Kevin Burns Blog

The legacy you create in safety must be on-purpose.

Legacy. It’s what you leave behind after you're gone. You want a purposeful legacy. Those ones are positive. The legacy you leave behind by accident is usually a negative one.

No one will remember the safety systems you built after you're gone. Nor will they remember that you were responsible for the security lock on a door or a new design for lock-out tags. Those are lifeless objects. And although they play a part, forms, rules, paperwork and procedures can be replaced. They are temporary at best.

Safety systems are not legacy things. That is unless you’ve done something so radically different that it’s now referred to as The (your name) Manoeuvre. Then it’s a legacy. But those things don’t come around often. Instead, consider the easier way to create a legacy, by being remembered for who you are instead of what you’ve done.

Here are three tips to consider in building a legacy in safety:

Relationships work better when there is respect and trust - both ways.

As a supervisor or safety person, building better relationships is key to open communication. It is also the strongest building block to creating engaged teams that buy-in to safety. Combine good communication with mutual trust and respect and you build solid teamwork. Relationships matter and so you had better get good at them. But you cannot feign or fake your way to building solid working relationships.

Everything that matters in "the way we do things 'round here" rests almost solely with supervisors.

Senior management doesn't create safety culture. It's impossible for senior management to be connected with every nut and bolt, every shovel full of dirt and every connected wire. It's impossible to see that from the senior management perch.

But this is the world that supervisors live in; one connected wire at a time, one shovel of dirt, one torqued nut and bolt.

It is for those reasons alone that supervisors have far more influence over the safety culture than a CEO. There is no doubt that senior management can influence a safety culture. But senior management neither creates safety culture nor reinforces it. The best they can do is commit to it and support it. Everything that matters in "the way we do things 'round here" rests almost solely with supervisors.

But not all supervisors are given proper management-skills training courses. They may not know how to manage people, how to inspire them, or how to help them find their motivations for safety. Too many supervisors ascend into their positions without the tools to help them do the job effectively. But supervisors are certainly responsible for production, safety and teamwork. And if none of it happens, the supervisor is to blame.

If you're a front-line supervisor, here are three reasons that your position can make or break safety and the crew culture:

Nothing shows your respect for employees like making them feel that they matter.

Communicating one-on-one is the backbone of solid safety performance improvement. If you don't make the communication personal, you can't possibly make safety personal. So the key to making safety personal is to make the communicartion between supervisor or safety person and front-line employee personal.

There are no tricks to doing this effectively. But there are five things that you really should consider adding to your communications with front-line employees. It will help you build better rapport and open the lines of communication:

If you want to become an effective and respected safety leader, work on these personality traits.

Back in 2009, when Google first launched their Project Oxygen employee survey, they were looking for a way to help their managers be better. They were also looking for ways that managers and supervisors could help engage employees better.

Solid and effective safety leaders make people proud of who they work with and inspire them to want to be better.

I watched a firefighter tear up at being called a hero this week. Then, he displayed class and leadership in his response. And I was captivated and engaged and proud … and I don’t even know him.

The Fort McMurray wildfire brought out the best in so many. It continues to do so. Captain Adam Budgen of the Fort McMurray Fire Department, after being asked in a TV interview about how he feels about being called a hero, responded to the question.

“I don’t consider myself a hero. But I’ve met more heroes in this experience than I ever thought existed. (Pause to wipe his eyes) Our community right now has more firefighters and more first responders, police, everybody, that have given up their own homes (in other communities) that are safe, their own families that are waiting for them, to come up (to Fort McMurray) in the middle of this beast to help protect my home. They’re heroes to me. (Pause to wipe his eyes) Everybody I work with has been holding me up and I’ve been holding them up. So I am in the company of heroes.”

There are just some inspiring moments in the deepest, darkest adversity. That thirty-seconds of sound bite provided reflection. There are three compelling things that leaders, including safety leaders, do to get results:

Communication gets better when your intentions for communication become clearer.

Clear, concise safety communication is critical to front-line crews and employees. As a supervisor or safety person, you need to be fully understood in your communication. There’s no room for ambiguity. There can be no doubt about what you’re trying to say and what you want them to do next.

Too many supervisors ascend to their positions because they’ve been on the job the longest. It's not because of their communication skills. There is no direct connection between tenure (seniority) and communication. In fact, the longer you’re in the job, the more you assume others already know what they should know.

Safety people and supervisors are not required to have any schooling in either communications or management skills. But the biggest part of the job is communicating, right?

Let’s re-frame communications in a way that helps front-line supervisors and safety people. Let’s improve communications. Here are three questions that are designed to streamline your communications effectively in safety:

Front-line employees can have leadership abilities without having a title.

Call it a pet peeve but please stop using the word leadership to describe management. We have all worked for a manager who had no leadership skills. You don’t call those people your leader. You call them your boss. Leadership and management have little to do with each other. Besides, front-line employees can have leadership abilities too - without having a title.

You don’t have to be in management to be a leader. Besides, peer-leadership is sometimes far more effective when it comes to getting fellow employees to safety-up. Positive safety peer-pressure can make work-sites more safety-conscious than management intervention.

Safety certification and titles don’t make you a leader. Position doesn’t make you a leader. That’s good news for front-line employees. There’s no monopoly on leadership. Employees can be leaders just as easily as anyone else. It's influence, demeanor, conscientiousness and selflessness that makes leaders. Leadership is a mindset - how you approach your role in the world. Leadership, natural leadership, doesn’t need courses or schooling. Leadership is not something you get in exchange for money.

Employees make decisions daily that are either in alignment or out of alignment with the safety program. You can be a leader in your own life in safety - or you can take your orders from the boss.

Front-line supervisors and safety people have the most challenging positions in any organization.

Front-line supervisors and safety people have the most challenging positions in any organization. Most do it with little management or supervisory skills training. It's tough to stumble around in a job trying to find your voice and management style. Yet, supervisors and safety people do it. They manage the heart and soul of production and must get exceptional safety performance.

If this is you, here are five things you need to acquire to become more effective at the job:

If you want to improve safety meetings, you have to improve the level of respect you have for your people first. 

Mark Cuban, television personality and owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks once said, “Never take meetings unless someone is writing a check.” He might be onto something there. Safety people would make a bigger effort if they got paid for the quality of their safety meetings.

But that’s not happening anytime soon. So, for now, you will have to accept that safety meetings are notorious time killers. They usually start late, discuss too many topics, and end up running long. Poor planning combined with poor presentation skills make them difficult to endure.

If your people can’t wait to attend the next safety meeting, and are excited when it’s meeting day, then you’re doing it right. But that’s not you is it? So how about you invest a few minutes and give some consideration to some new ideas. Like a good safety meeting, it’ll be short and to the point.

Here are three simple ideas that can transform your safety meetings from boring to engaging - and build respect: