Coaching Safety Leadership Using the Situational Leadership~R Model

摘要

Safety Leadership should be about engaging employees in safety and empowering them to take responsibility for their safety and safety of their co-workers. Every employee needs to be a leader in safety every day so that a zero-injury workplace can be achieved. Many opportunities exist to coach employees on how to take this personal responsibility, but those methods are not always clear to managers. This paper will describe how and when to use Situational Leadership to coach employees on safety leadership so they can apply it in daily actions. Common approaches to safety involve reactive rather than proactive steps, which leaves an organization exposed to potential mishaps as well as to deficiencies in employee training and attitude. Both are detrimental to an organization’s growth and fiscal management. The Situational Leadership style allows managers to analyze needs proactively and then to adopt the most appropriate leadership style. To get the most benefit, a leader should be trained in various leadership styles and how to determine others’ development levels. This style is popular with managers because it is simple to understand and works in most environments for most people. Managers can assess employees’ development levels before coaching them on a safety issue and developing a corrective action. Generally, employees with low skills or attitude will need more detail in explanation and corrective action, while employees with high skills or good attitude will need less explanation and will achieve more ownership of corrective actions. With this type of coaching, managers and employees will progress to the highest development levels at which they are the “owners” of corrective actions and become true leaders in safety. This paper will describe the methodology and inherent benefits of using Situational Leadership to redefine an organization’s safety culture.