Sometimes Speaking Up Is the Most Important Thing You Can Do
When I was a Construction Safety Officer, there was always a lot happening around you. Equipment was moving, different trades were working in the same area, and everyone was focused on getting the job done. It was the kind of place where you had to pay attention because things could change in a hurry.
One day on a job site, I noticed a crane was moving a bucket of cement back and forth as usual. Everyone had already completed their own safety checks and responsibilities before the lift, but something didn’t feel right for me. I called for the operator to bring the bucket back down before it was set in place. When we looked closer, we found the shackle was hanging on its very last thread instead of being properly secured. If that load had continued, the shackle could have failed, and the bucket could have fallen. I was pretty upset, and you can imagine how the safety meeting went that night. It was a powerful reminder that even when every procedure appears to have been followed, you still have to trust your instincts and speak up when something doesn’t look right.
Nobody likes stopping work when everyone is trying to keep a job moving, but that never bothered me. My first thought was always about the people underneath that load and the families they were going home to at the end of the day. A delay on a job can be made up. Someone losing their life or getting badly hurt cannot.
I have never looked at that day as some great accomplishment. I was simply doing what I thought was the right thing. If you see something that could hurt somebody, you speak up. It really is that simple.
You Get Further by Treating People Right
One thing I always believed was that people listen a lot better when you treat them with respect.
I learned pretty quickly that barking orders doesn’t accomplish much. What people really need on a job site is structure and guidance. When everyone understands their role and what’s expected of them, the work gets done safely and efficiently. That’s always been a better approach than trying to manage people by raising your voice.
I guess you could call that having a good bedside manner. I have always believed there is a right way to talk to people. Stay calm, explain what you are seeing, and work together to fix it. You do not have to make someone feel bad to get your point across.
It Was Always About the People
When I look back now, I realize I carried that same attitude with me wherever I went.
I spent more than 25 years umpiring baseball and slo-pitch, and I was fortunate enough to be one of only nine umpires selected for the Senior Summer Games. I was proud of that because there were a lot of good umpires around, and I always took the job seriously.
Being an umpire was never just about calling balls and strikes. You were dealing with people. Players got frustrated, coaches disagreed with calls, and sometimes tempers got a little hot. If you lost your cool too, things only got worse. I always figured you were better off listening, treating people fairly, and getting the game back on track. Looking back, I think that is one of the reasons I was trusted to work those games.
These days I use that same approach with my parents. My dad is 96, and I spend a lot of my time helping both him and my mom. At that age, you cannot rush people. Sometimes they need a little more time, sometimes they just want somebody to listen, and sometimes getting them out of the care home for a few hours, like taking my dad to a car show, means more than anything you could buy them.
Looking back, one of the things I’m proudest of is that the Alberta Safety Council and the WCB trusted me enough to bring me in on separate investigations. That made me feel like all the years I’d spent paying attention to safety and doing things the right way had paid off. I had taken a two-weekend detective course about 30 years earlier, and believe it or not, some of what I learned there helped me solve one of those cases. I never expected that course to come in handy, but it did.
To me, those things are all connected. Whether I was talking to a worker on a construction site, standing behind home plate, or helping my parents, I always tried to treat people the way I would want someone to treat me.
Looking Back, I Would Not Change a Thing
When people ask me what I remember most about my years working as a Construction Safety Officer, I do not think about the buildings or the deadlines. I think about the people I worked with and the responsibility we all had to look out for one another.
Stopping that crane is something I will always remember, but there were plenty of other days where paying attention and speaking up mattered just as much. Those moments never made headlines, and they were never supposed to. They were simply part of doing the job properly.
I have never been the kind of guy who wanted a pat on the back. I am just a regular Alberta guy who believes that if people are counting on you, you show up, you do your best, and you treat them right.
That is how I worked, that is how I umpired, and that is how I try to live my life today.