All this emphasis the industry is placing on shared values, principles and behaviours, to unlock the potential future for our industry, has perhaps presented us with the greatest of all leadership and cultural challenges.
Are we really leading by example?
From a stereotypical cultural perspective, the UK has a linear-active culture meaning we trust people who maintain word-deed correlation and consistency.
Now, I have to start with an admission, I failed to intervene, to step up and to challenge what was, at least for me, poor safety behaviour. So where did this happen?
Well, I was travelling to London on a flight and the attendants did their usual fantastic pre-flight briefing, they are taking the time to look after my safety so I can take a couple of minutes to engage and play my part.
I checked under my seat for the life jacket (apparently more go missing than you think in the course of a year) and counted the rows to my nearest exit. I saw it as a toolbox talk, it’s that simple.
For me, toolbox talks are an essential part of the safe execution of a job and this has left me thinking. What is a toolbox talk? Do we recognise and respect it when it doesn’t fit our normal process? What is the just and fair culture recommendation when someone doesn’t engage with a key part of the safe system of work?
So back to the story, to my forward right was a well-recognised senior executive busy beavering away. Whatever he was doing was obviously very important, as he continued to reply to messages on his laptop throughout the safety briefing… not looking up once. Now I am sure he is a very frequent traveller and I’m sure he thought he knew the briefing of by heart but this got me thinking. If he went to one of his many worksites and saw one of his employees, ignoring the pre-job brief, even for a routine task that someone had done a thousand times, I expect that he’d be concerned. I hope that he would intervene, something I failed to do. Even more so, I suspect that there would likely be some punitive action for the poor worker that failed to follow some rule on the back of some card with the same senior executive’s name at the bottom saying ‘your safety is our top priority’.
And beyond safety, is it not just incredibly discourteous of the passenger towards the crews?
Here in lies the rub, it doesn’t just apply to safety – it’s relevant to all those other values we have on our walls, they cannot just be some things that show-up when you think someone is looking. Leadership and behavioural change must start and be consistently supported from the top otherwise how will we ever build the trust and engagement that delivers change. As leaders we set the tone, the standards and the expectations and regardless of where you are, we are observed. It’s not unreasonable to expect that when you advocate a better way you endorse a better way.
That’s why I always make a point of engaging with the safety brief not matter how many times I’ve seen it, or how well I think I know it. Something might have changed, as a minimum it’s likely that I will be in a different seat and therefore my nearest exits will be in a different location relatively.
I’m not vain enough to think everything is about me but in this case it is, I failed to walk the talk. I am disappointed that I didn’t due to my lack of intervention. I should have been able to but I deferred, I took the path of least resistance and ultimately decided that no matter how well intentioned my intervention may have been, I was convinced that it would not have been welcomed. If you don’t have time to play your part in the overall safety envelope then how can you reasonably expect those that look to you to do so?
So the next time we’re on a plane I will play my part, will you?
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