The Emerging Role of the Safety Professional, Part 4
- By Donald R. Groover, CIH, CSP, Jim Spigener
- Jul 21, 2008
Practicing transformational leadership provides your roadmap to success.
In this series, we have laid out the emerging challenges
that safety professionals are experiencing,
the new skills we must possess to operate in this
new era, and the challenges we will face if we decide
to remain stagnant. Safety is taking a much more
central role in the emerging world, but safety professionals
who remain rooted in their past successes and
approaches may find themselves become less and less
relevant. So what is the pathway to success? How do we
increase our relevancy? In addition to new skills and
knowledge, safety professionals also must become
change leaders. To complete this series, we look at how
leadership style can help safety professionals become
more effective influencers of safety -- and organizational --
performance.
Transformational Leadership Style
Fundamentally, a safety professional must have sound
management skills. He or she must be able to outline
staffing requirements, select the right people into the department
or organization, know where to get answers to
technical and regulatory questions, and be able to lay out
a project plan for a new initiative.Yet, in a business landscape
of increasing complexity and diversity of demands,
safety professionals also must become change leaders.
A change leader generates great enthusiasm and energy
within his or her direct reports and those around
them and acts in a way that makes others want to listen
and take heed. This is not to say the safety professional
must become a self-centered egomaniac; in fact, he
must become just the opposite. Leadership is about a
person’s ability to give people a sense of purpose and
understanding regarding the work they do and move
people to action.
James Macgregor Burns coined the phrase “transformational
leadership” in 1978 to describe just these qualities.
Burns defined this leadership style as “inducing followers
to act for certain goals that represent the values
and the motivations, the wants and needs, the aspirations
and expectations—of both leaders and followers.” Since
then, transformational leadership has become a wellstudied
and documented leadership style. Transformational
leaders have been shown to:
• Lead work groups that are consistently rated as
more productive and flexible
• Contribute more leaders into the pipeline
• Attract and retain desirable people to the organization
• Score higher in safety leadership best practice scores
Transformational leadership can be understood as
having four defining characteristics or dimensions.
They are:
Challenging: The leader provides subordinates with
a flow of challenging new ideas aimed at stimulating
them to rethink old ways of doing things.He or she challenges
dysfunctional paradigms and promotes rationality
and careful problem solving. Behavioral examples of
intellectual stimulation include: encouraging followers
not to think like him, creating a “readiness” for changes
in thinking, encouraging a broad range of interests, and
putting forth or entertaining seemingly foolish ideas.
Engaging: The leader helps others commit to the desired
direction. She coaches, mentors, provides feedback
and personal attention as needed, and links the individual’s
needs to the organization’s mission. Behavioral examples
include: creating strategies for continuous improvement,
promoting self-development, encouraging
others to take initiative, and coaching and counseling.
Inspiring: The leader sets high standards and communicates
about objectives enthusiastically. He articulates
a compelling vision and communicates confidence
about achieving the vision.Behavioral examples include:
helping followers achieve levels of performance beyond
what they felt possible,demonstrating self-determination
and commitment to reaching goals, expressing optimism
about goal attainment, and arousing in followers emotional
acceptance of challenges.
Influencing: The leader builds a sense of “missionbeyond-
self-interest” and a commitment to the vision.
She gains the confidence, respect, and trust of others;
considers the ethical consequences of her decisions;
appeals to others’ most important values and beliefs;
and instills pride. Behavioral examples of influence include:
engendering trust in the leader’s ability to overcome
a crisis, acting as a role model, sacrificing selfgain
for the gain of others, and creating a sense of joint
mission and ownership.
Transformational leadership is not mysterious. It is
comprised of observable behaviors, and its effect can be measured through discussions with people
who are in contact with the leader.
Becoming a Transformational Leader
Transformational leadership creates a will to
go above and beyond self-interest within the
organization. The challenge for safety professionals
is learning how to direct that will toward
an investment in safety—in other words,
learning how to tie a transformational style to
safety practices. To illustrate how leadership
style can influence best practices, let’s use examples
of two well-known leadership best
practices: credibility and collaboration.
This article originally appeared in the July 2008 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.