The Top 5 Things I’ve Learned About Safety & Leadership Throughout My Career

The Top 5 Things I’ve Learned About Safety & Leadership Throughout My Career

This article was originally posted at markperrett.com.au. Click below to see the original article.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article on my?ORIT??site called, “How I accidentally became a safety advisor, and why I hated safety so much that I wanted to quit“.

The article was about 4,500 words long and probably too long for the average reader.

This article provides a summary of that article and highlights the top 5 things that I’ve learned about safety and leadership throughout my varied career.

I’ve had a very varied career over the past 30+ years.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with some amazing people in a range of workplaces in various industries around Australia.

I’ve worked in large organisations and in very small businesses with as few as 2 employees (the owner and me).

I’ve worked in some incredibly dangerous workplaces and have seen some horrific accidents.

I’ve had some amazing leaders, and also some leaders who were absolutely terrible.

I’ve worked on the tools. Sweated buckets. Have been hurt.

I’ve led teams and have worked in the office.

I’ve worked for myself and have felt the pressure that managers are under.

Getting my first safety job because I hated safety

I fell into safety in 2007 when I applied for a job as a driller’s offsider in the Queensland coal mining industry. During the interview, I was asked about my thoughts on safety. Having experienced commanding safety crusaders on the docks, I absolutely canned safety and spoke instead about how I thought it should be done. I hated it. I didn’t get the offsider’s job and instead got offered a job as a safety advisor and was tasked with ‘fixing’ safety in the business.

Ever since then, I’ve hated safety. Organisations that are led by people who also hate safety hire me to help change it by making it about people, and cutting out a lot of the useless and often counterproductive safety crap that has built up. Now I work for myself and study for a PhD and aim to try and help as many local government organisations to make work great for their people. I love safety when it’s about people and helps improve organisational performance.

But enough of that, here are my top 5…

I can think of many more than 5 important things about safety and leadership and welcome a chat any time.

1. Safety is about people

The law and compliance are important. We have to comply with the law. It’s how we go about complying that is important.

When we make safety about people, people own it and as a result, it is much easier to comply. Any non-compliance will be minor and easily fixed when identified.

2. There is too much safety crap!

Somehow, safety became all about paper. This probably has a lot to do with the compliance-driven approach. And over the years more and more paper has been added to the pile. But it is counterproductive as much of the paper and safety administration is trivial or takes people away from productive work. Taking people away from productive work adds more time pressure which flows onto corner-cutting. It also trivialises safety when we should be focussing our attention on the things that matter.

3. The best leaders are honest and caring

The best leaders that I’ve had were genuinely interested in helping me grow as a person. Not just at work, but as a whole person. They appreciated my efforts and valued me. They involved me in decision making, provided clarity and let me work autonomously. They were also incredibly honest. A spade was called a spade. You never had to guess what they were thinking. I really appreciated that.

4. We need to take a worldview of things

Safety and team performance are often broken into small pieces with the hope of learning more about the pieces and fixing them in order to improve things. But work and organisations are incredibly complex. We need to look up and out rather than down and in if we are to get a better understanding of things and the different relationships between people, society, work, and the environment we live and work in.

While this ‘systems thinking’ approach is not a silver bullet, it does give us a better understanding of things which allows us to make systemic changes rather than just shuffling the deck chairs.

5. Take charge of your own learning & development

We are all leaders and we are all followers. We should all be working on becoming better leaders and followers. Whether through formal education, by reading books or reputable magazines, or through our own observations and reflective practice, we need to commit to lifelong learning. Even with the most amazing leader to guide us, we have to take ownership of our own learning and development.

Let’s wrap it up

There are many more things I could add. Maybe that’s a Part II where I list the next 10 things.

I’ve been very lucky to have had such a zig-zagging career which I feel has made me a great leadership and safety generalist.

What would you add to the list? Please share in the comments.