I've worked with all sorts of people over the years. Some have been loud, direct and capable of turning a fairly ordinary Tuesday morning meeting into something resembling a hostage negotiation. Others have been quieter and more considered. There have been people I've liked immediately, people I've taken a while to understand and probably a few who've taken their time to understand me. For the most part, I've always found a way of making it work. You learn what makes somebody

This week I was offered a new job with the company I have worked for, for the last five years. When the announcement went out across the business, I laughed. Not because I don't want the job. I do. I'm genuinely looking forward to it. I laughed because somehow, at 45 years old, I have become an Operations Manager. That probably doesn't sound particularly remarkable until you consider that I left school with very little apart from a GCSE in Art, which I was naturally good at a

I was talking to someone recently when, halfway through the conversation, they reached for their phone. Nothing had gone off. There was no message they were waiting for and no call coming through. They just picked it up, looked at it for a few seconds, put it back down and carried on talking. A minute or so later, they did exactly the same thing again. I don't think they even realised they were doing it, which is probably why it stuck with me. Not because I thought they were

Why Effective Leadership Might Be One of the Most Important Safety Controls We Have There is a phrase I have encountered countless times during my career in construction and health and safety: the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. It has likely been printed on more safety posters than anyone could count; however, this overuse can sometimes diminish its significance. Nonetheless, this phrase has always resonated with me. Not because I believe that good leaders

Men's mental health, overthinking and the risks we don't always see There is something slightly strange about the way we approach health and safety at work. We can spend hours discussing the condition of a scaffold, the suitability of a lifting accessory or whether somebody has selected the correct gloves, yet the condition of the person actually doing the work can receive considerably less attention. I don't mean whether they are trained, competent or physically capable of d