Tag: Leadership Development

Your workforce is one of your project’s greatest assets. From the top down, the maturity of this asset has a dramatic impact on your safety culture and ultimately your bottom line. In this article I identify personal maturity metrics. By using the metrics, maturity is now identifiable. The idea is that your safety culture becomes stronger based on each individual’s ability to demonstrate mature behaviors. We can now recognize, demonstrate and teach these mature behaviors at all levels of management. In doing so, we are fostering maturity by empowering personal responsibility. The reverse holds...

In iP’s earlier installments of the Supervisory Series (April 2011 and June 2011), we discussed the importance of career development for lineworkers targeted for supervisory responsibilities, as well as the supervisory skills required to be effective as a crew leader or foreman. In this installment, we will discuss one additional set of supervisory skills that are possibly the most critical for the new supervisor: human behavior and communication. Human BehaviorWhy do people do what they do? Is human behavior predictable? Human behavior, and people in general, are so complex; could there be...

In iP’s first installment of the Supervisory Series (April 2011), we discussed how many organizations react when they are in sudden need of a crew foreman. Most have no career development plans for their lineworkers and have not taken the time to adequately prepare qualified crew members to move into a supervisory position. A quick decision is made out of desperation to promote the best employee we can find at the moment. Unfortunately, with good intentions, we often set up our best employees to fail this way because they have not been properly prepared for their new responsibilities.   The...

It happens all too often. We need a foreman as soon as possible. The crew leader position is vacant for any number of reasons – often suddenly – and we need someone now. A powerline crew can possibly continue to work minus a groundman, helper or apprentice. Depending on the crew configuration and work assignments, we may even get by a few days without a lineman. But to be without a foreman is usually grounds for shutting down the crew. If we’re lucky, maybe an operations manager can fill in temporarily, but the crew foreman’s position must be filled sooner rather than later. Limited...

Careless adoption of a best practice may result in placing dangerous blinders on individuals within the organization, ceasing the search for vital fresh approaches. Someone, somewhere, pioneered the approach you are considering. Is your goal to innovate, or follow? The English writer, Charles Caleb Colton, said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.” The average safety performers imitate; the best create a culture of collaborative innovation within all levels of the organization. Best practice is often defined as a proven method to accomplish a task in a more efficient and effective...