Leading the Safety Adventure
Safety and Ergonomics Specialist Grace Thai isn’t afraid to push the limits while making sure to stay safe.
- By Robert Pater
- Sep 01, 2021
There is always place for those who approach their field in different ways, as long as they're effective. Grace Thai, Manager of Safety Management Systems with Hawaiian Airlines immediately comes to mind. If there is a default mold for the average safety professional, she breaks through.
In his famous bestselling career development manual, Richard N. Bolles contends that people are first drawn to a field because its inherent approaches mirror what they already believe. Then, years of immersion in their profession reinforce their mindset. Most of the safety professionals I know (including myself) tend to lean towards a risk-averse lifestyle. As I’ve mentioned in previous seminars, it’s unlikely to see many safety pros who would go bungee jumping or leap out of a perfectly good plan. (However, if they do, they would thoroughly read the bungee cord manual and likely want to tie on multiple bungees as a backup before they leap.)
This cautious approach to life can disconnect us from those we most want to influence. It leads to supervisors, who are ultimately responsible for fomenting positive change, getting frustrated with and even blaming workers for seemingly disregarding safety policies, procedures and practices. “What’s the matter with them? Don’t they care about their own safety?”
As mentioned before, Grace is different. Not outwardly so, however. She is communicative, high energy and has a positive “can do” attitude. Grace has a bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology, followed by four years as a Safety and Ergonomics Specialist with Honda of Canada Manufacturing, which achieved groundbreaking results in injury reduction. Then she moved to Honolulu to work with Hawaiian Airlines as a Safety Manager. She accomplished all this, before she was 30 years old. Here are some comments previous supervisors said about her:
“Anybody would be fortunate to work with Grace.”
“Grace is an amazing person and a huge piece of the ergonomics program at Honda Canada.”
“She builds relationships with people very easily.”
“She was highly successful both on an individual level, supporting our ergonomic coaches, but also on a programmatic level, building support from other leaders.”
The thing that sets Grace apart though, is that she has bungee jumped, sky-dived and more. She even went to Kenya at 22 to teach women in the Korogocho slum how to set up and run their own businesses.
Grace is a first-rate safety leader, but under her calm, even-tempered demeanor, she is also personally one of the most adventurous safety professionals I know. She’s not an adrenaline junkie, but she does work to seek out activities that frequently take her out of her comfort zone.
By not fitting the stereotype image of the safety professional showing up to enforce the rules, she comes off more relatable to those she leads. This helps her in communicating and persuading others to live and work safer. How, she wonders, can she expect others to learn individualized risk management if she can’t relate to taking some considered risks herself?
What can those of us more risk-averse safety professionals learn from Grace that we can apply to becoming a more effective leader? Consider these seven ideas:
This article originally appeared in the September 2021 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.