Leading From the Middle To Enhance Workplace Safety

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Mikel Bowman, a consultant who focuses on leadership development and organizational culture. He’s a former senior Safety Director with over 20 years experience in the mining industry, who also has a background in counseling.

Mikel applies his in-depth experience of human relationships to the safety arena and helps HSE professionals overcome polarization, improve safety and change cultures by ‘leading from the middle’.

He explains how and why you can lead from the middle at any level within your organization. Loving, nurturing and encouraging your co-workers can help engage and empower them to start taking ownership of their own safety and the safety of others.

Using many real-life stories from his safety career, Mikel discusses the importance of balance between data and relationships for EHS professionals and how they can become facilitators rather than dictators.

He believes you can improve both production and safety at the same time and urges the profession to abandon its pursuit of perfection that creates mission statements, such as ‘zero harm’.

In a rousing call to action, Mikel declares that safety practitioners have the opportunity to change mindsets and cultures by leading with integrity and compassion. He describes them as superheroes with the power to inspire worker engagement and empowerment, improving workplace safety and revolutionizing people’s lives!

♪ [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] ♪ Hi there. Welcome to "Safety Labs by Slice." It's no secret that the world has become, or at least certainly feels, more polarized than ever before. Because of social media, we've got access to pretty much everyone's opinion about everything at all times.

Today's guest has deep experience with human relationships, both inside and outside the safety arena. He sees this polarization in many places and has developed a leadership style he calls leading from the middle. I'll ask him what that means, why it's effective, and how it can move the safety industry forward. Mikel Bowman is a consultant who focuses on leadership development and organizational culture.

He has over 20 years experience in the mining industry in leadership and upper management roles, such as GM and senior safety director. He also has a background in different kinds of counseling, personal, professional, and marital, and he was a children's pastor for seven years. Mikel joins us from Bloomington, Indiana.

Welcome.

- [Mikel] Thank you for having me here. It is always an honor. Thank you.

- Yeah, you're welcome. So, I gave you a slightly shorter introduction than I do for some guests because I'd like to hear from you about your journey. So, what is the story that led you to where you are today, professional, and what past experiences kind of feed your current practice?

- That is a huge, huge question.

- I know.

- Nothing like just swinging for the fences right from the question, right? Moreover, I think since a small child, I've always just loved people. My mom said that when I was little, you could set me in a room just a little baby. She said, if we had a family reunion or a gathering, she was the most hurting person in that room you would gravitate towards because in your diaper, it's like you could feel the person who needed your hug or to hold a child more than anyone else.

And she goes, it would just puggle my mind. And she said, also, as a parent, it was always the person who was the most broken person in the room. So, I was always like, no, you know, as an overprotective mother. But that's just kind of been the overarching theme of my whole life, whether it's in a non-for-profit space or in the mining space. We ask more of our people than what we ought in so many ways.

And they spend more time with us than they do with their loved ones. And it is up to us, I believe, to love them, to nurture them, and help them to move forward on a grander scale than we have ever done before. And I think that my journey has given me the opportunity to work with 1% of bikers coming out of federal prison.

And seeing that they were good people who did horrible things, unspeakable things that they were just set in the wrong direction. If they just had somebody to father them for just a little bit, the whole direction of their life could have changed. And in today's day and age, we are in the most fatherless generation the world has ever seen.

And what I found was that during that time, whether in the non-for-profit space, the safety space as a GM, as a...one of my titles was culture guru, yeah, right, no matter what the position or the title was, what I found is loving people right where they're at, helping them and helping them to conceptualize their own greatness is that very thing that would push them to want to be more, to do more, and to progress more in life.

And some Wilson won't, but for the most part, most people will. And that's what got me to where I am today. Just seeing that play out in people's lives in a massive way has been life-changing for me.

- Okay. So, I'm going to sort of dovetail on that because last time when we met, you mentioned that you feel like the overarching theme of your life or anything that you're doing is encouraging people. Yeah. How did that theme develop?

So, it sounds like maybe it was genetic or it was innate or something, but how does it play out in your work today?

- Well, as a consultant, so I'm a business consultant, leadership consultant. I help organization not only define their culture, but find out where it is and then give them pathways to move forward strategically. And as a leadership development consultant within mining space and civil construction space, I help organizations deal with what they already have, work with what they already have instead of throwing people and money at problems.

And for me, encouraging has been the center focus of what I do. You know, a lot of consultants come in and they smack you around. They tell you all the things that you do wrong, but man, I'm telling you, knowing what you're doing right is half the battle. And then encouraging people to continue to do what's right, you know, is the other half the battle. And what we've seen is a dramatic change.

And I learned that in the counseling realm. I learned that...I've got a guy in front of me who rode for a One-Percenter Gang who spent more of his life in prison than he did anything else. If I yelled at him and told him all the things that was wrong about him, guess what? He already knows. He already knows where he is going wrong.

He already knows the missteps that he's taken in life. What he needs to know is what he's good at. What he needs to know is how to enhance that. What he needs to be is encouraged that he actually can be somebody else and reinvent his life. Well, the same goes for any organization. It's no different. I worked for an organization that when the president contacted me, there was an active shooter situation in the organization.

And what had happened was through a quarterly review, the employee came in, got his review, shot his employer, and then shot himself. It was a horrible situation. The president of the organization who was doing the interview, he lived. Thank God he lived, but it was nonetheless traumatic. Also, OSHA had walked in the door and had shut them down. So, when I walk in the door, that's what I have to face.

That's the very thing that I have to face walking in the door. If I come into there and start discouraging everyone who has just been through a traumatic situation like this, if I walk in as their fireman, their fixer, and I come into that organization and I yell and scream and force my way, I will never gain trust.

I will never build hope. The side of recruiting and retention for them is absolutely destroyed. And if I lead in that moment from the middle, the proper way, it leverages change. Now, this company, particularly the one I talk about is the longest client that I've had, almost three years now.

And what we've seen is from that point to come to an area where we haven't had to recruit because we've kept employees and when there's over $6 million in CapEx for that organization right now to continue to pour into the organization. Where we started was we had an active shooter situation, OSHA shut the place down, the EPA showed up, and then I walked through the door.

Now, that hasn't had anything to do with because I'm really smart or I'm just an absolute brilliant person, it's because somewhere along the lines, I learned that to encourage someone to do the next right thing is better than beating them down. And a man named Perry Sanders invested in me in my 30s. And I'm going to tell you, that guy changed and revolutionized my life because I was bullheaded.

I was violent. I was the type of person I didn't have a problem with throwing someone against the wall, slapping people around, forcing my way, putting that macho bravado forward, thinking that's the template of who a man is and that's who I'm supposed to be. And it didn't work. And found myself just horribly frustrated and upset with life because I wasn't progressing or moving forward.

And when this man came into my life and he pointed out that I had greatness within me, and it was there because not just to better me, but others around me and enhance their life, and that God put it there and divinely set that in my life and put that course forward, it changed and revolutionized the way I saw myself because I had always played the villain in every scenario.

I always felt I was the bad guy coming in. And when I saw myself as the hero, glimpsed it for only but just a moment that I could actually be the hero of my own narrative, once I realized for just a little glimmer that I could be more and that potential was there, it literally rocked my world. And so when I bring that into other people's lives, it works.

It's not something I created or I invented, but it's something that I decide to hone because it's the thing that I've seen that not only helps, encourages, that encouragement, that help takes ground and it keeps it. And that's what sets so many different consultants and counselors apart. So many people need to go back to counseling, back to counseling because they're always the victim or the villain in their own narrative.

So many businesses keep reaching out and reaching out for consultant after consultant because they are always seeing their problems as the villain and they don't know how to capitalize on their problems, their failures. They don't know how to move forward and they're having a difficult time conceptualizing what they do well and then growing that within the organization or their own personal lives.

- Okay. So, narrowing in a little bit on safety, one thing when we first spoke, you said that you wished you'd had this podcast when you started out in safety. So, I don't mean to toot our own horns, but the reason is that you said at the time you felt pretty isolated.

- I did. Yeah.

- Yeah. Can you tell me a bit about your safety beginnings and what you found challenging?

- So, I was in the mining space at the time and I was a driller. And I'd only been a driller for a year, but the safety director that we had at the time had decided to embark on a different career. And I felt as though with my background with counseling, with my background in the non-for-profit space, I felt I could make a difference with our guys.

And what was so isolating was I didn't go to college to be a safety person. So, I didn't have the network that I think a lot of people come out with that they have colleagues and friends that they have made that they can go back to. So, for instance, in the mining space, you know, you have the CFR. And the CFR is a pile of rules and regulations that were to motivate and move around.

Actually, I have a copy of it right here. So, this is the Part 48 CFR. And it's pretty, you know, massive, it's massive. But, you know, there's a reason for it.

If you swim through it and you're going through, you're starting to realize, okay, you know, most of the stuff isn't fluff. There was no way that I couldn't have known it all. And so I constantly felt isolated, I constantly felt like I was in a deficit of knowing what to do and how to take all that CFR, the Part 48 CFR, and bring it down into a place that people could actually utilize it, see the practicality behind it, and do it for more than a sense of just being compliant.

Doing it for the safety side, doing it for being their brother's keeper, and doing it, you know what, they go home more whole than they... You know what I mean? With all their parts and pieces, you know, and understanding you're doing this because of integrity. You're doing this because you're a family, not because it's a compliancy issue. And then I didn't have a lot of people within that queue like I said, because I didn't go to college for this.

And so it took some time. I finally got to meet a guy named Matt Butter. I mentioned him a lot, and he was a safety guy for a company called Mosers [SP]. And he really went out of his way to help me for no other reason than just to be there for me. And it meant a lot and it was a saving grace for me in the safety world.

- Okay. So, now, you know, you've been in the safety world for quite a while. You've developed your thoughts about leadership. Balance is really important to your leadership style. So, you've mentioned there's different pendulum swings between like being so hard on people that they get written up for breathing funny or being so laid back that the safety professional is trying to be everyone's buddy.

So, can you talk to me about balance in terms of safety leadership?

- So one of the courses that we're getting ready to pull the trigger on is called the soft skills of safety. And what I learned from being a driller, I worked with what we call safety cops a lot for different large mining organizations.

And like you say, you know, if you sneezed out of the line, you're getting in trouble. And then we worked for other safety...I was in a mine site in California and I lived in Indiana. We were out in California and I never once in over two years of going back and forth to that mine site, saw the safety director, even when we had a safety issue as the contractor I never saw the guy.

Never. Not once. And more than once, I went there with a one-way ticket and was there for three weeks, never saw him. And so the balance is this, I think you're playing as a safety person, you're playing the two parts. One is Sherlock Holmes and the other is Spock. In other words, you're looking for trends and commonalities. The balance is yes, you do need data, 100% you need data, but you also need to take your emotions out of that data and get in the field with your people.

And this is the balance. When you're in the field and you're creating those relationships and you're giving them the opportunity to take ownership of their own safety and be part of the system of fixing things, you empower your people and you become less of a dictator and more of a facilitator. And that is a powerful balance.

Now, obviously, there's some safety people, I know I've been in this position where you have to write people up. I've also been the safety guy at one time where I wasn't allowed to hire, fire, or write up anybody. And so, yes, I know what that's like. You had no authority whatsoever, and that's a very lost feeling. But the balance is knowing that what you're doing isn't for the sake of compliance.

You have to have more of a passionate understanding that these are human beings that you are protecting from themselves, from the elements, from random things that can happen with a piece of equipment. And you have to have this insatiable desire to see everyone in the room win, utilizing the data to make that work and happen.

So, the balance is walking in authority and compassion at the same time, depending on the directives given upon leadership within the organization. Because I know I've been there, some organizations are like, look, you're only to monitor.

And then there's a whole nother pathway of inspiration that you can do with other people by encouraging moving forward, but then some companies are like, look, you have full ring. Do what you want, fire who you want, get rid of the bad apples. Well, now you have to pace yourself so much more because absolute power corrupts absolutely. And what you must understand is now it's time to pace yourself because you have an amazing opportunity as the safety person to be the key cultural component to that organization.

And you can do so much to make people want to come to work because they know that you're looking out for them.

- So is that what you mean...when you say leading from the middle, is that when you're talking about like authority and compassion? Is that or is that something separate?

- I think it's one and the same. Leading from the middle means you're not the president. I'm not the president of this organization and I am not making all the final decisions, but I can lead with class, I can lead with poise, I can lead with integrity, and putting forth the initiatives of honor forward right where I'm at. And what that does is that inspires others to do the same.

They see that and people who want to be there, who want to grow will follow your lead. And when they do, that affects the whole. You know, just as they say as one bad apple spoils the cart, well, the inverse is true, but one good apple can change the whole cart too. And it's just by being consistent in your want to move forward in a positive and a professional manner.

- So, leading from the middle, like part of it is that's sort of structurally in the organization, like in the org chart, you are typically in the middle, right? You're not the frontline and you're also not the CEO, but it's also a mindset, you would say.

- Well, absolutely 100%. You can be an entry-level employee and lead from the middle. If you're a high schooler today and you're listening to this, you're like I'm the least popular kid in school. You can still lead from the middle. You can lead by example. You can walk with your head held high knowing that you're making the right decisions instead of adapting to the culture.

I worked for organizations where when I first got there, I was like, oh my gosh, these guys are a bunch of cowboys out here. And we're flying by the seat of our pants and seeing the level of work that needed to be done. I will not shy away from the fact that I was very, very upset and I was very, very discouraged. But what I learned was that by my example, as long as I did adapt to that preset culture and I stuck with my morals and I stuck with my integrity, putting truth first, and even putting truth first when I wasn't right.

Yeah. Because we're not always right about things. And especially as safety people, man, we get this mission, we get powerful. And we're like, oh, oh, oh, and then we realize, dang it. I was wrong. Yeah. Oops.

But when you stand up in that moment and admit it and move forward anyway, my gosh, my gosh the difference that that makes. I have people from my first safety position. I just actually during Christmas saw one. He had came back from what was called their Part 48 meeting. And I saw his truck, which was one of my...I drove a truck just like his, and I was like, oh my god, my wife was there.

We were at Kohl's department store. And I said, "Oh my god, Anita." So, I took a picture of it because I thought it was a buddy that I still work with. When I looked in the line, they were buying Christmas presents and for their kids, and when I looked, it's this guy named Luke. And I hadn't seen Luke in years. And he's like, oh my god. And he reached out and he hugged me.

Now, this is as blue-collar as it gets. This guy deals with hammer oil. You know, he's been covered in muck. He knows what it's like to work 90 hours a week, snow spitting sideways in the worst conditions. He's as blue-collar as it comes, and he opens his arm and he hugs me. And his wife was happy to see me.

And yeah. And the reason why, and he looked at me and he said, "Man, I'm going to tell you what? The guy that we have now is a great dude, but I'm going to tell you he doesn't have the heart you had. Please come back. Please come back. Please come back." And I said, well, Luke, you know, I've started my own business and it's gone pretty good and I've found freedom in ways I never thought imaginable. And just there's no going back.

But thank you so much for that. I appreciate that. And this is a guy, he hasn't seen me in years, but because I chose to lead in the middle in that business, he remembered that, and the moment this blue collar guy covered in tattoos sees me, he has no choice but to wrap his big old arms around me and give me a hug.

- That makes me think too, like, just in terms of balance, thinking about between, so we've talked about mindset, we've talked about the structure, but also between sort of heart and head really. That's kind of what you're talking about, right? Like, there's compassion, heart, and authority head. Like, so it sounded like the guy, his current safety person was a nice person and...

- Yes, a very good guy.

- ...sensible, you know, not making bad decisions, but maybe just didn't have the heart.

- Yeah. He didn't have the heart and he didn't have the love for people. No matter what you're doing today, whether it's safety, there's nobody...okay, if you're a safety person and you're walking into an office and you're looking at people and you think for one second you have an enemy in that room, boy, you've messed up right away. And I don't care if that person is vying to get your job or to get you out of there.

You do not have an enemy in the room. The enemy that you do have, and there is one, and it's clear, it's ignorance. And ignorance, we don't use that word very well in society today. In Western culture, ignorance means dumb. It's not what I'm talking about. Just like discipline, everybody hates the word discipline as if you're getting spanked as a child, you know, or your hand's getting slapped.

No, that's not what that means. But ignorance is simply what they don't know. And it's your job to guide them and convince them and to inspire them to do what is right on the behalf of the employees you work with. And that's very, very difficult because these people already within the queue of their subconscious have worked with either safety people that weren't very good, that were safety cops and were always trying to catch them doing something wrong, or they themselves feels that they want to get the job done, but they're under such scrutiny for production, they're being pushed for production in such a way that you present yourself as a hindrance to them.

And this is why it's also important for you as a safety person to know more than the CFR and the rules of your organization, but know the business that you're in so that you can help them so that you can both increase production and safety because I've done it and it can be done. It's the long road, it's the high road, but if you truly have the insatiable desire to see everyone in the room win, that's the only path for you to take.

- So, that reminds me of your company's mission. And I don't know if this is what you're meaning by it, but I'll read it out. It's helping the lives of blue-collar people one CEO at a time. Is that kind of what you're talking about there, or have I missed the mark a little?

- You've not. You're dead. The idea that when we... Okay, if in counseling someone has a problem, what I know is that the head is sick. And if the head is sick, the whole body suffers from it. I remember a young lady who my wife and I actually had a leadership connection with in her life. And we helped her and her daughter who were not having a good relationship.

And after this happened, her face and her visage became younger. The head was sick, she had so much resting on her shoulders and her mind that it affected her physical body. It is the same way for any organization. There is no different.

If the CEO or the president of an organization is pushing production because either they're ignorant to the safety issues they're putting their people under or they just don't care, then it's time to help that head, inspire it in such a way, and then once you do, it affects the whole. It affects the whole body. I'm coaching a president the other day and I'm getting a referral from him.

So, I videoed this referral. And one of the things that I love what he said, he said, you know, though, we started out on the personal level and he goes...he had a traumatic situation happen in his life and I'm helping him coach through. It was awful. And it was no fault of his own, just something that happened. So, to help him through that.

And he said, you know, what's crazy how much more I'm getting along at work. It's crazy how much my safety's picked up. It's crazy how much our production's picked up because of my mindset being in a different way. When I'm leading people and I'm actually more engaged, I cannot believe the change. And so this is the same mentality is like, you have the opportunity and take that CEO mentality into your superintendent, your foreman.

Wherever you go, it's the same exact concept. Every cue of leadership is a microcosm of the body, if you will. And if you can make the head better of wherever you go, the body has no choice but to follow. In wrestling and in martial arts, we always had a saying, and that saying was, "control the head, control the man," or "Where the head goes, the body will follow."

And so now that is a manipulative tool within martial arts, but in life, it's the same way. If you can inspire and educate somebody and then you can not only do that, but you can inspire, educate, engage, and empower somebody to do the next right thing, I'm going to tell you, it will change the dynamic of wherever you are.

Whether that's entry level, somewhere in the middle, or at the very top, the head, the body has no choice but to follow. And that's on the negative side too.

- Yeah. I mean, leadership sets the tone whether they're doing it on purpose...or I should say, whether they're doing it mindfully, like, aware of what they're doing it or it's just sort of an accidental effect of, you know, they don't realize that they're doing it. What do you think is the rule of perfectionism when we're discussing the polarized approaches and how we define success?

- Man, that's...gosh, you keep throwing these big ones at me. I hope I'm doing a good job here for you because you have very thought-provoking questions and some of the best that I've... Man, I've been in over 100 podcasts, and I got to tell you, that's a huge question. So, let's talk about perfection right now. So, we have a sick obsession with perfection. You know, look at any app right now and you're looking at Instagram or Facebook, or my goodness, even if you remember...if you're old enough to remember MySpace,, - I'm old enough to remember it.

Yes.

- Are you old enough?

- Okay. So MySpace was like..oh, it was just awful. But if you're, if you see these things, everybody is in this culture that their imperfections cannot shine through. We cannot shine through. And so it leaks out in every area of our lives. For me, in the coaching system that we're building right now, we're building an online courses that you can actually take on your own time, which you can level up and leverage that, get phone calls with me, but what we realized was there was people who desperately needed my coaching but could not afford it.

So, we're making a very affordable method to do that, and we're going to launch that hopefully before the end of the year. And I screw up a lot in those. And I've told people, "Hey, look, I don't care." If I screw up or if I mess up, I'm going to keep it in here because I don't want this to be glossy. I want you to know that you too amidst your imperfections can move forward." You know, if you look at some of the people in this world, I've met so many famous people, so many famous people in my lifetime, and I could not believe how short they were.

- Yeah. Yeah. And that's a psychological phenomenon, right? Like, we think that they're somehow better because in the case of an actor, they're more beautiful. Well, they've got an entire crew making them look that way.

- Exactly right. I landed in San Jose, California...I love their airport. I love flying in and out of San Jose. And so I came into San Jose and I bumped...I won't say who he is, but I bumped into a quarterback who used to play for the 49ers. And I remember bumping into this guy and looking...he's on ESPN, and I looked at him and I was like...he was maybe 2 inches taller than me.

And right now...at my height, I was 5', 10.5". But because of injuries and a Rocket's life, I'm 5' 9", so I have some back injuries and things. I'm 5' 9". So as 5' 9", I'm looking at this guy thinking, no, my brain could not conceptualize that this dude wasn't 6-foot, 4. And I was so boggled and I realized, I'm like, no, this very much is that guy.

And I was like, hey, man. I was a fan. He's like, "Oh, dude, thanks." And he was super friendly, he was a great guy, and I just walked off and left it at there, but we think we have to be perfect. You got to have the perfect teeth, the perfect smile, and you've got to have those six-pack abs and you've got to do this, and that's what makes you a human being.

Then tell me why some of these people have at times sought out people just like me for help because they obtained everything they thought would make them valid and they feel hollow inside. And so you've got to get rid of that. If you're waiting to be perfect to embark on your dream, if you're waiting to be perfect to stand up and lead from the middle, I'm sorry, it's not going to happen.

You're never going to be perfect. And there's no time like now to make your voice be heard, but just be transparent when you fail, do the honorable thing and say, I failed and then adapt and move forward. So stop thinking like you have to be perfect. Now, when we strive for that in the safety realm, you're not going to have a perfect record. I cannot stand it when I see the shallow mission statements that are put out there by organizations that say zero accidents.

Oh my gosh, that kills me because the day you have an accident, guess what? Now you don't get the pizza party. And, you know, I don't know if you've all seen that, it's been around for a long time, but Mad TV did a video about... Yes.

- Yeah, That's exactly what I was thinking of.

- "Don't say anything. You cut your arm off. We won't get the pizza party."

- Yeah, exactly. It's a comedy sketch folks, if you haven't seen it, but yeah, that's the idea.

- But there's a lot of truth to that. You know, because of perfection, we will hide and a lot of people when that's expected will not report. And we need the data. As safety people, you need the data, remember. And so, therefore, you don't want people to have to hide from you for that. Now, so we talked about perfection.

What was the second part of that question?

- Well, it was in terms of polarization and how...so you talked about how we define success, but what's the role of perfectionism when we're talking about this polarized or unbalanced kind of approaches?

- Consistency in being transparent on where you fall short. You have to look at this. So often we want to plan it. Now, unfortunately, there's so much more that goes into this because I think that a lot of organizations push their safety people to produce as well.

They want production. And what they don't see is they're stifling a lot of creativity on your part and they cause you to write policy all the time just to justify your existence. And man, that's what we call business adrenal fatigue or safety adrenal fatigue. And people are just waiting for you to write the new policies so they can sign off of it and go, oh, you can't do this, because then you're going to get stuck in trying to out write human behavior, okay?

Out write, as far as policy is concerned, human behavior, and you're not going to do that. So, what you have to do is stop thinking things have got to be perfect. Now, if the organization that you're in expects that, there are ways that you can try to inspire them and teach them and educate them.

Remember, your enemy is ignorance, but it might be good for you to get on LinkedIn and start networking because if you're in an organization that is expecting perfection and they're living on that zero accidents moniker, if it can't be taught out of them or inspired out of them, maybe it's time for you to find a place that would better suit your mission.

- So, you mentor some national safety directors, corporate safety directors, and you teach them...and you mentioned this earlier, something called the soft skills of safety. So, what are those specifically?

- Specifically are your daily interactions with superintendents and foreman and the people that you meet daily and how to be intentional and strategic about that. As a fighter as a young man, I was known for being a counter-striker. And so I teach a method of even speaking to people on what I call verbal counter-striking. And so the counter-striker is not the guy who comes in rushing at 100 miles an hour into the fight.

He is the one who's trying to outstep you and outmaneuver you and allow you to come into a place where he can knock you out. Remember, again, saying that our enemy is not the individual, it's ignorance. And so what we're trying to do with the soft skills of safety is gain trust with an individual.

One of the first things that I talk about with the safety director is I start to ask them, how often are you in the dirt? How often are you with your people? And have you ever helped them do anything? That's a big thing. I was big about digging out tracks at the end of the day. I was big about fueling up equipment because I wasn't just a safety director, I knew the industry.

It's important for you to be passionate about knowing the industry so you know what needs to be done and then you can also help. You'll get so much intel from this. You know, I appreciate the apps, I do, some of them are phenomenal, but they're not going to give you all the information that you want. Not like when you have a relationship.

And when you have a relationship, when you have a friendship with someone and they know you're there to link shields with them, they will give you...they will volunteer some of the most insane stuff that goes there on the work sites that you had no idea and would never know is happening. But because you've swung in there and you've said, I am going to be your friend, I am going to work hard for you, I'm going to be here early and stay late, I'm not going to be the typical barn sour safety person who likes to either stay in my office or in the truck, but I'm going to help you right here where it matters most on the frontlines.

And that's part of that soft skills. I met a safety director one time. I was bidding for an organization that had a fatality. They had 2,000 employees and they had several fatalities over the summer. And I asked him, I said to the president, "Well, how many safety people do you have on staff?" And he said, "Oh, we have six safety directors and they're over our six regions."

I was like, "Oh, impressive." And I said, "Okay, well, then do you have any safety leads or safety people who are in the field representing those safety directors?" And he said, "No." So I assumed that those safety directors were regularly in the field. So, I asked him, what was the cadence that they were in the field both as a surprise visit and scheduled visits.

And he said, none. They wrote policy from an office and they had 2,000 employees. Another one of those soft skills is asking the people what they need to be safer. What tools do they need? Hey, if I'm going to write this policy, what do you think about the policy? I know what the CFR says.

I know what our safety handbook says. You guys, none of your people know what the safety handbook is. And most of them couldn't tell you the business core values.

- Right. Yeah. But they can tell you exactly what they need to... They can give you answers to questions you didn't know you needed to ask, I imagine.

- Oh, that is huge and that deserves to be said again. They can give you answers to questions you didn't even know you needed to ask. That's enormous. I found out stuff that like I didn't even know were an issue. And when I was trying to prioritize and execute major issues, I found out, oh man, what I thought I needed a push, what I see is what they actually need. And when they saw me fighting for them and standing in that gap in the middle for them, I'm telling you, that's one of those soft skills too.

When we were kids, we knew growing up who would fight for you and who would leave you hanging in the schoolyard. You know, we knew. And so those were the guys we chose to hang out with because, you know, we weren't up to anything bad, but we knew, I knew this guy would stand next to me if I was going to get punched in the face. When they realize that you're the guy who's going to go to bat to them and you're going to hold them accountable, but you're living to that same level of accountability, there is something that changes within the human psyche that's unbelievable.

I learned this from biker gangs. I watched guys go to prison for things they did not do and spend 30 years there for a loyalty to a vest, like this, a vest. It was much deeper than that. There was a sense of brotherhood there that there's nothing they wouldn't do because they proved themselves to others.

And that's that same mentality you've got to drive. You've got to walk in there with confidence. You've got to walk in there with professionality and poise, and yet also be there to actually listen. I went to a site that we were getting kicked off of. It was a multi-million dollar site. We had 75 employees. I was told that if we failed there, the organization failed.

I was told when I went there with a one-way ticket to go out there that I was not allowed to chew anybody's butt as far as the contract...we were the contractor, so the site superintendent, who was an awfully most corrosive human being I've ever met, still to this day. I was not allowed to fight back with him. So, I had all these rules of engagement.

We were failing on every safety front and even on the front of production. But when I came in there and after three weeks, I had such a brotherhood that we checked everything off the list. We checked everything in our contract where the site superintendent was happy with everything. How'd I do that?

I did that by leading within the middle. I listened to our people. I listened to what they said about more than just the job. Because sometimes they need someone to talk to about life. If you're a safety person, I'm here to tell you right now, you need a bone up on personal development. That's another soft skill. If you want to grow and move forward in any level of your career, personal development is it.

And the more you learn about yourself, the more you can help others, because they're going to want someone to talk to about their dreams eventually. They're going to want to talk about moving forward with their own career. You got to be the one to listen. I listened about what the problems were with safety. Now, they were always right, you know what I mean?

Like, they had a particular understanding of what the concrete issue was, but that data and the willingness to give it to me gave me information that I could look deeper into. It's like an incident investigation. You had a rollover and it was much deeper than a rollover. It's much deeper than a haul truck rolling over. You got to get in there and inspect what was that haul truck doing a hundred yards before it went off the side of the road?

You've got to interview everybody involved and look for the trends and commonalities on what they're saying. So, you got to listen. You've got to be a phenomenal listener.

- Zooming out a little bit to look at the whole safety industry, what are your hopes for the future of the safety industry? Like where...and I know it's hard to, you know, speak for an entire industry, but where would you like to see safety go as a whole? What kind of directions?

- You come out with these questions, oh my gosh. They're so huge. So when you were a kid, [inaudible 00:41:30], no fluffy questions. As safety as a whole, what I hope that we see more of is, yes, you must learn the CFR. If you're going to go to safety school, you're going to go to college and do this. Yes, the CFR is important, but you need to learn how to lead. You need to learn to lead on a high level, and that's going to help you at home, it's going to help you within your personal life, and that's going to help you in business.

One hundred percent glean every book that you can about leadership. Anything written by Jocko Willink or Leif Babin or the two of them, "Dichotomy of Leadership," "Extreme Ownership." These are phenomenal books. There are so many other books, The 360 Leader. There's goodness gracious actually, "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership." These are things that are beautiful things for you to learn.

So, I'm hoping that they breed more leaders. What I would like to see also from businesses, I would like to see businesses take their safety people more seriously. I'm very weary right now of the story of getting safety people calling me or talking to me about their leadership team not actually engaging in leadership as if the safety...there's a safety director, he's got that handled.

We talk about production, we talk about the next job, but we're not really a part of any of the safety initiatives. If you're a CEO or president and your safety director comes out with a safety initiative, you need to have the integrity and the wherewithal as a leader to know what it is and be engaged to eat it so you can empower others as a part of it. It shouldn't be a section that's different.

I would also like to see every entry-level worker truly conceptualize and understand that safety is not the safety director's job. As a safety director, safety is not your job. It's the employee who's doing the works job. It's your job to monitor it. And you wouldn't even have a position if people, one, were disengaged when they came to work, or two, the, you know, production wasn't pushed above that of people.

And so what's phenomenal is you are a superhero. And so lastly I'll say this, I want safety people to really see the power of their position. To lead from the middle cannot only change someone's work life, but their home life as well. You have an opportunity to grow people in such a way with what you do that it can literally revolutionize their lives.

You know, I talk about legacy a lot people, and I'm here to tell you right now, that is legacy. That is legacy, not money that you leave behind, not statues that were made in your honor, none of that means squat because after the annals of history is over and you'll be far forgotten and the deeds that you do will be far forgotten, The intentions you put forward in life will perpetuate themselves for an eternity.

And I'm here to tell you the safety people are the true heroes of the industrial complex. And if you'll conceptualize and understand that and grab ahold of it and walk in it, you will see cultures change. You will see mindsets change.

You will see what you thought was impossible Move, because I know it, because I've lived it. It's not easy. It's the harder way. It's not about the box that gets checked, okay? It's bigger than that. It's much bigger than that. And then when you lead in that way, I'm going to tell you, you're going to see your citations go down.

You're going to see compliance go up because you've got engaged, empowered people and they're doing things for you because they're willing to march to hell with you and back because they've watched you walk it and it's inspired them to do the same.

- Well, there you go. There's your call to action, folks. Earlier, you talked about listening and I kind of paused and it's because of what's coming next. There are some questions that I ask every guest, and I usually ask guests where would you focus soft skill training for tomorrow's safety professionals, but for you, I was going to make it harder and say, because you're so focused on that, if you could only teach one soft skill to all the CEOs, what would it be?

So, I kind of paused because I thought you might say listening, but I'll throw it open and see if there's anything else that comes to mind.

- This is such a hard question and it's so beautiful, but for me to truly care and love their people, to actually see what they're doing. It isn't about the vacation. It isn't about the golf. It isn't about you influencing on LinkedIn or Instagram and looking good. It isn't about the bands and the skinny jeans and the endless amount of followers. It's about you understanding that you have the responsibility over people's lives as a president or CEO of an organization.

And the choices that you make greatly affect people's quality of life. If I could teach that to help safety people...or help boots to every CEO to literally see that you are changing for the better or for the worst people's lives and how that ripples into the universe, into life, I'm going to tell you that's what I would strive to push, to teach that one thing is the love and the understanding and respect for your people.

- Okay. And now, I'm going to hit you with what is often called the hardest question and then I promise it'll get easier. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your safety career, what's one piece of advice that you might give to yourself?

- Don't be in such a hurry. Don't be in such a hurry. And this is what I mean by that. I have many times, and I'm sure a lot of safety people will relate to this, felt rushed, felt in a hurry. Felt, oh, my God, I got to fix this right now. Oh my goodness, oh my gosh. And you're running here and you're running there and then you become the reactive safety director.

And the reason why I stopped being the reactive safety director and I was able to lead myself out of it and become the proactive safety director is because I wore myself out. So slow down. Slow it down, be logical, be Spock, be Sherlock Holmes. Take those emotions out of this and realize this is not pass or fail. This isn't grade school.

Slow down people's lives are in the queue here, let's do this right.

- Right. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

- Exactly.

- Yeah. How could our listeners learn more about some of the topics that we talked about today? You have mentioned some books. Are there other resources that, you know, maybe websites or projects or other books that you would recommend?

- I think the biggest resource is stop with the algorithm of Instagram just hearing what you want to hear. And I want you to start to listen to things that will challenge your thinking. I want you to start to question your motives. This is where it begins. You can read all the books in the world, but it doesn't help if you don't question your own motives. You don't start to look and question your own thoughts. I think too many people just don't do that with themselves.

They trudge along through life. They have all these absolutes and they don't question themselves. They don't look within, because sometimes that can be a scary place. But I'm going to tell you that's the best place that you're going to go to fix anything, even a safety situation. So, other books that..well, one, I would say follow a lady named Linda F.

Martin, who's a wonderful friend of mine who I dearly love, get with her on Instagram. She's been on my podcast. I've been on hers several times. We talk all the time. We have long conversations. And I think that she has integrity. She has a phenomenally beautiful heart.

She's a soulful, wonderful person. And so follow people like that. Follow people on LinkedIn and start leveraging that resource so that you don't feel alone and so polarized like we talked to before. There's a lot of safety people there on LinkedIn that are so passionately looking for someone else just to share thoughts and ideas with.

So, get a community. So I could share all the books in the whole world. I've got a whole stack of them here. You know, I've got a stack here. I've got a stack behind you. I've got a stack over there. I could tell you all these books, but I want to encourage you to say, start questioning your own motives.

And I have a book right here from 1943. The first issue was out in 1933 about leadership and managing people. And I'm going to tell you they had the same problems we have today. So, also realize that nothing, no matter who's out there, myself included, we're not selling you anything new. There's nothing new under the site. And so understand the situations that you are going through are common. There are answers, they've been around forever, so network with other people, question yourself, and find those resources that might challenge your thinking a little bit and eat the meat and spit out the bones of the truth of those things and formulate your own way.

This is important. My way may not have been your way. And the way that you find success I'm going to tell you is not by brow-beating people because people are going to hate you. And that's not a way to move a needle or change the culture. So, those are my suggestions.

- I want to point out too that we had Linda Martin on our podcast and I would agree with your assessment. She's wonderful, super intelligent, extremely down to earth, a compassionate person. I really enjoyed our conversation.

- Yeah.

- And there are lots of people in safety who are. And I think in looking for this community, you know, reach out to people because I think you, I don't know, in my experience, you'd be surprised at how much people want to connect.

- We are our greatest resource, by the way. We truly are. And we hear that a lot. But as safety people or anything that you're going through, to be able to have that community and others that you can link shields with will shock you because sometimes when you're going through something that you feel like nobody gets and you feel so alone on all your island, you'll realize there are so many people that are either right where you're at or maybe they're just a fuzz ahead of you and can give you that proper perspective to help you to move forward.

So, I can tell you all the books in the world, but nothing beats human connection and connecting with people that care and wanna link shields with you, but also people that aren't just yes men and women, but people who are willing to look at you and go, "Hey, this is where I think you're going wrong. This is the missteps that I see you making." And then have that relationship with them to look at that and go, "Okay, I'll receive that."

- On that note and somewhat related, where can our listeners find you on the web?

- So, I'm on Instagram, it's Mikel Bowman. It's mikelbowman243. I am also on LinkedIn, Mikel Bowman on LinkedIn. And that's where I really focus a lot. I used to be on TikTok, but here lately I've had a lot of people mock and mimic my social medias to gain money from elderly women.

And oh, it's been tragic. And so I got off of TikTok just so that I can say, "Look, that's not me. That's not me." And we also have our website that is Bowman Legacies at kajabi.com. And so that is where we're building a lot right now, but mostly LinkedIn.

And I'm also on YouTube as well. I have a YouTube channel with over 200 videos there at Legacy Quest. And our podcast is the "Legacy Quest Podcast."

- Great. And we'll have links in the podcast notes as well for some of these things if you're looking. So that's our discussion for today. I'd like to thank our listeners for tuning in and taking part in the safety discussions that we do post on LinkedIn. And thank you, Mikel, for joining us and sharing your point of view. And, of course, as always, my thank you to the "Safety Labs by Slice" team who work hard to keep important discussions like this happening.

Bye for now. ♪ [music] ♪ 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.