Vocational Mastery: The Final Practice of Personal Safety Excellence

This series explores five personal practices of safety excellence, including steps each of us can take to become as safe as possible.  

The first article in the series was a reminder that we have personal accountability and agency in safety – enough to stop work and even walk off the job if conditions are unsafe. We focused on mental preparation in the second article, exploring how our impulsive tendencies influence performance under pressure. Article three examined spiritual health, which requires each of us to develop a personal system to ensure that our work aligns with our deeply held notions of purpose, meaning and contribution. The fourth article covered physiological readiness for hazardous work because we want to be at our best on a storm call at 3:30 a.m.

Now, in this fifth and final article, we’ll examine the importance of striving for vocational mastery. We begin taking too much for granted and become less safe when we are not habitually oriented toward learning. Achieving mastery is in our best interest.

Safety is often discussed as a system: policies, procedures, training and equipment. These things matter, but in hazardous work environments, systems alone are not enough.

That’s because at some point, every worker makes independent decisions, such as whether to slow down, ask a question, double-check a step or speak up when something feels wrong. An individual’s choices are influenced by their technical skill but also by their discipline, humility, physical health, mindset and character. Ultimately, safety is personal.

Individuals who achieve mastery over their work become safer, more confident employees. They develop keen awareness of job-related risks, enhance team culture and serve as role models for other employees. Consider that the level of mastery each crew member achieves directly correlates to the rate at which the entire crew goes home safely after each shift. In a chain of competence, none of us wants to be the weak link.

When I served as a system operator for Southern California Edison, complicated switching was required to safely conduct work in the Long Beach district’s dense underground network. A company foreman, Ron, was truly masterful at preparing our preliminary switching programs, often hand-carrying them to us so that we could walk through every step as a group before preparing the formal program. Ron taught us constantly, and each member of our perpetually young and relatively junior crew looked forward to his tutelage. He understood planning, engineering, switching, customers, traffic requirements and safety risks. Ron’s vocational mastery set the standard for me, and I worked hard to meet it.

The Journey Begins
Our journey to mastery kicks off with a single step: deciding that we want to become masterful for the right reasons, which helps to ensure a healthy mindset. No one likes a know-it-all; conversely, nearly everyone is willing to help a humble, earnest learner continue their personal and professional development.

Rigorous self-analysis is next. We must honestly identify the areas in which we are vocationally weak based on both our historical work performance and the quiet inner voice that says, “We’re just kind of guessing” about how to execute certain tasks. Self-assessment matters because it reflects our own sense of preparedness. Progress begins when we tell ourselves the truth.

A third practical step is to revisit our old learning resources. These items could include journeyman exams, planner training materials or professional engineer study guides.

Finding Motivation
Once our initial vocational training is complete, we tend to slow or even stop our learning, assuming time on the job will carry us to mastery. But we are either deliberately pursuing growth or limiting our development. Given the utility industry’s persistent serious injury and fatality statistics, we cannot afford to remain intellectually stagnant.

Motivation to continue our education is often derived from behavior modeled by others. In the U.S. Navy, power plants, the field, engineering, training, the classroom and every department I have worked in, one or two individuals were always truly masterful, setting an example for me to emulate. Earlier I mentioned Ron, the foreman, but he was not the only one.

Terry was a control operator at the now-shuttered Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada, a 1,580-megawatt coal-fired power plant with extreme operating parameters, including 3,000-psi main steam pressure. He had read the books, understood the theory and was deeply familiar with every device in the complex facility. During our time working together, Terry always commanded great respect for his knowledge and competence and was frequently asked to provide input and assistance regarding plant operations. Tragically, he died while attempting to rescue fellow operators trapped in the facility’s control room after a massive steam leak.

External Recognition
External recognition can be another source of motivation. Once, a client asked if I was certified in safety. When I told him no, he asked, “Why not? Doesn’t it strike you as a good idea, or do you think you know everything already?”

That question gave me great pause. Then I decided to act, recognizing that everyone who works in a utility environment should be a safety expert, not just lineworkers and safety staff.

When I eventually discovered the Certified Utility Safety Professional (CUSP) program (see https://usoln.org/cusp-certification/), I initially assumed I could pass the exam with flying colors that same day. After all, utility safety work is my bread and butter. Now, however, I am embarrassed to admit that there was absolutely no way I could have passed the test that day.

Others had already taken care of the hard parts: identifying the essential knowledge that every utility safety professional should possess, creating the CUSP exam and developing the online preparation tool. I merely had to pay a fee, follow the study path and take the exam. So, after eating some humble pie, I launched a self-defined learning project, working through the CUSP program to earn the credential and redeem myself in my client’s eyes. The experience was difficult, but I learned a great deal. Perhaps my most important takeaway was that until I truly tested myself, I could not guarantee that my vocational confidence was justified.

Self-Preservation, Moral Obligation
Vocational mastery is a continuous act of self-preservation that demands honest assessment, thorough research, thoughtful planning, and a willingness to pursue development opportunities as efficiently as possible. Further, mastery is a moral obligation (recall the moral code addressed in article three); our continuous learning enhances the team’s overall competence and safety.

To become masterful, each of us must establish a series of learning projects that fit within the realities of our lives. Although some individuals will naturally progress faster than others, the goal here is to cultivate a consistent orientation toward learning. The more we understand across different dimensions, the safer we can become.

Conclusion
This series has fundamentally been about safeguarding ourselves and our teammates despite risk, not determining blame for incidents and injuries. When we commit to working for an employer, we agree to accept the system as it is currently constructed, which may not always provide us with adequate protection. Thus, we must take every possible measure to guard our personal safety while management continues striving to fix the system.

The five articles in this series are designed to help readers do just that. My overarching hope is that they encourage you to think more broadly about safety – not only in terms of compliance but as a lifelong commitment to taking personal accountability, honing our mental acuity, and becoming more spiritually grounded, physically prepared and professionally masterful.

About the Author: Tom Cohenno, Ed.D., CSP, CUSP, NBC-HWC, is a recognized safety expert and principal of Applied Learning Science (https://appliedlearningscience.com). With deep academic and operational experience as a U.S. Navy veteran, substation chief and former utility executive, he blends real-world insight with evidence-based research to deliver practical, impactful safety solutions.

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Sidebar: 4 Important Reminders

1. We develop vocational mastery because we want to be as safe as possible. Although creativity and initiative may be required, someone who genuinely wants to learn and improve can almost always find opportunities to do so.

2. True vocational masters thoroughly understand adjacent jobs. A lineman who learns why we arrange electrical components in specific configurations, for instance, begins to understand that what may initially appear illogical could in fact reflect the realities of clearance requirements, anticipated load growth and/or material constraints. This is valuable knowledge as the lineman encounters new field environments.

Similarly, a worker strengthens their overall competence as they become educated about operator switching, relay functionality and even how to manually operate a station during an emergency. A basic understanding of distribution engineering is equally beneficial. How are conductor sizes chosen to avoid unacceptable voltage drop? What’s the ideal way to determine circuit lengths? How are sectionalizing switches coordinated with backup circuits?

3. We must seek out individuals one or two levels above us who possess hard-earned knowledge (e.g., senior foremen, experienced supervisors). Inquire about their personal learning journeys and what has shaped their judgment. Additional worthwhile discussion topics include hazard prediction and recognition; job briefings; human performance basics; coping with time and storm pressures; and effective stakeholder communication.

4. Deliberately seeking this kind of knowledge is neither automatic nor common. Nevertheless, until we eliminate lineworker fatalities, it is prudent for each of us to develop a strong personal commitment to continuous learning.