Safety is a conviction

Author: 

Bart Kelderman. InTense CEO.
Bart Kelderman, the CEO of InTense, is a business owner but also an artist (in his second year of the Classical Academy of Fine Arts in Groningen). During the period of Covid-19, he kept on finding various channels to express his creativity, finding invisible bridges between the art and the business. And in doing so, re-inventing InTense in turbulent times.
During my first year at the Academy, I already found out that in my development towards a professional artist, this process, very much, is strengthening my creative (brain)muscle in finding the right business solutions! During the process of making paintings, I often experienced brand new and clear solutions after being confronted with ‘problems’ in my business. It is my left brain, facing a ‘problem’ and desperately trying to analyse it and while being creative, suddenly the right brain came up with ‘bright’ solutions. In art, ‘tone, value and perspective’ are key to a good art piece. During Covid, everybody experienced a lack of perspective. Our value system has been tested to the max. Rules and regulations were the key to get control of the crisis. But we were often asked to put our ‘behaviors’ first. Politicians understood that without this, no rule would be of any value. How close this all came to organizing and developing a proactive HSE culture with our business partners? And, how difficult it was to behave accordingly. In our team, we have found new tones and new colors (new online services) that will contribute massively in future. We only just started on this path. We will promise to deliver you much more, in the field of Safety Leadership! At InTense, we do not settle on merely the behavior change. We constantly work on the right mindsets for lasting impact. In order to help people to understand and apply, we have chosen analogies to illustrate the different mindsets. The first painting I have made on our homepage is about the “Relationship” Mindset, embodied by a herd of sheep. The individual or the group with predominantly this mindset will display compassionate, people oriented, supportive, and facilitative safety leadership styles. They empower the fellow workers and support a good working climate. However, as also portrayed in the painting. Over-pronounced relationship orientation bears the risk of “group/herd thinking”. The danger and the shadow side of this is undermining risk recognition, avoiding challenging each other, reducing motivation to speak up and courage to intervene in front of the risks, which are the essential behaviours to improve the safety and health culture. How to build connection and comfort in the group but avoid the negative side of the group thinking, is the challenge many companies are facing. As my creative process continues, coming soon are the illustrations for the other 3 mindsets. Together, it will provide individuals and teams a powerful tool to assess the current status, identify the developmental areas in terms of safety leadership and build on diversities in team to respond to varying situations. We are currently in validation process of this novel safety leadership assessment tool. When it’s ready, InTense is able to tailor the programs for our clients, to a new ‘golden’ standard. We are here in building the safety DNA to FEEL. THINK. ACT.