1. Safeguarding the social safety of the team
People can only act openly and freely if they feel socially safe. Social acceptance by colleagues and support from teammates are crucial in this respect. A good leader uses their authority to ensure that everyone experiences themselves as a respected member of the group. To this end, the leader safeguards norms of interaction and ensures that no one is excluded. In addition, the leader ensures that the team receives meaningful assignments and the resources needed to carry them out.
Under these conditions, the likelihood is greatest that team members will look after both their own safety and that of others. They then dare more readily to give feedback to one another and to address unsafe behavior.
The most important signal that social safety is not in order is bullying behavior. From a group-dynamics perspective, bullying is an alternative way for team members to create some degree of cohesion in situations of social insecurity—by expelling one or more individuals. Bullying is therefore a signal of insufficient authority.
Creating social safety is a precondition for enabling the other six principles.
2. Setting rules and explaining why
Rules provide support because they translate knowledge from previous experience into possible courses of action. Especially in unfamiliar situations, they offer guidance for behavior. They are also valuable in complex tasks that require a great deal of readily available knowledge.
However, humans have a natural aversion to rules for two distinct reasons. The first is culturally determined. In Western societies, we generally dislike being told exactly what to do. We prefer a degree of autonomy, which can be achieved by allowing some room in how rules are formulated. This also makes it possible to adapt execution to the current situation.
The second reason relates to how the brain functions, which is based on competition between different functions. One function—the safety function—sounds the alarm in the presence of danger; another monitors the efficiency of our actions. These functions are not always aligned. As long as the usefulness of a rule is not understood, the efficiency function continues to protest, attempting to convince us that the extra energy required for a safety measure is unnecessary. On an unconscious level, this nudges us toward ignoring the rule.
Acceptance of a rule therefore increases when we understand what the rule is for—especially when we understand which problems it prevents and which knowledge or experience it embodies.
A good leader safeguards the efficiency function by being sparing in introducing new rules, and simultaneously feeds the safety function by clearly explaining why a rule is necessary.
3. Ensuring compliance
A rule is only a rule if it is enforced. If you tell a child to go to bed at 7:00 p.m. and at 7:30 p.m. they are still happily playing, the child learns that the caregiver does not take house rules very seriously. The workplace is no different.
Issuing a rule inevitably invokes the role of the police officer. Just like children, adults tend to test authority by violating rules. Based on the response, people learn where they stand. Monitoring and correction create authority, while tolerance of violations leads to loss of credibility: “They say it, but they don’t really mean it.”
An important piece of advice for leaders is therefore to issue only those rules that can realistically be enforced, and then to ensure that compliance is indeed enforced. Compliance may sound negative, but it creates the basis of trust between a leader and their team.
4. Leading by example
People learn a great deal from one another. They serve as models not only for each other’s behavior, but also for the intentions underlying that behavior. Some models are stronger than others. Leaders, by virtue of their position in the organization, are among the strongest models. They occupy roles that may offer us opportunities and that we may aspire to ourselves. As a result, we are especially sensitive to the behavior and intentions of leaders, and more willing to adopt them.
A major problem is that most of us have a more positive self-image than reality warrants. Almost all of us suffer from some degree of overconfidence, especially when it comes to safe behavior. Regular feedback on one’s own behavior is therefore desirable. The greater the level of social safety, the more readily others will provide feedback. It is nevertheless advisable to embed such feedback in formal instruments, such as perception or climate surveys.
Leaders must realize that their credibility depends heavily on the consistency between what they say and what they do. Talking about safety without practicing it oneself undermines one’s own authority. Through their actions and omissions alone, leaders influence their team members. The closer words and deeds align, the stronger the leader’s role as a model to which others attune their behavior.
5. Prioritizing in policy and coaching
People sometimes do things that seem incomprehensible. In part, this results from conflicts between our innate instincts. Biology teaches us that we exist because our ancestors both took good care of their own safety and safeguarded the survival of the human species. Today, we still want to care for ourselves while also serving our organization. As a result, we sometimes show a willingness to take risks in pursuit of organizational goals, even when this may have negative consequences for ourselves. From a safety perspective, this represents an undesirable prioritization.
Others can influence this prioritization to some extent. Leaders can do so by consistently giving priority to personal safety over short-term organizational success in their policies. This may sound obvious, but reality often proves otherwise. Work should therefore be planned in such a way that it can be carried out safely, and inevitable deviations should be addressed in a manner that preserves the priority of personal safety.
This principle also applies to day-to-day supervision. Leaders should be aware that most of us have a tendency to partially sacrifice our own safety for organizational interests. Acknowledging this tendency and consistently steering toward safeguarding personal safety helps others establish the right priorities.
6. Instructing on risk and behavior
Brain Based Safety assumes that under certain conditions, rules must be allowed to be set aside if a better alternative exists. Doing so requires not only communication, but also a personal compass grounded in risk awareness. To develop this compass, risks must first be understood.
A leader cannot assume that risks are already known when someone starts in a new role. Because risk awareness is not purely cognitive, but always a combination of knowledge and emotion, it is best learned through personal transfer.
Unfortunately, the average leader often has too few contact moments to familiarize new employees with the risks of the profession. Developing risk awareness must therefore be supported by others. A structured onboarding program led by a close colleague (a so-called buddy or mentor) can be helpful. Organizing and overseeing this process is a responsibility of the leader.
Risk awareness, however, only leads to safe behavior if the employee also knows which behavior is appropriate when a risk occurs. This requires training to embed adequate behavioral patterns. Here too, the leader plays a crucial role in organizing and evaluating such training.
7. Seeding safety cues (priming & nudging)
In many cases, there are multiple ways to perform a task, some of which are safer than others. The final choice is strongly influenced by circumstances. Research shows that we are subtly guided by stereotypical messages (priming) and by the design of the work environment (nudging).
Priming involves the targeted transmission of messages—so-called primers. When we regularly encounter small references to safety, we are more inclined to choose a safe behavioral option over an unsafe one. The presence of safety themes in work meetings, toolbox talks, and discussions can serve as primers for safe behavior.
Nudging concerns designing the (work) environment in such a way that certain behaviors are elicited. A well-known example is the etched fly in men’s urinals. If the goal is to encourage slower driving, traffic signs may help, but an equally effective approach is to design narrower roads with paving stones that provide more visual and auditory feedback on speed.
Finally, a tidy work environment (“housekeeping”) increases compliance with rules.
In closing
What is described here is, of course, an idealized picture. In practice, every leader likely already applies some of these principles—perhaps without realizing it. The seven verbs are intended as a reference framework and checklist for setting up leadership coaching and training.
The book “Safe Work Behavior by Brain Based Safety” can help further translate these insights into practice. If you wish to further develop your leaders in this direction, it may be worthwhile to engage in a conversation with Brain Based Safety.
Juni Daalmans
May 2016