What Is Safety Leadership?

Why the most effective safety leaders focus on organizational learning

The safety leader’s job is to see those decisions early and somehow influence them while there is still time.

To prevent incidents, many people think the work is about putting out fires or enforcing rules. Those are the most visible parts of the job. But the knowledgeable and the ‘initiated’ spend their time gathering what everyone in the organization knows about risk and turning it into decisions everyone can act on. 

Safety leadership is about influencing an organization to engage in risk management and to continually assess and improve all its processes. It’s a common term in large safety-critical industries, like commercial aviation and healthcare. However, in outdoor and experiential programs and in schools, it's hardly used. Yet, senior leaders in these organizations- the program directors, risk managers, and heads of school- are responsible and accountable for risk management and safety, just the same. 

Safety leadership is not a job title

Yet for some reason, many organizations treat it like one. An executive will point to the risk manager and say, "There, that person is our safety leader." The risk management director does have plenty of safety-related responsibilities, but putting the weight entirely on one person is neither fair nor effective. Responsibility for safety leadership belongs throughout the organization, especially among the trifecta of program leadership, risk management, and executive leadership.

The firefighter and the cop

Executives are hired because they bring a particular set of skills needed at the organizational level, in areas like business development, finance, or human resources. Some do have deep experience in program work, and they might already be 'initiated' in how senior leaders can support safety. Executives have real power over how the organization is set up, including how jobs are designed and how departments treat one another. An executive with a business background might view safety leadership as a firefighting or policing function, and then shape their approach accordingly. Other departments and staff then follow suit.

The 'uninitiated' tend to see the safety leader in one of two ways. Both are aspects of the role, but neither is the whole of it.

The firefighter

The first is the firefighter. To the uninitiated, the best use of safety leadership is to handle all the incidents. They're on call and they solve problems, usually other people's problems. Responding to incidents is an important part of the job, but when an organization treats putting out fires as the whole purpose, it loses the part that prevents incidents in the first place. If it's this person's job to manage every incident and solve every problem, the people who oversee programs never get direct feedback on their own decisions and actions. Supervisors should be the first call staff make when an incident occurs. The next, depending on the organization's incident management framework, should be the safety leader, whose role is to advise and, when necessary, step in to take the hardest and most consequential incidents.

The cop

The second is the cop. To the uninitiated, the safety leader's main job is to make sure everyone follows the policies and rules; essential to act as the internal compliance officer for the organization. Enforcement is part of the role, but it’s not the main part. Getting people to follow the rules is the supervisor's job; they have tools to change behavior, such as job descriptions and performance goals. 

I recently coached an experienced risk management director of a non-profit adventure program provider. She shared that after an internal review, the chief executive and the lawyers told her that the staff hadn't followed the written protocol and that it was now her job to ensure they did. She felt obligated to push back, which was hard, because these were the two people with the most power over her. Those staff didn't report to her, so it wasn't hers to make them comply; she was more interested in learning why the rules either weren’t known to them or why they didn’t make sense at the time. She told the executives she could work with the staff and help them, but that if they wanted a heavier hand, they should have a conversation with HR and with the executive the staff reported to. Enforcing the protocol was their responsibility, not hers.

Leading through influence

Safety leaders are most often not in the direct reporting line. Even when they are, using the heavy hand isn’t always the first tool to pull out of the toolbox, as it has significant consequences for rapport and trust further downstream. Changing behavior without positional authority or a heavy hand comes down to the credibility and rapport built up in the relationship. Building and wielding influence are skills in their own right and are major focuses of the five challenges of safety leadership.

Cops and firefighters wear badges and are visible in everyday life. So, it’s only natural that an uninitiated executive or board member looks at a risk manager or safety leader and sees one of those two personas.

But, both personas miss the same thing. Most people in the organization, including the chief executive, are challenged to see the whole safety puzzle. Executives don’t have the visibility to see all the way through to program staff, and the pressures and constraints that actually drive safety behavior. Program directors don’t have the visibility to see the pressures and realities the executives face when deciding priorities and budgets. The risk manager is typically in the middle, and must work up, down, and across to see and put the puzzle together. If there isn’t a risk manager in the middle, program and organizational leaders must build an intentional, ongoing conversation to ask questions and share with each other, so they can both see what actually drives decisions. This is the work and the art of safety leadership.

The Department of No

There is a cost to the person in the role, too. Years ago, an executive called me the Department of No, in front of a few hundred of my colleagues. He was referring to me and my department as the place to go to get your ideas and plans shot down. 

My face turned as red as my nose gets on the first day of summer; I was mortified. How could this be, when I do this work exactly because I believe in programs and want more of them, and for them to succeed? 

I’ve heard similar stories and sentiments from colleagues all over the world. One new risk manager was called the Debbie Downer. Another program director was known as the wet blanket. Yet, if that were really true, they would have picked a more lucrative industry.

The label isn't really about the person. In fact, I now know that it points to structural issues. Important questions and opportunities for input often reach safety leaders too late, after decisions are made or even after things have gone wrong. The root of these structural issues is that risk management, too often, gets put into a silo. 

The most useful thing a safety leader does

If the safety leadership isn't firefighting or policing, what is its most useful purpose? 

It’s to help the organization learn. 

Everyone influences risk by either determining safety context, or directly managing safety outcomes. Safety leadership puts the parts together. It packages data, knowledge, experience, intuition, feedback…all of it…into tangible and actionable narratives and lessons that each corner of the organization can understand on its own terms, and act on. 

When an executive cuts the budget to hit a number on a spreadsheet, those cuts affect safety. Staff need feedback on their decisions and actions to improve how they plan and deliver programs, and, across the organization, departments like HR, finance, and business development need to see how their decisions affect the conditions program staff inherit.

Everyone in a school or organization works toward their own goals, and each of those choices affects safety, whether or not the person making it can see how in the moment. The safety leader shows each group how its decisions affect the context the field staff and participants work in, which they inherit and carry out. 

What good safety leadership looks like

Good safety leadership starts with a clear structure. While everyone shares responsibility for safety, accountability for it should be clear and traceable. The chief executive is ultimately accountable, but various aspects are further spelled out and delegated throughout all functions and levels of the organization.

Good feedback loops matter just as much. An organization learns how safety is really going from site visits, incident reporting and review, outside experts, and staff debriefs. However, this information is only as helpful as it is understood and used.  

The third ingredient is psychological safety. People raise issues and escalate when they trust that doing so is welcome and will productively lead somewhere. When they raise something and see it lead to real change, they are more likely to pay closer attention and keep doing it. Everyone wins. 

Good organizations that manage risk well use safety leadership for learning and improvement, not just to put out fires and police their colleagues. In doing so, they give their safety leaders, the program leader, risk manager, and chief executive, the space to help the whole organization learn and improve.

Your next steps

Most program directors and risk managers in outdoor programs have solid backgrounds in outdoor leadership, yet, organizational leadership is often new. Working with HR, finance, and business, and learning their goals, motivations, and languages, and how to resonate with them are skills. Those skills can be learned.

Want to see how you can learn to build and wield your influence, and get everyone engaged in risk management? Take my free Safety Leadership Self Assessment, built around five common challenges of safety leadership.

Slay Risk helps safety leaders build and use their influence to get everyone engaged in risk management. Check out Slay Risk Coaching for more information, and reach out to start a conversation.

FAQ

What is safety leadership?

Safety leadership is the practice of influencing an organization to manage risk effectively. The core of the role is organizational learning, which entails collecting information from up, down, and across the organization and translating it so each group can act on it. Safety leaders are anyone accountable for safety in their organization, typically the program director, risk manager, and the executive director.

Is safety leadership a job title?

No, most safety leaders hold titles such as program director, risk manager, or chief executive/head of school. The responsibility is distributed mainly among this trio. Singling out one person as the safety leader overlooks the fact that safety relies on all three roles working together.

What is the most important thing a safety leader does?

A safety leader's most valuable job is helping the organization learn and getting everyone engaged in risk management. They collect information from up, down, and across the organization and translate it so each group can act. Responding to incidents and checking compliance are part of the role too, but the core of the role is organizational learning.

How do you get an organization to take safety seriously?

People take safety seriously when it connects to decisions they already make and when raising a concern leads somewhere. A safety leader builds influence through credibility and relationships, by sharing responsibility across program, risk, and executive leadership, and by turning what the organization learns into changes people can see. Pushing harder or adding rules does not get you there.

Do we need a risk manager or a safety director?

More outdoor programming organizations have created a dedicated risk management role in the past 10 years, and the trend is expected to continue. But, naming one person and assuming that ‘safety is taken care of’ is the common mistake. Safety leadership is shared, most of all among program, risk, and executive leadership. A dedicated risk manager can help, but the role only works when responsibility for safety is delegated across the organization and someone is accountable for each part.

What does good safety leadership look like?

Good safety leadership starts with a clear structure, where responsibilities are delegated and someone is accountable for each part of safety. Safety leaders build systems and processes to ensure the organization’s feedback loops are working and are used, such as various types of reporting, debriefs, and other information collection methods. The clearest sign is whether people feel safe to raise issues and see them lead to real change.