Safety On Tap

My guest today is not backwards in coming forwards.  Sue Bottrell is a unique kind of person in our space, one of the few who has experience spanning in-house safety roles, consulting, and on top of that is a lawyer practicing in OHS law.    I think it's helpful for me to give you some background on why and how I say yes to conversations on this podcast.   So my starting point, is not being super enthused about the law - it's not unimportant, it's just better placed on someone else's podcast not this one and for an audience like you. 

The voice you hear is not Andrew Barrett.  This is a robot, an accessibility device which reads text for people with vision impairment.    Some of you may have been fooled, and if you feel that way I'm sorry, it's all for a good reason.  Most of you might have realised it wasn't me.    But it was me, kind of.  This is my words.  I created this podcast, the idea, the flow, the linkage of ideas, the words, and audio features all while I was sitting in seat 8F flying to Auckland.    How much of this podcast is me, and how much isn’t? When you heard, near the beginning of the podcast "Technology is great, and I would know", said in the first person, was that Andrew Barrett saying that, or was that the voice robot? Or was it both?

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents traces it's history back to a meeting in London, in 1916, the attendees of which resolved to create a Councilto tackle " the alarming increase in traffic accidents, and the direct connection therewith of the restricted street lighting which had been necessitated by the War conditions". My guest today is Dr. Karen McDonnell, the Head of RoSPA Scotland and the organisations Occupational Health and Safety Policy Advisor. 

I frequently get questions from you, which I love because it turns you, a nameless faceless listener statistic into a real life human being, with a story and emotion and successes and challenges.   I learn a lot from the reflection you stimulate when you ask questions, and I learn a lot from the kinds of questions you ask too.   So here is a little experiment, for the first time bringing you the Q&A between a real listener, and I. 

Today I welcome back friend of the show and previous guest Michelle Oberg, to fill us in on some new ideas, her new but not so new role, and what new things we might consider if we want to innovate in safety. Michelle is the Safety Innovation Lead in the transport and infrastructure division of Downer, which employs over 50,000 people across Australia and New Zealand designing, building and sustaining a bunch of different infrastructure and facilities assets.

Close your eyes for a minute, assuming you are not jogging or walking down a busy street. If you are, maybe stop, because this is the #1 question you need to answer to drastically improve your performance. I'm going to ask this question, and you need to immediately grab the answer which comes to your mind - don’t think about this, this is not a thinking question.   For show notes please visit: www.safetyontap.com/119

I've got some exciting news for you, but I know you come for the interviews. So I won't hold that up, stick around after the conversation and I'll tell you what I'm so excited about.   Today I catch up with a previous guest, Wade Needham, helping him scratch his own itch. That'll make more sense in the first few minutes, and no, there was no actual scratching we did this all over zoom.

 Regular listeners will know I took a short hiatus from the podcast after episode 116, only a few weeks ago, to spend more time writing. This writing was in the form of emails, to my email subscribers, as a form of reflection after the Safeguard Conference I spoke at in NZ a few weeks ago.  I've had a surprising number of people ask me over this time, what is it like writing vs podcasting. Writing vs podcasting. I am a regular podcaster, and I paused that to do writing. Writing vs podcasting.

I'm guessing you're listening to this podcast because you like to learn by listening, and it fits in with your busy schedule.  You are a listener.   I also know that listening to a podcast, especially some of my episodes, presents a time challenge.  My intent is to offer value, which takes time to do.  Rushing is a 21st century challenge, so everyone is under pressure to get more, do more, deliver more in less time and with less money.       

Dialogue is one of the most powerful, and abundant sources of learning available to us as humans (especially professionals).   Technology, in particular social media, helps us get more connected, and should enable us to have better learning dialogue.  But it rarely does.   Social media constrains dialogue, limited by the text medium, short length, and relative anonymity behind a keyboard.  (And trolls). Learning focused dialogue on social media, especially when people disagree, too easily disintegrates into defensiveness, confusion, and negativity. So let’s take online dialogue offline

Today's guest Sarah Cuscadden will be sharing her journey of understanding and shaping the health and safety experience in her company, in a half-day masterclass at the 2019 Safetyscape convention, part of the new events offering from the Safety Institute of Australia on from the 21st to 23rd of May in Sydney.  The #SAFETYSCAPE Convention brings together a range of industry partners committed to health and safety to assemble as the largest gathering of Health & Safety professionals across a program of events, workshops, forums. 

This episode is brought to you by the Safety Institute of Australia's Safetyscape Convention.  Martyn will be sharing his insights about regulation, change, and the future in a panel discussion I will be hosting at the 2019 Safetyscape convention, part of the new events offering from the Safety Institute of Australia on from the 21st to 23rd of May in Sydney.  The #SAFETYSCAPE Convention brings together a range of industry partners committed to health and safety to assemble as the largest gathering of Health & Safety professionals across a program of events, workshops, forums.  At the centre of the overall convention is the Safety Institute of Australia’s own two day National Health & Safety Conference: Back to the Future along with the Workplace Health & Safety Show. 

This episode is brought to you by the Safety Institute of Australia's Safetyscape Convention.   Stephen will be sharing his insights into supporting at-risk worker groups at the 2019 Safetyscape convention, part of the new events offering from the Safety Institute of Australia on from the 21st to 23rd of May in Sydney.  The #SAFETYSCAPE Convention brings together a range of industry partners committed to health and safety to assemble as the largest gathering of Health & Safety professionals across a program of events, workshops, forums.

This episode was really far more left field as an idea which when I suggested it to my guest today, he jumped at my guest is Ron Gantt, who some of you will know as the editor of the safetydifferently.com blog. This all started with a post, which Ron put on LinkedIn. This is what the Post said. He said, what makes having a meaningful constructive conversation between people who disagree with one another hard on this website.

2018 was a tough year for me as I faced a lot of challenges ahead but I approached the challenged differently and I want to share it to you today, a quote from Theodore Roosevelt popped up in my social feeds which is been timing on the day when I needed it and I've adapted it, it's called "The Man in the Arena"

Today I'm chatting with Daniel Hummerdal, the relatively recently appointed, and first, Chief Advisor of Health and Safety Innovation at Worksafe New Zealand, the countries sole government regulator for work health and safety.    My curiosity was really the driver for this conversation - the organisation, the role, that it's new, that it's about innovation, and Daniel's reputation for challenging the status quo to search for more effective ways to improve health and safety -

Today you'll hear my conversation with Carmen.  Carmen's challenge is really significant - she is working every day in the suicide prevention and support space and wants to help a very specific group of people, who have 'lived experience' with suicide and back in the workforce. Carmen asked me for some help, I really did wonder whether I was the right person   And that's where the value came from.  Carmen was stuck, and after this conversation, became unstuck.   

Today, for the first time, I have two guests on! Double the value. We discuss the limitation of retributive approaches, the popular but unachievable ideas behind restorative approaches, and the benefits of underpinning our work with transformative thinking and approaches. What's it all about, and what are the alternatives? Check them out, here's Campbell and John:

I'm shaking things up again this episode, another kooky idea of mine.  I love getting out and about amongst people, whether that be in workshops, team sessions, coaching or conferences.  When it comes to conferences, I'm getting more and more, umm, insistent about my views about what a good event looks, sounds and feels like.  What I mean, is that there is no shortage of information out there.  Regular listeners will have heard me say that many times.  So paying lots of money to sit in a room, to listen to live, real-time content delivery, isn't bad, it's just not optimized for this day and age.  So when I'm invited to contribute to a conference or event, I tend to prefer, and try to influence, interactive sessions like panel discussions, roundtables, facilitates activities - where you can tap into way more social and experiential learning.   

So here we are! These episodes, the title of which I will prefix with the words 'coaching call', I know I spent a long time with the marketing department working on that one, so you can see them easily in your podcast feed, as distinct from interviews and my solo episodes.    My intention here is to help supercharge your learning and action.  Just because I'm coaching one person, doesn’t mean that you won't find really helpful takeaways from the specific challenge or opportunity we work through, but in the way we go about the coaching process.    Can you let me know what you think? Post a comment on this episode over at safetyontap.com/ep104.  I would love to hear what you think.    Without further ado, here’s our very first live coaching podcast.