• Expressed as specific, rather than vague, actions
• Conveyed as a request and not a demand (as a leader it is important to remember that requests are received as a demand when the other party believes they will be punished or blamed if they don’t comply)

When you put these four components together they form a simple sentence such as:

“When I hear ___X__ , I feel __Y___ , because I need ___Z__ ; would you be willing to__ABC___ ?”

In Summary

Ensuring that our leaders are correctly commissioned and able to perform their role, goes a long way to ensuring you have the effective, high-performing safety culture you want. An excellent place to start is to ensure they know what the message is, how they are to manage it, and the emotional intelligence to execute on this.

References

Goleman, D., Boyatzis, R. & McKee, A., (2001), Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance, Harvard Business Review, December 2001, pp.41-51.

Freedman, J., (2012), At the Heart of Leadership: How To Get Results with Emotional Intelligence (3rd Edition), Six Seconds.

Salovey, P. & Mayer, J. D., (1990), Emotional Intelligence, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.

Rosenberg, M.B., (1983), A Model for Nonviolent Communication, Pennsylvania: New Society Publishers.

Rosenberg, M.B., (2003), Nonviolent communication: A language of Life, Encinitas, Puddledancer Press.