Understanding and Using Your “Coaching” Safety-Leadership Style

Understanding and Using Your Coaching Leadership Style for Health and Safety CoursesSo far we’ve looked at five safety-leadership styles, and there’s just one more to add to the mix, and that’s the Coaching Style. It’s fair to say that style is the preferred style of many leaders. In fact, all things considered, the Coaching Leadership Style is by far the most widely used style. [content_protector password=”sls-05″ identifier=”sls-05″]

Recall that there are six safety-leadership styles. They are: Coercive >> Authoritative >> Affiliative >> Democratic >> Pace-setting >> Coaching

How Does the Coaching Style Differ From Other Safety-Leadership Styles?

The Coaching Style is decidedly a developmental style.  With a focus on trying new things and stretching in new ways, its prime objective is long-term personal and professional development.

The tendency of this style is long-range development by identifying the performance strengths and weaknesses of an individual. Have they progressed in their safety leadership beyond what they would gain from operations training, process safety management training, and basic health and safety courses?  If so, this style is a good one to use.

Once strengths are identified, the objective is to leverage and use those strengths to further the vision or direction.  Weaknesses, once identified, translate into new opportunities for development.

This style is most effective for highly skilled, highly competent–and highly engaged–team members.  As with the Pace-Setter, the Coaching style is custom-made to accommodate high performance players.

Unfortunately, this style is not as effective when it comes to new employees or a high-maintenance team.  Both of those employee categories need lots of training and basic skills building before they would benefit from the coaching safety-leadership style.

Be sure to view the video below for more information about the Coaching Style. And stay tuned as we explore when and how to use each style.  But that’s it for this edition of Recordable INSIGHTS.  Until next time.

~ES

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About the Author

Eric Svendsen
Eric Svendsen, Ph.D., is Principal and lead change agent for safetyBUILT-IN, a safety-leadership learning and development organization. He has over 20 years experience in creating and executing outcomes-based leadership development and culture change initiatives aligned to organizational goals, and he personally led the safety-culture initiatives of a number of client organizations that resulted in “best ever safety performance” years for those companies.