My insights on the book "Next Generation Safety Leadership"

"Without trust (and its cousin, Psychological Safety): People don’t speak up. Teams don’t fully engage. Metrics don’t reflect reality. New initiatives don’t gain traction. People don’t admit mistakes. People don’t share ideas". Sounds familiar? Read “Next Generation Safety Leadership” by Clive F. Lloyd.

One of most recent - and greatest - books that I have recently read about safety. The book is encouraging the ongoing adoption of Safety II or Safety Differently; it is doing so by simple ideas with thought provoking stories that sometimes makes you read them more than once.

The book continues to touch on what is happening on the real world; where some companies are clinching to the old way of Safety - Safety I - and so reluctant to push towards the shift. Clive landed this when he said: “Little wonder then that safety leaders revert to doing what is comfortable. Sadly, this is often based on seeking to force compliance via methods mired in out-dated modalities such as behaviorism. If technology had developed at the same rate as safety we’d still be using Commodore 64s and dot matrix printers!”

It’s a paradox - from my opinion - the more companies are relaxed in doing Safety the same way, the more other companies will be afraid to do this leap forward to Safety II. However, the books has a number of successful stories that makes you believe that change will happen - eventually. Those attempts still seems - at least to me - an individual attempts rather than a more driven industries shift.

One of the challenges I continue to see is how to put the ideas of Safety II in practice in the real world; how to provide a step-by-step guidelines to make that shift towards Safety II. It’s a journey! I am totally aligned with Clive when he said: “Safety Differently remains more as an appealing philosophy than as an implementable approach with compelling research evidence attesting to its efficacy.”

Here is a story from the book to end with when Clive was having a session with leaders in an organization: “when you speak with them (Bill referring to his team) you’ll notice two things: They don’t like me, but they bloody well respect me!” I did meet Bill’s team the following day, and he was half right. They didn’t like him; however, neither did they respect him – they feared him!” For all the leaders out their; ask yourself, are you like Bill? What do you think would be the honest opinion of your team members about you if you’re not around? Think about it.

The book lands on a very strong conclusion; trust is the key; “In short, trust is the primary currency for leaders. Without it, nothing else you do will make much difference.” The next question would be how to build that trust between the leaders and their workforce? How can we improve trust? What can you do differently as a leader?

Disclaimer: This is not a book review, as I am not in a position to do so for such books or authors! This is only my own thoughts and insights about the book that I enjoyed reading.