When I was first promoted into a low-level manager’s job, my mentors were tough “Kick Ass-Take Names” (KATN) managers.
They were “it is my way or the highway” type people.
Our focus was on things, and we saw the organization as a machine and the people as challenges we had to make work for us. I modeled this and was quite good at KATN, but it was tough, progress was limited, and people were angry most of the time.
Then one day there was a modest-sized fire in one of the chemical production units in the big plant where I was the Plant Manager. All the ugliness, arguing, complaining disappeared and in an instant, the people became a high-performance team. In just three weeks of amazing work, the plant was back into production, but then people reverted to their terrible behavior.
Sometime later, as I walked the plant talking together with the people who were most impacted by the fire, I found that they really liked the way they worked during the fire repairs. People helped each other, they shared all information, were respectful, they told the truth, they made decisions themselves close to the work; this way of working meant a lot to them. They were quite excited as they reminisced about the fire and restoration experience. At one point I said to them “Fellas, we can’t burn the darn place down every few months so we can feel good. We have to figure this out.”
I began by walking the Plant for 3-5 hours a day, every day, among the people, listening and learning about their work and ideas, discovering that many of them were quite remarkable. I asked for their help and encouraged them to solve as many problems as they could themselves. I held weekly communications forums (in various venues across the plant) to keep everyone updated on the business, events, changes, etc., and answered everyone’s questions. Energy and good ideas bubbled up as the deep intelligence and creativity of the people emerged each day. Within just three years, the injury rate was down 97%, emissions to the environment were down 95%, productivity was up 45%, and earnings were up 300%.
In walking among the people, talking, listening, and sharing, everything changed. My role was to encourage the sharing of information, helping to maintain the vision and mission of our work as well as insisting on maintaining high standards of performance. Those doing the front-line work did remarkable things to make significant improvements. We all developed our agreements on how we would behave and work together which formed a rock-solid basis of our culture.
For example, we agreed to tell the truth, listen to, and respect each other, and apologize for mistakes. I was part of this; I had to model the behaviors. We held each other accountable to live up to our agreements. We had discovered that the organization behaved as if it was a living system where the key for success was in all of us, how we related and agreed to work together. We had created the conditions where everyone could learn, grow and be the best we could be. I asked everyone for help because we in supervision surely did not know everything. Many people already knew this.
Partner-Centered Leadership
We had shifted from a fear driven, KATN culture where relationships were poor, where it was hard for people to learn and grow, where change was slow and difficult, to a partnering culture where we cared for each other, learned, and grew to levels of performance we never imagined. I call this way of working “Partner-Centered Leadership.”
Everyone began to shift from sitting back like consumers, waiting for management to bring in various, new safety offerings like better safety meetings, training courses like behavior-based safety, new PPE, better safety equipment, new hazards analysis processes, more process safety management, management inspections like walk-arounds, big safety conferences, special OSHA training, and new versions of safety like Safety II and Safety Differently, to becoming active citizens and leaders taking the initiative and responsibility to be creative, to explore new ways to do things so we could all get better and help to solve most of our problems.
If new training or equipment was needed, groups could select from a broad variety of safety offerings to fill the need. We took responsibility for the whole plant system, our safety, environment, health, production, HR, quality, customer service, and community relations; they all came together. The separate stovepipes almost disappeared as we realized that we were all in it together, needing each other to be successful. We were a whole system with all the parts connected and interacting all the time. Through the process of partnering at all levels, our total performance went way up. Morale and a strong sense of belonging developed which felt good.
As we worked together this way, we learned to sustain this way of working. For example, the safety and health performance achieved a TIFR (Total Injury Frequency Rate) rate of ~0.3, and it was sustained at this world-class level for 19 years; this lasted for 14 years after I was transferred to a new assignment. I wrote an article about this in the American Society of Safety Professionals Journal, Professional Safety, which showed that Partner-Centered Leadership was far more effective than KATN.
Doing It
This way of leading requires a shift in management’s thinking about the people to seeing them as whole people with families, hopes, dreams, and a big creative capacity. It requires a shift in management’s behavior about developing relationships of caring, trust and commitment. It requires a willingness to treat each other with respect, to listen together, learn, grow. It means inviting everyone to work together to become our best. It requires giving people credit for their contributions.
It does not mean losing control of high standards, suffering with incompetent people, putting up with toxic behaviors and sloppy performance. It does not require new capital investment, new computers, and training. It requires a willingness to be with the people to talk together about the problems we face, to share almost all information and the need to solve problems at the lowest, appropriate level so our businesses can survive in this highly competitive, fast changing world. We also need to give credit where credit is due.
Everyone Wins
Partner-Centered Leadership builds morale and releases creative energy. The collective intelligence of the whole organization increases. It builds resilience and flexibility. Everyone together, co-creates their shared future. As the Plant Manager, I could throw leading by fear and KATN into the trash and shift to leading with deep caring, respect, integrity, and a great sense of satisfaction as all dimensions of performance significantly improved. It was wonderful to see how we all were growing and developing. All of us became winners!
The goal is to get through all this safely, keep your people and business thriving and active, building stronger relationships for partnering and working together. This is a tough challenge, but who knows your workplace and the people better than you. You can work things out together.
When I was transferred to the DuPont Belle, West Virginia plant in 1987, the Total Recordable Injury Case Rate (TRC) was about 5.8 and emissions to air, water and ground, as reported in the EPA Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) annual report, was over 6,000,000 pounds/year. Within three years, both of these had dropped by about 95% to a TRC of about 0.3 and a TRI of about 275,000 pounds/year. Emissions to the environment is one way to measure how well the process safety is working; the better the process safety work, the lower the emissions to the environment.
The process safety management collapsed in January of 2010 with major, accidental releases to the air and river and they had a man get killed with a phosgene release. When the US Chemical Safety Board investigated in late 2010, they reported that while the occupational safety and health performance was the best in the DuPont Company, the process safety management had fallen apart and the plant was not even using the DuPont standard procedures. This was a sad commentary about how far things had fallen.
Our businesses, our schools and hospitals, our governments, and not-for-profits, at all levels, are fractured and coming apart. Change is coming faster and faster. So many people seem to be trying to cope by pulling into their shells and trying to push the turmoil all away. The trust levels among all the various groups is very low. So many loud voices are pushing their version of the “truth” that it is almost impossible to tell who is being honest and should be listened to. How do we find the truth?
In thinking about your own place of work, what do you suppose it would be like if people did some of the things mentioned earlier in this newsletter? Do you think that you could begin talking with others about building a more respectful environment? What do you think it would be like if you could openly talk together about the important issues like improving the safety of your job? What would it be like if the managers and supervisors talked frequently about with everyone about how the business was doing the challenges from the competition? What would it be like if you knew that someone was looking out for your back? What would it be like if you felt you were in an environment of trust? What would it be like if people really asked important questions and talked about them? What would it be like if people in upper management asked you for your honest opinion and really listened? That’s called breaking the iceberg and engaging in authentic conversations!
I feel we are not moving fast enough to get to higher levels of performance. Way too many people are getting hurt and killed. Safety is a part of all we are doing and the whole system needs to be making improvements.
I was given the opportunity to talk about my work on Partner-Centered Leadership and shared information about the Process Enneagram, which is such a powerful tool to help people to come together to solve their complex problems. Partner-Centered Leadership is focused on sharing information, building trust and interdependence, helping everyone see the importance of their work for the success of the whole enterprise and moving into a better future. Everyone at the workshop was seeking ways to actually move into Safety II and make it happen so there was a lot of interest in this work.
Leaders are people who have a vision of what is possible, are concerned and care enough to make a difference, have the courage and commitment to do the work, and truly engage with people to learn, grow and to achieve their results. These are people who regularly go into their organizations, walk around, have the important conversations about getting better, building a respectful workplace, listening carefully, building trust and interdependence, and helping the people to be the best they can be. They create environments where it is safe to openly talk together, ask questions, share information, think out-loud and build a better future.
Lots of managers talk about the need for organizations to change and improve. But as I talk with people, go to conferences and read the safety literature, I hardly ever encounter anyone leading this way. So many managers do not know what it means to lead.
Todd Conklin works with companies to help them recover and begin to heal after they have experienced a fatality in their workforce. He has come up with a different, creative way to look why the number of fatalities at work has remained at about 4,700 people a year for a number of years. Our programs of focusing on accident prevention have significantly reduced the total number of recordable injuries, but they have not had much impact on reducing the number of fatalities.
I just saw an announcement that the Liberty Mutual Research Institute for Safety was closing after 59 years, to reduce costs. The ISO 45001 Standard is in the final stages and is aimed at improving safety around the world. Yet some people are reacting that it will not make a difference because of management indifference or cost restraints.
Many of you who have been reading this newsletter know that our emphasis is on Partner Centered Leadership. We emphasize the importance of supervisors and managers getting into their workplaces each day and talking with the people. Talking with the people is a key to breaking through to safety excellence. Talking about the risks they face each day, how they are managing them, how their kids are doing, how the safety is doing, how the business is doing, asking them what they see as to ways to improve their own work, asking about problems they are dealing with, etc. Doing this with respect and really listening are vitally important.
