Aggregates Manager

January 2018

Aggregates Manager Digital Magazine

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AGGREGATES MANAGER / January 2018 33 by C. David Crouch S afety incidents are the result of organizational culture, and culture is heavily influenced by leadership behavior. So, to create a strong safety culture, you must address leadership behavior. Leadership can be either positional or emergent, or both. Positional leaders are those who hold a leadership title, though a title alone does not make one an effective leader. Emergent leaders surface when they earn the voluntary and passionate involve- ment of those they lead. They lead by example and have a strong, positive influence on those around them. Emergent leaders, positional or otherwise, are effective leaders. But what does it really take to be an emergent safety leader? In 2012, Caterpillar Inc. launched a comprehensive re- search team to determine the answer to that question. With collaboration from behavioral assessment experts Development Dimensions International (DDI), the team discerned four basic skills a leader must demonstrate with a high degree of com- petence that lead to safety excellence. DDI Chief Scientist, Dr. Evan Sinar, has statistically validated these findings through rigorous data analysis. The team defined safety excellence as a team of people with strong leading indicator outcomes in the areas of effective safety meetings, near-miss, hazard correction and identifica- tion, incident investigation, and inspection processes. Research included surveys of nearly 1,000 employees, front-line leaders, middle managers, and top managers in the industries of construction, energy, forestry, and manufacturing with 133 questions about what they had observed in their immediate supervisor. The responses were scientifically correlated to the leading indicator outcomes listed above. The findings provided the first ever statistically validated results of exactly what it takes to lead others to work most safely. The research revealed four domains and 14 elements of safety leadership. To produce a safer workplace, leaders must drive accountability, create connectivity, demonstrate credible consciousness, and build trust. The sample assessed 189 lead- ers (54 percent front line, 26 percent in middle management, and 20 percent top leaders), and data reveals some interesting information about safety leadership. • When a leader demonstrates the four domains in high degree, employees work more safely. • Leaders who have more than nine direct reports experience lower performance in leading indicator outcomes. • The domain of accountability provides the strongest link to leading indicator performance among the four domains. • Building trust is the highest predictor of reduced inci- dents and injuries and the success of any subsequent investigations. • The top three elements driving leading indicator outcomes are defined expectations, integrating safety into the business operation, and sharing relevant safety informa- tion with others, and showed a 15 to 20 percent stronger performance over the other elements. • Near-miss and hazard identification processes were the two leading indicator outcomes most impacted by safety leader behaviors. • Higher level leaders generally outperformed front line leaders. This is very interesting considering the front line is where most incidents occur. The four domains Domain 1: Build accountability. Within the three main types of accountability — personal, team, and organizational — we focused on team accountability with the main question being Leading Others to Work Safely New research reveals four domains of safety leadership. SPECIAL REPORT

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