Leader emotional commitment

Who the leader is lies at the center of the model. The leader s personal safety ethic is at the core of safety leadership. No one can be an effective patient safety leader without genuinely valuing the safety of others. Personality, values, and emotional commitment are part of this ethic. Because our personalities are developed early in life and tend to change little in adulthood, a leader is more successful in achieving his desired ends when he understands how his personality affects his behavior and is experienced by other people. 

A leader s personal safety ethic is a blend of the leader s personality, values, and emotional commitment to safety. Let s explore each one. 

These considerations bring us to the next aspect of the Safety Leadership Model s center—the values and emotional commitment to safety that are part of the leader s personal safety ethic. 

A good leader is sensitive to the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic values. This is how he or she keeps the organization focused and working to achieve its proper ends—whether that is performing surgery with technical excellence or scheduling to maximize the bottom line. In addition, however, a great safety leader is especially sensitive to intrinsic values. She believes in and is deeply committed to the worth of the individual—a belief that is deeply felt as an emotional commitment to the health and safety of each individual patient and employee. 

A leader can express the compassion and emotional commitment required to be a great safety leader by not allowing himself to relate to patients and employees as mere resources or as paying customers, but rather by holding himself responsible to relate to them—in his interactions and even in his thoughts—as individuals. 

The journey, which has delivered a deep-rooted commitment to sustainable development, has been long and challenging. It has reached to the core of Shell s values and drawn widely on society s expectations. It has engaged the time and emotions of senior leaders, and impacted the people, business models, governance,... 

Fact/value confusion describes the tendency to regard and present strongly held values as facts. For example, the debate over abortion, pro and con, often proceeds with value commitments pla)dng the role of fact. In another example, a doctor may be unaware of how his personal religious or sectarian convictions influence how he interprets data and directs patient treatment/ A patient safety leader may make the opposite mistake, appealing only to facts to motivate a needed change in culture while remaining blind to or mute about the relevance of ethical and emotional issues. 

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