“One ill-judged behaviour can decimate a culture”: leaders debate leadership at SHW Live

Gawthrop was one of five panellists at ‘the Leadership Effect: It all Starts at the Core’, panel event at the Senior Leaders Summit, an exclusive programme of talks at SHW Live yesterday in London.

British Safety Council CEO and moderator, Mike Robinson asked key questions for the panel to respond to. On what leadership traits are most effective in driving real change, Tim Marsh, Managing Director of Anker & Marsh, said a good leader will demonstrate what he called “proactive learning”: “When things go wrong a good leader asks why curiously not passively,” he elaborated.  “'What do you need from me to help you to [be able to] go home safely?'” should be a question asked, and these should be asked daily.”

Panelists from L to R: Chris Briggs, Peter McGettrick, Kirsty Summerby, Jonathon Gawthrop and Tim Marsh. 

How to make remote or hybrid working work for your organisation? This next question was answered by Peter McGettrick, Chair of the British Safety Council, who stressed the importance of communication. This involves being “emotionally connected”; understanding what motivates a person and what their circumstances are. With technology threatening to alienate and separate us, leaders need to make sure that remote working, as in person, is “deeply human”.

Chris Briggs, Group Health and Safety Director at JCB, said good comms may require tailoring messages to different parts of the organisation.

Mike then asked panellists to offer any “real life, tangible”, examples of leadership. Gawthrop shared how at EMCOR where he is executive director of safety, they revamped their question set for the manager’s ‘walking about’ on site. One question, “tell me how you’re feeling today?” sparked a discussion about what might happen if the answer was “no.” They realised as an organisation that they had “no mechanisms” of support for such an answer.

“We took that one statement to focus in on a framework in signposting and supporting.. we created stories and storytellers who shared their own experience and created a lexicon for how we want to talk about mental health, we said ‘this is the language we want to use’. But it took a few years – culture change takes a few years,” he said.

Kirsty Summerby, Health and Safety Director at Unipart shared her example of how they hold check-ins before every meeting, asking each person “how are you personally and at work” helping to open up a dialogue. “It is helping us to become a safe space where people talk about mental health.”

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