HP Principle #3 - Individual behaviors are influenced by culture and leadership. That reminds me of a John Maxwell quote, “Leadership is influence, nothing more”. So much of this is about gaining awareness of how the behaviors of leadership influence the behaviors of the workers. That influence can be intentional or unintentional. Either way, what workers do on your project is directly influenced by what leaders do. And I’m not just talking about wearing PPE. I’m talking about perceptions of equity in accountability, having a growth minded attitude, creating an environment of open communication, and why people are or aren’t engaged.Since HP is concerned with becoming a learning culture, a critical component of leadership is continually growing your ability to influence others to add value to them.The power of influence can be used for very selfish reasons. True leadership is using the power of influence to add value to others, not yourself. What’s good for the team is good for the leaders. They both benefit. However, in a world where me-me-me is something we see a lot of, this can be challenging. John Maxwell says there is a leadership deficit in our world today. He says that our entire world is seeing more bad examples of leadership traits, from churches, to politicians, to companies, than examples of great leadership. We need to show the world what great leadership looks like. Unfortunately, there are less examples of great leadership than there are of poor leadership.As I mentioned earlier, this is often the hardest HP principle to implement. This one is an inside job. We need to change people from the inside out. We need to work on the organizational culture from the top down, not the bottom up.Although the leadership principle can bear the most fruit, it is also the hardest to implement. Leadership is involved with emotional change, not technical change. That’s what makes it so hard. The leadership principle is concerned with changing people on the inside.This is a hard path to go down, but the best things you experience in life are never the easy ones. It’s the hard stuff that produces the most satisfaction in the life experience. To help people become better people is not easy. But it’s also the most rewarding. From one view it’s a total paradox. But should it really be any other way? Greatness comes from struggle.  Through that lens, it should definitely be this way.So, let’s look at some different ways that leadership influences behavior and how to improve upon it.Modeling Safe BehaviorsI think the easiest one to start with is modeling the safety behaviors you want your people to display. It’s easy to talk about because I believe all of us have seen examples of this.If the supervisor performs energized work without LOTO or following NFPA requirements, then that sends a powerful message to the workers. The rule doesn’t apply to supervision.You can apply that to not using fall protection, not wearing PPE and the myriad of things I think all of us safety people have seen at some time in our career. I believe all of us know how important it is to do what we say others should do. At this point, lead by example and practice what you preach, have become a little cliché. However, actually doing these things is not always practiced in our world. Still, it’s imperative that we do what we want others to do.We are all human, including managers and supervisors. But when we are in a leadership position, more is required of us. It’s hard for all of us to always do the right thing. This reminds me of another quote from John Maxwell, “The hardest person to lead is myself”.We need to show ourselves grace, because all of us are human and all of us are failable. At the same time, we have to hold ourselves to a higher standard.Beyond following rules, leaders must model the emotional intelligence we want our workforce to display. CommunicationOne example is communication. I often see in our culture assessment work managers desiring employees to communicate more about what they know. Managers often express a perception that employees just won’t speak up, or share, or bring things to their attention. If you want people to communicate more, you must learn how to influence those people to want to talk to you. My friend Shelli McCoy, who was on a previous podcast, studies how the vibrations we give off can attract others to us. I was talking to her about the type of people I attract tend to be struggling with something. She mentioned how I give off vibrations that make people think I genuinely care about their struggles and genuinely want to help them. This is an example of knowing how behavior influences the behavior of others.Words can mean a lot but so much of communication is body language, or vibrations as my friend Shelli says. Our facial expressions, our posture, the way we hold out our hands, how we ask, how we respond, our tone of voice; all of these things influence the willingness of employees to share information. Are we talking about these things? Are we developing these skills? Are we measuring their effectiveness and holding people accountable for these traits? These leadership skills matter in the context of adopting Human Performance principles.Buy-InAnother one I hear often is a perceived lack of buy-in. It might present itself as lack of buy-in from the worker level or middle management. The real question is why are they not buying in, and how am I selling it?Sometimes I see where a percentage of management is bought in to HP and a percentage is not. People don’t buy-in to what they are told is valuable, they buy-in to what they believe is valuable. One of the best methods to increase buy-in is to be authentic with your own buy-in. You can’t convince someone to believe in something. People make their own choice whether or not they believe. However, your ability to influence buy-in is much greater when you believe it. People are much more likely to believe in something because the leader believes it to be true, not because they are told to believe it.How leaders communicate the benefits of HP matters. If they come across as authentic, showing that they truly believe that HP will create a cultural shift that benefits the frontline worker, then the workforce is more likely to buy-in to this philosophy. If the leader is communicating some new safety stuff that we have to do to satisfy company requirements, there will be a lot less buy-in.Not everyone in management will buy-in to HP immediately. But the buy-in we see at the frontline is directly related to this. Some of our leadership team will need more attention and time than others. Some will buy-in during the introductory class. Some may never buy in. What is imperative, is to be fully aware that leadership influences buy-in. Any gaps in that influence must be addressed through education, coaching and accountability.Some of our most successful clients started the HP path by educating upper management first. Although many of them faced struggles and resistance with that approach, looking back they often mention how it was one of the most valuable things they did. When leadership is bought in, buy in from middle management and the frontline is so much easier. EngagementAnother one ...

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