Safety | Leadership: Altruism, Learning, and Safety Performance Continued from page 41 for top-down support as a necessary component within effective SMS. While recognizing that SMS relies equally on bottom-up support as it does top down, understanding the mechanisms behind how leadership affects safety allows identification of organizational levers through which change can be embedded. In 2012, compliance with transactional leader- ship alone, but that style has no direct outcome on willingness to actively engage in safety activities. An authori- tarian leadership style supports neither compliance nor performance during normal operations. Knowing what works in theory is interesting, but how do highly effective safety leaders put this science into practice? Great safety leaders build teams that understand where safety fits in the organization’s cultural DNA. Sharon Clarke conducted a meta- analysis (essentially a study of studies to aggregate the scientific literature on a subject of interest) of transfor- mational and transactional leadership effects on safety behavior. What the research overwhelmingly showed was that, as many leadership theories suggest, different situations require different leadership approaches. Whereas a transactional leadership style reinforced strict compliance with safety rules, transformational leader- ship encouraged higher safety par- ticipation, and a performance-based approach. It might be possible for leaders to positively influence safety 42 Leadership in Action Great safety leaders know how to build teams that understand where safety fits in the organiza- tion’s cultural DNA, but they don’t do it by accident. Here are some things that you can do to make the most of leadership’s impact on safety performance: Create a Vision Transformational leaders have a clear vision, and can communicate it unambiguously. At a large operator, an informal poll of just a few of the several thousand employees showed that while everyone knew that com- pany leadership valued safety, no one could describe what that vision looked like. After hearing those disappoint- ing results, the safety department worked with the senior leadership team to articulate a clear vision of how things would look and feel at the company when the vision for safety was realized. The team focused on describing in detail the things they would see and hear once safety was embedded at the level they expected. Those detailed descriptions allowed employees at all levels to assign meaning to the vision, and make it real. A vision has to be made tan- gible, so that employees know what it means to them beyond a simple state- ment of belief. Leaders have a num- ber of tools for communicating vision, including a safety policy statement, strategic plans, marketing, and regu- lar, employee-facing communications. Set Clear Expectations Leading for safety means being specific about what is expected at all levels in the organization. A manu- facturing firm had a large banner displayed at the entrance of their facility that read, “Safety is everyone’s responsibility.” Interviews with work- ers at the assembly plant, though, showed that line workers and supervi- sors weren’t readily able to describe their safety accountabilities. Instead of making safety everyone’s respon- sibility and offering no more specific information (which means, in prac- tice, no one is responsible), incorpo- rating individual accountabilities and responsibilities for safety at all levels of the organization not only helps shape culture, but also it provides clarity of purpose and a link to vision. Communicate Through their communication, safety leaders inspire action. This can be nonverbal, such as demonstrating acceptable behavior and modeling proper action in the context of safety; or it can be through more traditional written or verbal methods. Safety leadership means clearly articulating not only the faults and limitations in our systems, but the hero stories as well, and using our mistakes as teaching opportunities. Senior lead- ers support safety by modeling open dialogue and ensuring that employ- ees always know that they can share information, good or bad. Engaging in Aviation Business Journal | 4th Quarter 2017
