The Power of Paying It Forward

So far, we’ve looked at why relationships are the key to unlocking our potential (there’s no such thing as a self-made leader), how harnessing the power of candid conversations builds strong foundations for those relationships, and steps we can take to maximize the return on investment from each relationship we cultivate. If we only put these in place, we’ll quickly see a measurable difference in the results we achieve in our professional lives. But the most effective leaders I’ve ever known focused as much on developing their team members as they did on what they achieved personally, and that was crucial in unlocking the power of paying forward. To be completely honest, I’ve experienced more professional growth through the process of developing others, most of which was based more on survival than intentionality - and I’ll explain that more soon, than anything that only benefited me. To paint this picture, I’ll share a few lessons I learned from the amazing mentors I’ve had in my life. I’ll also detail a couple that I’ve stumbled onto myself…

I don’t think I’ve ever felt completely qualified for any job I’ve been offered, mainly because I wasn’t. Earlier, I shared how the work ethic I learned in my teens opened some of the first doors to bigger and better opportunities. As the responsibility involved with each new position increased, the gaps between what I was prepared for and what I would need to achieve to be successful grew too. Never being one to let my current ability get in the way of a chance to take on something new, I pushed forward; daring at times, often ignorant to the consequences I was opening myself up to, and nearly always under the assumption that I’d somehow figure things out on the fly. Each of the mentors I’ve listed so far, and many others that I’ll attempt to give credit to moving forward, helped me keep from drowning any time I jumped into the deep end of the pool. Interestingly enough, I always seem to learn the most from the lessons those mentors had shared with me when I found myself in a spot where I had no choice but to convey that message to someone else. I’ve often heard Albert Einstein quoted as saying, “If you can’t explain it simply then you don’t understand it well enough.” While there’s some debate as to whether he actually did, the statement holds true here.

When I was first asked to travel to another facility to provide training on the behavior-based safety initiative I was responsible for locally, I had been involved with the process for close to five years but had been in the facilitator role for less than two. Like most everything else, I was learning as I went and felt ill-equipped to offer that kind of support on my own - especially for another site within the company that had floundered after receiving the training initially from someone who was likely far more qualified than me. I went anyway. Surprisingly, whatever I offered seemed to hit the mark, and that soon resulted in me being asked to support a few other locations across the United States. Within the next year, I found myself in a formal conversation with the man who led our company’s behavior-based safety initiative globally and his boss, the corporate safety director, detailing how they wanted me to officially provide support to all our sites in North America that had active behavior-based safety processes.

Once I agreed in that initial conversation, things got more serious - quickly. Since this wouldn’t be a full time position, we needed my boss and his boss (Kevin and Rod) to sign off. They did, but under the stipulation that my local duties would remain my top priority and the very limited overtime (I was an hourly employee the entire time) would be billed to the corporate office. Like I had done so many times before, I assured them that I could live up to all that to get the deal inked. Not only did I underestimate how tough juggling all that would be - my local responsibilities, traveling across the country two or three times each month, and preparing for and delivering training in manufacturing plants I had never set foot in - I didn’t have perspective early on for just how unusual it would be for a guy with a high school education who was operating a press just a few years prior to be making recommendations to the executive team as I wrapped up my time in each location. Developing others certainly is a path to earning leadership influence and there’s tremendous power in paying forward the lessons we learn from our mentors, but being forced to teach others is what really sharpens our edge so let’s look at a few ways I experienced that.

Teaching Sharpens Your Edge

I had been extremely consistent in completing the expected weekly observations, became a member of the steering committee, and got somewhat involved in the training sessions during the two years prior to accepting responsibility for facilitating the behavior-based safety process at our plant in Harrisonburg, VA. During the 18 months leading up to that first trip to provide training in Hartwell, GA, I guided several groups through the full two-day observer training course and I had brought a few new folks onto the steering committee. All of that, though, was under the watchful eyes of mentors like Terry, Kevin, and Rod. Anytime I felt over my head, support was just a few steps away. Further, our process had a decent foundation. When I walked into the plant in Hartwell, and almost every other facility that asked for my help, I had none of those things to back me. The challenge I was faced with then lied in paying forward all the guidance I had been blessed with to that point in hopes of providing the team members and executives in each location with return on what they invested by bringing me in.

Initially, especially during the first day at the plant in Georgia, I felt extremely inadequate. I had sat through multiple sessions where several of the company's best trainers covered the content I was there to deliver. While I was no longer terrified of speaking in front of a small group of my peers, I certainly wasn’t as versed as the folks I had learned the material from. I struggled to be as eloquent in covering the scientific methodology backing the initiative early on so I was forced to rely heavily on the only other thing I knew: my practical experience in conducting the observations, providing feedback to the people I observed, and working with them to initiate behavioral change that reduced or eliminated any risk they were exposed to. 

With each of the people I trained in that observation process being hourly manufacturing workers who had similar experience to what I had done before accepting that position, what I shared seemed to connect - even if it wasn’t as articulate or as thorough as it was when I first learned it. But each time I covered the material, especially with groups in facilities where it was all on me, I became more competent and more confident in everything I was sharing, at least with the folks I was training directly.

As I wrapped up my time at each location, I had to provide a report to members of the local management team, typically the site safety manager, operations manager, and plant manager. Working through the how-to’s with a handful of folks I viewed as my direct peers forced me to get good at presenting the material, but presenting a list of action steps for the facility’s management team - which I was expected to share with the corporate safety director afterward - was a whole different kind of challenge. In many cases, the management team members I met with had only vague familiarity with the behavior-based safety methodology. And sometimes, they were adamantly opposed to supporting it. 

Whether it was in earning a press operator’s commitment to perform weekly observations or getting enough buy-in from their managers to allow them to have time to do the observations, the training I was providing others soon helped me clarify my own knowledge in every aspect of behavior-based safety to a level that built the influence necessary to lead when I had no real positional authority. Teaching others what I had learned myself not long before helped me master the technical aspects of the process and it refined my leadership ability. Over time, the results I could help each location achieve became better and better. Through all that though, I would have fallen flat on my face if I hadn’t been able to delegate some responsibilities at home to a few key team members.

Empowering Through Delegation

Teaching others across North America what I had been applying personally in our local behavior-based safety process sharpened every aspect of how I understood the methodology it was based on. Further, it forced me to learn those concepts so well that I could explain them to people with varying backgrounds and native languages. Truth be told, that experience also helped me develop communication skills that have served me in every other role I’ve taken on since. But if that had been my sole focus, I would have found myself looking for employment since I had committed to keeping my local responsibilities as my top priority. As thin as this stretched me, it led to many opportunities for me to pay forward the lessons I had learned from my mentors.

After only a few trips to other facilities, I realized that I wouldn’t be able to juggle everything that had required 40 hours of my time each week, spend close to 40 hours on the road and in the air each month, and another 40 hours working with the folks in those other locations. Much of my time locally was tied to entering data from the hundreds of behavior-based safety observations completed each month, running reports on that data, and working with our steering committee and management team to analyze those reports in mitigating risks throughout our facility. Our local IT manager was amazing; he worked his magic on the nearly obsolete laptop the corporate office provided me for use while traveling, allowing me to keep up with most of the data entry from airports and hotel rooms. That helped me get back ten to fifteen hours each month, but there was just no saving the other 65 to 70 that I had previously been able to spend one-on-one coaching the observers and steering team members volunteering in our local process. 

This challenge taught me the value of being empowered to think outside the box. It also provided me with an opportunity to learn how empowering others through delegation fosters their growth, strengthens team bonds, and often produces results that would never happen otherwise. Before detailing how I learned each lesson, consider this statement as it relates to empowerment: “The truest form of torture is to assign responsibility without authority.” Interestingly enough, the guy who said this did exactly that with a small group of volunteers I was part of a while back. He set very specific goals he expected us to achieve, without any budget for doing so, and squashed every idea we implemented that hadn’t received his complete approval - regardless how effective we were. He told us early on that we were empowered to make things happen, but his words and deeds did nothing to back that initial statement.

Once I realized there was no way I could juggle everything necessary in our local process and spend nearly half my working hours each month out of the building, I floated an idea to Rod and Kevin. I asked for their support in tasking each of our steering committee members with some of the duties I couldn’t do remotely. Since it would only be one or two hours per week from each of them, Rod and Kevin gave me their blessing to seek support from the supervisors and managers the steering committee members reported to. The sense of empowerment I felt from Rod and Kevin gave me hope, but I still had to learn how to provide someone else with that same feeling…

Most of the supervisors and managers I talked with offered reluctant approval. The real work for me started when I had to provide each of those steering team members with enough autonomy to perform the tasks a little differently than I had as long as they were achieving the necessary results. That was tough. But since I had no authority with any of them and needed their help, I chose to tread lightly. The results that followed have been some of the most fulfilling that I’ve experienced professionally to this day.

Through that empowerment, from me to take on new responsibilities in the behavior-based safety process and from their supervisors to have time away from their regular duties to do so, each of them performed at a higher level; in their normal jobs and with the new tasks they took on. The training I was delivering at other locations was producing positive results but the team that formed locally through this new sense of empowerment yielded what was widely recognized as the most effective behavior-based process in the company. Even better, though, has been the long term results so many of those steering committee members have achieved since. 

Rod and Kevin trusted me enough to empower me. I had a lot to learn to pass that empowerment on to the team around me. Delegating some of the most crucial tasks, then allowing them to have autonomy to complete those tasks with their own unique approach showed that I trusted them too. While that resulted in some longstanding relationships, my favorite part continues to be watching the success each of them have achieved since as they’ve built on those initial tasks I delegated to them. That said, each of them needed a different type of support and the only way I could provide that was by listening closely enough to help unlock their potential - so we’ll pick up there soon.