Paul Duncan, Norfolk Southern’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Joe Gioe, Vice President, Transportation, discuss how we are demonstrating leadership to create and inspire a safe and high performing culture.

Here’s what they had to say:

Paul Duncan

Our strategy is to be a customer-centric, operations-driven organization. Everything will start with safety, and we will balance service, productivity, and growth.

As leaders, we set the tone, and that tone influences culture, and culture will drive outcomes as we continue to achieve our strategy.

Joe Gioe

Norfolk Southern leaders are in a partnership with our craft colleagues. We’re a team. So, in safety, we’re empowering our team to look forward and really look at risk and assess it for themselves. But that isn’t about us imposing safety to. It’s about safety with. It’s a commitment.

Paul Duncan

A fundamental component of our leadership strategy is to work as a Team of Teams. Trusting each other. Working collaboratively. And communicating as a group. As leaders, what we can do directly to inspire our teams about our strategy is to first and foremost communicate it.

Joe Gioe

We’re making sure that we have clear expectations so that everyone that comes to work every day knows what’s expected. We have a great workforce. People want to do a great job. At Norfolk Southern, we want to ensure that we’re empowering those people as leaders.

Leadership is about courage. When leadership is done correctly, it flips who reports to who and who works for who. And ultimately, for me, I want to inspire my team for that better way forward in our strategic vision and has to do with modeling that servant leadership. Going out and saying, “I’m here. I’m here every day. Whatever roadblocks in the way of the team, I’m going to remove that.”