Behavioural Science for Leadership in Safety Defence Sector Case Study

Our client was keen to develop and upskill the teams within their Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) function, so they were exposed to the skills they needed to help facilitate their journey within the organisation but also within the wider OSH profession.

They were searching for a training offering to support this transition and became aware of Behavioural Science for Leadership in Safety, which was something new and different around leadership. What appealed to those operating in a safety capacity, and more broadly their leaders across the business was that the course material could be delivered in an easily digestible format with a flexible learning approach and accredited by IOSH.

Since they started the course, they found members of their SHE function building upon their traditional OSH backgrounds, growing their capabilities and technical skills in a way that allows them to put theory into practice and offer up new ways of working at an operational level. By combining this course with development in coaching skills, they were seeing improvements across the function – and engaging and enabling the leadership teams across the organisation. The conversations on SHE were so much more probing and positive and switching from a compliance focus to one of system flexibility through engagement with their people.

They also combined Behavioural Science for Leadership in Safety with a book written by Clive Lloyd – called the Next Generation Safety Leadership: From Compliance to Care. Together the whole approach became the blueprint for their OSH professionals.

 

Behavioural Science for Leadership in Safety

Fifty individuals in their SHE function hadn’t really had exposure to more contemporary approaches on Safety leadership. In the past, it had been about compliance and reactive investigations focussing on the individual’s non-compliance with the system. Their aim was to change this approach by coaching the leadership team and business to see people as an asset and solution, not a problem – which is why they were quite taken with the section on leadership, leadership styles and developing a positive culture –and how they turned this into reality within their organisation.

Completing the training at their own pace, they encouraged the teams to actively engage in talking about what they’d learned and shared ideas on how these theories could translate into improvements within their organisation. Their people were becoming more curious and starting to ask questions and explore the learnings by putting them into practice.

Using the Swiss Cheese model, they considered what they have in place as an organisation and where they have holes and more importantly how they could do better. It was about peer-to-peer encouragement, changing the hearts and minds of the individual, the team and the business and bringing the concept to life through reflection boards. They were interested in the humanistic approach to coaching their people through empowerment and that’s what this course gave them.

Their directors wanted better trust and a psychologically safe environment where people can freely speak up to tackle problems not just in the SHE realm but across their operations. So, for them, it started with the Behavioural Science for Leadership in Safety.