Managing Competencies of Safety Leaders: Some Promises and Shortcomings

This chapter aims to explore the potential of identifying and managing leadership competencies that contribute to safer workplaces. The importance of competencies for safety leadership also varies with regard to situational contingencies. The designated competencies describe a leader’s behavior aimed at organizing and coordinating co-workers’ safe task fulfillment, which involves clarifying work roles and providing the necessary resources in terms of technical support and knowledge. All in all, monitoring and developing safety leadership competencies is prone to the difficulty in reliably monitoring and therefore tracing leaders’ competencies and their impact on safety. The competency itself contains several behavioral aspects of providing leadership and supervision and deciding and initiating action. The competencies were mainly derived from the transformational and empowering leadership model. The designated competencies describe a leader’s behavior aimed at organizing and coordinating co-workers’ safe task fulfillment, which involves clarifying work roles and providing the necessary resources in terms of technical support and knowledge.