Leadership Issues in Implementing Change: It's All a Matter of Behavior

Ann Pinney, MA, MBA
Terry McSween, PhD

Many safety managers or change agents have uttered the following words at one time or another, "This is a great process and will really help improve our performance---if only we could get our management to fully support it." The person will try to gain management's attention and, even get their hopes up, when by their leaders make positive statements about the new process, only to have their optimism dashed by a lack of follow-up and active support beyond such initial comments. The change agents finally give up and the change initiative joins the ranks of the "program of the month" efforts that have fallen by the wayside. Our endeavor is to address three critical questions:

1. Why do we need leaders "on board" when implementing change?
2. What does specific actions to we need leaders to take?
3. How do we get them to take those actions?

Impact of Leadership Support

Companies have had substantial gains from behavior-based safety processes and have found them easier to implement than other safety initiatives primarily because the employee's role is well defined and such a large part of the process. However, even behavior-based safety programs are not immune to the damage caused by inadequate management support. After years of implementing behavior-based safety in a variety of industries we noticed that some organizations struggled much more than others, taking much longer to implement and having greater difficulty getting employee participation in conducting peer safety observations. Low morale and a high level of distrust often characterized these companies. We consider these issues to be a direct result of the leadership activities and the leaders' relationships with their employees.

When companies choose to implement a change within their organization, it is usually because they are striving to achieve improved results in their performance. These changes typically require a change in both processes and behavior that demonstrate an adoption of the change and the values that support the change. A company's leaders may espouse the value that "Safety comes first" and really mean that. However, it appears as a disconnect between the value and the leader's actions when employees see their leaders making decisions to under staff an operation, failing to address an unsafe condition, or other actions inadvertently increase unsafe performance. John Kotter in his book, Leading Change (1996), states "Nothing undermines the communication of a visionary change more than behavior on the part of key players that seems inconsistent with the vision." Modeling the commitment to the change through words and actions on the part of the leader becomes critical to implementation success.

The figure below shows in research conducted over 10 sites that as the leadership participation in conducting observations decreases so do the number of employee peer observations that are conducted. Such data show what many employees have known, and that change agents have discovered, "if the boss doesn't think this is important, why should I?"

What are the effective leaders doing?

Our research includes a review of the research literature as well as interview data from our clients. The research data is based on 19 field and experimental studies conducted in manufacturing, financial institutions, US Army, 38 ft. racing sail boats, post office and theater groups in the United States, Sweden and Israel. Our interview data was with 9 CEO/General Managers and 12 Safety Managers/Change Agents in manufacturing, logging/sawmills, oil and gas, software design and utilities in the United States, Canada and Germany. The results of our interviews were consistent with the research literature.

Several research studies had directly examined the differences between effective and mediocre leadership. The researchers identified effective leaders based on the collective performance of their subordinates and by what those subordinates said about their leader. The following sample study by Komaki, Desselles, & Schepman (1988) conducted with the US Postal Service helps illuminate the what kind of leader behavior produced the highest level of performance. The independent variable in this study was having the supervisor trained to:

• Provide non-specific positive feedback
• Monitor activities without comment
• Monitor activities with specific positive feedback on the employee's performance

The dependent variable in the study was the quality of performance achieved by the leader's group and the employee attitudes about their leader, defined as the percentage of time they spent making positive versus negative about their leaders.

The graphs below show that the leader who directly monitors or observes employee performance and comments on that performance gained both the highest level of quality performance and the most positive employee attitude about their leader. Dropping down in both quality performance and positive employee comments was the leader who surveys the work that is being done and makes no comment. Least effective was the leader who passed out compliments indiscriminately, "Good job whoever you are, whatever you are doing."

Critical Leader Behaviors

The research highlights the need to leaders to be out in the area directly observing and interacting with employees about the specific work actions being taken. Good leaders also prompt employees to talk about their own performance while providing significantly more feedback. In contrast the less effective leader engages in solitary activities while "holed up" in their office. When they do talk about performance they talk more about their expectations with very little checking or monitoring to see if the performance is taking place.

The interview data supported the research by stressing the need for the following leader actions when implementing change:

1. Incorporate discussion on the change initiative such as the behavioral safety process everywhere in all kinds of occasions in meetings as well as out in the field. As one CEO put it, "Don't think you can have one kick-off meeting and your change has been implemented. People will be watching you to see if this was just a management speech or did you really mean it."
2. Model visibly the desired actions that exemplify the change. (ie. conduct behavioral safety observations, make a decision in the defense of safety, get out in the area and "monitor and give feedback to employees on safe and unsafe actions)
3. Develop measures of accountability for the successful adoption and implementation of the change initiative for the leadership group. The measures should prompt either positive recognition to leadership gaining success or remedial actions for leaders that aren't actively supporting the change.

Exactly What Is Leadership Support?

Identifying the critical leadership actions that demonstrate support is critical to developing an effective measurement system. Such actions must be pinpointed and clearly define precise behaviors, such as:

• Holding three "hallway chats" about the change initiative
• Covered implementation progress with direct reports
• Corrected an unsafe condition
• Asked an employee their opinion on how a job could be made safer

Once the critical behaviors have been identified, the leadership group can design a measurement index that can be scored daily/weekly on the actions they took to support safe performance in their work area. Below is an example of a safety index designed by a logging client defining the "support" actions of the leadership group to help sustain increased levels of safe performance.

The leadership group in this case measures themselves when prompted by a random radio call and then combines their individual scores to create a leadership daily/weekly score which is plotted on the Leadership Performance graph posted next to all the other crew's safety graphs. Everyone has a role in safety---only the behavioral content is different. The index below would reflect the managers' support behaviors to encourage supervisory practices supportive of safety.

How do we get the Leader to buy-in to these behaviors?

1. First, we must speak their language. Typically, that language involves the cost impact of injuries and accidents. Leaders are sincerely concerned about keeping their employees safe from harm. However, most of the focus on daily performance measures is heavily weighted towards production and perhaps quality. That focus influences day-to-day decisions and management efforts towards production without really evaluating how quickly increases in production can be erased by the cost of medical aids, injuries and accidents. Below are two graphs that helped illuminate for a large trucking repair company how seriously the injuries, indirect costs, light days, and lost days had eroded the company's profitability. When the managers realized the amount of sales they were going to have to have just to pay for their past injury rate, it helped elevate the importance of supporting their safety process daily.
   
   
   
   There are available resources to help the safety manager calculate the financial impact of their accidents and injuries at the Occupational Resources Council website, www.orc-dc.com and OSHA's website, www.osha.gov under e-tools (download $afety Pays).
2. Understand what consequences are impacting on the leadership team. Managers constantly complain that they have too many initiatives to support at once creating a sense of frenzy in trying to launch a quality program, a safety process and program to reduce cycle time at the same time. All the initiatives could be excellent, but implemented at the same time they stress management's ability to effectively and continuously promote any one initiative, thereby diluting the impact of all of the programs. Companies need to limit the number of competing programs during a safety implementation. Once the decision has been made to implement the safety program, leaders must talk about it everywhere---in production meetings, on the shop floor and informal hallway chats.
3. Another pinch point for leaders is constant pressure for production. Many sites have tight accountabilities on daily production to their corporate parent. A part of the safety implementation strategy should be to educate all that carry consequences on the leaders even, if the corporate group may not be actively involved in the implementation. Executive management needs an overview of what the safety process involves and should be alert to any temporary drops in production, or other potential disruptions that may result from the implementation efforts. Also, the corporate group can be a source of powerful positive acknowledgement to the leadership group. Corporate management should display interest through questions and comments about the safety process in their conversations with the site leadership.
4. Take visible action if a leader refuses to actively support the safety process. When interviewing both the change agents and the CEO's, the leadership issue that was identified as being the toughest is that of consciously non-supportive leaders. Olivier Helleboid, CEO of BEA corporation stated "The biggest problem for me is that I let people in the very high ranks that report to me go too long with non-performance because I kept wanting to give them a second chance...and then I found what a destructive influence they had on the change that I was trying to implement." In these situations you need to determine whether the leader's non-performance is a "Can't Do" or "Won't Do" problem. The question is, if you held a gun to that person's head, could they do what ever you are asking them to do? If the answer is "Yes," then you probably have a "won't do" problem. They could do it, but they just haven't had the time, or they don't think that it's important. But if you have a person who, when people sensitivity was being handed out he or she was last in line and they just really don't have that capability, then that's going to be a "can't do" problem. You have to determine which one you've got. If it's a "won't do" problem, you can start looking at changing consequences. Look at who is getting promoted or lauded. Is it the person who is really being good about promoting safety out in the field or is it someone else? Are our performance appraisal systems supporting that? In contrast, if you have a leader that has been trained and knows what they are supposed to do, but either lacks the capability or has made the decision to engage in active non-support, you must change out the person or change out the job. You really do need someone who will act like a leader in supporting your safety process.

SUMMARY

The Leader's Role can't be overlooked. Our research and interviews yielded a list of "To Do's" for any organization attempting to implement change:

CEO's To Do List

• Communicate, communicate, communicate. Look for every opportunity to talk about the change. Never let more than two days go by without bringing up the change initiative in some form with your people.
• Check the pulse weekly (monitor and feedback). Get out in the operations and check out how the change is being implemented.
• Be willing to go out on a limb. Leaders need to see the vision and then "lead"-sometimes in the face of resistance and without popular opinion. People watch the leader to see by his/her actions whether the commitment is there for the long haul. Along with stepping out front,
• Don't wait for people to feel "comfortable" before implementing change.
• Model visibly that safety is the priority every day.
• Have metrics to reflect short-term gains. Determine ways to measure change adoption in all areas of the organization and celebrate small goals that are achieved along the way.

Rixio Medina of Citgo Petroleum sums it up best with his statement, "A bad leader can kill a good process." Make sure you prepare your organization's change with good leadership.