I spoke with a young man who grew up with my son this weekend. He’s just back from Iraq, having served several tours of duty there in the military, then several more years as a sniper, then team leader for Blackwater Security. He’s a fine man now and we talked about people.

Not about people we both knew, but about people in general. We talked about the differences when a rich world person gets killed vs. a Third World person. I mentioned how my travels led me to believe that people the world over have so much in common. We want the same things from our spouses, from our children, from our lives.

He agreed and told me about the first time this thought came clear to him. He was working as a military policeman in Iraq and they pulled over a vehicle. The four guys inside were drunk (reasonably rare in Iraq), singing and laughing. They wanted to give their new friends hugs. He realized, “They get drunk and act stupid, just like us.”

The insight followed that people are more the same than not. I don’t really know what this insight does to you in a war zone. But on a construction site, the insight should lead to a bit more patience. Perhaps we act with a bit more tolerance and acceptance of different ways when we have a job site encounter with Mexicans, or Poles, or Amish or Fill in the Blanks.

Hopefully, we eliminate offensive language and we strive to improve the productivity of the entire project. The construction industry needs to improve in this area. Each of us should do our part to move our job sites to become more inclusive and productive places. Everyone wins.