Paul Tyree
Total Safety’s Paul Tyree has played an integral role in the company’s growth since 1996. For the past six years, he has led the team as COO. Together, Tyree and the Total Safety community have built a winning culture. BIC Magazine recently visited with Tyree to learn more.
Q: What led to your position at Total Safety?
A: For the past 20 years, I have focused on building teams, innovating our offering, understanding our clients’ needs and helping them find solutions to complex issues they face daily. Every decision I have made has been focused on our mission: to ensure the Safe Wellbeing of Workers Worldwide.
Q: What is the biggest news at Total Safety right now?
A: In March, a new owner acquired a majority interest in Total Safety. The investment provides Total Safety with significant financial and strategic support to accelerate our pursuit of best-in-class customer service, innovation, and growth, as well as world-class training, a compelling career path and the safest workplaces in the industry for our employees.
Total Safety
Q: What is the most important part of your position?
A: Finding the very best talent to live our mission every day, ensuring they have what they need to be the very best and then getting out of their way. As a servant leader, the most impactful thing I can do is set expectations — for how we are measured and what our strategic outlook is — and then let great talent do their thing.
A company’s competitive advantage is its culture. How a company treats its employees is a direct reflection of how those employees will service their clients. We have to win the hearts and minds of our employees before we can win as a service company.
Our mission gives purpose to everyone in the organization, regardless of their position, seniority, nationality or social status. It binds all lines of business, end markets and geographies for our clients and employees alike.
Q: What are your goals for your position?
A: Find the biggest opportunity for growth, eliminate noise and obstacles, align our team on what is expected, do whatever it takes to take care of our customers so they can do what they do best every day, and — most importantly — ensure I am learning something each day: how to be a better leader, what our team needs, what the pain points are, what my blind spots as a leader are, and how each day can bring improvement to me, our people, our products, and our customers’ businesses.
Q: What do you love about being COO of Total Safety?
A: We are lucky to have the best people in the industry. I love their commitment as fighters to win and make great things happen.
I love the sales and operations teams that drive the mission and delivery of our services to our clients because their hearts and minds are in the right place.
I love our clients and the relationships we work hard to develop with them. They trust our brand to protect their co-workers, friends and assets.
I love that the work we do is meaningful. It makes a huge difference in people’s lives. I’m extremely proud of our accomplishments. When I joined, we were essentially a Texas/Louisiana oil and gas business with an upstream focus. We grew the downstream business from $7 million to more than $300 million. We developed better, smarter ways to deliver mission-critical safety and compliance-based services to clients, while improving safety performance and lowering costs. My heart and brain have always been and continue to be with the great people who drive Total Safety’s mission.
