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Prepare for the Unexpected: Leadership and Safety Lessons from an Offshore Explosion with Lee Ellis

Apr 30, 2026

Prepare for the Unexpected: Leadership and Safety Lessons from an Offshore Explosion with Lee Ellis

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ABOUT THE EPISODE

In this powerful episode of The Safety Guru, Lee Ellis from Proud2BSafe shares his firsthand experience of a catastrophic offshore explosion in 2020, involving a commercial fishing vessel off the UK coast, and the critical leadership and safety lessons that emerged from it. Through vivid storytelling, he takes us into the heart of the crisis, revealing what it truly means to prepare for the unexpected. Drawing from this life-altering event, Lee explores essential lessons in safety leadership under pressure, risk identification and mitigation, and the true value of recurring training—not just completing it but truly trusting it when it matters most. He highlights the importance of prioritizing mental health support, fostering a strong debrief culture, and providing ongoing support in the aftermath of trauma. Lee also emphasizes that exchanging experiences and knowledge across teams, along with adopting a growth mindset, is vital to strengthening safety culture and ensuring teams are truly prepared for unexpected situations. Tune in now to experience his powerful story and discover these impactful lessons, as he challenges us to move beyond routine safety practices and actively prepare for the unexpected.

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Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost. For the C suite, it’s a real topic of daily focus. This is the Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now.

Hi and welcome to the Safety Guru. Today I’m very excited to have with me Lee Ellis. He’s an offshore maritime professional who’s going to share with us today a pretty exceptional story about an incident at sea and some of the learnings from it. Lee, welcome to the show. Excited to have you with me.

Thank you very much, Eric.

So, Lee, why don’t you start out with your story and what happened in, in that, that day in 2020?

Yeah. So, I was working on a service operations vessel on off of the east coast of the Uk supporting wind farm operations. We were doing service and maintenance and on this particular day, there’s nothing significantly different about it. It was quite a bright, sunny December day. It was quite pleasant. But we were involved as a, as a craft with the, an incident involved a fishing vessel by the name of Gal wadi Moore, which has had a catastrophic underwater explosion. So, it started as a regular day for our wind farm. The SOV was called the Sag Nord. So, we had part Norwegian crew, part Dutch crew, part Danish crew. Sorry. And then UK resident technicians and a nice mix of general different nationalities now on board, all working together. So, yeah, on this day, just gone past 11:00am, cool, bright sunny morning, as I said, December 15th and there was a very loud bang. I was in my office on the operations, in the operations management office on board the vessel.

Yep.

And yes, the air fell silent for a few seconds after this bang and then all of a sudden there was quite a lot of commotion in the changing room which was located right next door. A lot of the crew members were rushing into the, the rescue equipment locker. And then my desk phone started to ring. It was the vessel captain, and he was calling to let me know that they just received a mayday call from the fishing boat and it was located approximately three, three miles away from, from us from our current location at that point in time to the north of our position. So just a little bit out of the wind farm and that the SOV itself was going to deploy its fast rescue boat and its fast transfer vessel, which are Two small rib type craft with three, three crew on each, driver, navigator and an assistant person, rescue person, if you will. And they were going to go to the location to assist where possible with this news. I called all the, for all the work within the wind farm to be stopped immediately. And so, we did have a couple of teams out on locations already.

At that point they had to play deployed on two different turb. So, I gave them a shout on the radio and also to the control room, put a full stop work order on the whole wind farm, everybody to just stop what they’re doing, go to their nearest safe place within the wind farm or within their wind turbines and just take a break and wait for further news. We also deployed, we had a, a small service vessel, transfer vessel with us as well. Kind of moderate size, twin catamaran hull. She could carry up to 12 people. And I deployed her out to go sit with two teams between their turbines so they can provide support facilities if they want to go back on board, use the toilet facilities, stuff like that, or fresh water supply. They were there available for them.

Sure.

Until we knew, you know, if we needed any additional resource, we knew where to find them. But for the meantime, they’re in a safe place. So, once they must have in the safe areas and received the messages back, we started to receive more information from the fast boats that were seen at the scene of the vessel, the fishing vessel, where the explosion had taken place. And they’re in the process at that point of rescuing all seven of the fishing boat crew. Some of these crew members were in very serious condition. So, to put it into context, the skipper, he was in, he received in the wheelhouse at the time, he actually had three broken vertebrae.

Wow.

Broken cracked sternum and orbital bone and significant knee injuries. The first deckhand let’s find him. He, he was a fractured skull, fractured pelvis, arm, ribs and toes and a ruptured bladder.

Wow.

The second deckhand had a broken leg, damaged knees, damaged knees and elbow and a punctured lung. The third deck had the deck hand. My apologies. He had significant eye injuries, plate to cranium fracture. So, it’s skull fracture and loss of sight in one eye. The fourth deckhand, he had minor injuries to his shoulder, ankles, knees, neck and back where he’d been thrown around in the blast. The fifth deckhand just had minor cuts and bruises. He was the guy who was on deck of the vessel, fishing vessel at the time. He kind of got thrown in the air and landed back on his feet and then fell over. So, he had Minor injuries. And then there was the night watchman who was in below decks. He was being the night watchman. He was asleep in his bunk, and he got thrown clear of his bunk. So, he was in the prone position in the upper bunk. He had a broken leg, broken hip and a broken shoulder where he was thrown out of his bunk completely. So fairly substantial significant injuries there. And yeah, so it was quite a quite difficult time for dealing with those casualties as they were coming back to the vessel.

So, everyone who wasn’t directly involved in the running of the critical vessel operations, we assembled them out on the back of the rear deck where the fast boats are recovered back to the, the main service operations vessel. And we made it into a; the deck area became a triage basically for the administration of first aid and pain relief. So, on board the vessel as well as having the, the basic first aid training that we all have to do to go offshore, we also had a vessel medic. We had an independent medic on board as well for being in farm paramedic grade medic with us who had been doing additional training on days when we weren’t able to work. He would give us an additional first aid training lessons and progressed our first aid level skills up to an advanced level.

Sure.

To the point where we could administer a pain relief in the form of a drug called Pentorex, which is an oral, oral pain relief. It’s like a little cylinder capsule. You pop the capsule and you take it like an inhaler. But it’s quite a strong, potent pain relief which we would been trained to use. So, he was out there as well. So he was, he was organizing the triage. Basically, we set up accidental emergency on the back of an offshore vessel. So it was, it was quite an interesting, interesting morning at that point. So, as well as controlling things in the wind farm, I was also hands on with the. Administering first aid to both the fishing boat skipper and the second deckhand. I, I did the bandaging of the skipper’s legs. So, I actually saw his, his bone, his shin bones.

Wow.

Where he had been thrown in the wheelhouse. His shins and his knees had taken out the counter console of the wheelhouse itself, and it basically skinned his shins on both legs. So try to patch him back up as best we could just so that he was able to transit back to shore at that point. Right. The other guys had the other, more, more serious casualties out on deck on, on stretchers and spine boards and we’re administering additional pain relief to them as well. Obviously, the Paramedic and the, the ship second officer were far more highly trained. They could administer more different pain reliefs that they had available to them. So, they were going through those and putting IV drips and stuff in as well. So yeah, it was quite a significant time.

And do we know what happened that caused that explosion?

Yes, we do. So, there was after the event a few, a few months later, well, the vessel was towed back to shore and assessed. She didn’t sink. Surprisingly she did take on water, but she didn’t sink. There was significant, the significant damage throughout the vessel. The, the hole was rippled as well. The bulkheads had moved; the engine mountains had moved by six inches. It actually shifted the whole engine inside the vessel off of its engine mountains in, in the, in the depths of the. The hull.

Wow.

But yeah, she was actually token back to hull in, in Yorkshire to a maritime yard there and assessed by the maritime agency. And it was determined that it was a Second World War bomb that had been caught crabbing. That. Yeah, yeah. But it’s not as crazy as you might think and I’ll get onto that bit in a minute. This is, yeah, she, she dragged up. They reckon It’s a 250-kilo bomb damage that they assessed it to be and then they did send down a, a dive robot a few, a few months later and they found fragments. There were also fragments in one of the pots, the crabbing pots that remained on the seabed where it parted the line and they found pieces of that. So, it was significant physical evidence to say exactly what it was. And they reckon it was a, say a 250 kilo German Second World War bomb. But yeah, so due to the unfortunate events of that day and being a completely random nature, but it’s still estimated, you say about the bomb, about a hundred thousand tons of unexploded bombs in and around the UK waters.

So, 100,000.

100,000 tons. Yeah.

That makes it risky to do anything that touches the.

Whoa. Yeah.

Deep water surface.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it’s, you know, it’s a, it’s a real big. 

It’s.

They, they still pull stuff up all the time. Occasionally the fishing boats will pull up an old sea mine or something like that and you hear of the lifeboat, or a naval vessel will go out, and minesweeper will go out and try and deal with it or they’ll locate it. Things get dragged up and then they get destroyed by the bomb disposal. Whether it be depends on where it sits as well on the shoreline. If it’s higher than the tide mark, then the army have to deal with it. If it’s lower than the tide mark, then the navy will drag it out to see him and make a big water splash. So. But yeah, there’s a lot of it out there still, especially around the east coast, obviously, because it was closest to mainland Europe. So, yeah, so there’s a lot of that out there.

Wow. So, in this example, how, how would you characterize leadership under pressure? Because you, you were in a routine day, or what appeared to be a routine day until about 11am and in, in a high-pressure environment, how do you prepare for this type of decision making? 

You have to rely on your training. And there’s no, there’s no specific training for that scenario, sure, no, and there probably never will, but you can always, you can always maybe surmise it may happen, but the risk factor is very minimal. But in the offshore renewables and in the offshore industry on a whole, it’s always about the training of what you, you prepare for the worst conditions is it particularly a high-risk environment. And so, there’s a lot of time, you know, it’s all about having good risk identification and mitigation factors. And it’s the same with a lot of land-based industries. You, you train to identify what is the potential risk to yourself, your team, your crew and also in the environment. And this, however, being at sea is purely complicated by that fact that you are isolated and well away from regular emergency services. You’ve got no fire, you’ve got no ambulance, you do have helicopters and we do have helicopter support from shore. The, the Coast Guard agency in the UK have interspersed helicopters around the UK coastline. But again, where you are in the North Sea, you could be an hour away from one of those.

We were, we were 45 minutes at the outset and that was a direct flight to us. And he was, he was hightailing as fast as he could in a large rescue helicopter and that was still 45 minutes away. So, you know, you are isolated, so you have to deal and you have to be prepared as best you can. Anybody who goes offshore has to be trained in the basics of emergency firefighting, first aid, management of control of certain situations as well. So, you do those as undertakings, but then you progress and you learn, you take as many more additional trainings as you can over periods of time. You, you basically, you increase and advance your portfolio, and you also add experiences into that. So, in this situation, although unprepared for it, having never faced an explosion before, it’s a case of, well, what Can I deal with and how can I deal with it? And it’s. So, it was a case of us. You’ve got to keep calm. It’s first, first and foremost in any situation, at any management level, you’ve got to keep calm and look at the facts and see what it is you’re actually dealing with.  

And what can you do to help and aid that situation or make things better or make improvements. You get the rescue parties moving as fast as you can. Which was dealt with in this situation by, by the vessel crew, by the captain on the bridge. He sent out his rescue teams on their fast boats. And from my side of things, for managing my personnel that I was directly responsible for, it was to make sure that the initial teams I had out, as I said before, they, I made sure they went to a safe place and they stopped work so they couldn’t come to any further harm of what they were doing. The turbine that they were working on was shut down. There was still power available. They still had, they had food and water, and they had a support vessel there for other needs that was necessary. You could ask why, why didn’t they just get on that support vessel and sit there all day? But actually, if it’s quite a bit, if there’s a little bit of lump or swell out there and you’re not that well-seasoned a maritime traveler, a wind turbine is actually a far more stable place to be than traveling around on a boat all day.

So, you know, some of the lads do have to deal with seasickness. They’re quite happy sitting on a big boat because that doesn’t move so much. But they don’t want to sit there all day, Bobb, if they don’t have to. So, they’d much rather be in a more comfortable situation on the turbine. So, so yes, there’s other things you have to deal with, but basically, it’s, it’s to keep a cool, calm and collective head about yourself and deal with each thing as you come across it.

So, so there’s an element of also being prepared for the unexpected. I think that that, that comes through from your story because I think in most trades, we tend to assume the best possible outcome. And as you said, there’s conditions. It’s a little bit like when you’re in the, when you’re in the air for pilot or if you’re at sea, you’ve got to be self-sufficient and find your way through whatever is happening in front of you because of that extended distance. I’ve been to many offshore wind onshore wind farms. But I can’t fathom to imagine the exponential difference in risk when you’re offshore and you’re dealing with the same wind farms.

Yeah. I mean between being on the actual wind turbine, the risk is exactly the same. That part it’s all, it’s all about the getting to and from. It’s, it’s about that element of working at sea and in, in high-risk environments like the offshore renewable industry, you have to build, you have to build your culture daily risk awareness and it’s all about the good safety culture. So, the development along with the training, you develop a good safety culture. It’s something that every company wind farm site strives to achieve and maintain, and it takes the involvement of all parties. So right from every new visitor that starts on site, they have to start with a thorough site induction as well as the site induction. You do a safety induction, you go through all the relevant toolboxes talk talks, incidents that have happened, recent historical facts with the safety related within the wind farm. Along with that initial induction. The team, if they’re going out, will have pre-sale briefings. So again, you’re looking at the reef risk factors again and the toolbox talk as well. You’ve got to have a toolbox talk every day before you do anything.

Regardless of what industry are onshore, offshore.

Yeah.

In America, maritime, aviation. All the same, everybody has a toolbox talk periodically as well to make that safety culture long standing and get the buy in of everybody you’re looking for. We do safety focused stand down days and stuff like that and team building days designed to make sure that everybody you know is, is both fully engaged and comfortable and confident in identifying the, and discussing and reporting on positive and negative safety issues and risk jobs used in this way that creates a very productive safety culture which should you know, part the way for everybody having a safe and productive but everybody coming home safely at the end of the day. And that’s the number one most important thing.

This episode of the Safety Guru podcast is brought to you by Propulo Consulting, the leading safety and safety culture advisory firm. Whether you are looking to assess your safety culture, develop strategies to level up your safety performance, introduce human performance capabilities, re-energize your BBS program, enhance supervisory safety capabilities, or introduce unique safety leadership training and talent solutions. Propulo has you covered. Visit us at propolo.com

and there’s also, I hear in your story a lot of elements of recurring recurrent training as well. Right. So, what you were talking about in terms of the medic it’s not okay I’m qualified with first aid, it’s how do I continue to upskill while we’ve got some downtime so that my skills are prepared for an unexpected event like what happened that day.

Yeah, absolutely. With, with any training it’s always about keeping it fresh as well and doing. You have, as I mentioned, the basic periodical trainings that everybody has to go offshore. They call them the GWOs, the global wind Industry Organization trainings which covers your fire awareness and those, all the basics, that’s fine, you repeat them every couple of years at a training college but in the meantime it’s expanding on those skills and making yourself a better training portfolio for yourself and making your skills sets fresh. And as you mentioned, the paramedic on board, he was an ex British army paramedic. Absolutely lovely guy. But he was, he was adamant that if we had days when we weren’t doing a lot because the weather was too bad, we were training with him. He, he didn’t, you know, you couldn’t go down to the games room and play computer games. No, no. Today we’ve got a training session and we would do two or three hours of advanced first aid to the point where he pushed it and to his credit, absolute credit and on this occasion he, he pushed us through to doing our advanced first aid certificates and we were under him to do advanced first aid which is, it’s maybe a two, one or two steps below UK paramedic level.

Certainly, it’s like an ambulance technician level where you’re able to do the splinting, a lot of the traction stuff, putting into baskets, putting, preparing for spine boarding. We also went to the level where we could give minimal pain relief in the form of the Penford, which is, it’s like an oral inhaled pain relief which is what we’re permitted to do. So. Yeah, so you know, you can never stop learning and the training is, is valid and significant but it’s, it’s very well and good doing it in the two-year cycle. But if, if you don’t keep up those periods of training more often and keep it fresh in your mind and things become stale and stagnant and you forget.  

So yeah, it also takes a mindset around training to maximize the value to, from a growth mindset to also say how do I get to the best version of myself from a safety standpoint because I can pay attention to training, soak it up or assume it will never happen to me.

Yes, definitely. And with these sort of things it’s Very easy to, to say, oh yeah, you do that when you speak to the new guys I mentioned before, you have to the new, a new visitor or a new technician comes to the site and you say well what advice would I give them? And my advice would be quiet, quiet, quite short and simple to them really. It’s never stop learning and sharing that knowledge. If you, if you’ve had experience with things, these industries from people, you go further through life. You meet different people who come from different walks of life. They’ve done different things. They may have ex-military backgrounds, they may have done, worked around the world. Me personally, I came to this industry from a brief spin stint in oil and gas. Before that I was working in factories. So, I’ve seen things and done things and been involved in general life. You know, people, people experience things in their lives different to everybody else. And the best thing you can do is share that experience. If you’ve seen something done better or you’ve experienced that some somewhere else, share it with a guy who hasn’t.

You know, you may have done a training course, but the knowledge more often comes from, from that experience. And so, it’s always best to try and learn from that as well. Whether that comes from, you know, an experienced colleague sharing a story on something or from something that you’ve actually witnessed yourself. You know, maybe you, you were first to witness a car accident or something like that. You’ve had to do first aid. I mean it’s, they’re not nice situations and you never really learn from a nice situation. That’s the unfortunate thing about life in general, you know, so, you know, but don’t ever be afraid to share that knowledge and, and that experience or ask for that knowledge and experience if you know, somebody’s got a little bit of a history in that. So, know what, how have you dealt with this situation? What have you seen before? What’s your backstory? You know, get to know your colleagues on a boat, it’s a lot easier because you sit around in the evening watching telly and chat, just chatting the day away. Some of the guys that we used to share the boat with, they were xref for, for a start.  

So, they’d been to some of them in both the Iraq campaigns and stuff like that. One guy was ex-army, he’d been in Bosnia, things like this, you know, significant military background and you can learn a lot from them. But some of it’s really scary but the experience is still valid. So yeah, it’s a shared knowledge that helps you build your experience. Not your personal experience, but it can help you with how you would deal with a situation.

And I think one thing that struck me when we first talked about your story is also the element of mental health, but also the debrief that occurred the day after. So rather than run back to work, when all was said and done and everybody was back on the sov, you didn’t jump right back into work. Tell me a little bit about how you handle mental health, but also the debrief that’s so important after an event like this.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the debrief started pretty much after the last helicopter had taken the last significant casualty off of the. Off the boat, and we were starting to return back to actually go and pick up ours. Our stranded team members who were back in the wind farm where we’d sailed away to do the helicopter operations. At that point, it was about an hour and a half sail back to the wind farm, and we kind of all just sat around in a bit. A little bit of a state of shock, if you will, just trying to process. Yeah, everybody’s trying to process. Nobody really said a lot. Everything was just trying to process personally, what on earth just happened. You know, there’s that big question mark you might go, did we do the right thing? Didn’t we do the right thing? Have we. Have we done what we best we could have? We could. We’ve done it better. And it’s like, okay, that’s fine. Everybody will ask those questions. And that. That is your own mental health to his tea. Sure. But what we did when we got everybody back on board, because we debriefed the guys when they came back on board as well.

And we got everybody up. We went to the anchor ground, and we got everybody up from the crew and everybody who was involved up on. In. In the bridge. It’s a large bridge area. There was about 50 of us in total, all stood up there in the end. And we had a general chat session, and it was led by the captain, and he was. He was talking about, you know, what happened, how. How we go about dealing with the situation. What do we think? Palm reflection? How do we think we were. Things went. And it was. It was kind of. It’s a bit of a strange one. So, the captain, when we all stood up there initially, we all gathered up there and the captain broke the silence and he gave a brief recount of the whole event, which he’d taken from his ship’s log directly. And then he personally praised every one of us for professionalism and the collaboration with the rescue effort, you know, with the guys who went out on fast boats. We helped them get the, the casualties off. Everybody mucked in with the helicopter, helicopter operations. And then we started to open up conversations and, and just talking about the things, how we were involved, what we did, where we were, what we were doing.

And just kind of a little bit of a breakdown analysis. Not too in depth but just kind of post incident. And then in the following days after that there were individual and group counseling sessions that were offered to everybody. We didn’t go back to work the following day. Certainly not. There was a couple of days actually we didn’t get back to work. It was just best just we were in a good position with the wind farm anyway. But that wouldn’t have mattered.

Sure.

You know, we didn’t have anything significantly broken. We were ahead of service, so it was like fine. But if that hadn’t been the case, that would have just waited. And management were really good about that. They turned around and said, you guys need to, you need to decompress, you need to take your time. We need to make sure everybody’s okay. And the mental health accent on that was really significant. And I was quite impressed with the, the company that managed that we work for on how they dealt with that. So much so that they had especially psychologists and counseling sessions. You could either do group ones; we all did group ones anyway to start with. And then they offered an extended that to individual sessions if you want to schedule them yourself, if you want to have a chat. We also, we were also having little breakout areas around the boat and just having little group chats and stuff and would go and have a coffee with one of our colleagues from the canteen or someone from the engine room. And because everybody ended up interspersed throughout the whole vessel during the incident. So, everybody was working with people they never really worked with on a day-to-day basis.

Some of the guys did have sleepless nights and it did affect them. Certainly, some of the younger lads, those who hadn’t had significant military backgrounds and things like that, maybe they weren’t. So, it’s, it’s a nasty phrase. But battle hardened, if you will, hadn’t had the experiences of traumatic experience so much so some of them were fresh out of college. So literally they’ve only ever seen was school.

Right.

So, you know, they’ve done an apprenticeship, become an engineer and thrown onto a wind turbine and that’s where they were, you know, and no face with this in their first year out from college. So yeah, absolutely. Yikes. And some of Those guys did need a little bit more support as well and that was given to them as well as best we could on the vessel. And again, with the onshore support and we actually made port on the third day. We went back and dropped a few guys off and made sure they got home. Some, some weren’t, some lived a few hundred miles away as well and they weren’t, they weren’t allowed to drive home. They were driven home and their vehicles were taken home for them. So that was quite a really nice supporting touch I thought. Or they were put onto trains, and their vehicles were arranged to be picked up or whatever means when it made necessary for them. But the ongoing from that was the long term on the mental support. It kept going. It wasn’t just when they went back to work.

Right.

That was at the end of did carry on. If you needed to talk to someone there would be a program put in place for you. And it was as you wanted it. It was a really good supporting feature of the company.

Yeah. Well Lee, tell me, thank you so much for sharing your story. I think there’s some really good learnings as well in terms of preparing for the unexpected in terms of professional orientation that happens in the, in that environment. But also, how you debrief and how all the practices to make sure that people return to work in good shape after a traumatic event like this. It’s a really, really good. Because it’s one thing to have a one-time intervention like you said, versus ongoing support recognizing that it’s a pretty traumatic event that happened.

Yeah, it certainly was. There is a, a bitter note to the end of that story unfortunately.

Okay.

So, when I presented my initial talk it was a two-day event for the company I now work for. And one of the participants in the audience, he was actually, he’s a vessel skipper, he’s a captain on one of the smaller vessels and he was actually that day he was the lifeboat skipper who came out and rescued some of the, the, the medium and minor injured personnel. The ones that weren’t helicoptered off.

Sure.

And that day I learned that even though with all our company orientated all our mental health support and everything, the captain of the fishing boat himself 18 months after the event succumbed to amount mental health insurance. So, he left behind a wife and two children. And it was because he has. Because they’re essentially, they work for themselves. So, they work for a very small, not big. The fishing industry is, is not huge, not big companies that they don’t have that kind of support or that, that and yeah, he unfortunately in the end, 18 months later, he didn’t make it.

And the others, the other six.

The others, the others certainly I’m aware that the ones with the significant life changing injuries, two of them never went back offshore again, but they are moving on with their lives. And the other three who didn’t have such significant injuries, I think they went back to fishing again. Sure.

So, thank you for sharing that. Unfortunately, that final note and it is true because there isn’t the support mechanism that exist in larger companies for industries like phishing that are highly decentralized small companies for the most part.

Yeah.

So, thank you. If somebody wants to get in touch with you, Lee, what’s the best way to do that?

Probably best to contact me through Proud to be Safe through P2Bs through the UK and they will. They will message through from this.

Excellent. Thank you so much for sharing your story.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to The Safety Guru on C-suite Radio. Leave a legacy. Distinguish yourself from the past. Grow your success. Capture the hearts and minds of your teams. Elevate your safety. Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their safety leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance. Begin your journey at execsafetycoach.com. Come back in two weeks for the next episode with your host, Eric Michrowski. This podcast is powered by Propulo Consulting.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Lee Ellis is a seasoned maritime professional and survivor of one of the UK’s most serious commercial fishing incidents in recent years. On 15 December 2020, while serving as duty operations coordinator, Lee was directly involved in the emergency response to a catastrophic underwater explosion aboard the crab potting vessel Galwad-Y-Mor, 25 miles off the Norfolk coast. The blast left the vessel severely damaged, injured multiple crew members, and triggered a complex rescue operation involving the RNLI, coastguard helicopters, and offshore support vessels.

In his powerful talk, Lee recounts the events of that day with raw honesty and vivid storytelling, using presentation visuals to help audiences understand not only the incident itself, but the split-second decisions and teamwork that followed. His session includes a 15-minute personal account that places listeners on the deck with the crew — feeling the impact, confusion, and courage required in the face of the unknown.

But Lee’s message goes far beyond the incident. He speaks to the value of training — not just attending it, but trusting it when it matters most — and the critical importance of mental health support in the aftermath of trauma. Most importantly, Lee challenges teams and individuals to think beyond routine safety: to go above and beyond in their preparation for the unexpected. Because when the unthinkable happens, it’s not just knowledge that counts — it’s mindset, readiness, and the ability to act without hesitation.

Lee’s delivery is calm, relatable, and deeply authentic — the kind of message that resonates particularly well with operational teams, offshore workers, young professionals, and anyone involved in high-risk environments. His session serves as a stark reminder of why safety training, preparedness, and emotional support aren’t just checkboxes — they’re lifelines.

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Game Plan for Safety: Leadership Lessons from the Football Field with Dan Comiskey

Jun 26, 2025

Game Plan for Safety: Leadership Lessons from the Football Field with Dan Comiskey

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ABOUT THE EPISODE

What can safety leaders learn from the football field? In this high-energy and captivating episode of The Safety Guru, we’re joined by Dan Comiskey, a former Canadian Football League star turned safety leadership expert. Dan shares powerful leadership lessons learned under the stadium lights to inspire a winning safety culture. He brings to life what it means to lead by example and foster a culture grounded in accountability and care. Discover how building mindful habits and empowering team members to take ownership can strengthen a resilient and high-performing team. Don’t miss this episode! It’s packed with game-changing takeaways to help you develop a Champion Mindset and put your game plan for safety into action.

READ THE EPISODE

Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe, yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost for the C-suite. It’s a real topic of daily focus. This is the Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now.

Hi, and welcome to the Safety Guru. Today, I’m very excited to have with me Dan Comiskey. Dan, welcome to the show. Really excited to have you with me. Tell me a little bit about your impressive background from sports to what you do today in safety.

Oh, gosh. Thank you so much for the warm welcome, Eric. I’m happy to be here. Always like getting involved in safety messaging. It is my business now is really safety messaging. You know what? I started speaking way back in the CFL in the mid ’90s. I started in 1997. I guess that’d be late ’90s. They started sending me around to schools to talk to kids about bullying when I was playing for the Rough Riders. I played in the CFL for 13 years and had a great time. Really loved it. It was obviously a passion of mine. You don’t get there without being passionate. But it really also, through the different the teams I was on, I was able to cut my teeth, so to speak, in a professional speaking capacity. So, I started at schools, and then it turned into leadership programming and different breakfasts. And then by the time I was retired, this is really all I wanted to do, was get out and talk to people about important things.

That’s cool. So, let’s get into your story, how you got into football.

Wow. Okay. Well, I was a troubled kid. It’s the bad sports kid story. You’ve heard it before. I was a troubled kid. I had a brother who was sick. He had cancer, and he died. I got really angry about it. And my parents were divorced, and I was angry about that. I started getting in trouble. My dad figured out that I was in trouble, and we had a bunch of tough conversations, and one time, a very serious conversation. And finally, he said, you got to find something better to do with your life. And if you do, I’m going to help you, and made a promise that if I found something that was productive, that he would go as far as he could possibly go to make it work for me. And I found this picture of Tony Mandarich, who was an old offensive lineman back in the ’80s, who was from Toronto, and he was 6’6, he was 315 pounds, and he could bench press two and a quarter 37 times and run a 4. 65, 40. And all this stuff matters to me now, and it mattered to me then. And I just saw this guy that was indestructible, and I really thought that I wanted to be indestructible.

So, I told my dad I wanted to play football. And he just started moving mountains, man. I was living in a small town with him. There was no football team. He bought a car for my brother, turned the garage into a gymnasium, and just started buying milk and cheese, put it in the fridge, and I started gaining weight. And I spent time living with my mom and my dad, and lucky enough to play for a bunch of years and eventually ran into some people that said I was talented enough to go to the CFL, and that became a dream. And I was drafted back to Saskatchewan in ’97. So, it was probably the one thing that changed my life when I was on the wrong path that my dad gave me.  

So, Saskatchewan Roughriders, because back then, I think there was still the Ottawa Roughriders, wasn’t there?

There was not. The Ottawa Roughriders had folded. That was right after the CFL expansion. So, the CFL expansion had just folded. In 1996, the teams were in such financial peril that, and I’ve heard stories, I won’t talk about which teams, but the owners of the teams were telling players on check day because you always get paid the day after the game, right? You get handed a check back in the day. I don’t know how they do it now. And they said, go to the bank. Wow. Take this to the bank. And so, they would say, so they’d give them the check at the beginning of practice, and they’d say, take this to the bank before we go to practice. And it’s because they just were worried about checks clearing. That’s It was scary it was in the league back then. It’s a different place now. You see the stadiums and everything else, right? So ’97, I’m brought in. I’m making about four bucks an hour for the whole year. It’s not a whole bunch of money in playing football in Canada back then. And yeah, it was wonderful. I had great leaders around me. I had on winning teams and losing teams and made some amazing friends that are still great friends today and lucky enough to win a couple of Great Cups.

Yeah, it was a great career.

Excellent. And so how did you pivot from football into safety?

Well, I had some things happen in my life that were making me think about safety. The biggest one would be It was two people very close to me. One was my stepbrother. We lost him in an accident at work. He was working for St. Catherine’s Hydro, and he was electrocuted. He just grabbed the wrong wire at the wrong time with the wrong gloves. And that it was back in 2001. I was halfway through my career. My father-in-law at the time, who since passed, had a serious head injury. He was a minor. My wife and I, at the time, my ex-wife, we had kids, and we had twins, and there were some complications. Serge was her dad, and he moved his family, his wife and him, from Northwest Territories to Alberta to go back into mining after being retired so that she could be close to us because there were some health complications with my daughters. Then his first shift back as a miner. I’m 52 right now, so he was 52. I always thought he was an old fart when I met him. But he was this tough Frenchman, 6’3 or something and 190 pounds.

And you’d see him work and he just… The guy wouldn’t take breaks. He just worked. If you’re unloading a van with that guy, the van is unloaded before he stops. He’s head breathing heavy and stinking, and moving, and great guy. Just work his butt off, right? And then he goes out for his first shift, and he gets hit in the head with a piece of rock and changes his whole life. He survived it, but it changed who he was. And those things affected me, right? So that when I got into looking at my retirement, I knew I wanted to speak. I didn’t know how I was going to become a safety guy. I didn’t even think about it. But I knew that as a speaker and a lead, I realized there’s a bunch of skill sets that I had from football that were leadership skill sets that I’d learned over 13 years, from being a rookie that didn’t know anything to being a vet that at 38 thought he knew everything. How about we just say that? And I mean, since then, now I’m 52, I’m hoping I know a little bit more. You know what I’m saying?

I’m growing as you go, right? So how was I going to transition? I got my NCSO out of Alberta, and I was approaching Shell about selling them a leadership training program, and along with a whole bunch of other people, just looking to sell my wares. And they just said, why don’t you actually come work for us and learn our leadership program? We’ll teach you, and you can learn it. And so, I actually learned how to deliver theirs, and I started delivering theirs and all sorts of different onsite stuff. And I became not only a safety adviser, but I became a cultural adviser for bigger projects. I became somebody that was really responsible for trying to affect how the How the idea of safety was going to permeate through the crews. So, all of the onboarding, all we had pause training and stop work programs and even permit to work. I got involved in all of that stuff so that I could actually understand it. But to me, it was always, how do we bring it to the point where people actually are so concerned about… They understand that safety is the number one thing while we have to get work done, obviously.

But they understand that safety is the number one thing, and that we have to make sure that they’re going to go home safe. And that’s got to be a major value to them while they’re getting the work done. And so that was really what I learned at Shell. It’s not just about stopping work. It’s about how do you keep work going, safely. It was really a… Maybe that’s a long answer to a short question, man. But that’s what happened. Is it just a transition? And then after we had an election and government changed and the oil fields got hammered pretty hard by somebody who I don’t mention very often. And opportunities left, but I started just getting on this keynote roll in both 2015, and I started doing that as part of my work. And it’s been a mainstay for me. And then I had to adapt through COVID like everybody else and took on some other roles. But last year, again, went full-time. And this year, there’s some really amazing things happening because of it. Really excited about some opportunities that happening. Really, given the safety career has been something that’s been very educational and meaningful.

But on top of that, it’s given me all sorts of opportunities.

Now you bring a lot of your lessons in leadership from your days in football all. Walk me through some of the big lessons in leadership that you use in your presentations.

Well, thank you. Great question. There’s a bunch of stuff that you learn that That’s fundamental, right? You learn about leading by example. And people say lead by example, and it’s like you wrap everything in leading by example, and that’s just an easy thing to say. Sure. But what you learn is that when somebody is actually leading by example, they know that they’re leading and misleading by example. They know that people are going to watch them for not only what they’re doing right, but especially for what they’re doing wrong. And they’re going to watch them when not only things are going really well, but they’re going to watch them when things go sideways. How do you react when things aren’t working the way you want them to work? That’s when you find out what leader you are.

Absolutely.

Right. I had some great examples of this in football. Tom Higgins, Jeremy O’Dade was another one who’s GM for Saskatchewan now, who’s just great. Just as a player, I knew him, and now he’s a GM. He’s been involved for so long because, man, he’s the same guy. He brings the weather every day. And he’s always the same guy. And people don’t catch him making those huge mistakes and finding out that he’s actually a hypocrite to what he says, which is what the problem is with trying to lead, right? If you go against what you say, you’re in trouble. So, it’s stuff like that. Leading by example, knowing who your audience is, who you’re working with, knowing how to actually reach people, knowing what their goals are, getting out of the truck and talking to people on site. I mean, that’s really about understanding who your players are. And so, a lot of this stuff, it started, I understood it in football, but then working with Shell and with so many different people at different businesses, you start understanding that there’s experts everywhere. There are people that actually really… And so, I’ve learned from everybody that I’ve ever worked with.

Good and bad, I’m sure.

Oh, certainly. Listen, man, I worked with some guys that were from the Jean Jack and Days on Pipelines, and I work with some guys that were from the Drinking Days back in the CFL and Drinking and More. Everything’s evolving, right? Everything’s evolving.

So, leading by example, I think it’s a very powerful lesson because I think it’s exactly what you said, is how do I respond to bad news when something goes wrong? What’s my initial response? So key because it’s easy on a good day to show up the right way.

It is. Eric, the interesting thing is I can say that, but that still doesn’t tell you how. How do you make a bad day seem acceptable? How do you do it? And what I’ve learned, and this is through new coaching and mentorship, like I say, I continually learn. I have new partnerships all the time. The mental side of habit creation is a big football thing. It’s a habit creation machine. It grinds out habits because you’re videoed You’ve done everything you do, and your body position has to be perfect, and your hand placement has to be perfect, and your foot position, and your knowledge of the game and the playbook has to be perfect. If everybody isn’t perfect every play of the game, you lose. That’s how you lose by somebody stepping three inches too far in one play, you lose a whole game. People don’t understand how technical it is, but it’s sick. And so those habits have to happen. But not only that, the mental habits. How do you actually… And this is something that you learn in Physically in a game like that is how do you… So, let’s say you’re playing in a very important game.

I was playing in the Great Cup. I was playing against a guy named Robert Brown. Robert was my nightmare. I mean, there’s guys I liked playing because they would come right to me and just give me their chest. That’s as an offensive lineman, let me beat you up. I love that. I respected everybody I played, but Robert was one of those guys. Scott Schultz was another guy that was tough for me. There are certain guys that were just tough, right? And going into the Great Cup, I had a torn meniscus, so my knee was locking up. And I wasn’t going to sit the game because I knew I was… Well, I wasn’t going to sit the great cup. I wasn’t going to do that. And then going to the second half, first or second play of the second half, he beats me and gets a hit on the quarterback. And it’s like, how do you… So now you’re playing in front of 3 million people. You’ve just made yourself look like an idiot because you look foolish. When you get beat as an alignment, all they have to do is beat you once or twice, and you’ve had a bad game.

You got to be good every play. So how do you get that mindset get back. It’s the chatter in your head is like, Oh, you’re a loser. Oh, he’s going to get you again. Oh, you’re doing everything wrong. And it goes against everything you’ve trained with over the last however many years you’ve played and however many weeks you’ve played that’s saying, I know exactly I’m doing. I’ve watched this guy on film. I know exactly what he’s going to do next. I understand his keys. I know. So, you’ve got this internal battle that goes all the time, right? And so, the voice is in your head. We call them chatter. It’s like this chatter. But do you know how many thoughts you have in a minute? How many words-No idea.

I have a feeling it’s a lot. 300. In a minute. Scientifically proven. 300 thoughts and pictures a minute. And so, all of those pictures. So, if you get a haywire a minute where you’re getting hijacked, all of those pictures are going against you, and all those thoughts are going against you. And now you’ve got to come back, and you got to focus, and you got to get back to calm and peace, right? Sure. So that’s great for football. What does that have to do with life? Well, I think about the guy working a power linesman working in an ice storm who went to work that day, and his dog died.

That’s top of mind. That’s a distraction is using a unit of attention for you.

Exactly. How do I focus? When my wife’s angry at me, how do I focus? When my kid is sick, how do I focus? And so a lot of the training that I now do, both with teams and individually, is really about getting that chatter under control by learning to focus and figure out where it’s hitting you and where it’s hijacking you and creating tools to calm that and give you peace so that you can actually zone in and focus on the things that are important.

So, tell me a little bit more on the habit creation part, because it’s a key component. There’s lots of books written on habit creation. Tell me about a little bit from a sports standpoint, how you got to building those habits.  

This episode of the Safety Guru podcast is brought to you by Propulo Consulting, the leading safety and safety culture advisory firm. Whether you are looking to assess your safety culture, develop strategies to level up your safety performance, introduce human performance capabilities, re-energize your BBS program, enhance supervisory safety capabilities, or introduce unique safety leadership training and talent solutions, Propulo has you covered. Visit us at propulo.com.

Well, like I said, for me, it was like I didn’t have to think about it because they were grinding me out of the machine. It was changing your habits or lose your job.

Right.

So, you just start realizing that number one, you realize that you can. Anytime I tell somebody, I’ve got a friend who Let’s just see. I got a friend who has too much… They like going to bed late at night. Let’s use this one. They have to stay up till 2: 00. They have to stay up till 1: 00, and then they get tired, and then they wake up like it’s an accident. I don’t know, wake up like… It’s The conversation is always the same thing with anybody like this. You say, well, and I’ve been this person, so I’m not trying to be judgmental. Say, well, you should just start getting up at 6: 00 in the morning. Well, I can’t do that. Well, you just set an alarm, and you get up. That’s literally all you do. It’s one little thing. You just set an alarm, and you get up and you have a coffee. And as soon as you have a coffee, you start your day. And now, okay, well, I don’t start work till 8: 00. Well, that gives you an hour before you start to think to maybe pray, maybe read, maybe meditate, maybe listen to some music, maybe get some exercise.

And then all of a sudden, those hours that you put in at the end of the day between 10: 00 and midnight are 6: 00 to 8: 00 hours. And so, it’s a tiny little change. And it seems, well, that’s a huge change. Well, no, it’s actually it’s like setting an alarm. And as soon as you do that, your body says, well, I need sleep. So, guess what? By nine o’clock, you’re saying, I’m going to bed. Listen, I’m not enjoying watching TV anymore. You’re falling asleep, right? It’s the same with… It’s really the fundamental, I think the biggest thing people do is they try to do too much. So, let’s call that a big shift, right? Let’s call that a big shift. How about we do something like, there was a guy I was coaching, and he was late for every meeting, and he was executive, right? And he’s like, I’m just late. He was on site, and on site, you’ve been on site. Things are crazy on site. Things are Everybody’s always late. This guy’s an executive. He’s high up there, and he’s not just a little bit late. He’s like 45 minutes, an hour late for everything.

Guys are waiting for him, and he’s slow and work down, right? And so, we’re talking, and he says, Yeah, this is my biggest weakness. That’s a process. Getting too that’s his biggest weakness is a process. But let’s just start there because it’s easier for this conversation. I said, well, what is the reason for you being late? He says, well, I get in these other meetings and why do they go longer than it’s supposed to? Why do they go longer than they’re supposed to? Well, because I feel like when I leave a meeting and somebody is still trying to talk to me, I’m being disrespectful.

Sure. 

I get it. It’s human, I feel, I often feel that way. Can’t get off the phone with somebody. You know people like that, right? There are certain people in your life that you just can’t get them off the phone. I can’t say goodbye, right? And so, what do you think we can do to change that so that there’s no disrespect Because the disrespect is the key. It’s the key. The key to that whole thing is he doesn’t want to disrespect, but he doesn’t realize he’s disrespecting the people he’s making later, right? And so, we came up with a system, and I can’t remember him or I. I’d like to claim it, but it was probably him. He walked into every meeting, and every meeting had a deadline that he was walking out. When he walked in, he said, can you come see me today, Tony? Yeah, I can come see you. But I can get there at 10: 00. When he gets there, he says, I’m leaving here at 10: 30. I’m walking out the door at 10: 30 because I’ve got another commitment. He doesn’t have to tell him what the commitment is.

I’ve just got. Within three months, he started getting promoted because all of a sudden, he’s on time for every meeting, and he was a very exceptional executive. He’s a great guy, and he’s a hard worker, and he knew what he was doing, and he’s smart, and all of those things. That tiny little habit changes your life.

Sure.

How many of those do we have that we can work on? And then it’s like, well, you should probably just try one at a time. Because until you get the one- small steps. Yeah, small steps. How do you eat an elephant? One step at a time. So, to me, that was all from football. The interesting stuff for me is getting into the mental, the gymnastics of creating habits that calm the storm, that calm the hijacking. What is your reaction to, I just got bad news? What is your reaction? How do you bring peace in? You ever see the old Seinfeld episode where I think it was Jerry’s dad, Serenity now. Do you remember?

I don’t, but- Yeah.

He had a… I don’t know. Anyway, I guess it doesn’t matter.

So that’s what you do now, Serenity now. 

Well, no, there’s visualization, but everybody’s going to have their own method, right? But you have to figure out what brings you peace. Is it pictures in your mind of… I have one friend who he pictures Jesus holding him as a child, and that’s what brings him peace. And he just goes to that. And he’ll take five minutes. People used to go for a smoke break when they’re upset. Well, people don’t smoke anymore as much, right? So, go for a breath break and take a breath and then what is it? What questions do you ask yourself? Where do you put yourself? Some people it’s music. Some people have a book, right? Just get yourself back out of that hijacking and into life. And then obviously, if you’re working on the line or if you’re working like a micro break is part of the job. If you feel like there’s a risk that you’re bringing to the work site and you’re actually working the shovel, working the tools, working the trades, then you have to be able to pause. Say, I’m the danger because I’m hijacked right now. So, let’s have a conversation about what’s going on around us so we’re safe.

So, to me, it’s like that’s the… In Shell, we used to call it the pause moment. I’ve seen stop work. Stop work, pause, just recenter on what we’re doing, what’s the task in front of us, what are the risks, so forth. A hundred percent. And so now can we do that because the risk is actually an emotional hijack decking. And that’s the training to see that as the key that gets you to pause, right? 

Because the distractions are a big part of what happens immediately prior to a serious event in many cases. And distractions are units of information that are distracting you from what you have to do in front of you. It could be, how are you doing that day?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I said, I’ve never seen a guy in a good mood when his wife yells at him on the way out the door. It doesn’t work. Well, I have, but maybe those guys are.

It’s a different story, different problem.

Maybe I’ve never been in a mood when I’ve been yelled at on the way out the door.

Any other lessons in leadership that you bring to some of the speaking engagements, the training programs that you do?

Well, there’s lots, right? I mean; to get into them, I have a website. You can go to www.dancomiskey.com. And there’s all sorts of stuff on there. The reality is it’s… I mean, there’s so many, right? I can get into… Well, I’ll give you a couple more. So, a lot of what we have to really acknowledge is how powerful we are. And that really comes with understanding how powerful your decisions are, because we can’t do anything without a team around us, but everybody affects the team, right? Sure. One of the things I talk about in some of my presentations is the butterfly effect. And I’ll bring my brother into this. So, my brother was a linesman, and he was up in the bucket. And the common practice of the day was to change out of his double-insulated gloves into leather gloves at the end of the day to clean. And that’s what they would do. When they’re tidying up at the end of the day, that’s just one of the common practices of the day. Okay. And on this particular day, it was really hot. It was Saint Catherine summer, and it was, whatever, let’s call it 100 degrees.

But it was the area swim through. Essentially, he lost his balance. He grabbed the wrong wire, and he died. And so, the question to me was, how did he have those gloves on? At first, you’re angry that he had the gloves on. The guy was a hard work. He was a great brother. He was a great son to his father. He was a great son to my mother. He’s a really good man. But you ask that question, right? Why did he have those gloves on? And so, something’s missing. So then how many people knew that that was a common practice? Because if you work in electricity, you know that’s a risk.

Yes.

Right? And so, if I said it’s 100 people a day, like 100 times a day, somebody thinks we shouldn’t do this, or 100 people that are in that business know that that’s a risk, and they know it’s a risk that’s happening every day, right? That means every day there’s a decision for people to not do anything about it. And so, if you go 300 days in a year, you got 30,000 opportunities where somebody could have stepped in, and they could have done something. That’s a lot of opportunities. That’s the domino effect in reverse. How many things had to go wrong for Augie to die. How many people had to not talk for Augie to die? We’ve got these opportunities to intervene all the time. I’ll tell you another personal story here. I had a daughter who was very sick, and she was born with multi-organ failure. She was in the NSEU. We were 94 days in the hospital with her. In those 94 days, she had 72 procedures. She had heart surgery that put her in a coma. She’s there, and she’s there and she’s in a coma. And the doctors kept on saying to my ex-wife and I that we’re going to have to unplug her.

So that’s awful. It was an awful time. When you’re looking at this kid, she’s in a coma. Well, but she’s like, what’s the right thing to do? After a few to four times, we started thinking, okay, it’s time to unplug her. And we’re doing last rights. We’re praying on her. And the nurse practitioner, Cathy, comes running in. She says, what are you doing? Well, we’re going to unplug her because this is what we’re told, right? She says, No, you’re not. We have to have a meeting to make sure that all of the doctors are going to agree with this because she’s for every organ. She’s got brain damage, heart damage, liver damage, kidney damage, stomach damage, every organ. She had eight organs that were… We get this meeting together, and all the doctors agreed that the organs were working within reasonable amount, but they weren’t communicating, and they didn’t know why she wouldn’t wake up. So, the conversation went from, do we unplug her, or do we give her time? We gave her time, and now she’s a creative writing student in university. She So you say, well, who helped that? Who saved her?

And so, did Cathy save her? If you ask Cathy, she was given that procedure by the doctor who wanted us to unplug her as a safety net. She had the power to call that meeting. So, she called that meeting. So, was it her or was it the doctor that created the procedure? And then you go to him, and he says, well, you played in the CFL, you’re broke, right? You want to thank somebody for saving your daughter. Thank Tommy Douglas. Because Tommy Douglas is… So, was it Tommy Douglas or was it the doctor? Because I’ve got this is a $3 million baby. How do you How do you rectify that? Well, Tommy Douglas was an immigrant from Scotland. Do you know Tommy Douglas’s story?

Yeah, I do.

So, he’s an immigrant from Scotland, right? He’s brought into Canada. He’s just outside of Winnipeg. And He has an injury to his leg that turns into an infection. They’re going to have to amputate his leg, and they don’t have anybody to do… They don’t have any money to pay for a surgery. There’s a doctor coming through town who’s going to start a school of medicine in Winnipeg. He’s got students with him, and he says, I’ll do the surgery and save the leg if I can, if I can let my students watch. Parents agree. Leg gets saved. Tommy becomes a boxer. Tommy becomes passionate about medical assistance for everybody in Canada and creates the system. So you go, well, how far back does it go? Because is it the doctor? Or was it his parents? Or was it… How far? And you just realize, well, number one, it’s a miracle. I’ve said it a couple of times already. I’m a thank God guy, and I don’t know how you wouldn’t if you were me. That’s first. But I think also God created this procedure, where all these people are involved in saving my daughter. And then you look at it and you say, well, so now what’s she going to do with her life? 

Who’s she going to help? Who’s she going to save? And who am I going to save? And Eric, who are you going to save? What are you going to do? Is it the kid next door? Is it somebody that’s broken down on the way to the cottage and they’ve got no gas in the car, or they’ve got a flat tire? And maybe it’s cold enough that if things go just wrong, they die because I know what it’s like up north. Or is it saying the right thing? Or is it saving a guy from wearing the wrong gloves 10 years from now? Because you don’t have to change the whole world with everything you do, but everything you do can change the world.

Everything you can. Yeah.

Right. Right. So, to me, people forget how powerful they are. So, when I go out and I speak, what I try to do is I try to empower the audience. I do safety presentations. I do leadership presentations. I try not to get into the sad stuff. There is sad stuff. People have sad stuff. Everybody’s been punched in the stomach by life, and that’s part of life. But I try to leave them with that understanding of that it’s not just It’s power, but it’s responsibility to actually take part in taking care of people, whether that’s interventions, helping somebody that’s working with you, whatever it is, that’s the empowerment part of it. When I talk about the butterfly effect, that’s really where it hits for me.

I think that’s a really powerful one because when you’re thinking about your brother as an example, there’s a brother sister’s keeper, which people keep talking about, but often don’t interpret it this way, which is each moment opportunity. But you’ve got leaders who are seeing something, not saying something. And so, everybody has an opportunity to step in. And you may choose not to, but there’s an entire poem that was written on that.

Yeah, you choose not to, but it’s still a choice.

It is a choice, right.

And that’s a domino.

Correct. That’s a domino. Or you can say something and the power of that can be substantial.

Yeah, exactly. Thank you for listening and understanding.

So, you’ve got a podcast. You mentioned your website. If somebody is interested in reaching out to you, what’s the best way to do it? And also, how do they get to your podcast?

So, you can find my podcast on YouTube. But I do have to say that some things are changing in my business, and there’s some amazing… I’m involved with an amazing new partnership that I’m really excited about, and it’s going to change the direction of my podcast, too. One of the things that happened the last year since I started the podcast is I’ve spoken to a lot of men about mental health and women about mental health, leaders about mental health. And I’ve realized how much of a… There’s such a connection between safety and mental health. 100 %. Most of what we talked about today, resonates on that line. So, I’ve gotten together with a fellow named Ian France. He approached me about doing an across Canada tour. We’re calling it Breakfast with Champions. We’re going to bring experts in, leaders in the field of mental health, as well as people who have just persevered. We’re going to be talking. We’re going to be putting breakfast together in every city that we can. We’re starting in Edmonton and Regina. It appears that July will be the start date.

Good time to do that, not December, January.

That’s right. You read my mail now. Those are going to be the Florida trips. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to not only give people motivation and someone that understands that there are mental health issues, but we’re trying to give them tools. What can we do with these mental health situations? We’ll have keynotes at every event. It won’t be me necessarily, likely won’t be me. It’ll be somebody that’s local that’s prevalent who’s in that arena of mental health. Like I said, we leave people with resources, and we’re looking to change the country because we know that right Well, I’ll just say it. I’ve seen too many of my friends from the CFL die, not only on the streets, to addiction, to depression, and that’s just a game. In Canada, it’s a huge deal right now. There are so many things going on. Eric, you see in Toronto, but in small towns, the homeless situation is insane. It all starts with people getting lost. We got to make a change. We’re trying to make some big domino effects with that.

Excellent. Excellent. And on your website, again, if somebody wants to get in touch with you or would like you to come talk or present to them.

Thank you. https://www.dancomiskey.com/. I’ll throw in the description on anything I do, but yeah, https://www.dancomiskey.com/. So, if you think Comiskey Ball Park, same spelling.

Excellent. Well, Dan, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing your stories from football into safety. I think it’s been a Really good overview of themes, ideas, and quite motivating. So, thank you.

Thank you very much for your time, Eric. I appreciate you having me on.

Excellent. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to The Safety Guru on C-suite Radio. Leave a legacy. Distinguish yourself from the past. Grow your success. Capture the hearts and minds of your teams. Elevate your safety. Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their safety leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance. Begin your journey at execsafetycoach.com. Come back in two weeks for the next episode with your host, Eric Michrowski. This podcast is powered by Propulo Consulting.

ABOUT THE GUEST

Dan Comiskey is a dynamic and inspirational speaker renowned for his ability to deliver impactful keynote presentations to audiences across diverse industries. Drawing on over 20 years of professional football experience and more than a decade in industrial safety leadership, Dan has honed his expertise in leadership, accountability, resilience, and the power of creating mindful habits.

Dan’s journey, marked by overcoming adversity and achieving excellence in high-pressure environments, forms the foundation of his motivational presentations. He skillfully tailors his messages to resonate with a variety of audiences, whether addressing frontline workers, corporate leadership teams, or attendees at sports, business, or industry conferences. His versatility and ability to connect make him a sought-after choice for organizations aiming to inspire and engage their teams.

From cultivating a culture of safety to fostering resilience and teamwork, Dan’s keynote presentations go beyond inspiration—they provide actionable insights that empower his audience to create huge changes over time. His approachable style and deep understanding of diverse challenges ensure his message resonates with every audience.

For more information: https://www.dancomiskey.com/

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