Originally published by the Australian Institute of Health & Safety
Effective leadership goes beyond directing a team; it requires fostering curiosity, empowering individuals, and creating an environment where innovation thrives, particularly in OHS where balancing compliance with human-centred engagement is crucial.
Curious leaders are often very successful because they tend to ask rather than tell, according to Greg Lazzaro, principal – strategic advisory for The Safe Step. “By asking lots of questions, they are tapping into the full capability within their team,” he said.
“I have seen some intelligent people who are terrible leaders because they always want to have their opinion on the table and usually everyone else around them shuts down. Leaders need to support their teams, that’s a given, but they also need to lead with a human-centred approach, that is, being able to tune into what their team members respond to.”
Lazzaro, who was speaking ahead of an AIHS webinar on Future-Ready: Critical Skills for Tomorrow’s Safety Professional, which will be held on Thursday 6 March, pointed out that not everyone likes to be led the same way: some people like autonomy and others like to have access to support more readily for direction and multiple variations in between.
“The challenge for the leader is to balance the needs of their team whilst being consistent and very clear of the direction or vision, so that team members understand their contribution to the end game,” he said.
“Leaders who are clear on the outcomes and don’t ‘meddle in the detail’ often create an environment that explores what is possible. This is key to success as it enables an enrolment to occur as it comes from the team.”
In these environments, Lazzaro said good leaders often surround themselves with clever, engaged people who are enrolled in the organisational vision and objectives, become solid advocates, and learn valuable leadership lessons along the way.
“Leaders don’t have to be smartest people in the room. Teams will thrive if their leader creates a safe environment and shows a degree of vulnerability,” he said.
For those leaders that want to get better at leading, Lazzaro recommended they learn to stay quiet more, ask more questions of your team, become curious in their ideas, and actively listen. “This is the easiest and most effective way to empower your team and extract the gold,” he said.
“Show that you have high trust by intentionally skipping the odd leadership meeting and allow them to run it, you will be surprised on how conversations could flow differently in your absence. Then ask them how it went, what was different and make notes to yourself about how this could happen whilst you are in the room.”
Lazzaro acknowledged that OHS professionals have a challenging job, and a balance must be struck between ensuring that there are high standard of systems and process, coupled with behaviours and practices that compliment a harm prevention culture is often challenging. “Empowering others to take accountability for their own and their teams’ safety is a true sign of organisational success,” he said.
“The OHS professional’s opportunity is to be empathetic and seek to understand why work as imagined doesn’t always translate to work as done. Take practical steps to ask what you can do to help others achieve their objectives.
“This is powerful and immediately focuses others on your ability to help them rather than asking them to do something for you. By engaging people on what’s important to them, they will mostly be more tuned into what you need for the organisation.”
For OHS leaders, Lazzaro said to employ multiple approaches to build team capability by involving them in projects that could be outside the immediate OHS team, encouraging them to take more active learning pathways, and considering them for secondments in other areas to lift their organisational depth.
“Supporting the OHS profession to become the leaders of tomorrow is a real need in the current landscape and with digital, AI and other technology expanding at a logarithmic pace, it is important to raise the awareness of how this affects the harm prevention and care cultures that we strive to maintain,” he said.
Lazzaro will be co-presenting an AIHS webinar on Future-Ready: Critical Skills for Tomorrow’s Safety Professional together with Stephen Coldicutt, associate director of The Safe Step. The webinar, which will be held on Thursday 6 March from 12:30 – 1:30pm AEDT, will detail the capabilities that consistently differentiate top performers, practical ways to develop these skills, and how to showcase them effectively. For more information visit the event website.
