Observation as a form of respect

The best learning often begins when you stop trying to teach. I discovered that years ago in Germany, not long after leaving Canada with a shiny new engineering degree. At Siemens, I was training service technicians, armed with manuals and stacks of circuit diagrams. I thought my role was to hand over knowledge, step by step, like filling a cup. Then the company gave me a gift: once a year, I could spend a week in the field, following technicians working in hospitals.

Those weeks stripped away my assumptions. In neonatal wards, ERs, and ICUs, I saw what technicians faced: machines that failed at awkward times, alarms going off in the middle of procedures, and families silently waiting at the edge of the room. What I taught in training was suddenly put under a different lens.

What I taught in training was not useless. The technicians needed to know how to keep the machines running. But seeing them at work in their real world expanded my perspective. I began asking myself different questions: how could I shape my training so it truly supported them? Was there information missing that I could bring in? Could I work with the engineers in research and development to make the instructions clearer and more practical?

One technician taught me more than any manual ever could. In almost every room he entered, there was a patient lying unconscious, either after surgery or in a coma. Yet he always greeted them, always explained what he was doing. He spoke with the same tone he would have used for someone sitting upright and alert, as if the patient’s awareness or lack of it changed nothing. He was not performing for anyone’s benefit, and he received no recognition for it. It was simply respect, woven into his daily routine.

I carried that lesson with me. Observation is not passive, I began to realise. To watch carefully is to acknowledge the humanity of others, whether they can respond or not.

Now, years later, here on the MV Roland Oldendorff, those lessons echo. The crew live in the rhythm of breakdowns and repairs. Something always needs attention. Some failures become critical without warning. A pump that worked fine yesterday suddenly refuses. A pipe that looked sound yesterday starts to leak today. And the response is always the same: keep working until it is fixed. If that means through the night, then through the night it is. The ship must move on schedule, and it will.

From my favourite seat on the bridge, I have a front-row view of this unending cycle. I am not part of the repairs, but I see the determination that drives them, the way responsibility is shared without fuss or complaint. And watching it reminds me of those hospital technicians: unseen by most, often unacknowledged, yet utterly vital.

It strikes me that this kind of observation would benefit far more people. Just as my time in hospitals gave me insight into what technicians truly needed, a stint on board a ship would give experienced managers or operators a wider lens on their own work. To spend even a week every year or two in someone else’s world is to stretch your perspective. It is a reminder that the best systems and strategies only matter if they serve the people who keep everything moving.

Observation is not a lesser role. It is not passive. It is a way of recognising the effort and the dignity of work that often goes unnoticed. Whether in an ICU or here at sea, to really see what others are doing is, in itself, a form of respect.