Building Rapport as a Safety Manager

In this episode, Mary Conquest talks with Joel Neily. Joel’s background in safety management is unconventional and highlights strategies for building rapport with employees. Trust, integrity, and balanced communication are key to Joel being a respected and approachable EHS expert.

As one of the few safety experts who chose against studying at university, Joel expands on the advantages and disadvantages of his decision, how it sets him apart from his colleagues, and what he would do differently if he got the chance. Starting from trucks to transport safety, Joel has great organic insight into why talking to people is important and how to identify the people who need to be won over.

Joel Neily is the Safety and Risk Manager at Bruce Automotive Dealerships and has over 27 years of experience behind him in the field of transport and safety.

♪ [music] ♪ - [Mary] My name is Mary Conquest, I'm your host for Safety Labs by Slice, the podcast where we explore the human side of safety to support safety professionals. We move past regulations and reportables to talk about the core skills of safety leadership, empathy, influence, trust, rapport.

In other words, the soft skills that help you do the hard stuff. ♪ [music] ♪ Joel Neily is the safety and risk manager at Bruce Automotive Dealerships in Western Nova Scotia. His path to safety is a bit unconventional, which we'll get to in a minute, and he's here to talk about strategies for building rapport with employees.

So, you told me in our earlier chat that rapport is the most important consideration for an EHS person, why is that?

- [Joel] For me, I mean I learn a lot from the folks who I work with and I'm able to, I don't know, find out that the small details that end up fixing the bigger problems. A lot of times the guys on the floor, they know the real issues. We think we have a pretty good idea about them, but they really know what's up. And when you're down there and you talk to the guy that maybe doesn't get a lot of FaceTime with someone from, you know, the executive team or something like that, they really appreciate it, and that's how we fix our problems.

- Yeah. Well, yeah, they appreciate it, and that's really kind of at the core of rapport, isn't it, which is trust. So, I hinted at your sort of route into OHS. So, lots of OHS people go through formal training, diploma, certificate programs. You took a different route.

Tell us a little bit about that, and you have already hinted, but why it gives you a different perspective from some of your safety colleagues. And also, were there any specific advantages or disadvantages to your journey?

- Yeah. So, I grew up on a farm and forestry operation in Nova Scotia, here in Canada. And my father was always really strong on safety, which was kind of nice, and we always had a big transportation background, we had some trucks and stuff like that. And so, I took a job at a big factory when I was younger, producing paper.

And they closed down and they offered us job retraining, so, I took a training as a truck driver in Canada here, it's 12-week course. I did that for 10 years, it was great. I mean I got to see a lot of the United States, a lot of Canada, a lot of cool spots I never would've seen growing up in kind of rural Nova Scotia. And it's a lot of work.

So, then I was like, "Man, there's going to be a better way." So, I started joining all the OHS teams and then I took a job as a professional trainer at a company called Commercial Safety College in Nova Scotia, probably 150 kilometers away from where I live, and became a driver trainer. And then we created a new type of driver training course where we basically started at companies and we were able to bring people in who had, you know, no experience ever in a truck, they never heard of it.

And from day one, you know, we basically opened the door for them and showed them what the inside of a cab looked like. And after 8 weeks, they were ready to take their tests and then they did another 4 weeks on the road with another coach. And that program went really really well for three or four years, and then the company that I was teaching at offered me the position running their safety program in-house, so, I was able to move into the office I was kind of looking for.

I did that for a number of years and kind of started building a little bit of a name around the valley. And the Bruce Group decided to create a position, as they had grown exponentially over the last couple years and were kind of at a point where they needed someone. And a friend of mine worked there and he went to their HR manager and he said, "Listen, I know a guy, he's not looking to move but..."

Anyways, they called me and we chatted and the rest is history. I was able to come in here, kind of work my way up. I definitely wouldn't encourage this path to everyone. I mean it took 20 years and it is not easy, I kind of had to fight for everything over the years and really probably prove myself more than if I had have gone to school.

And I will say I went to college and took business, when I first got out of school I was an honest distinction student. I mean I had done well in school, I just didn't feel like going on, you know, anymore in a post-secondary education. So...

- Yeah. No, and when I said "no training" I meant sort of specific to safety. So, you talked about some of the disadvantages, what do you think the advantages are of coming up the way that you did?

- Yeah. It's on the floor, I mean...so, we have a bunch of car dealerships and there's a lot of characters, a lot of really great people that work for us, different backgrounds. And it allows me...you know, I can walk in and a lot of the guys know who I am or are pretty vocal. And I walk in and I can get a little bit of respect. I find that sometimes your white hard hat and a clipboard isn't always as respected.

I mean it's definitely has its place, you know, but they seem to really gravitate towards me. Everybody in the company says that there's no one else here that talks to more people in the run of a week than me, so, that's kind of a...I like that, I mean that's what I'm here to do. So...

- Yeah, I had that impression before, you mentioned the person who talks to the most people, why do you think that's important?

- We have to. I mean in this job, if you're not there talking to the people that are doing the job, if you're just like sort of sending down information...like I mean, obviously, we have a hierarchy that we follow through the fixed ops managers and stuff but I mean I have to be standing beside them when we're doing meetings and we have to have each other's respect, but also the ability where I can just walk in, open any door and talk is huge because they just...I mean we've struggled in the past with trying to change the culture, and this seems to be the best way to do it right now.

I mean it's working.

- Yeah. So, when you position yourself as one of the guys, that's kind of, you know, metaphorically speaking, it sounds like you're finding that people listen to you more. Are there any risks with that? Like do you think there's any danger of losing authority in anyone's eyes or...

- Yeah, that's huge. I mean you have to be really really careful. I'm pretty particular like with social-media stuff, you don't want to be, you know, friends with everyone, you have to be kind of picky a little bit, you have to distance yourself from time to time. And I think folks know that that's kind of where we are.

I'm not going to go out and, you know, going out and party with the type of folks and stuff like that, unless...you know what I mean, like you have to be distant but still being able to, you know, stand there while people are on lunch break or whatever or having a casual conversation and be able to, you know, have someone look at you and say, "Hey man, what do you think?"

that's huge, right, so... I mean this morning we had a pretty major blizzard over the weekend, so, I showed up at a dealership for some OHS meetings at 9:00 this morning and everybody was shoveling snow. So, for an hour and a half we shoveled snow and then we had our meeting. So, I mean you get out and you get the shovel and, you know, you dig in literally. So...

- Yeah, it sounds like there's a bit of a sweet spot between, you know, sort of being close, being sort of one of them but not quite being so close that you lose...you know, I hate to use the word "authority" but...

- Yeah. But you're right, it is. I mean, at the end of the day, and I was a captain in the fire service for a long time and I've always said, "There's a lot of people who want to be leaders until you have to do leadership things." And there's often tough conversations. I mean we, obviously, with COVID, over the last couple years, that's been a major topic of conversation and we've had to implement some pretty hard and fast rules and they come from me.

and with the backing of the executive team. And, you know, people sometimes don't feel that they apply to them or they need to follow them, and you have to go in and lay down the law from time to time. And it's rare, like I have such a great group of people that I work with, you don't have to worry about it too much, but sometimes you have to be the hammer.

- Yeah, you do have to be prepared. Any kind of management is...you know, hard conversations as part of it. So, I want to talk a little bit more about rapport or trust and I'd like to set this up a little bit. So, for listeners who haven't seen the show "Ted Lasso," it's about an American that finds himself coaching a team that wants nothing to do with him.

He needs to build rapport quickly. And one of the things that struck me was that very early on in the show, in the relationship, he points to the angriest player, the one who hates him the most, and he tells his assistant coach, and here's the quote, "If we're going to make an impact here, the first domino needs to fall right inside of that man's heart."

So, you have talked about using this kind of strategy, identifying the leader and winning them over. Why do you think this works?

- Yeah, that's been my strategy all along in basically all my jobs. And it's massive. So, what I've always tried to do is there's two people in every room, there's always a lot of people, but there's someone who's really quiet who knows a lot and is the quiet leader, the one that stands in the back and, you know, just kind of watches, and then there's the very vocal person, and then there's usually a mix of everyone else.

So, the vocal person, that's probably your most dangerous person, they're the ones that's going to incite...you know, they're either going to have your back or they're going to knock you down, one of the two. And then the second person is the one that you really really need because that's probably the real leader. And that's kind of what I've noticed in these groups is, you know, there's always a guy that is vocal, or a girl or whatever, but getting them on your side is massive.

So, what I always try to do is you go in with the backing management...and everybody knows there's problems everywhere, so, you have to be able to fix one. So, I kind of tell management, I'm like, "Listen, guys, I need something right off the bat." So, you go in, you kind of listen to their problems and you're like, "Okay, there's something here we can fix, something," you know, "easy."

I mean, for instance, I had a problem at a dealership where we had an air compressor, you know, a big air compressor that was really noisy. And the dealership's been around for a long time, we just purchased it. And I walked into the dealership, brand new, never met anyone in there, and the loud, you know, the guy that talks, he come up to me and he's like, "Man, you know, Mr. Safety, you're going to come in," and he starts kind of getting mouthy and he says "no one will fix this air compressor that's been blaring in my ear for the last 10 years," that he's worked there or whatever.

I said, "All right, I'll fix it." So, we put a room around it, we insulated the room with sound-ending material. And now you can stand beside it and you don't hear it. And I'll tell you right now, that guy's my best friend now. Like it was simple, someone should've done it 10 years ago. It cost us maybe $1,000, like it was...you know, that's the stuff that makes the difference. And I think, in this day and age, we're running into retention issues, especially amongst highly-trained technicians, is the biggest issue that most dealerships face.

It's easier to find people who can sell and kind of the shiny parts of the dealership, but to find a good technician is difficult and keep them. So, I mean retention, if that's all it took to make this guy, you know, happy, man...the people that didn't do it before failed.

- So, what do you need to make these wins happen?

- I think the safety and the risk-management team is the middle ground. I mean you're not the executive team, and, if you think, you're probably in the wrong gig, but you're just below them and you're above the general workforce. So, you kind of have to realize that. So, when I go to do things, I need the support of the people above me.

If I'm going to try and do something and I haven't made a case for it or I haven't made it a reasonable expectation of something above me and I go promise it to the team, I'm going to lose credibility. So, the first thing I always try and do is I'm like, "All right, this is kind of the problem we're going to have," and, "is this something we can do?"

And then, if you can go in and promise it and actually come through, that seems like that's anybody wants is just someone just to, you know, back up what they say. Simple.

- Yes, it sounds like, you know, step one is really listening in terms of what the workforce wants. When you're coming in fresh, right, listening what...especially for leaders. How do you make your case to management? Have you ever had a situation where, you know, management is like, "Well, that..." maybe they think that, you know, the noise of the air compressor is ridiculous and you should really be looking at such and such regulation scheme or...how do you make that case?

- Yeah, it's like I said before, ROI is a good thing, and ROI can be a lot of different things. I mean it can be straight up money, which is easy, I mean that's pretty easy to figure out. But I mean [inaudible] like retention costs and stuff like, that's kind of those hidden funds. I mean we have a team, the HR team that will onboard people.

I mean it takes time, it takes, you know, days to do their courses and onboard them and get them comfortable. And if we have to do that all the time, that's money spent that, you know, you don't really think about because it's in HR salaries. And so, I'm big on that, trying to...you know, if we can cut down on some of that stuff, we can sell that easily to upper management and it allows us to kind of get more of a help, you know.

I can say, "Look, I can do this for 1,000 bucks and it's probably going to save us a salary, you know, later on." I don't think anyone will argue with that.

- Yeah, I think money tends to talk. And you're right, there's a lot of situations where people don't consider money in terms of either lost opportunity or money that they don't have to spend doing things like finding new hires and that sort of thing.

So, you'd mentioned too immersive versus a top-down approach, how would you define those and why is that your approach, like how did you come to that?

- Yeah. Both are good, I mean I think they work in different situations. I mean, obviously, you get [inaudible] kind of military-style, which is your top-down, you know, you have your boss and everybody below and everybody kind of follows the chain of command. And that works out really well a lot of the time. I find that in Canada people like to just talk, you know, like it's a very...I don't know, we're kind of a vocal community and we seem to be pretty open to discussions.

Like I mean we do a lot of round tables, like, you know, we'll gather everybody inside the bay and ask what they think, you know, and allow people the opportunity to speak or...and perhaps that's not the same way...so, for me, probably 90% of my job is immersive, you know, you'll be working on a car or truck or whatever and I'll just show up beside you and I'd be like, "Hey, you know, what's going on?"

And we might just talk about, you know, the game last night or something. You know, and then, at the end of it, they'll be like, "You know, man, something's been kind of bugging me," like and that's kind of the thing. Like I find I don't win pushing, like, you know, "Tell me your biggest concern right now today," like, "try to start off..." and you might not even come up with anything that day but it's...what I found is I'll have a conversation like that and then, the next time I go back, these people will kind of search me out a little bit and they'll be like, "Hey, man, I've been thinking about something," and that's when we're making our biggest gains.

Right? So, that's kind of the immersive approach is just getting in there. Right? I don't really like as much the militaristic approach, that's just personal.

- Yeah, as you're describing, it sounds a lot like how to deal with your teenage child. But I mean it's true in that you are building rapport, you're planting those seeds, you're gaining trust so that the next time there's an issue that person is ready to talk to you about it.

So...

- And that's it. I mean we found a lot of times that, if folks aren't willing to talk, you're wasting your time, they're wasting salary on me. I mean we have to be in there and have to be, you know, making people feel like they can talk. And that's probably one of the biggest part for me is if people don't feel like they can speak their mind or say their worries, we failed.

- Yeah, I wonder, given your experience, do you think that the safety industry safety management has changed from a top-down to more of an immersive kind of overall...like, obviously, there are examples of different styles all over the place, but are you noticing any changes or...?

- Yeah, I mean, 20 years ago when I started in transportation, it was a different ball game. I mean we were basically thrown out on the road and, you know, you got to think. Back then, there was no Facebook cell phones. I mean like you would cross the border into the United States, we didn't have international calling plans, like for four or five days you were basically gone.

I mean there was literally no one that was able to help you. I mean you could use those old phone cards that we would go to these payphones at the truck stop and you'd type in 57 numbers and, eventually, you'd talk to someone for 4.5 minutes. But it was a whole different world back then. And, you know, every once in a while you'd get a communication from a company from whoever the safety manager of the day was and it would just be like a form, a memorandum or something.

And you never knew them, you know they were...you know, especially as a long-haul driver, you weren't at the office very much and you really didn't care. I don't remember any of them because they weren't memorable, you know.

- Yeah. Which is a good point. And now we have so many potential surveillance communication tools that...

- Well, that's it, that's the change. I mean nowadays we are able to be more immersive no matter where they are. I mean, as a growing group, we're expanding all the time. Geographically, we're going to be into a pretty strong geographic area soon, so, like it'll be more difficult to be more on-the-floor presence, which is probably one of my greatest worries.

And I mean, as we move into different provinces and stuff and like our management is aggressive and we are growing, that's going to be a struggle going forward for me personally. Right?

So...

- Do you think there's an ideal ratio of sort of safety staff or safety management to workforce?

- Yeah. And that's exactly where we're getting into right now for us. Like we're 10 dealerships, which are spread over 200 kilometers, so, I mean it's about 2 hours, 2.5 hours I can drive between them. Which is pretty easy, right? But I think, once it gets to the point where I can't be there, you know, 3-4 days a month, then I'm probably going to need some help.

And that's, for me, it'll be tougher probably to relinquish a little bit. I was able to have really good counterparts at my last job and I trusted them completely, so, it'll be interesting to see what we do here, but I mean that will be the plan of the future, obviously, to have some more people because we're just going to get spread too thin.

- Yeah, I think the technologies of today just wouldn't work in that setting, right? Like if you were safety management for an office type environment, then sure, Zoom meetings, that kind of thing, but I don't really see an auto technician stopping to do a Zoom call.

- Exactly, yeah, and you have to be there. And I know, going forward, like when we purchase more dealerships, like I'm going to be at them. And like I've kind of been mentioning to the folks, because I mean this year looks like it should be a good year, and when I've been doing meetings and meeting with folks lately, I'm like, "Look, guys, you know, by summer, I could be away for a bit."

And, you know, so, I'm kind of trying to soften it a little bit because I've made such good connections with these folks that, you know, they come to kind of expect it. They'll be like, "Joel, man, can you pop over this afternoon," right, and that's not going to be able to do for a while likely. So...

- Yeah, I guess...and that's the situation, you know, picturing a safety manager in a giant company who's got, you know, massive staff, would you have any tips or ideas of how to manage that? Yeah, if you just physically can't walk the floor all the time, let's say you're working for a massive company...

- Yeah. And that's, if you can't, I mean you can't, that's it. I mean I'm big on building a team, we're definitely a team-based organization here where we try and work together. I would hope you could have the representative that could kind of handle your concerns, if not, then you're going to have to rely on your managers, I mean, which are great, and the ones that I work with are awesome as well, but I mean everybody's busy.

But if you have a receptive, you know, fixed-operations manager or general manager that can kind of step in and say, "Listen, my door's open," which they have a really good policy here, I mean I don't think there's anyone that couldn't go and speak to the owner. And we're at 275 employees now and, you know, growing daily but, you know, even once we get into the major numbers, I think the managers, probably we're going to have to lay it on for a bit.

I mean you're going to be around but it just won't be.

- So, building rapport is super important, it's kind of the core of what you're talking about and it's a one-on-one kind of thing. Do you also have more formal training that you develop or anything that...yeah, more formal techniques I guess than the one-on-one conversation.

- Yeah, so, everybody in the company has to go through a suite of courses and training, depending on your position. So, I mean like the average technician probably has to do 8 or 10 different courses. We have our formal OHS meetings monthly, each store and each team. And of course, we have, you know, representatives, those from the staff and from the floor, on each group. In Canada, they ask you to, obviously, have more staff than management on any of the committees, so, that's kind of cool and we get a lot of good stuff from them.

So, it's definitely a chore though trying to get, you know, the representation and get people out. So, we like to feed them, that's the biggest thing.

- [inaudible].

- Yeah, that's my go-to as well. That's the pro tip, if you want to be a good safety manager, you get on all the OHS teams and then you get about 10 meals a month, it works really good. That's something they don't talk about in the school, yeah.

- Talk about return on investment there, you really stretch out your salary.

- That's how they hook me in, yeah, free lunches, I can handle that. So, yeah, yeah. "Working lunches" I guess we'll call them.

- Yes, of course, of course. So, I have some questions that I ask every guest. The first one I'm going to call "The University of Joel." I do change the name depending on the guest.

- So, I just thought we're all Joel.

- Yeah, I only interview Joels. If you were to develop your own safety-management training curriculum, which it sounds like you have some experience in, where would you start? Like what core human skills do you think are the most important to develop in tomorrow's safety professionals?

- Yeah, I'm going to have to go with the big one for me, which is trust. Trust and integrity, those are probably the biggest skills and traits that we need to build on. I mean, if you build a program and no one trusts it, no one believes it's actually going to work, you're wasting your time. So, for me, it's we build a program that, you know, it's straightforward, it's honest and trustworthy, it has results, and then we can just build from there and put the soft skills in.

But yeah, trust is massive for me. That's it.

- Integrity, how would you define or how would you demonstrate that?

- Yeah, so, there's always going to be problems, I mean that's the second part of any safety manager's job. I mean, obviously, you're trying to fix problems, but you're also trying to, you know, deal with issues as they come. I mean part of the job is a reactive job and part of it is proactive. So, the reactive part, you have to have integrity.

I mean we are going to deal with difficult situations and anybody...I mean, in my last job, I was in transportation, it was nothing to have a driver call you that was 5,000 miles away and say, "Hey, I'm upside down in a ditch, I got fuel leaking. Fix the problem," and you just had to be the person. And at the end of the day, someone needs to be the person.

And that's the integrity part. People get used to knowing that, A, "If I call Joel at 2:00 on a Sunday morning, he's going to make it okay." And that's where I am with this group. I mean, obviously, I don't get as many 2:00 in the morning phone calls, which is nice, it was probably a large part of why I moved away from transportation.

But they know, when they call, that I'm going to fix the problem or find someone who can. And that's the integrity part for me.

- So, let's turn back time for a minute. If you could travel back in time and speak to yourself at the beginning of your career and if you could give only one piece of advice to young Joel, what do you think that would be?

- That's a great question. So, like I said before, I did really well in school, it came relatively easy. I did go to college, I was going to go to university, but I was like, "No, I'm just going to do a small college," did really well, I really enjoyed it. And it was a school that went until May, so, it used to end in May.

So, in April, I can remember I was 19, 18-19-years-old and I was sitting and I was looking out a window at the school and I realized I had been in school since I was 5-years-old. And I got up and never went back. And that was probably an error.

I would not encourage that. Like I likely could've passed it without doing anything for the rest of the year, like I had really good marks, I just couldn't do it anymore. I was sitting there and I remember it like I was like, "Man, I've been sitting in a classroom my entire life," and I just didn't want to do it anymore.

And that was that. So, if I had to look back, I would probably say that waiting out that one more month probably would've been a wise thing to do because I had to pay the loan off for the next 7 years. So... Yeah, yeah.

Of all the things I've done in my life, that might have been the finest. But anyways...

- You know what, it led you to where you are now. So...

- Yeah, but it was way harder. I just...man, like I'm a huge proponent of school, my wife is a double master's level teacher, and I mean she's worked her whole life to get where she is. And she's extremely smart and extremely well educated. And she's worked hard on that way whereas I've had to like grind more. And I don't know which one's easier, but I find that sometimes the documentation on the wall, especially with upper management, gives you a lot more credibility.

For me, I've had to go into most of my interviews and basically win someone over. And at the end of it, you're more or less saying like, "Look, it'll be the best decision you'll ever make if you give me a chance. But I know there's three other people standing outside this door who have a beautiful education, a beautiful document that they can hang on the wall, but you need to give it to me."

And I mean, if you only got an hour to convince people you don't know of that, that's difficult and doesn't always work. So...

- Yeah, I was going to say that your piece of advice was...do you think it was more about the paper or do you think it was more about patience? I mean...

- Yeah. Yeah, patience is probably not my strong suit if you ask my friends or my wife. But yeah, I would've learned a lot by staying there. Patience and just perseverance...I mean really, when I think back on it now, like it's just silliness, like I mean, you know...but it was, you know, when you start college, it's your first real taste of freedom and you're kind of...and I was a good kid and, you know, grew up on the farm and worked hard and I'd never really been able to make my own choices.

So, that was it.

- A little taste of freedom?

- Should've never been given that. But...

- Well, you know, you learned from it. And hopefully, people listening to this will learn from you. So, there you go.

- Well, and that's helped me going forward. I mean I understand most of the folks I work with had a difficult path to where they've got to as well. And, you know a lot of them know me, you know, and they kind of...I don't hide by past and the poor decisions that I've made, as far as education-wise. And I think it actually helps because they're kind of like, "Man, [inaudible]."

- Yeah. Yeah, in a sense, they're seeing someone modeling, moving up, but also knowing that you do actually understand, you haven't come in with an academic or theoretical point of view, you really do understand where they're coming from as well.

- Yeah. And I will say that I'm a bit of like a information junkie, I spend every day and every night researching and modeling and trying to find best practices and trying something and designing a program and then changing it.

And like, you know, I mean I've probably done, you know, the equivalent of 10 courses, if I had stayed at it, just in extra work that probably would've been a lot easier had I have [inaudible] a more formal education or someone say, you know, like "This is the best way to do it because this is tried, tested, and true," whereas I had to find that kind of the hard way.

So...

- Oh, well...youth.

- Anyways...

- So, it's tool time. Let's get practical. This is where I ask our guests for their best most practical tips or resources for safety managers looking to improve their work relationships and their core skills. So, this could be a book, it could be a concept, a website, anything that falls under resource.

- Yeah, I'm just going to stick with people. I find that what you need and what's worked for me, I had some really good mentors. I worked with some guys in transportation, one of my old bosses, David, was a incredible risk manager. And I spent a lot of time watching how he did his job and how he interacted with folks.

And that's the biggest tool that you can do is sit back, watch someone who knows what they're doing, or who maybe doesn't, and try and find a practice. I mean there's a lot of really good people who really know what they're doing. And if we can kind of watch and learn, I think that's probably the best thing that you can do.

I mean for anyone wanting to do this job, it is hard. I mean the last 2 years have been difficult. I mean when COVID started, the company I was with is an international transportation company, so, we traveled all over Canada, the United States. And Florida was getting hammered pretty hard with COVID right off the bat, there was a ton of people dying.

And I can remember guys coming into my office and be like, "Joel, man, like I can't go to Florida, you know, I got young kids, whatever, grandparents, whatever, and I'm going to get COVID and die and I'm going to kill them." And we didn't know, no one knew what the deal was back then. And we sent them.

You know, I had to sit there and say, "Listen, guys, you know, we haul food, it's an essential service. All we haul is food, we bring fruits and vegetables and stuff from the United States back to Canada. And I need you to go, Canada, the people need you to go," and like that. Nothing I could've ever done prepared me for that, those conversations.

You know, like when you leave, you just sit there and you're like, "Man, did I just send someone to their death?" Like we didn't know, right? And that was heavy, like that was tough.

- I can imagine. Yeah, hearkening back to when we really didn't know very much and, you know, we didn't have vaccines, we didn't have tools or information.

- Yeah, it was difficult.

- So, you were talking about mentors, would you recommend...I actually don't know if there are a lot of sort of formal mentorship programs in the safety industry. I know they exist sort of in a lot of knowledge work industries but would you recommend just like actually finding a safety manager and talking to them and making it explicit? Or is it just more about watching and learning?

- Yeah, I 100% recommend finding someone. I don't think there's too many people out there who get dropped into this role with zero training. I mean, even if you go to school and get a degree, I would hope that there's still some element of, you know, on-the-job training or working with someone.

And I think that's where you need to focus and learn. I mean that's probably...I mean like you go to school, you learn a lot of the formal stuff, but the soft skills, like what I'm talking about today, that's where you're going to get them. And you're either going to see how it's done right or see how it's done wrong and, hopefully, be able to adjust for yourself.

Yeah, I 100% recommend it. Like I said, Dave to me was awesome. I mean he's retired now, he's traveling around the United States in a brand new RV right now where it's warm. And, you know, we still talk on a daily basis, I'll bounce stuff off him, you know, odd situations, and he's my first call. Right?

So, it's nice to have that relationship and be able to do that.

- Do you think these human skills are learnable? I mean to what degree do you think that? Because we all know people who we say, you know, "They're not really a people person." Right?

- Yeah, it's not teachable, I can tell you that. Because we have seen it, I find that you could...I don't know, that's such a tough one. I think you have it or you don't. But it's going to define what type of a leader you are really. I find if you don't have the strong human skills, you're probably going to be more of a top-down manager because it's easier to just drop that to a subordinate and then have them keep dropping that down.

And I think, if you have more of the soft skills, you're probably going to be a more immersive person and just work it more yourself. Right? That's...

- Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I mean you work where your strength is, right?

- Yeah, that's basically it. Yeah.

- So, do you have any final thoughts or anything you want to share?

- You know, it's funny, I'm doing this now with this group for a year and now I'm starting to get guys kind of reach out to me and like, "Hey, man, you know, are you looking for someone to work with or are you looking for someone to kind of join your team?" And I'm not yet, I mean we're not far away from that, hopefully, but I think, for me, that's kind of a badge of honor because that means that people are kind of...well, one of two things, either they've heard about free meals, which is, you know, not bad I must say, or they actually think that you're making a difference.

And that to me kind of seems like, if someone wants to work with you, like they're asking to work with you, then they probably think you're worthwhile working with. Which, to me, is huge. I mean I've had several different folks reach out to me and they're like, you know, "When you're looking for someone, I'd like to be that person," which is really cool. Right?

Like that's kind of the penultimate thing, like that's what I'm...

- Yeah, absolutely. Although the question on everyone's mind really is how much lobster are in these free meals?

- There's a lot. Yeah, I mean, obviously, here on the East Coast those things just run wild, right, sometimes there's traffic jams, just lobsters running around on the highway. Yeah. You know, I'm not a lobster person, I like steak, I don't know...

- Really?

- Oh man, everybody out here just eats steak, we don't like lobster.

- That's so funny because I always joke...I grew up in Alberta and I always joke that I got kicked out because I didn't particularly like steak.

- Yeah, man, that's what it's all about. Yeah, we feed the lobster to the tourists when they come here in the summer, that's it.

- Well, yes, I have eaten lobster as a tourist in Nova Scotia in the summer. So...

- [ianudible] Hall's Harbour, there's a big lobster pound, Peggy's Cove there and stuff. It's, you know, half hour from where I'm at and it's definitely...this time of year, it's nice. It gets a little busy in the summer, but we love seeing our tourists come down, you know, it's pretty [inaudible].

- Oh, I've been to Peggy's Cove, it's beautiful.

- Oh, really? Cool.

- Yeah, and dangerous if you're not paying attention. Yeah.

- Well, every year, a couple people get a little too close and we have to go and pick them out of the ocean. The downside with the Atlantic Ocean is it doesn't get warm. Like we have a lot of really nice beaches that no one swims at because it's cold all the time.

- Yeah. Well, here, way over on the West Coast, we, unfortunately, have people, storm watchers, who tend to get a little too close in the winter as well to storms.

- I know, I hear it.

- So, where can our listeners find you on the web?

- On pretty well every social. I mean it's easy, obviously, LinkedIn and stuff. I think we [inaudible] here before, you know, all the Facebook, Instagram, all that sort of good stuff, I'm pretty easy to find, but LinkedIn's probably the easiest, yeah.

- Great. All right. Well, thank you very much. It was great talking to you.

- I really enjoyed it, it was nice to chat.

- Safety Labs is created by Slice, the only safety knife on the market with a finger-friendly blade. Find us at sliceproducts.com. Until next time, stay safe. ♪ [music] ♪