About Practice

There’s a favorite question I’ve been asking leaders the world over for more than two decades: “If I followed you around for a day, what would I see you do to lead and manage safety performance?” No surveys to be administered; no models to be applied; no formulas to be calculated; no forms to be filled out. Please, just tell me what you do to lead and manage – in practice.
 
The question’s simple enough, but it’s one many leaders don’t find easy to answer – properly.
 
By properly, I mean addressing the “see” part of the question. We’re talking practices, not category headings like “motivate” and “communicate.”  Those answers don’t lend themselves to observation, at least not by me. Leaders often fail to understand the question; even when they do, they find it hard to explain what they do in practice to lead and manage safety performance. 
 
That’s an observation, not a criticism. Full disclosure, back in the day when I served as a leader, I would have just as hard a time explaining what I did to lead. My answer probably would have started, “Talk on the phone, and sit in a lot of meetings.” 
 
But it’s your turn to answer: can you explain what you do to lead and manage safety to someone else – in a way they can understand?
 
These are your practices, and managing safety is the most important part of your job.

Leadership Practice
 
I love the word practice: it’s such a useful and practical term of art. Best of all, it’s totally real. The theoretical physicist Albert Einstein reminded us that “In theory, practice and theory are the same.” Not that it takes that level of intelligence to understand the world does not operate like a controlled experiment in a physics lab.
 
The beauty of safety leadership practices is that they can be observed – in practice. Practices can be defined and taught, and they can be learned. I spent the first thirty years of my career observing leaders and their practice of leadership, and the last twenty-five teaching leaders what I learned in the process: what to do, how to do it, why to do it that way, and why not to do it some other way. 
 
The word practice is also versatile, serving as both a noun and a verb. Remember those from high school English? Practice – the things a leader does to see that their followers work safely – is a noun. Verbs are action words. That’s the aspect of leadership practice missing in action: practice meaning rehearsal, preparation, training and refining of skills. Leadership practice is something leaders rarely even pause to consider, let alone actually engage in.
 
Try explaining that approach to doing something important to an athlete or a musician or singer. For them, practice is the very foundation of successful performance. They would think it crazy to step up to the plate or step out on the stage without having mastered in practice what they are about to perform when it counts.
 
Is it that leaders are born, not made, and are just so good at their practice of leadership that practice would be a waste of valuable time?
 
In theory, maybe, but not in practice.
 
Evaluating Practice 
 
So, back to the opening question: “If I followed you around for a day, what would I see you do to lead and manage safety performance?” Your answers are your safety leadership practices. That question begets another: once those practices are enumerated, how do you judge and evaluate your proficiency in the execution of your practices?
 
It might be tempting to think evaluating your performance is your boss’s job, not yours. 
 
On one hand, that is true. On the other, it’s not the smartest thing to think. First, because by the time your boss starts getting on your case for not being that good at managing safety performance, the damage might be irreparable. Besides, come performance appraisal time, you’d much rather have your boss singing your praises for being really good at safety leadership. Second, your manager might not be all that adept at understanding and evaluating anyone’s leadership practices. That I have seen a lot.
 
There’s another way to look at this question: you very well may be in the position of having to evaluate the safety leadership performance of the leaders reporting to you. You could simply grade them based on the numbers: zero harm earns an A, etc. You’re plenty smart enough to know there’s way more to that story than just numbers: what’s the process used to achieve those bottom line results.
 
In practice, there is no escaping the need to be able to enumerate safety leadership and management practices, and, in turn, to be able to evaluate the effectiveness of that practice. It really doesn’t matter whether you’re looking at the practice of leaders you supervise – or looking at yourself the mirror.
 
Judging Proficiency
 
This is a newsletter, not a book; the intent here is to stir up interest in important issues. Hard to think of any subject more important to going home alive and well at the end of the day than leadership practices. Their successful practice demands practice, in the textbook definition of practice. 
 
Since we’re interested in practice, not theory, a practical example might help elucidate the point. Consider these four simple and widely practiced safety leadership practices:
 

• Run safety meetings in a way that creates engagement and produces a specific and tangible benefit. 
• Communicate changes in procedures in a way that produces understanding, acceptance and commitment to make the change happen.
• Correct unsafe behavior in a way that increases the likelihood that the individual will engage in safe behavior in the future.
• Reinforce safe behavior in a way that increases the likelihood that the individual will engage in safe behavior in the future.

 
As safety leadership practices go, they don’t get any more fundamental than running safety meetings, communicating change, correcting behavior and reinforcing safe behavior. Come time to be asked, these are answers that should be on the tip of every leader’s tongue. Having asked the question upwards of a thousand times, I can tell you they are not. 
 
Please note that for each of these practices a description of performance proficiency has been added, at no additional cost. Running a safety meeting is one thing; running a good safety meeting is an entirely different thing. How often do you sit in really good safety meetings? Hence, the proficiency statement – “in a way that creates engagement” and “produces a specific and tangible benefit” which begins to suggest how to judge the effectiveness of the practice.
 
Note “begins” as there are all sorts of subtle but vitally important elements found in the process of running an effective safety meeting, such as choosing a relevant topic, asking the right questions in the right way, and listening to what people have to say. All part of being proficient.
 
On the long list of safety leadership practices, these are four of the most obvious. See what I mean about knowing your safety leadership practices?
 
So, what’s on your list? And how do you judge your proficiency?
 
About Practice
 
We close with the most important point about practice: how does a leader practice their leadership skills? Practice in the sense of rehearse, prepare, train, develop and improve? No matter how much natural talent a leader might have, performing leadership practices well combines art and science.
 
Athletes and musicians and singers have their coaches and teachers, who themselves are highly proficient in the practice of observation, analysis and giving constructive help built on “the right way to do something”. Those just happen to be the core elements of the coaching process. If you’re going to take your practice seriously and get something from the investment of your time, you’ll need to figure out how to factor them into your practice regimen.
 
If you are of the view that “leadership is nothing at all like an athletic competition or a stage performance” you might want to reconsider. While they don’t hand out a score or walk out of a bad concert, don’t think for a moment that followers aren’t constantly judging the performance of their leaders.
 
Now comes the practical question: where to start? 
 
The first step is simple and easy: make the long list of practices. Be sure not to confuse a category with a practice: practices are what can be observed. Next, add in a description of what constitutes proficiency: there’s a world of difference between “running a safety meeting” and leading a session that engages and accomplishes something of value. 
 
Start down that path, and it’s likely the next few steps will become obvious.
 
Finally, if you have followers who are themselves leaders, you might want to do the same thing for their practices. Among other things, that’s the first step in evaluating their effectiveness. Next comes either reinforcing or coaching them up.
 
One more example of a safety leadership practice, right?
 
Paul Balmert
November 2024