Leading and Learning Through Safety
Leading and Learning Through Safety
Episode 159: Who is the Leader?
The podcast episode discusses a tragic incident at a Kansas municipal airport where a 16-year-old worker was electrocuted while using a boom lift near high-voltage power lines. A 24-year-old worker also sustained severe burns in the incident. The host, Dr. Mark French, emphasizes the critical role of leadership and safety protocols in preventing such tragedies. He questions the decisions that led to the young workers being placed in such a hazardous situation without adequate protection or training. Dr. French stresses the importance of pre-task safety assessments, proper training, and empowering supervisors to stop unsafe work. He criticizes the lack of leadership that allows dangerous work conditions and reflects on the broader issue of young workers being exposed to hazardous jobs without sufficient oversight. Dr. French calls for a stronger safety culture where human dignity and safety are prioritized, urging leaders to ensure that workers, especially minors, are properly trained and protected. The episode highlights the need for continuous learning and improvement in workplace safety practices to prevent future incidents.
https://www.kake.com/home/wichita-teen-electrocuted-man-burned-by-power-lines-at-great-bend-airport/article_98de914e-59a4-11ef-a7b3-9f0eca8de002.html
This week on the podcast, we're talking about leadership, we're talking about training, we're talking about age restrictions, and overall, how does that relate to an organization and how an organization leads? Through these items this week on the leading and learning through safety podcast.
Announcer:Welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. Your host is Dr Mark French. Mark's passion is helping organizations motivate their teams. This podcast is focused on bringing out the best in leadership through creating strong values, learning opportunities, teamwork and safety. Nothing is more important than protecting your people. Safety creates an environment for empathy, innovation and empowerment. Together, we'll discover meaning and purpose through shaping our safety culture. Thanks for joining us this episode and now here is Dr Mark French,
Mark French:welcome to the leading and learning through safety podcast. I'm your host, Mark, And as always, I am thrilled that you have chosen to join me as we take a journey that starts with safety but always ends in leadership and the other way around. Show me good leadership. I'll show you good safety. If I see good safety, I see good leadership. This week, one news story in particular really caught my attention, and it happened earlier this week in Kansas. And I want to dive deeper in this. And again, we have to make a lot of assumptions. We have to speculate on what really goes on in an organization to let something like this happen. And I have a lot of questions, and I always love asking the questions, because I maybe just asking the question out loud makes me feel better to ask it, and that's where I'm at with this. But so this was happened at a municipal airport in Kansas, and they were working on to put new siding on kind of the airport area, one of the hangars or something another. They were basically a project to put new siding up. They were utilizing a boom lift, a and there's actually a picture from the sheriff's office. They credit the sheriff's office with the photograph of the scene after the fact. And you see, I see, and I'll post a link to this with my LinkedIn account. I'll put a link in there so that it's visible. There's a blue Genie, boom lift, typical metal, fully metal, boom lift, and there's high voltage utility wires just all over where they're working. And what happened was it touched the electrical wire and a 16 year old lost his life. Another, a 24 year old received significant burns as they bailed out of the boom lift and landed on the roof. So many questions. One, why were we so close to power lines? Right here when I go, yeah, there's this. The thing that happened the power lines, where was a pre task job just to walk through and talk about the hazards? Did anyone say something along the lines of, those are electrical wires, and you're working right near them. You are approaching. You're really close. You're right on top of them. I think about the very first step of setting up a good project, in setting up a good method of doing work. And even if you're comfortable doing, say, roofing or siding or take your pick of any job, there still should be that moment, two minutes. Let's call it sometimes more, sometimes less, but I'm going to say two minutes to look at it and go, What are the major issues, what are the ones that are going to lead to fatalities, significant injuries? What could go wrong? What could be the catastrophe? Work that happens at this job site during the work that we're about to be performing today. Someone has to be in charge. Someone has to take that responsibility on their shoulders, to go. I have the empowerment, and I have the authority to stop or change this work if I see something that is going to be detrimental to life, oh, we take another step back now, because it's not just doing the pre test job, it's who is in charge enough to make the call and make it stick, to look at the area and go, Wow, there's power lines here, and this is the way we're going to have to use a boom lift to do this. And to do that we're going to get close. And how are we going to protect ourselves from that? What are we going to do differently, and how do I enforce it? Or do we find a whole other way to do this work? Do we approach from a different angle? Do we have the power turned off. What do we do differently because of it? And I a supervisor or manager who has the authority to make the call to make it stop and make it stick, too many times, too many times. And I've talked about this on the on other podcasts. I'm not saying this happened here in other industries and other places there, the employee has said, I feel unsafe. I don't feel right about this. Especially there was, I remember, especially there was a trenching job where they had mentioned that the person had been saying how unsafe they felt. They raised it to supervision, raised it to management, and basically was told to get back in there. They wouldn't have a job, and then it collapsed, and there was a fatality, and there's a supervisor out there who ordered someone to go back in that hole. And so there has to be someone with the authority and the compassion, and I'm not even saying compassion, In what world is it okay to order someone to go down somewhere where they have a chance of fatality or a chance of death? Why would we do something of that type? What kind of organization? And even more, we allow people to work for those organizations. I say we, you're not doing it. I'm not doing it, but it to find work for people to have a job, to provide for their they're accepting that as a normal in this case, I don't know any. I did some research, I can find very little on the organization that they of safety protocols or anything of that sort, but there's a lot of and I'm sure OSHA will sort out as they're doing the investigation. And I hope to see it. I truly hope to be able to find it in the months that come to see what they cite for this, no doubt there's going to be the closeness to the power lines, but a six, again, the definition of hazardous work and some of the fluidity that we've been seeing here recently, whether it's happening more or we're calling it out more, we are seeing miners doing more and more work in the workplace that is dangerous. There was the sightings of the food industries that had subcontractor their sanitation using night shift hours with young people doing the work. Here, a 16 year old is on the job site in a boom lift with a 24 year old near power lines hanging sheet metal. Where do we make that call? Who made that call? Why did they make that call? That's the question I always ask, is, why? What was it? What drove the decision making process to lead us to think or to deliver that person to that work, thinking that they were ready for it. What kind of training is there and that there's my thing is, I'm I believe in training. I believe in appropriate training. I know that it's hard to do, draining. I know that it can get very difficult, but that's not the excuse that that is just a reason to to say that well, because there's an exception, I don't have to do it. That's not the truth. You do your best you can, and you try to continue it. And I want to talk a little bit more about that I'm getting I'm getting. I'm moving around all over the place here in the first half, because this is there's so much wrong with this single news story of a 16 year old being electrocuted hanging sheet metal on an airport a public. Area. Let's talk more about this entire situation on the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. You
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Mark French:Welcome back to the second half of the leading and learning through safety podcast. This episode, one news story consumed my thoughts and continue to consume my thoughts of a 16 year old on an uninsulated boom lift near electrical wires hanging sheet metal for an airport for a subcontractor of an airport, and the fact that the 24 year old that survived with Burns was able to bail out of the boom lift onto the roof, makes me wonder if there's even fall protection. And so we go back to the very basics, the very fundamentals of what safety should be, and that's looking for the major issues, how and what can create a significant incident or fatality, fall protection, working in heights, working near electrical those items are big ticket items. Who was watching out for that. So when we go back to leadership, true leadership, it goes first of all to let me help identify what could go wrong. Let me identify where the issues can be, where are the big problem issues. And two, how do we mitigate it? In three How do I train you to make sure you know what mitigation steps are in place and what to do if you encounter something unknown, the stop work process essentially three of very core things that when it sounds daunting, it sounds like a lot, and so people dismiss it as that's just a lot of extra work. It's going to cost us a lot of time, and time is money, and we must get things done. And again, I'm not making those assumptions about this company. I'm asking the questions, and I'm using other knowledge of other incidents and other investigations, and I'm making a blanket statements of asking these questions and using it to look back at the fundamentals of leadership and the fundamentals of safety, the fundamentals of leading people and leading them effectively and leading them in a way with compassion and with just Some form of human dignity. Because, to me, a 16 year old one probably doesn't understand exceptionally well a boom lift probably does not understand the risks of being around high voltage power lines, probably doesn't understand what fall protection is. Because if I were to take a piece of fall protection, I have a 16 year old. So this hit home for me when I think about this, this hit me where I could relate this in a very passionate and real way. I have a 16 year old and a 16 year old died here if I took my fall protection, my harness and my lanyard that I have for when I'm on the job and may need them, and I were to drop them on the ground, even if they were provided, I don't even know if they were provided here I look at the picture, and I don't know if I see what I should Be seeing to be able to make that determination. But I look at that and I say, if I drop that fall protection in front of my 16 year old, could they put it on? Would they know how to use it? Would they know how to hook it in? Would they know what to do with that piece of equipment to make it fit right? Would they know to ask if it wasn't right? And I'm a safety professional, so let's start there that I'm probably, if there was a kid out there that would maybe have seen that before, it might be one of mine, just because it's stuff that lays around my that I have, I have people. PE of various forms and, you know, safety stuff, it's here. I don't think they would. I really feel like there would be a gap there, that there would need to be training. And so I go back to this and go, I'm I feel so confident in saying they didn't understand the hazards they were getting into. Did they understand the work? Were they being mentored appropriately? And let's go back to the big three, the big three things that need to happen on a job site, whether or not you're going to follow OSHA, whether or not you're even though you should do the right thing no matter what. Let's talk about the big three. One, what's going to kill me? What is going to kill my workers? What has the highest potential of creating significant harm to my people? What are they? What are these things? Two? What can I do to avoid these things? Because there can't be, in most cases, that many, fundamentally, when we think about the big things that could go wrong, they could create significant fatalities and harm. What can we do to mitigate it? And three, can we tell the team, teach the team even a toolbox talk to the team about what we're doing to prevent them from getting killed today at work, because I'm not even talking about following OSHA regulations or doing like normal what would be expected, or even going above what would be expected, basic human dignity, by giving them and providing them the right tools, the right training, and someone who's going to step up, not be a manager, not Be a project person, be a human being who's going to be a leader, a human being who is going to step up and go, we're we may not have it may not be perfect, but I definitely at least want to see you go home today. I want you to be safe. I don't want you to be killed on the job. I want you to have at least that. Let's look at it. Talk about it. Do something about it, because I look at the setup, and I think some of this probably it and overall, could a large company at the very top have great intentions, and maybe there's one supervisor, one superintendent, one project manager that just, you know, a little rough, and here we are, the caring, the dignity, Not there, not there as part of the work, not there as part of the culture, definitely not there as part of leadership. Thanks for joining me on this episode of the leading and learning through safety podcast, a very heavy episode. It hit me on it right in my heart and my passion for a lot of reasons, and we, being those in the know, being those who care, being those who are passionate, we can stand up for it, and we just continue to talk the talk, do what we know is right, and continue to do the right things. And I applaud that, because we're always trying to get better. We're always trying to learn there's no such thing as perfect, and we always try to keep getting better anyway. Thanks for joining me. Appreciate you being part of my podcast, and until next time we chat, stay safe.
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