One of the thorniest challenges a safety manager faces is how to make safety a priority when organizational leaders are resistant to providing the necessary resources. One tactic for overcoming this resistance comes from an unlikely source—a book about corruption.

When Brian Klaas wrote Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, he wasn’t thinking about workplace safety at all. Rather, he was interested in examining the ways in which people’s attitudes and behaviors change as they accumulate power. What makes a CEO act like a dictator? For that matter, what makes a dictator act like a dictator? And just as importantly, what can be done to keep the powerful in check? These are the questions that Klaas sought to answer in his book.

One of the recommendations for stopping power from going to a leader’s head is to leverage the weight of responsibility. Corruptible outlines a concept called psychological distance that measures the perceived proximity that people feel to a phenomenon. In reviewing research on powerful leaders, Klaas noted that there was often a great deal of psychological distance between them and the people they were in charge of.

What does all this have to do with workplace safety? Klass recommends a societal countermeasure to potentially corruptible leaders: closing the gap in psychological distance between the leader and the layperson. It works for political leaders, and it works for corporate leaders too. It could also have an impact when it comes to discussing next year’s safety budget. Because the greater the psychological distance, the more likely an organizational leader might be to underfund the safety department.

How do you go about reducing the psychological distance between workers and the C-suite? It’s likely a matter of repurposing tools you’re already using. One of the recommendations from this guide on delivering impressive toolbox talks is to focus on telling stories rather than talking about statistics. At SafeStart, we’ve seen the transformative power of storytelling, and in your day-to-day work, you’ve likely seen how much more engaging stories can be.

Next time you’re discussing safety resources with corporate leaders, make sure you come prepared with some stories about safety successes as well as failures. The goal is for the stories to make frontline workers feel as real as possible, and to convey the effects that safety resources (or lack thereof) have on them. This can help company executives recognize the full value of safety initiatives and make them more likely to sign off on additional resources.

You could also take a cue from other tried-and-true safety engagement tactics and discuss off-the-job safety. Help executives see the families behind every employee who is affected whenever someone is injured at work—not to mention the wider circle of friends and community members impacted by workplace incidents.

One last method of closing the psychological gap is to close the physical gap. Try to get executives to visit the shop floor as much as possible. Obviously, the CEO can’t spend every day doing walkarounds, but as a safety professional, you want to maintain and strengthen the connection between the boardroom and the production lines. Putting people in direct contact, and having them see and hear from workers directly about safety, can go a long way toward helping executives recognize the need for safety resources.

Obviously, there are many factors to consider when it comes to convincing the C-suite to invest in safety. As Danny Smith points out in his article “The Other Side of the Coin”, it can be incredibly valuable to have a solid understanding of the financial savings that go hand-in-hand with strong safety outcomes.

And then there’s the ability to talk the talk. According to this primer on building a career in safety, it’s important to be able to connect with executives on their terms. Not to mention making your efforts visible to everyone, getting your timing right when it comes to approaching the CEO about a new safety initiative, and persevering if their initial interest is lukewarm.

To that list, you should add closing the psychological distance between leaders and workers. Think of it as another tool in your belt that you can use to build a robust and well-supported safety system, one that you should keep in mind the next time you need to make the case for safety in the boardroom.