Why Leaders must embrace the challenge of creating a Safe & Supportive culture in the workplace.

What you do in adversity is the greatest measure of you as a leader – it tells people much. It tells more than any other operating condition. Your ability to make colleagues feel safe and secure in a situation of high stress and anxiety is the highest calling of leadership.

We should not listen to those who call “This is not a kinder garden,” of “Safety is complacency.” Any leader who bothers to even examine such assertions through the lens of their valued colleagues will quickly realise that such macho management views have no place in a progressive mind set of servant leadership.

Creating a safe culture, is not soft, it most certainly is not complacent. What it is is the creation of environment and culture where people feel they can reach for the highest performance levels without fear of `being castigated or reprimanded when the inevitable mistakes arise. It also facilitates the third element effective challenge - because colleagues trust where that challenge is coming from.

Something goes wrong, we make a mistake, things don’t go as we expect them to.....?

Those circumstances are familiar to us all. Anybody who tries to do anything of any significance in life, who wants to make a difference, who takes the initiative, or who simply goes about their daily tasks to get things done, will know that things do not always go to plan.

The emotions we feel in response are also similar, disappointment, frustration, deflation, vulnerability, isolation, disengagement, regret, anger, hostility, confusion. These are all emotions that we all go though - nobody who is honest with themselves or others will they say they have not experienced these feelings when failure or setback occurs.?

Equally we must also ask and understand what is important to us as human beings in order to overcome these situations. Whilst we all deal with failure in slightly different ways there is an underlying set of needs we all seek when these circumstances arise. We usually look for the following?

• A chance to explain why things have happened.
• Somebody who is prepared to listen.?
• Not be judged, but to be understood.
• The opportunity to try and make amends.
• Help if we need it in finding solutions, be that in a mental, physical or resource based perspective.
• A will and desire to not go through the experience again.?
• The opportunity to implement what we think will fix things.

For a leader of any level this appreciation is doubly important, as they do not only have to deal with their own failures and setbacks but also those of their colleagues and ensure an effective recovery and sustainable solutions can be found . To understand how to deal with failure a leader must be prepared to look at their own human reactions when they are in that situation - they must put themselves in other shoes - empathy must be the driving emotional state for an effective response to be formulated to failure.

A leader that operates without empathy can never truly deal with all the underlying dynamics of failure, because they can never see the full picture of all the forces that created the issue in the first place.

How we deal with adversity and setback is perhaps one of the most difficult decision gates we walk through on the journey of growth and development in leadership. It challenges our most basic foundations and values. It asks questions of our very DNA as a human being and the beliefs we hold. It puts pressure on us and how we respond. As always as leaders we face choices. Recrimination or supported recovery??The temptation can be huge towards the former - yet we must all walk towards the latter, no matter what the pressure.

For a leader who blames people for mistakes as their initial reaction will quickly discover their ability to recover and respond to scenarios is severely constrained - as in most cases the implementation of solutions lie with those who were involved in the mistake in the first instance.

As human beings we will all make mistakes (Leaders are not exempt.) - a leader must accept that fact. It is an inevitable and given condition if we are to push boundaries and seek to improve at the edges of what we are capable of. That does not make a person incompetent or ineffective. It also does not mean that individuals should be automatically moved on. For if that is your approach you are highly likely to replace that person with another human being who makes similar mistakes. Or you will generate a culture where growth and improvement are not encouraged and fostered though fear of reprisals.

The quicker that we accept that the vast majority of our colleagues arrive?at work to actually try to do a good job and not a bad one then the quicker we can get on with the real challenge. Which is how we ensure the mistakes are not repeated and we grow from the experience.

The ambition of all leaders must be to build a culture of mutual support and dependence not only amongst colleagues but also amongst themselves and colleagues. If that condition is created then teams can then feel free to challenge and question and then grow - knowing full well that their basic human needs of emotional support and well being will be taken care of. When people feel they have the safety net of their colleagues and leaders support no matter what then they are much more prepared to be honest, address critical issues and reach for the highest branches of performance without fear of reprisal or castigation.

As always as leaders we must search our basic day to day approach for the answers and actions. They will be the key in determining whether colleagues feel such support and engagement . These must include

• Increasing your presence and proximity to colleagues in their environment.
• Be open and transparent on communication -face the elephant in the room.
• Creating opportunities for smaller group discussions on issues.
• Allocating more time for 1 to 1 s with team members
• Accepting of our responsibility of situations.
• Allowing time for individual reflection and analysis
• Listen - a lot - and with all your senses not just your ears.
• Assessing structural support models for flaws
• Assessing resource models for miss or under allocation?
• Looking at your own leadership gap - what could you have done better to stop this happening
• Being robust and relentless in the delivery of all corrective actions - not just the ones you feel like.

There are reasons and moments to change team personnel and in many ways one of the truest tests of a great leader over time is to judge those moments well and intelligently. This approach in no way suggests that people change and team evolution is not an important and integral?part of a journey towards excellence. Simply that it should not be our most immediate response to failure. The revolving door should only be used at the entrance to a building - not as a tool to deal with performance.

In many ways attitude and mentally is a much more of an important determinant factor than capability in those situations when personnel change is considered. Yet even in that a leader has to look at themselves first before judging others. We all deserve a chance, so ask what is the cause of behaviour not judge what they people doing first.

What is clear is that we need to accept setbacks as an inevitable condition of growth and as Vincent Lombardi reminded us “it is not getting knocked down that matters, it is how we get up that counts.” In that leaders have a fundamental role to play through creating a culture of support and interdependence from where they can then facilitate challenge.and growth.

Let your teams flourish from adversity, be the leader who gives them that chance. build a culture where we all aim to look after each other - it does indeed make a huge difference.