The Fifteen Minutes

Eighteen months ago I stood in front of a room of operators who'd been on site longer than I'd been alive and forgot how to speak.

Fifteen minutes. Fourteen days a swing.

I stood in front of a room of operators and delivered a prestart I knew was awful.

Fifteen minutes. Setting the tone of shift. Safety. The stuff they've heard from every leader who came before me and every leader who'll come after. I said the words. I watched a guy in the back row look at his boots. Someone scrunched their brow at the lack of confidence in my tone. Nobody asked a question, which is the worst kind of silence. Not hostile, just patient. They were waiting for me to finish so their real day could start.

I walked out and told myself: that was a complete disservice. That was crap.

Then I had to do it again the next morning. Absolutely gruelling.

You see, the fifteen-minute prestart is more than a statutory obligation, though it's often treated as one. It's the one moment in the shift where the crew is in one place, looking at one person, and whoever's standing up there is, for those fifteen minutes, the heartbeat of the culture in the field and a representation of the leadership team. I don't take it lightly. I didn't take it lightly that first morning either. That's what made walking away from it so brutal. I cared.

Here's the part no one talks about. It's a misleading thought to believe you can back away from leadership until you've achieved technical mastery. In most cases, if not all, you can't achieve technical mastery without already being in the role itself. So you stand up there with gaps in your knowledge and a crew who can smell it, and you lead anyway. You lead while you're still learning.

The harsh reality is that no one talks about how you're the only person who can lift yourself through it. Your boss might have a clear idea of what you're like, but the gap between leading and learning is purely yours. No matter how much potential you have, your boss can't close it for you. Neither can the crew. You wake up the next morning, in the same steel-capped boots, with the same battle to confront.

Somewhere along the line, I stopped performing and started connecting. What had been a monotonous daily procedure (and still is, some days) slowly turned into a chamber of collaboration, a safe space for reporting and escalating matters. I implemented strategies over time, piece by piece, watching some of them fail badly, and I persisted. I noticed who nodded. Who didn't. What resonated. What was unnecessary. An operator pulled me aside after a prestart and told me about a hazard I had forgotten to mention that morning. He wasn't testing me; it mattered to him that I'd missed it. That was the moment the prestart stopped being a performance and became a conversation.

I think we all experience this in different shades. Different forms, variations, circumstances. Whatever your challenge is, in work or your personal life, you will feel like you're dying over and over again. I stood in front of them again the next morning. Same fifteen minutes. Slightly better words than the day before.

You become better for it…yes, one prestart at a time.