There is no finite description of what entails world-class safety, but there is one characteristic that absolutely is essential, and that is employee involvement and engagement.

Most safety professionals know that employees do not become more involved or engaged by decree or by promotional gimmicks like caps, t-shirts and flashlights, and will only become involved if they take ownership. But do safety professionals know how to achieve employee by-in and ownership? The key to employee involvement is not the person responsible for safety; it’s the company leaders, who must become less transactional and more transformational. So the question now becomes, what can safety professionals do to convince leadership of the need to become more transformational?

Transformation leadership will not only drive better safety scores but will also enhance work performance and operations. The result of transformation leadership is cultural change; employees will not only be engaged in safety, but in the entire work process. This could be the key selling point for leadership to become more transformational. It will make a positive impact on the company’s bottom-line.

A traditional management system is where employees are utilized from the shoulders down (i.e. used for their brawn) and their work is task-focused vs. process-focused. This system will drive average results for production, quality, safety, and the like. This work system is highly transactional, featuring a quid pro quo (a service traded for something of value) relationship between management and the employee.

A transformation leadership management system is where the employee is fully involved and engaged in the work process including safety. The employee is utilized from the head down (i.e. both the brains and the brawn). In many cases, the employee’s heart is also invested. Only under these conditions can the relationship between the employee and the work be optimized and maximized. It may be a cliché, but when the “hearts and minds” are engaged, above-average results will be achieved.

As you will see, the transformation leadership management system requires managers to focus both on the work and the employee. Several years ago, the terms transactional leadership and transformational leadership didn’t exist. The management model trend in those days was the Blake-Mouton grid, where a traditional work system was managed by a 9:1 manger with nine being the primary focus on the work and one being the minimal focus on the employees. The transformation leadership management system requires managers to have a balanced approach, which on the grid was labeled as a 9:9 – equal weighting on both the work and the employee. Today a 9:1 manager is a transactional leader and a 9:9 manager is a transformational leader. The bottom line being that a transformation leadership management system led by a transformational leader will deliver above average results across the line – production, cost, quality, safety, etc.

A transactional leader:
• Has a quid pro quo relationship with the employee, frequently relying on disciplinary action.
• Is task-oriented and focused on regulatory compliance.
• Preserves existing culture, conditions and practices.
• Is likely to focus more on the work than the employee.

A transformational leader:
• Prompts results in which the employees’ values align with the leaders’ values.
• Empowers the employee to engage in the work process, going beyond their self-interest.
• Personally is engaged with the employee and cares about the employee.
• Maximizes the contribution of the employee.
• Focuses on both the work and the employee.

In his book, Heroic Leadership, Chris Lowney summarizes the outcome of a transformation leadership management system. He stated; “Individuals perform best when they are respected, valued and trusted by someone who genuinely cares for their well-being.”

The proof is in the pudding: I’ve had the privilege of working with a company that is committed to achieving world-class safety. Through 2008, this company’s leadership focus was heavily transactional. With much mentoring and encouraging, the leadership focus gradually changed to transformational. The below figures show not only the dramatic improvement in safety, but also in other critical business outputs.

– TIR: FY 2008 = 8.20, and 2009 = 0.78
– Profit: FY 2008 vs. 2009 = 191% Increase
– Customer Satisfaction: FY 2008 vs. 2009 = 49% Increase
– Lost Business: FY 2008 vs. 2009 = 43% Decrease
– Turnover: FY 2008 vs. 2009 = 76% Decrease
– Material Loss: FY 2008 vs. 2009 = 25% Decrease

To create this tremendous transformational change in the company, we create a culture of caring. We personally marketed, communicated, demonstrated and taught this message from the moment we made the decision to change.

Tom Krause does a very good job of describing the characteristics of transformation leadership in his book, Leading with Safety (Wiley Interscience). He provides a simplified description of the characteristics and attributes of a transformation leadership management system, including:

Listening and Communicating – Listening is one of the most important communication skills there is, yet most of us have had little or no formal training in listening. There is a distinct difference between “hearing” and “listening.” Hearing is fairly passive with little or no energy expended and can be accomplished by using only our ears. Listening is highly active, requiring us to use not only our ears but our head, heart, eyes and body.

Some important characteristics of a good listener are seeking first to understand, then to be understood; listening for meaning and feeling and not just for facts; demonstrating a high level of caring; not interrupting or developing a response while the person is speaking; and being open to the speaker in a way that it shows.

Ralph Carito
Total Environmental & Safety, LLC