Role modeling constitutes principle 4 in the series of management principles. This theme lies at the heart of social influence. Through behavior alone, a manager sets an example for others. Role modeling is therefore a form of unconscious communication and guidance. It can be a powerful auxiliary engine—but also an invisible source of interference. Self-awareness is therefore a crucial element in leveraging role modeling effectively.
The leader as a role model
For employees, the image of their leader functions as a model for their own behavior. Leaders tend to recognize their own likeness in their employees. Those whose behavior resembles that of the leader are often met with greater sympathy. This dynamic creates an unconscious drive for employees to copy the behaviors—and especially the intentions—of their direct supervisor. This applies across many domains, including safety.
How does the safety image form?
Direct subordinates continuously assess their manager. They track how much attention is paid to safety, whether safety is included in planning and decision-making, and whether projects allow sufficient room for safe execution or focus exclusively on results. They observe the speed and decisiveness with which safety improvement plans are implemented, as well as how safely the manager behaves personally.
These observations do not stop at the company gate. A director’s driving speed, for instance, is a popular topic of informal conversation.
Who is sensitive to the safety image?
Sensitivity to the safety image depends on one’s position in the organization. A manager’s role-model effect is strongest among direct subordinates, due to the greater opportunity to identify with the manager’s tasks and responsibilities. Among employees two levels lower in the organization, this influence is still present but less pronounced.
Research by Zohar and Luria shows that the strength of role modeling among direct subordinates is twice as strong as among employees two hierarchical levels below.
What is the impact of the safety image?
Zohar and Luria identified a relationship between employees’ perceptions of the safety image of both their direct supervisor and higher-level managers, and the actual safety performance of the organization. Their conclusion is that organizations operate more safely when employees believe their leaders value safety at least as much as production.
A strong safety image encourages safer behavior, which in turn positively affects the organization’s actual safety outcomes.
Self-awareness
If role modeling is this influential, managers with the greatest self-awareness have the strongest ability to leverage their image. This allows them to amplify the impact of their actions. Conversely, managers whose self-image deviates significantly from how others perceive them will often be puzzled as to why their intended behaviors are not followed.
They may be unaware of the message they are actually sending and fail to recognize that unsafe behavior among employees is partly a direct result of their own unsafe image. Self-awareness is one of the key drivers of managerial effectiveness, including in the domain of safety.
Feedback
The most effective way to increase self-awareness is to actively seek feedback. Some of this feedback is readily available; other insights must be gathered deliberately from additional sources. A coach who can translate workplace perceptions into meaningful insights for leaders and managers is therefore invaluable to an organization.
Such feedback helps managers examine their image and align it more closely with their self-perception—significantly increasing management effectiveness.
Prioritizing safety
This concludes the current blog. The next installment will address one of the core challenges of safe behavior: the fact that the intention to work safely sometimes loses out to competing intentions such as production targets or efficiency.
Leaders who consistently assign a high priority to safety influence employee behavior at an unconscious level—and thereby the safety of the organization as a whole. The next blog will explore how this prioritization works and what actions management can take to ensure safety ranks high on the organizational intent list.
Juni Daalmans
April 2017