The closing section of our book Following-Leading in Risk, A Humanising Dynamic presents what we call an ‘Adaptive Toolbox’. These are a suite of methods that can help anyone in management/supervision demonstrate an ethic of care/helping. It is one thing to have aspirations and slogans about leading and quite another to have practical methods to help enact those aspirations.

An ethic of care/helping means that any engagement with others places their needs at front of Mind (not brain). This means placing their best interests in decision making, as achieved through mutuality, respect and dialogue. None of this happens by accident, nor can supervising others or caring/helping for others, happen without open and effective listening. In a strange way this means that leading and managing takes the lead from following.

So, what are your tools/methods that help you demonstrate vision, helping, listening and caring? What do you do that demonstrates that you know how to follow and lead? You can’t talk about ‘doing’ anything without methods to do.

This was first discussed by Riggio, Chaleff and Lipman-Blumen (2008) in The Art of Followership, How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and Organisations.

Following is not about subservience or status. Neither is following about hierarchy or power. This is essential to understand an ethic of caring/helping.

Caring is not about feelings or emotion but rather about orientation. In Following, one delays one’s own needs and the needs of the organisation/system, for others. This is well described by Buber in his classic work i-thou (https://www.maximusveritas.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/iandthou.pdf).

When we look at the visual structure of the word i-thou we see that the hyphen conveys the idea of meeting. Ie. we leave our position of self and come into the hyphen to meet others. The key to effective leading and managing is not having meetings but knowing what ‘meeting’ is. In real meeting we learn how to trust and value the other. Most often meaningless meetings are conducted as a checking mechanism because there is little trust in the organisation.

Aneta and Brian Darlington discuss this beautifully in their book Real Meeting (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/real-meeting-a-book-on-being-in-leadership/). Both come from extensive experience in Leading, Managing and Following. Aneta as Crew Manager Emirates and Brian as Global Head HSEQ for Mondi Group. This is also one of the best and most practical books I have read ever on Leading, Managing and Supervising.

In their book they represent the hyphen visually

How far into the hyphen do we venture to ‘meet’ others?

Do we know to relinquish power and delay our own needs for the sake of others?

What about the needs of the organisation or the needs of the individual?

Or, are persons in the organisation just viewed as ‘objects’?

This is the language of psychosocial ‘hazards’! Only safety could turn psychosocial needs and person into objects. (https://safetyrisk.net/what-is-psychosocial-safety/)

The best way to help so called ‘psychosocial safety’ in the workplace is to have tools and methods for following-leading. In SPoR, we never use the language of ‘hazards’ in reference to people, culture, organisation or well-being. The best place to start in psychological safety is to jettison that language as quickly as possible.

In SPoR, we don’t fix people as ‘hazards’ nor understand work context as a ‘hazard’.

In SPoR, we focus on the ethic of: helping, care, listening and meeting and have practical methods to help enact these.

This is what we cover in our four part online series: Leading, Managing and Supervising in Risk we are conducting in March  (https://safetyrisk.net/leading-managing-and-supervising-online-workshops-march-2026/).

In these workshops we will see how the iCue method, dialogue tools and listening tools can help leading, managing and supervising, so that people are humanised.

You can register for the workshops here: admin@spor.com.au or online at: https://spor.com.au/leading-managing-supervising-workshops/