Developing Safety Warriorship

Safety “warriorship” isn’t about toughness—it’s about skill, humility, and the disciplined execution that turns intention into lasting results.

• By Robert Pater
• Feb 27, 2026

Significant improvements are founded on attitude and much more. While determination is clearly a powerful driver for stepping up Safety, it is only one essential element. I have consistently found that ardently desiring improvements, strong-mindedness, or a dogged will rarely move the needle significantly upward on its own, especially when fostering change that sustains. “Will” alone is not enough. You must go beyond simply committing to do something to knowing how to do it, and then put in the effort to complete the necessary actions.

Sounds obvious, yet we’ve all met someone who declares, “I’ll just make it happen! I won’t let that go down!” simply by believing and bragging they are somehow “tough?” Without experience or evidence, how can they accomplish their objectives? These overconfident statements rings alarm bells when I hear them. This is often conflated with strongly confident leadership.

However, those directors who are most powerful — in the sense that “power” is “the ability to change the future” — exhibit caution, watchfulness, and circumspection. Yes, knowing what they can do while also knowing they don’t know everything. Reference what former President Dwight D. Eisenhower said about President John F. Kennedy, “… he possessed a quality I grew to admire deeply in our many conversations: the courage to admit when he didn’t know something and the wisdom to seek counsel.”  

True “warriorship” goes way beyond what someone professes or how they might try to get others to see or think of them. It is more internal, grounded in the right mix of components. For real progress, an unwavering resolve must be combined with establishing and diligently practicing the skills needed to deliver desired work to a high standard. Mixed in with humility, to see — and then work on — current personal limitations (biases, ingrained habits, etc.) that might otherwise snag best efforts. If the objective is broader than one person can fully accomplish, it requires effective interpersonal skills to communicate and engage others while continuing to support their coordinated efforts.

Specifically, have you, like me, heard and read about safety leaders’ determination to reduce their sometimes-strangling burden of soft-tissue injuries? We know how to reduce these significantly. I’ve sadly seen that even with thinking, planning, and pledging to make significant, lasting improvements in these pervasive problems, not much really improves or stays better. Worse, when leaders put their name and energy behind any initiative with little apparent result, their reputation and credibility can suffer.

To move beyond the frustration of languishing on a performance plateau, I encourage Safety leaders to practice enhancing “Warriorship.” This does not mean fighting — it entails heightening (self-control), getting the most positive efforts and results from all your resources by developing and honing strength potentials. Here are five crucial elements I’ve seen needed:

• Balancing Mindset AND Mindfulness. Develop and support a mindset of “taking control” of what is realistic. This means working with, not against human nature, not trying to force others to be different than who they are (Safety culture/leadership luminary, Eduardo Blanco-Muniz, wrote, “It’s essential to be treating humans as they are and not as they are supposed to be.”) Higher level warriorship entails leaders embracing their own self-control and “personal responsibility” rather than pointing fingers at others for falling short of expectations.

Mindfulness means being aware of actual conditions, not plowing ahead but “staying the course,” especially when it may have diminishing returns or even backfire.

• Willingness to “Eat bitter.” This entails clear-sighted self-honesty, fostering the inner fortitude to dispassionately see and then work to overcome our own personal limitations. Receiving and utilizing “negative” feedback as positively as possible — and helping others to see both the half-full AND half-empty sides of any situation. This deep courage is crucial to taking steps towards the highest levels of self-improvement, which plough the path to significant step-ups with others.

• Harnessing Vision AND Action. As per that ancient samurai (warrior) expression:  To know and to act are precisely the same,” and here is another, “Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.” Go beyond just theoretical or solely paper changes. For example, forming pledges can be a good start, but only when closely followed by consistent changes. Otherwise, it is like saying “I am determined (to lose weight, get into better condition, become more promotable — pick one) but without doing anything about it that changes the status quo…Do not let dreaming keep you from trying alternative improvement methods. Understand that doing the same things is unlikely to lead to breakthrough improvements.

• Continuing to search out and develop better skills. While one martial arts master declared, “Before the struggle, the victory is mine,” his attitude was founded on his ongoing practice to become more mentally and physically effective. Tangible skills are essential for lasting improvements.

• Increasingly moving towards change from the inside-out, less so than outside-in. External motivation will always be limited. To energize and help achieve higher-level, sustained performance, it is critical to help others change from within. This goes counter to pushing guilt, shouting, pressure, etc., on people; instead, it aligns with inviting, questioning, offering options, and letting them decide what works for them (within limits, of course). Latest neuroscience studies corroborate this.

I have found that everyone has the potential to become a more effective Safety warrior. And that leaders best catalyze this by starting with themselves.  

This article originally appeared in the February/March 2026 issue of Occupational Health & Safety.