By Chuck Easterly, Loss Control Manager,
SAIF Corporation, Salem, Oregon
Leadership is a core element of today’s successful safety & health professional. You can be the greatest technical expert in the world, know all the appropriate regulations, and have an entire alphabet of letters behind your name, but if you’re unable to inspire and influence people to make needed changes, you’re not going to be very successful.
So, if leadership is so important, how is it defined? In his book, The Radical Leap, Steve Farber defines it in a mysterious way: “Love, Energy, Audacity, Proof.” But then he adds that this is not just leadership, it’s “extreme leadership.”
Love, energy, audacity, proof. More specifically, extreme leaders must be able to
Cultivate Love,
Generate Energy,
Inspire Audacity and
Provide Proof.
The "love" that Steve describes is not what might first come to mind for you – especially when you think about a business setting – but we actually use it all the time. It's how people who have a passion about something describe what they’re doing.
"I love my job."
"I love it when people have an ‘ah-ha!’ moment."
"I love helping other people."
"I love making a difference in the lives of others."
When you genuinely love what you’re doing and you believe you are making a difference, you have the energy required to inspire and lead people. On the other hand, if you’re not connected with your own work, you can’t expect to inspire others in theirs. “Without the calling and commitment of your heart, there’s no good reason for you to take a stand, to take a risk, to do what it takes to change your world for the better.”
People who love what they do generate energy (and lots of it!). You know the types. They walk into a room and they bring a positive attitude and enthusiasm with them. Energetic people are contagious. They draw you toward them and they pull you in the direction they are heading. The extreme leader is a generator … a powerful force for action, for progress and an enthusiastic believer in people and in their capacity to do the awesome.
As key influencers of our business partners, it's critical that we bring a positive, creative energy into every interaction. A question Steve challenges us to answer is, "What is truly exciting about the work I really do?" and then share that with others. Truly great safety professionals are not in the workers’ compensation insurance business because they want to help people save money on their insurance policies. Instead, the focus is on providing people with skills that make their lives better. Saving money is a byproduct.
Dale, one of our loss control consultants, recently shared an example of how this often works. He was involved in a multi-week coaching session for a group of supervisors at a manufacturing facility. Dale is passionate about safety and loves seeing the impact on people who “get it.” The emphasis of the first few coaching sessions had been on “actively caring” for each other, making safety a “value” (not simply a priority), and had recently moved into a discussion on hazard identification. At the beginning of the next coaching session, Dale asked if anyone had anything they would like to share about their “homework” from the previous week. “I have something I’d like to share,” came the response from an unlikely participate named Joe. He was in his early 30’s, had an air of confidence, and was generally described as “not the warm and fuzzy type.” But on this morning, Joe stood up and told a transformational story about a recent shopping trip he made.
Joe told the others about how he and his wife were shopping the past weekend for bunk beds for their two young boys. They looked at various models and price ranges. His wife suggested a lower cost model to save some money as they knew "boys would be boys" and jumping on the beds would be part of the behavior. Joe told his wife, "No, look at the head and foot boards, the boys could get their ankle or wrist caught between the bars and get hurt." They chose a more expensive model based on safety. Joe went on to say, "Prior to this training, I would have elected to save money, not considering safety in the equation."
Another worker named Tom shared that he was in his front yard about to mow the lawn when he noticed his 8-year-old son and another boy watching him through the front window of the house. Tom didn’t have his safety glasses or hearing protection and, as he looked through the window at these two young boys, he realized that he was setting a poor example, so he walked back to the garage to do things right.
What’s it like to see your work impact not only the lives of workers, but their kids as well? For Dale, it’s what happens when you cultivate the passion you have to help people and you generate energy in the hearts of those people. He told me, “I just love to hear these stories. They always give me the chills, hearing how someone has been impacted.”
The next challenge for the extreme leader is to inspire audacity. Steve's definition for this is simple: "Bold and blatant disregard for normal constraints in order to change the world for the better." I must admit that as a safety person, "blatant disregard for normal constraints" didn't initially sound like a great plan. But as Steve continues, he isn't talking about being a rebel just to break the rules. He is talking about looking beyond normal constraints to make the world better. The extreme leader is audacious, not to serve his or her own ego, but to serve the common good and to do so boldly.
Steve challenges us to discover what things are holding us back from making a difference in our world. We change the world in a variety of ways and "the world" means different things at different times. Sometimes, it really is the whole world. But it can also be as small as the “world” of your neighborhood, the “world” of your company, or the “world” of your particular state or province. His challenge question: "How are you going to change the world of our employees, our customers, and our marketplace?" Changing the world requires one to think outside the box. It requires bold thinking, and it can be scary. But thinking BIG also inspires people to raise their sights and to accomplish things that would not otherwise happen.
When I first came to SAIF five years ago, I told our loss control team a story about President John F. Kennedy’s challenge in May 1961 to have NASA put a man on the moon and return him safely home before the end of the decade. This was truly a “stretch goal” for a NASA team that had only successfully put a man into space for the first time earlier that month. As Kennedy toured a NASA facility later that year, he reportedly met a custodian at work in one of the facilities. When Kennedy asked the man what his job was, the custodian replied, “I am part of a team that is putting a man on the moon.” John F. Kennedy’s vision was inspirational, and it got every member of that organization behind that vision. A year later, Kennedy further explained this audacious goal. “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
I told my team that story because I wanted them to be more than safety consultants for an insurance company. We were not going to be satisfied by simply providing required safety services to policyholders. Our challenge was to provide the vision and leadership to make Oregon the safest state in the nation. This is not some kind of competitive challenge to other states. We actually hope we enter into a 50-way tie for first place. But we determined to strive to make Oregon the safest state because it challenges us to think bigger and better. It causes us to seek ways to collaborate with others and to find bigger and better solutions that help protect people throughout Oregon. We do it not because it is easy, but because it is hard.
One way we’re changing our world is through our collaborative work in the healthcare industry. Nurses and nursing assistants are being injured at alarming rates from moving patients. About three years ago, we recognized that one reason certified nursing assistants (C.N.A.’s) were reluctant to use lift equipment when lifting patients was because they were not given any instruction about lift equipment during any part of their certification process. We recognized that if we were going to change the world of safety in healthcare, we were going to have to “get upstream.” We were never going to “fix the problem” working at the policyholder level. We had to change the way C.N.A.’s were trained.
One of our loss control consultants, Deb, (who is also an R.N.) accepted this challenge and worked with the State Board of Nursing to help them see the value in making necessary changes in the curriculum and their training process. Deb’s passion, energy, and out-of-the-box thinking inspired each person she touched and the curriculum changed in record time. Deb then developed a train-the-trainer session to help train the C.N.A. instructors in the proper use of this equipment and how to instruct others to make sure the new concepts were sustainable. For the past 18 months, new C.N.A.’s have been entering healthcare facilities with an expectation that lift equipment is “standard procedure.” One long term care facility commented to Deb that they were going to have to get lift equipment in their facility because C.N.A.’s who were inquiring about job openings were asking “Do you have lift equipment?” When the answer was no, they withdrew their application and went to another local facility that did.
This work is beginning to transform healthcare facilities throughout Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, not just SAIF policyholders. More importantly it’s transforming people’s lives. From an AASCIF-organization standpoint, how can we change our world? How can we use our combined resources to make North America the safest place to work?
The remaining part of this extreme leadership paradigm is to provide proof. Are you an extreme leader? If so, you need to prove it to yourself, and you need to prove it to others. It's about this phrase: DWYSYWD: Do what you say you will do. That's at the core of our work. Keeping our promises and doing what we truly believe in. It's what can set us apart from the rest of the world.
We provide proof by answering questions like these:
What have I done today that shows my commitment?
How have I “changed the world” – even a little bit – today?
What measurable evidence can I provide?
What will I do tomorrow to demonstrate the power of my convictions?
When you start down this path, there’s a very real element of fear that pops up. But Steve points out that there is absolutely no way to have an extreme leadership experience without fear. In The Radical Leap, Steve says:
“We’ve been conditioned to believe that fear is bad. And while it’s true that fear can save your life or keep you from doing something stupid, avoiding it can also keep you from doing something great, from learning something new, and from growing as a human being.”
Extreme leaders choose to be extreme and choose to work through the fear. Extreme leaders actually pursue fearful moments, recognizing them as opportunities to change the world for the better. Choose to be extreme. Choose to change your world for the better.
Cultivate Love
Generate Energy
Inspire Audacity
Provide Proof
Lessons from The Radical Leap, by Steve Farber
For more information about Steve Farber and Extreme Leadership, read The Radical Leap and The Radical Edge. Also see www.stevefarber.com
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