This is This show is brought to you by safety. FM. The following program is rated for mature audiences and may contain adult language, adult situations and frank safety discussions. The names in certain details have been changed to protect the safety and the unsafe. But believe me, every item in here is true. When you think about the ancient title of Knight, what do you think of Someone who is honorable? Brave, helpful and chivalrous. Many of those old orders still exist and they help people unify and develop leaders in the community. In March 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic, safety nights was formed. It's an online community created by and for safety professionals, I joined and was blown away. We share information to develop and support leadership. Within the safety community are members come from all areas of safety and the best part of all of this, it's free. We are not like some of those other safety groups that charge money or are subject to the whims of sensors and group administrators visit safety nights at safety nights dot com. That safety nights and nights is spelled with a k. Mm. I have a little bit of a story here. I know what you're gonna say. There's always a story. Jim Here he is with another story. You need to be able to ask why even if it's uncomfortable today on safety wars. So this happened a number of years ago at a facility where somebody was working and I was there and the adjacent work area was on fire. Fire alarms sounded to evacuate. Radio went off. You know, evacuate evacuate. So I'm going to me evacuating the area. I see One of the people who I'm responsible for, I'm managing for safety. It's about maybe 75 ft away from me. I motioned to him to evacuate and he doesn't evacuate After about 10 seconds. believe it seemed longer than that. I just left him there. I said, well I'm just gonna leave them there and I'll report that there's a guy in there, I don't know what to do. If I stayed in there, I likely would have been a victim here. So with flames encroaching on his physician about 40 seconds later he starts evacuating and he's in a panic, he comes over to me and starts yelling, why did you leave me here? I asked him Why didn't he leave 1 to order to? What what do you want? A formal invitation or something? That is a question maybe I didn't want to hear the answer to. But it was a question that I had to ask. Eventually in this heated moment, people tell you wait for the cool off period. Sometimes you can't wait for the cool off period, you can't wait for someone to cool off because what happens is and that heat of the moment. Sometimes you get the moment of truth. I said, well, why didn't you leave when you were told to you said, well, management told him not to listen to safety people and turns out that after some investigation, this is absolutely true. But if I didn't ask the question, I would have never gotten that answer. Later on, I had a very heated discussion with the site manager and told him that if he didn't change his tune and his attitude, George safety dude, I'm out of there, I'm not going to be responsible for people losing their life. And by the way, on my way out, I'm going to follow it up the chain of command. Eventually, this employee was removed from a leadership position and he had a small leadership position, but he had a leadership position and he was not allowed to work alone again and he was never in charge of anything again. The site manager did change his tune after this discussion and by the way, never make a threat that you don't intend to follow through on. What's the moral of the story here? What's the point of the story? Don't be afraid to ask the question. Especially if it's a question you're afraid to hear the answer from. Had I not ask that question, we wouldn't have known any of this stuff. We wouldn't have been working towards a solution. Sometimes you need that negative feedback, you need to here's stuff that you don't want to hear about. Why so you can fix it. Maybe change your approach, change the way things are going, identify where problems are, you owe it to yourself and your organization, into your family. To become a better safety person. You have to identify behaviors and what the incentives are in an organization that are barriers to you, fighting and winning that safety war. But I always talk about also in your personal life. Find somebody who might be able to tell you off every once in a while. I have a couple of friends. I will give you an honest answer no matter what and that's why they're my friends for safety wars. This is jim proposal. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are those of the host and its guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within this podcast are only examples. It should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast, jay Allen.