"Whatever you’re doing today, what job you’re working, where you’re working, what your position you’re in, I think we’re called to greater things," says Torrey Garrison, vice president of environmental health and safety and leadership development for Performance Contractors, Inc. 

In safety, that means showing up with integrity, owning your influence and being the kind of leader others want to follow, whether you're running a meeting or walking the job site. 

Garrison began his career in the U.S. Coast Guard shortly after high school, serving for several years before leaving the military. More than a decade later, he returned to service — this time with the U.S. Air Force. He is currently a Chaplain Major in the Air Force Reserves. Drawing on lessons from his military service, Garrison recently led a webinar on leadership strategies that translate directly to the safety profession. The session was sponsored by ASSP’s Military Practice Specialty. 

In the webinar, he shared seven military leadership lessons that any safety professional can apply to their day-to-day work. 

“This is so valuable for us in the military but also in the civilian world,” Garrison says. There's always something to learn from someone else. 

"You may possibly be the smartest person on a subject…but you are not the smartest person overall. There’s always someone smarter," he says.  

In a past role, Garrison argued to his supervisor that while it's best practice for files to have handles, it's not a requirement. The supervisor quickly rattled off the exact page, section and subsection in the manual that made it clear: All files must have handles. 

"What I learned in that moment: Don’t take what you’ve learned in the past and always apply it today — things change," Garrison says. "Just because you think something is true doesn’t mean it is…I’m not always the smartest person and now I’ll make sure that I call the people that are.” 

Just because you’re not the smartest person in the room, doesn’t mean you can’t get smarter, he says. Take the time to find the right answer. 

For example, he once bought a sailboat online and immediately took it out on the water, even though he had never sailed before.  He figured his Coast Guard experience was enough to get him through. It wasn’t. 

"I ran aground within 50 feet,” he says. “I never thought that I couldn’t do it, but there are tons of videos on YouTube, there’s people I know that I could have called, there’s all types of articles I could have read, but I thought that I knew. ‘Thought’ will get you.” 

While we all have expectations of others, we don't always communicate them clearly, Garrison says. 

In the Coast Guard, daily tasks like running a tactical operation or a crane were well defined. But in industrial construction, where he currently works, expectations are not as rigidly structured.  

"We need to be more detailed in our expectations," he says. 

To help provide clearer expectations, Garrison has what's called an FEP or Flawless Execution Plan, which bridges the job safety analysis or job hazard analysis and the actual task at hand. 

"Communication doesn’t stop there," he says. "Once the task starts, we have a go/no-go plan. These are expectations. Once we line out the expectation or what the steps are for a task, it’s easier to hold someone accountable." 

"Hands will get you in trouble," Garrison jokes and relates this anecdote to emphasize his point: 

During his early years in the Coast Guard, an admiral visited and praised the Coast Guard. After his speed, Garrison raised his hand to express concerns about issues on the base. The admiral later approached Garrison while he was on the pier and asked him to explain. 

"As I started talking, he stopped me and said, 'Can you not talk with your hands?'...From a distance, that looks like you’re getting onto me. It looks like you’re jabbing at me with a knife hand…. Just watch people from a distance and see if you can read their body language.’” 

“From that point, I started reading about body language,” Garrison says. 

He warns against putting your hands in your pockets or crossing your arms because it looks like you're holding something back. 

It’s a self-soothing technique, Garrison explains. However, when people see it in others, it often reads as inauthentic. 

Garrison encourages everyone to identify their personal core values. 

"What are three words that describe you? That you want to uphold? That mean a lot to you? When things are rough or you’re in doubt, these are the words you fall back on?" he says. 

Garrison's three ideas are honor, respect and service before self. 

"Number one for me is honor. I want to honor my family. I’m a chaplain, so I want to honor my God, my reputation, my name, my father and my company," he says. 

"Second is respect; I want to respect everybody,” he adds. “People say I apologize too much, but I never want to disrespect anyone — even if someone cuts me off in a grocery store parking lot. Sometimes it’s to a fault, but I’ll take that," he says. 

"Third is service before self. I feel like helping people is the key to life,” he says. “In the civilian world, people are very unlikely to come to you for help. You must search it out. Ask, 'How are you doing today? Tell me about your family. I heard your wife was going through something — what’s the latest?' Knowing and serving your people is a huge deal.” 

Garrison says that during his time in the military, he always understood he was representing the uniform even when he wasn’t wearing it. That mindset still guides him today. 

"Your core values are never out of uniform. You’ve got to be on your game as much as you can. Of course, you’ll make wrong decisions and do wrong things, but you can always pull that back in by remembering that you’re never out of uniform," he says. 

People are always watching — for better or worse. Garrison reminds safety professionals that others may see them as role models, and that comes with a responsibility not to let them down. 

Life moves fast, and it’s easy to lose sight of your larger purpose, Garrison emphasizes.  

"You get up in the morning, you go to work, come home, get dinner, rest for a minute, watch a couple minutes of TV, you go to bed — and you get up and do it all over again," he says. "But you’re called to do far greater things." 

Wherever you are, you can be great, he asserts. 

"People always look for the next step, but the best way to get to the next step is to be great at where you are today. Let your work show." 

He offers this quote from former president and military general Dwight D. Eisenhower: "If a man’s associates find him guilty of phoniness, if they find he lacks forthright integrity, he will fail. His teachings and actions must square with each other. The first great need, therefore, is integrity and a high purpose." 

Finally, Garrison answered some questions from the webinar's attendees, offering advice on a wide range of topics: 

"The toughest one was my first day — my first 10 minutes — as a real-deal chaplain,” he says. 

I was up in the office chatting with a chaplain assistant at a hospital and decided to go down to the emergency ward," he says. 

When he got down there, the feeling was chaotic, and as he turned the corner, it got worse. He saw doctors doing chest compressions on an 8-year-old girl and as he approached, they stopped. The child passed away after coming in that morning with pneumonia 

The doctor walked out, and it was just him, the mother and her daughter — who were now gone after coming in that morning suffering pneumonia. 

“Well, what do you do? You do what you’re trained to do,” he says.  

He asked the mother to tell him about her daughter and stayed with her until the father, who was stationed three hours away, arrived. 

“That moment taught me to always be ready, for everything,” he says. “When I walk into meetings now, I’m overprepared, I’m ready," he says. 

"I ask people about their hobbies," he says. "If all you have is your job, or your son playing T-ball or your daughter in gymnastics — it’s going to be a long life. It’s going to be a hard road. We all need ways and avenues to release." 

He encourages everyone to find something they're passionate about. "A lot of guys I know have cows and for them, it's therapeutic," Garrison says. 

"There’s something I call the self-help gap," he says. "You see that you have an issue — maybe an issue with alcohol, illness, grief — and there’s a time when you have that issue and a time when you get help, professional help. And then there’s the self-help gap. The key to mental health is the self-help gap,” he says. 

"Feedback is one of the most critical things in life," he says. In his safety department, they promote constant feedback with formal feedback every six months. But he warns: "You’ve got to be able to take it. Everybody who gives you feedback, take it and decipher it and determine if it means something to you." 

"You’ve got to have buy-ins," he says. "You’ve got to go to the people on your team and say, 'Here’s the mission. Here’s some feedback on what I think you’re good at — give me some feedback on what you think you’re good at. Figure out what holes we have and gaps we need to fill and let’s get after it.” 

You don't need a perfect plan to start, he says. 

"We will adjust along the way. We will create a new path. We will adjust what we need to as we get into an area we didn’t see, but you got to start moving,” he says. “Leadership is about moving, not about having a perfect plan.