Safety | Leadership: Altruism, Learning, and Safety Performance Continued from page 37 as safety culture and participation. The maturation of safety management as a practice in the aviation industry has led to a more widespread recogni- tion that leadership plays a pivotal role in safety processes. But why this relationship exists—and how it can be influenced—remains a mystery to many. For a deeper understanding of the role of leadership in safety per- formance, we first need to recognize the various forms of leadership that might appear within an organization. Leadership Styles Leadership is an interesting idea. In contrast to managing, which is loosely defined as “controlling and directing resources,” leadership is best described as “the ability to influence others under dynamic conditions.” Its threads run through our lives in countless ways and the concept of leadership has provoked discussions for ages. Despite its prevalence, leadership has only been the subject of formal study for about a century and research has yielded a number of theories. Frederick Taylor introduced the idea of what he termed scientific management in the early 1900s, when he began experimenting with how leaders and managers interacted with workers to assure optimal production efficiency. Taylor’s work was arguably not a specific leadership theory, but some of his ideas—notably, the separation of work and workers into specialized units—persist even today. Taylor’s research improved efficiency, but at a cost. Organizations today are often complex, tight-coupled systems, and attempting to understand those systems as a function of various Aviation Business Journal | 4th Quarter 2017 component parts is not only unman- ageable, but inefficient. Even so, Taylor’s work started a trend of more formal investigations of the way we work together within organizations. In 1939, Kurt Lewin conducted one of the most well-known stud- ies of leadership, and he described three leadership behavioral styles: autocratic, democratic and laissez- faire. In the autocratic style, the leader exercises tight control over a group and centralizes decision- making. The democratic leadership style, in contrast, stresses group participation rather than the impo- sition of goals. Democratic leaders were described by Lewin, and many others in the decades that followed Lewin’s classic work, as participative and consultative, rather than direc- tive or manipulative (authoritative) or hands-off and passive (laissez-faire). Thirty years later, Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard described a theory of leadership that was similar to Lewin’s in its focus on behavior, but extended that thinking to accommo- date situational changes such as the task, function, or people involved. The Situational Leadership Model, as the theory was called several years into its development, identified four leadership styles: directing, coach- ing, supporting, and delegating. Hersey and Blanchard described the styles as fluid and contingent, but as having certain characteristics. ■■ Telling/Directing: Leaders give specific instruction on what to do and how to do it. ■■ Selling/Coaching: Leaders provide information to explain their decision-making. Leaders “sell” their message to bring the team on board. ■■ Participating/Supporting: Leaders build relationships, and are embedded in the team. Leaders may defer to team members for decision- making at certain points, sharing in the process. Delegating: Leaders pass on responsibility to the group, but still monitor progress. Delegating leaders are less involved in decisions. The Situational Leadership Model does a fine job of illustrat- ing changing leadership styles based on the situational direction and guidance needs of the groups, but it remains a bit simplistic. Patrick Hudson, in work- ing to develop Shell Oil’s Hearts and Minds safety culture efforts, extended Hersey and Blanchard’s model to also incorporate fail- ure modes. Hudson describes ■■ the four leadership styles as: ■■ “Telling” and “yelling” ■■ ■■ ■■ “Teaching” and “patronizing” “Participating” and “do it all” “Delegating” and “advocating” Adding failure styles is help- ful because we often learn by first describing a negative state. Though the styles clearly demonstrate refine- ment over the various iterations, what these models fail to describe is a map of why and what leaders engage in. Describing style is useful, but understanding substance is criti- cal to effective leadership. Common to all of the styles described here is that leaders must focus first on what their followers need, rather than on Continued on page 41 39
