Suppose that you are a corporate executive stating that the corporation going forward will prioritize worker safety. Would you say this?
As you will know, I have closed shafts, changed management and terminated contracts in the interests of safety. And I will have no hesitation in doing the same again if that is what it takes to keep people safe.
I have also said that we will only promote managers who manage their business safely and will not promote those who safety performance is poor.
Or do you prefer this?
I have closed shafts where workers struggled to breathe, changed managers who sneered at worker concerns, and terminated contracts where outside parties disdained worker safety. I have done this because the destiny of Anglo-American revolves around the axis of worker safety. I know you feel the same. And we will take any necessary steps in the future to keep people safe.
If you liked the second better, read on. The second is my rewrite of a section of a 2009 speech given by then Anglo-American CEO Cynthia Carroll. In two posts, I am going to examine Carroll’s speech and discuss some strategies that she could have used to improve it. Her speech can be found here: https://www.angloamerican.com/~/media/Files/A/Anglo-American-Group-v9/PLC/media/speeches/2009sp/2009-05-20/2009-05-20.pdf. Carroll’s story is dealt with in Harvard Business School case study 9-414-019, which deals with Carroll’s Zero Harm initiative. This initiative positioned Anglo-American in the absolute vanguard of worker safety. For the 2009 speech, she would need words that rang.
Background
Anglo-American is an international mining company with principal operations in South Africa. Between 2002 and 2006, Anglo American averaged 46 deaths in mining accidents yearly.
In chairman Mark Moody-Stuart’s view, worker safety was compromised by tough-guy managerial attitudes, which led the managers to shrug their shoulders when workers died. The case study quoted an executive: “There was this prevailing attitude in the industry that mining was a manly endeavor, like going to war, and you knew the dangers it entailed.” Carroll would be combatting this.
The case study begins with her receiving news of another worker death only a few months into her tenure. That brought the 2007-year total to 29 miner deaths. Carroll was aghast: “In my first address to shareholders in 2007, I was clear to them. These fatalities and injuries are unacceptable.”
Analysis: Persuading versus Ordering.
Although she uses first person plural pronouns like “we” and “our” to establish camaraderie with her audience, Carroll seems often to be giving orders rather than persuading:
As you will know, I have closed shafts, changed management and terminated contracts in the interests of safety. And I will have no hesitation in doing the same again if that is what it takes to keep people safe.
I have also said that we will only promote managers who manage their business safely and will not promote those who safety performance is poor.
The same principle holds for our contracting partners. We will only work with organisations which share our commitment to Zero Harm and who treat their employees with respect and care. It is my firm belief that when you show people that you respect and care about them. I then they care for one another and for the business itself.
Anyone who reads this speech at even a cursory level would feel that Carroll would brook no dissent in the matter. Of course, she was right to stress that workers should be safe.
But, to achieve this goal, was she best served by giving orders or by persuading? I doubt that the order-giving served her because it likely did not reflect reality – Carroll likely did not have unbridled corporate authority. Anglo’s operations were absolutely sprawling: it operated or explored in 40 countries with nearly 162,000 employees. It was largely a collection of mining businesses that operated independently. One executive told Carroll, “The heads of the businesses act like tribal chiefs. If they were asked to do something around safety or people development, etc., they would tell you to get lost.”
By the time she gave her speech, Carroll was some two years into her tenure. She might have fully consolidated power by then and been positioned to exert total control on the issue of worker safety. But that might have been unlikely considering that she would have had to fully reincorporate the somewhat balkanized independent businesses that she had inherited. If she did not have supreme authority, she would have been better using the velvet glove of persuasion, even if it cloaked the iron fist of asserting a new priority. To insist on a phantom supreme authority risked her looking impotent – the emperor without clothes.
I see a second problem. Carroll was confronting tough-guy attitudes that foisted blame on workers for fatalities and injuries. With the peremptory language, she seems to be saying that she can be tougher than anyone there. Perhaps, in the macho culture of mining, she felt that it would be best to come off as strong and dominant.
But, that kind of order-giving can either generate resentment or fear. Elsewhere in the speech, Carroll acknowledges that the “how” of getting to safety will involve collaborative efforts with the outside executives. But no one would make sincere suggestions on how to improve worker safety if they either felt resentful or afraid that they would be punished for the suggestion. This kind of collaboration necessitates that the rhetor show an openness of spirit – even if the final end – worker safety – is non-negotiable.
The better path would have been to dismantle the whole macho culture and introduce discussion and reflection. This kind of deliberative approach would also smooth the way for future efforts that would lead to a collective buy-in, both inside and outside the company. In such an environment, where people feel that they have been induced to choose worker safety, they will be freer and more willing to give suggestions on how to get there.
As an alternative, she could have simply assumed that people shared the emotional good of worker safety, and centered her speech on logos – reasoned argumentation on how to find policies and practices that will promote safety.
In the next post, I will examine how she might have used classical rhetorical principles to make a persuasive appeal.
Like what you are reading here? Perhaps you feel the need to understand the culture to which you will be directing your message. If so, book a session with me so that we can consider how to use rhetoric and modern principles of communication to bring your audience to your side.
