Attributes of Leadership: CEO of Anglo American on getting Serious about Safety

1. Transparent: Cynthia Carroll believed that a transparent and robust collaboration

between the mining industry and its stakeholders would ensure employee safety and
societal benefits on a sustained basis. She was willing to uphold this value of
transparency by holding a public summit. Facts and figures related to the industry's
death toll were discussed openly and invited public scrutiny.

2. Uncompromising: When Cynthia joined the organization, she was told by her
subordinates that fatalities are an inevitable part of the mining industry and there's not
much that they can do to change the situation. She refused to conform to the status quo
and decided that things will drastically change under her leadership. Some of her
managers even resigned when she started to make the changes but she persisted and
was successfully able to bring down the death rate from 44 in 2006 to 17 in 2011. This
shows that she is firm and never doubt or second guess her own decisions, which is an
important attribute for any successful leader.

3. Employee Well-being: Cynthia cared a lot for her employees even when the industry
they were involved in was such a hazardous one where fatalities were a known and
accepted occurrence. She went against a lot of standing traditions in the industry like the
top down management style and low presence of women, to make use of her position in
the company to bring a positive change and influence. She crossed uncomfortable
boundaries between stakeholders like the union, government and competitor industry
heads to collaborate and establish safety standards. She involved the employees who
would finally be implementing the standards in their development. Some of the other
CEOs even expressed their belief that she was creating more problems for them and it
would be harder to make money, but it just goes to show how much she cared about her
subordinates.

4. Accountability: Cynthia Caroll takes the responsibility for the safety incidents that took
place in the platinum mine.She was reluctant to accept that fatalities were inevitable
when it comes to mining and she even decided to shut down the world’s largest platinum
mine at Rustenburg when one of her workers was killed when he slipped into a conveyor
belt. She was also worried if her shift supervisors and mine managers were the right
people to keep everyone safe. She felt accountable for the fatalities that resulted from
mining and was not negligent about the loss of life of employees. She could have even
simply compensated the families but she took the decision of shutting down the platinum
mine for 7 weeks instead, which highlights her accountability as a leader.
5. Vision and Self Motivation: Cythia has a vision of zero harm in mining, which keeps her
motivated to continuously improve. Her work has made a huge difference, 62%
reduction in fatalities.Also Fatalities in South African mining as a whole have declined by
about 25%. She is judging her work on an independent basis and not comparing it with
the industry. She realises they still have a long way to go and is committed towards that.