The Lord of Safety Things

Drawing lessons from The Lord of the Rings, this article explores how leadership, collaboration, and purpose can elevate workplace safety and drive meaningful cultural change.

• By Robert Pater
• Sep 08, 2025

Anyone personally acquainted with me can’t help but know I’m a huge Lord of the Rings (LOTR) fan. Perhaps not on the same level as talk show host Stephen Colbert (who regularly riffs on every bit of minutia about Tolkien’s universe), but let’s just note there are four full-size LOTR posters on the walls of our basement television room. Moreover, while decades have elapsed since the books were written and even since then the films appeared, there are still countless others like me who remain deeply moved by the messages in this story.

So what does this have to do with leadership or Safety? I see many lessons in the LOTR that apply towards elevating performance:

Don’t let yourself become sidetracked or taken over. In the LOTR, the One Ring of power can be seductive; it’s akin to some leaders’ quest for overriding control and “making” workers or managers immediately and consistently toe the Safety line. They aim to press others to dramatically submit in how they think and act overall.

Lesson: Don’t yield to the temptation of siren-calling power. Beware of any “silver bullet” solutions for Safety or change. It’s highly unlikely that any trending or newly promoted intervention — this could be AI, analytics, near-miss reporting, or exoskeletons, for example — will by itself save the day.

Also, the more powerful the medication, the stronger the potential side effects. So, note the overhead costs (time, effort, pushback) that might result from leaping into any change. Don’t give in to the temptation to try to command and control others as it decreasingly works, especially with a dispersed and thinly supervised workforce.

 Different leaders require different approaches. While, of course, cultures vary between companies, they can even vary internally from site to site, from executive to executive, and even between shifts in any given business unit.

Lesson: Just as how in the LOTR Gandalf’s approach to the steward of Gondor had to totally differ from his approach to the king of Rohan, there’s no one-size-fits-all method for activating leaders and teams towards enthusiastically supporting a mission. Strong connections and versatile persuasion are essential.

Success comes from including a wide range of stakeholders. Not just the men, or the elves, or the dwarves, or the wizards helped triumph over evil in the LOTR; it required a team.

Lesson: When crafting change (much less a turnaround), look for and enlist the active support of all allies from many levels and functions. The Fellowship of the Ring spent a good deal of time and effort working out their internal tensions that could have otherwise negated well-coordinating efforts.

Just as the Fellowship had to remind the leaders of different cultures how they were connected, strong leaders bring people together; steadfastly reminding that hunkering down to just protect their own fiefdom, department, or business unit isn’t sustainable, especially during times change.

 Help others find their inner purpose, courage and drive. In the books and movies, the overly self-doubting Gandalf the Grey transformed into the more powerful and assured Gandalf the White, and Strider the Ranger evolved into Aragorn the King.

Lesson: Don’t write anyone off. People can change for the better with the persistent faith in them communicated by several compatriots. Aragorn’s development from a lone, self-doubting “Strider” into a confident returning king was founded within him. There’s no amount of cajoling, persuading, pressuring that will generate full-throated lasting commitment from without.

High-level Safety leaders might ask themselves, “How might I help others senior managers not fully on board when it comes to Safety perceive things differently and become more determined to make a difference in their own and others’ lives when it comes to safety?”

Leadership can and does spring from surprising sources. Even the humble Hobbits of LOTR, who initially appeared powerless, can grow into catalytic agents of significant change.

Lesson: Develop everyone’s leadership mindset and skills. Real leadership is much more than being bigger, louder, or stronger. This expanded thinking approach can lead to significant outcomes. We’ve seen time and time again how developing grassroots peer-level instructor-catalysts for Safety and reinforcement. As Galadriel reminded, “Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.”

 Copies of original Safety initiatives can fall short of the mark. Recent spin-off projects from the LOTR have failed because they copy the outer form of the books and movies, while not including the inner essence of what make the series great.

Lesson: Have you seen a company try to clone another’s successful Safety or other implementation only to find it didn’t take; that it needed to be customized to the second organization’s tasks, workforce, job restrictions, leadership style, and previous programs? For example, copying another company’s approach for benchmarking safety metrics can be useful, but only when Safety leaders throw out the other company’s bathwater and keep the baby.

 The best change-driving leaders know that bemoaning either past missteps or wishing they hadn’t missed opportunities for improvement is a waste of effort. The past can’t be changed. Dwelling on problems and finger-pointing divides and hinders, and never helps propel a Safety Fellowship forward.

As in Gandalf’s famed remonstrance, which is on the wall in my home, “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”  

This article originally appeared in the September 2025 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.