In today's episode I'll share how to harness your reason for being, your ikigai. 

I regularly hear that health and safety professionals feel stressed, anxious, frustrated and burned out because their job feels like such a grind.  Some feel unfulfilled, some just unsure about their career and job decisions. 

 

I find that when things aren't working as well as they could in my life, especially when there is high uncertainty, I can always rely on my core beliefs and values to guide me, which come together to form my collective reason for being.   

 

The Japanese word ikigai roughly translates to mean 'reason for being'.   I use this idea of ikigai when coaching people inside Safety on Tap Connected.  NOW you can head over to safetyontap.com/ep059 to download the full, free transcript of this episode PLUS a worksheet to help you take action from this episode. 

This is Safety on Tap! I'm your host Andrew Barrett, and since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! Today I'm joined by Dr Sarah Colley from Pockets of Brilliance.  This episode is made possible by Safety On Tap Connected the world's first professional growth accelerator for health and safety professionals. If you are invested in your own development and improvement, this is right for you.  For the price of about 3 coffee's a week, you can accelerate your development and your effectiveness with access to an amazing learning community, educational content like you've never been taught before, and you get 1:1 online coaching with me - your personal coach to help you accelerate your growth.  This combination of things would usually be out of reach of most health and safety professionals, which is the very reason why we developed it - for you.  If you want to know more, your first step is to head over to safetyontap.com/connected, and your second step would be to join our waiting list. I've had Sarah's partner in crime Jonathan Lincolne on to chat on episode 47, when we talk about the work Pockets of Brilliance does and their 5i change methodology.  If you haven't listened to that episode, make sure you do, since Sarah and Jonathan are like two peas in a pod! So Sarah is an organisational psychologist who has never had a real job, and thinks that she would suck at one anyway.  So instead Sarah leads Pockets of Brilliance, a research and implementation group based in Brisbane Australia.  Sarah and her team have decades of success, dozens of companies all over the world and thousands of people who have benefitted from their human-centred approach to change.  Whilst they are without doubt specialists in health and safety, they've realised that culture, people and change are much broader….which Sarah explains more in our conversation.  So we cover a bit about culture and climate and the difference between these, the research that led Sarah into this space, and what they've learned by putting research into practice.  Here's Sarah:   Here's my three takeaways from that chat with Sarah Colley:

1. Be a ninja, like Sarah.  Some of the stereotypes of a health and safety person is as a crusader, a teller, an enforcer, a zealot.  Now that's not always bad, but sometimes we get blinded by our own passion and enthusiasm, which means we are perceived to be pushy, tactless and un-strategic.  I love Sarah's image of the ninja in contrast - reflective, planned, thoughtful, agile, but swift and decisive when the time is right.  If you think you or your team are a little gung-ho, channel your inner ninja, and see if you can't be more cunning about how you communicate, engage and drive change.
2. Understand climate and culture.  My personal perspective on this is this: I learned about climate and culture, found it to be very loose and vague, and sort of put it to the side as I just leaned into the work of a health and safety professional.  But I came back to it because the concepts of culture and climate are critical to us understanding the big picture, that health and safety doesn’t exist in a vacuum.  And it especially reinforces the idea that it's not all about health and safety, which can feel confronting if we feel like we are overstepping our role.  Bottom line is this - I don't think you can be effective unless you have a solid understanding of culture and climate.  If you couldn't have a comfortable conversation with me about it, you've got homework to do.  This link is a starting point for that homework, plus included in my handwritten reflection the 4 quadrant model Sarah mentioned.  You can get access to my handwritten reflection notes for each episode, which includes a personal reflection template for yourself, if you jump on our mailing list RIGHT BELOW!
3. Take action.  This isn't specific to this episode, but a core component of your ongoing growth and development.  When it comes to research, Sarah mentioned that much of it never gets turned into action in the real world.  Sometimes that's because it's not great research.  But research is only as good as the action that happens from the insights it uncovers.  So if you read something, turn it into action.  Reflective practice is a great way to help you structure how to do this, so go back and listen to Ep 23 with Tim Allred to learn more about that.  If you want to know more about how to take action on what you learn as a framework for professional development, I'm actually putting together a free course which teaches you about the learning frameworks which have made me successful, and how I use these now to help members of Safety on Tap Connected.  Whilst the course is most helpful to managers of teams to help them improve how they do professional development, it's just as useful for individual professionals.  If you are interested in that free course, send me an email with the subject line "free course" and I'll keep you in the loop.

Until next time, what's the one thing you'll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Seeya! [thrive_lead_lock id='1854'] Click here for your FREE download of my handwritten notes, PLUS a reflection template for you to use for this episode.   I'll also send you the links to all the available back-catalogue of reflection templates so you can access these at any time. [/thrive_lead_lock]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Safety on Tap, episode number 50! Wooo hoooo!   I'm your host Andrew Barrett, and I'm so glad you've joined us to celebrate the 50th episode of the Safety on Tap Podcast! Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome to all of you wonderful, regular listeners! Before we get into it, I want to thank Alistair Camm for reading our regular introduction.  Alistair has been a long time listener, and I had the pleasure of meeting him in person a few weeks ago.  I wanted to share two things about that.  First Alistair has seen I had made some comments on Linkedin about stocism, and knowing we would be meeting in person he took the time to find an excellent paper about stocism from a service he subscribes to, he printed it out and he gave it to me.  It was a wonderful gift - so simple and so thoughtful.  It reinforced for me the power of small gestures to help others, especially when it comes to learning.  Second thing about that conversation is Alistair said that he could almost recite the podcast introduction off by heart given he had heard it so many times….so I thought who better to introduce our 50th episode than him! So thanks Alistair for that! Now as health and safety leaders, I hope we recognise that numbers don't mean much without giving them meaning.  So whilst 50 episodes is a pretty arbitrary number, I wanted you to help me make meaning of it, since this isn't much of a podcast without you thousands of listeners out there! I want you to know that there is a amazing community of people, just like you but different as well, with a common interest in improving yourselves as leaders in order to translate our greater effectiveness into better health and safety outcomes for the people we serve. So I put the call out for some messages from you, and so today's episode is just a handful of listeners messages reflecting on their favourite episode and how it’s helping them improve.  I'm pretty intentional about most things, and this is no different.  The intention behind this is to reinforce the power of social learning.  Individual podcast listeners you may be, but this handful of messages may just bring you a unique perspective, a new idea, or just an episode which you haven't listened to just yet.  I wanted to bring you the power of learning from each other, not just me and the people I interview. I've had a really really nice time reflecting on these messages myself, making meaning of them, and have shared my reflections of each with you in this episode too. So it is with great gratitude that we kick off our 50th episode listener messages: I hope you've enjoyed this episode as much as I did putting it together.  It's lovely to reflect on the community of listeners that have grown around the podcast, and to hear that positive impact it is having for them.  I'm especially happy to be able to share the personal relationship I have with some of the listeners you heard from today, because it is in the strength of our connections with each other that we find strength, opportunity, and growth.  Thank you  for our special listener messages from Steve, Cameron, Danielle, Kelly, Genevieve, Russel, Drewie and Sally. We sure covered a lot of ground in a short space of time! If you appreciate what I'm doing here at Safety on Tap one of the best things you can do is to share the podcast with a friend or colleague! Share the love, the podcast only works when we have listeners, and together you and I have some amazing potential to help so many more people, so think of a friend, send them a note, and say 'have a listen to this!.  I'd also really appreciate an honest review from you on iTunes, could you do one for me? That also helps other people find the podcast more easily.  And lastly, I know I'm asking a lot, if you have a guest you think I should interview or a topic in mind, shoot me an email andrew@safetyontap.com and I'll see what I can do!   Thanks for celebrating with me, here's to the next 50 episodes.  Until next time, what's the one thing you'll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Seeya!    

  Today I'm joined by Greg Smith, from Nexus Lawyers in Australia. This episode is made possible by Safety on Tap Connected, the world's first growth accelerator designed for health and safety professionals to be more effective. This is professional development like you have never seen before, where you get long term social peer learning, soft skills that aren't ever part of formal education, and 1:1 professional coaching from me. If you want to accelerate your growth you need to check out safetyontap.com/connected to find out more and join the waiting list. Now Greg Smith is the first lawyer we've had on the podcast, with good reason. I've resisted many suggestions to get lawyers on, on that basis that I think as leaders we probably need to focus less on the legal stuff and more on other things to make us more effective. But Greg has an amazing passion and despite being a lawyer, has some really pragmatic reflections on how we can be more effective. Here's Greg:   Greg mentioned the High Court judgement Slivak v Lurgi, where Chief Justice Gleeson provides a helpful perspective on interpreting what is reasonably practicable - not as complicated as it might seem. You can read more of Greg Smith's writings, blog articles and stay up to date with his latest books by visiting mysafetythoughts.com

Ep48: Industry 4.0 & the future of work is here, now. Innes Willox is my guest today.  Innes is the CEO of Australian Industry Group, the largest cross-industry peak body in Australia.  AI Group represents the interests of business to government, as an advocate and delivering services to their 60000 business members employing more than 1million staff Australia wide.   This episode is brought to you by the Safety Institute of Australia's 2017 Victorian Conference called Safety STEPS, Strategies Towards Efficient Productive Systems.  Innes is one of the keynote speakers this year, sharing his insights about the future of work, alongside a great lineup of speakers.  You can find out more about that conference and grab a ticket at www.sia.org.au, I hope to see you there!   Here's Innes: If you want info about the Net Promotor Score idea I mentioned in my take-aways, send me an email andrew[at]safetyontap.com   [activecampaign form=5]

Today my guest is Jonathan Lincolne from Pockets of Brilliance, a research and implementation company that does work that is way sexier than that description suggests.  I'm heading along to a workshop that they are running on their 5i change acceleration method on the 26th July 2017 in Brisbane.  I know that many of you won’t be able to go, so I thought it best to get Jonathan on to talk about their approach to change.  I'll put the links in the show notes for you to check out the workshop details if you do want to attend, spots are limited and time is short! Find out what is the one thing that drives Jonathan, which should drive you too.  Here's Jonathan:   Two things you need to know: Register here for the Pockets of Brilliance Change Accelerator Workshop on the 26th July 2017 Come along to our FREE listener meetup in Brisbane after 5pm on the 27th July 2017 (details and RSVP are here).

This is Safety on Tap!   I'm your host Andrew Barrett, and since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve!   Phil Bolton is my guest today.  Phil is a data scientist, whose been doing this for almost as long as the concept of data science has existed.  He is a Director at PWC and has spent his career in professional services companies helping clients get greater insights from their data.   This episode is brought to you by the Safety Institute of Australia's 2017 Victorian Conference called Safety STEPS, Strategies Towards Efficient Productive Systems.  Phil will be speaking at the conference on Machine learning and related concepts, alongside a great lineup of speakers.  You can find out more about that conference and grab a ticket at www.sia.org.au, I hope to see you there!   Here's Phil:   [thrive_lead_lock id='1542'] Safety Analytics - One Page Summary Health and Safety Analytics - Safety Institute of Australia Magazine Premium Subscriber Article [/thrive_lead_lock]   Here's my favourite links to start learning more about statistics: Basic Statistics Descriptive Statistics Once you have a basic understanding of these you need to move on to inferential statistics. I mentioned Pockets of Brilliance last episode.  They've got an amazing track record not only in helping organisations change for the better, but to actually make the change stick.  They call this their 5i method.  If you want to find out more about their 5i method before their live training in late June, they are hosting a free webinar on the 19th June, which is less than a week from this episode's release.  You can register for that webinar over at www.pobrilliance.com, I went to the last one, and found it really insightful. Speaking of their method, I've got one of their leaders Jonathan coming on the podcast next episode, to share more insights with you about leading change, the psychology behind it, and the reason why stickiness is the core mission of their business.  You can get advanced notice of new episodes, my personal reflections on each episode, and a bunch more special stuff if you hop onto our mailing list over at safetyontap.com  

My guest today is Peter Wilkinson, who has a wealth of experience.  Peter and I met a few weeks ago and I enjoyed every minute with him, such was the value he shares.  And as you'll hear, he doesn’t chase catastrophe, catastrophe chases him.  Here's Peter: I also wanted to let you know about a very special group of people at Pockets of Brilliance.  You might remember them from Episode 38 with Michelle Oberg, she is one of those special people at PoB.  They are a team of Research and Implementation specialists who have spent decades synthesising their method for helping clients navigate challenges such as safety, change and engagement. The most exciting bit is that they are now teaching others to do this for themselves, which is the same approach we take here at Safety on Tap to helping you learn, grow and improve. They are launching their 1 day change accelerator in Brisbane on 26 July 2017, which teaches you their method. If you want to check it out head over to https://pobrilliance.com/5iapproachandevents/ you can learn more and register.  I'm going, so it would be great to see you there! [activecampaign form=5]

  See the value of diversity and boost your career with a balanced approach to your professional capability. One of the greatest challenges I face in my mission to help people like you grow and drastically improve health and safety is to bring our message to people who aren’t seeking it out, but who would benefit greatly from growing themselves.  You might know someone like that - do them a favour and tell them about Safety on Tap, and what you get out of it.  But Don't tell them not just to take your word for it, check out this recent review on iTunes: HSE Improver says 5 starts Virtual Mentor! "The Safety on Tap podcast has been a revelation for me during my long commute. It is akin to a probing mentor, generating thought as it dissects across disciplines, with health and wellbeing at its core. Some of the episodes such as the recent cast on bullying have opened up my mind, and the technique that Andrew uses to flip threat discussions into opportunities has already reaped rewards in my own continuing professional development. I would like to say a big thanks to Andrew and enjoy hearing more of your great work. " If you appreciate what we're creating here at Safety on Tap, you can also spread the word by submitting a review on iTunes or Stitcher - I am always humbled and appreciative of the feedback I get. Today's guest is Kelly Lovely, an accomplished health and safety professional, mentor and coach through Bookenz Leadership, not to mention a director on the Board of the Safety Institute of Australia.  Here we go:   I mentioned the Implicit Association Test which would provide your unconscious bias, you really need to take at least one of these tests: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/australia/takeatest.html Kelly was also kind enough to create an e-book just for you, which describes the bookenz game in more detail.  You can access that here: [thrive_leads id='1516'] And speaking of improving yourself, I wanted to let you know that our friends at Art of Work have released new dates for their Master Classes across Australia, the UK and New Zealand. If you haven't heard of them, Art of Work is the company to go to if you're looking for practical support in implementing safety differently principles within your organisation. If you visit their website at artofwork.solutions, you'll see a range of Master Classes that will help you to shift the conversation away from controls and constraints and towards a more proactive and appreciative approach.  

I'm pretty excited at the moment.  I'm happy to announce that the newest member of our family has arrived, his name is Jude Thomas, and despite the fact that he has shown his stubbornness in both labour and afterwards, my wife and I, and his 5 siblings, are glad to have him in our lives. I'm also excited about another new beginning, something of a birth I suppose as well.  Safety on Tap Connected, the worlds first growth accelerator designed for health and safety professionals, launched on the 29th of May 2017.  I can't tell you how pumped I am to have our founding member group starting to accelerate their growth. I've had plenty of enquiries about membership after the deadline though, since we were only open for one week.  As our founders group settles down into the rhythm of ongoing growth and development through our coaching, community, content and contemplation, we may open up again for more new members in the future.  So if you think Safety on Tap Connected is right to help you grow, you need to be on the waiting list at safetyontap.com, and I'll let you know when we open the doors again. If you aren't sure what this is all about still, I have something else for you.  Since we are doing something quite different from conventional professional development, it's understandable that you might not be sure what you are actually going to get.  One of the more common bits of feedback I got was about coaching - so many health and safety people haven't had much if any exposure to what coaching is, which arguably is the best value part of the membership.  So if you are in the not sure camp, I have something special for you.  So you can get totally informed, I'll let you have a sneak peek at our member onboarding videos, which explains everything in detail.  If you want to check those out, send me an email andrew@safetyontap.com My guest today is Luke Anear, founder of Safety Culture, the creators of the iAuditor app, the most used audit and inspection app in the world.  Luke has a great product and leads one of the fastest growing tech companies in Australia to make his mission happen - to improve health and safety by helping frontline workers.  He has some great insights about user-centred design, staying true to your mission, and what the future looks like to him.  Here's Luke:     I mentioned a few links I'd share from that discussion with Luke: Health Monitor by Atlassian (for tracking all sorts of projects and team work) Spotlight Incident Reporting and Investigation app (for iOS) User Experience Design Cheat Sheet the Safety Culture way [activecampaign form=5]

Today we've got Part 2 of my deep discussion with Dave Provan, reflecting on the role of the health and safety professional, and how Dave is contributing to our understanding through his research.   If you haven't listened to Part 1, which is Episode 41, press pause now, go back and listen to that first.  If you've done that and you're ready for part two - let's go!     Plenty of growth-fuelling juice in that chat, thanks to Dave Provan for sharing so generously. Before I share my reflections, the launch of Safety on Tap Connected is getting close. It's the world's first growth accelerator designed for people like you. Not sure what that is? Well it's a hub which brings people just like you together, together online from all over the world, to learn and share and support each other in a psychologically safe space, it's 1:1 online coaching from me, the sort of thing that is only normally available to executives paying mega bucks, and growth-fuelling educational content to gain knowledge about the sorts of things that will make a real difference to your career. And when you compare the price for 12 months of membership to a 2 day conference or training course…you'll see that that value you can get is simply massive.  We'll only be opening the doors for a limited time soon, so hop on the waiting list at safetyontap.com/connected so you don't miss out. [activecampaign form=5]

Our guest today is Dave Provan, a guy who I found really drew me in, who made me curious to know more about him and what he's up to.  The crux of the chat was meant to be about his PhD research into the role of the health and safety professional, but I enjoyed that our chat was a bit more meandering than just a description of some straightforward research.  We connected in a way which both helped us to make meaning, of a whole bunch of things.  It's very consistent with the approach of a rational flaneur, which I'm exploring.  If you missed me explaining that one, check out episode 37.  The best illustration of that approach is that Dave and I didn't really start the interview but just started chatting, and only part way through did I say to Dave I'd use some of our conversation for the recorded interview.  I think this one is a nice reminder about the messiness and variation that we come across in every day work - life is just like that! I also wanted to do this discussion justice, without creating a really long podcast, so it's in two parts.  Here's part one of my chat with Dave Provan:   That's part one of my chat with Dave Provan.  Make sure you stay tuned for Part 2 in the next episode, when Dave tells us about the rest of his plans to uncover a deeper understanding of the role of health and safety professionals through his PhD research.  If you are a health and safety professional, you don't want to miss out on that one!   Stay tuned for Part 2 of my chat with Dave Provan in the next episode, and in the mean time I hope you take positive, effective and rewarding action to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Seeya! [activecampaign form=5]

  Last episode, (#39 with Carlo Capponecheia) was all about an elephant in the room - psychosocial risk.  Poorly understood, seemingly complicated, often this is put in the 'ignore basket', or the 'too hard basket', or the 'that's HR's problem to deal with' basket.  Far from a criticism of all of us working in health and safety (me included), it was a reflection on how what got us here (in terms of our knowledge and our experience) won't help us get to where we need to go.  I personally got a lot out of the interview with Carlo as I sought to improve my understanding, and then to explore what I implore you to do every week - HOW to take positive, effective and rewarding action.   This week is in a very similar vein.  Bullying you could argue is one kind of psychosocial risks, but I don't think it fits neatly into just that category.  Nonetheless, it is a risk, it needs to be managed, and it holds great potential to bring positive change in organisations far beyond just solving a negative problem.  My guest today Catherine Mattice from Civility Partners is one of the few people I know of who specialise in bullying (hang on, that came out wrong) - whose mission is to help organisations manage the risks and the opportunities, from bullying.  Catherine welcome to the Safety on Tap Podcast:     Now we've spent most of today focussed on the big picture.  I want to acknowledge the  very serious and real impact bullies can have on the targets of bullying behaviour.  If you or someone you know is having a touch time and needs help, we've got a bunch of links to helplines and resources from around the world, so you don't suffer alone - you can get help to work through it. Check these out: http://www.mentalhealthcommission.gov.au/get-help.aspx (Australia) https://www.healthyplace.com/other-info/resources/mental-health-hotline-numbers-and-referral-resources/ (North America) http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/stress-anxiety-depression/Pages/mental-health-helplines.aspx (United Kingdom) http://www.tnp.no/norway/health/1685-call-mental-helath-line-anywhere-in-europe (Europe) http://togetherweare-strong.tumblr.com/helpline (Other countries)   Speaking of reflective practice, I've been tweaking my reflective practice framework as I'm preparing the course materials on Reflective Practice - a critical skill for leaders like you to maximise the learning from everyday experience.  That and a bunch more courses, engaging community and 1:1 coaching from yours truly will be available inside Safety on Tap Connected.  Some people have been asking what it's all about - head over to safetyontap.com/connected to get on the waiting list to join - we're opening the doors very soon, and that will be only for a very limited time. [activecampaign form=5]