Profile:

James “Bishop” Decker

I began my first job in the Oil business the summer of 1969 working on a well servicing rig in the oilfields surrounding Bakersfield, California. I have worked as a roustabout, equipment operator, well puller as well as stints in outside sales and warehousing. I eventually began working for “Standard Oil of California” which later became Chevron. I worked my way up through the ranks spending a good portion of my career as a supervisor in production operations. I left California in 1996 and transferring with Chevron to Midland, Texas. It was here that I landed in the role of Health, Environmental and Safety (HES) Manager for Chevron’s Permian Business Unit.

The HES role was just a natural extension of my operations roles and responsibilities . HES is a critical part of every day and every job while producing oil and gas. It was a natural fit. I loved the HES side of the business so well that I wound up continuing that path up until my retirement in 2006 as Chevron’s North American Staff Safety Advisor for Chevron’s Upstream operations.

In 2006 I began my career as a facilitator for a Leadership Program, working with Global Training Centre, a training company located in Strathmore Alberta, Canada. The leadership program is focused on improving an organization’s safety performance by creating effective leaders. While working with Global I have had an opportunity to work with many of the North American major producers, both US and Canadian. It became increasingly obvious as I worked with an organization’s leaders that they must embrace their role as “influencers of behaviors”. During my tenure with Global I learned how effective the uses of personal stories are by tapping into the emotions and beliefs of the audience.

I have used personal and impactful stories to illustrate the leadership concepts with great success in my facilitation work. I am now embarking on the next stage of my retirement career, that of guest or key note speaker. I have an impactful story on my “Journey to Always” that highlights our need to not compromise our safety values. I continue to engage in the leadership facilitation as I find it very rewarding.

In the course of facilitating leadership training, I have encountered many opportunities to coach many of the participants through real time workplace issues. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.

Along the way I have pulled together an excellent survey to assess the safety performance of an organization from the employee’s perspective. The output is a performance plan for an organization.

I have a BS in Geology from California State University of Bakersfield. I have a certificate in Safety Management from the ASSE and I am currently preparing for the CSP exam.