0:01

Welcome to another episode of the Culturally Intelligent Safety Professional, a podcast aimed it providing a platform, whereby safety professionals can develop a pathway to enhance their cultural intelligence capability, which will in turn, help them function more effectively when working in a multicultural situation.

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I'm Greg Dearsly your host and I have a range of guests lined up to talk to this year.

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We have people with experiences across leadership, psychology, health and safety, education, and of course cultural intelligence.

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All of our guests come from a wide range of different backgrounds across the diversity spectrum including from different organizational context.

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In this podcast you'll hear stories aimed at helping you, the listener enhance your cultural intelligence.

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You'll gain an understanding of how you can create trust when working in a diverse environment and quite frankly, that's all the time, no matter how homogenous the place you work at might be it's still full of diversity, people with different backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs all built on their figured world.

1:19

Today. I'm talking to Tom Jones from Wellington.

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Thanks for putting some time aside to have a chat with me today, Tom.

1:28

No worries, thank you, Greg. I appreciate the

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offer. So this is really the first in-person podcast that I've done and we are here today in the lovely QT hotel in Central Wellington.

1:39

Tom, you're a safety advisor, you get out and do a bit of hunting by the sounds of it, a little bit of bow and arrow hunting.

1:46

That sounds just the job for a safety guy.

1:48

And I'm really interested in your bachelor's degree, which is in digital communications and multimedia, and it included according to your LinkedIn profile, amongst other things some focus on body language.

2:01

And from a cultural intelligence perspective, that's really fascinating stuff and maybe we might touch on that as we have a chat.

2:08

But in the meantime, tell us a little bit about yourself.

2:13

Great so I'll try and be brief as I possibly can, but I guess my story starts off in context with all of this, right back when I was a kid in school and growing up in, in Buckinghamshire in England and moving around schools and not being so hot at school, not being so good at good things and having to be reprimanded by the teachers from not being able to remember things or read stuff or write my own name and things from a point of view.

2:37

And then yeah, it got tested early on for this psychologist or dyslexia or whatever and mentioning it and giving you a label which then kickstarted my life into getting assistance, I would say through school.

2:48

So its less about can't do school, just more assistance to achieve it.

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And I found myself finding creativity as my outlet like the arts, was a really useful thing.

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I was always that heavy learner, like all the books you read I read'em still today.

3:03

But not your kind of fiction ones you're reading all the pop-out books as break apart ones with all the information, little snippets, magazines, anything I can ever read and digest.

3:12

And hence why probably I got that degree where I pushed myself and I never actually wanted to go to university, but it was a big thing and a push in the UK back then and went off and learned digital media I thought that was an out, it was a place where I found dyslexia really helped.

3:30

You could suddenly use your creative brain, you could use technology, you could use creative thinking, you could find really complex things and open'em all apart and use your brain in this crazy cool way and I thought, oh, maybe there's a potential for a living in it.

3:44

But yeah, found myself doing hundreds of different jobs all over the world, traveled the world.

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Also got some medical training from other jobs and moved here, there and everywhere.

3:56

Actually in context of this as well, taught some special I gotta say it, special needs people.

4:01

We talked about this earlier. But I, yeah. For my whole life it was always special needs training or special needs teaching and special needs or whatever.

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And I thought the things I learned through school of how I achieved it to give back.

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And I had a short stint at a job teaching people who were deaf, blind, autism, other dyslexics.

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In England, when you go to university, you go and get some money to go to university if you tick the box of having, a special need you got a computer and some software and stuff to go and train some of that.

4:28

And then, yeah, long long story short, take away half of all my life, but ended up in the sunny Wellington.

4:33

Met my wife and found myself somehow in health and safety, but.

4:39

I think safety is one of those amazing industries where you can be all over everything.

4:45

You can be out on every floor of a business in every part of it, in finance, through to the, on the ground, on the tools, through to, if you want to go down a specialist route, you can.

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You can be a generalist. You can just open your brain and creativity and dyslexia and safety just goes so hand-in-hand, it's, unreal.

5:03

So I found myself somehow here and loving it.

5:06

Excellent. So help me out here.

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We know that in many businesses, in New Zealand, in fact, most businesses in New Zealand, we could say that probably about 10% of the employees in any business in New Zealand is are going to be dyslexic people.

5:22

And if I am that safety person and I'm delivering a training session or I'm doing an induction, or I'm leading a toolbox talk or a committee meeting, or even just having a one-on-one discussion with a worker on whatever, what are some of the things that I should think about when I'm designing my presentation or my training course or my talking points on the basis that there could be a dyslexic person who's part of the audience.

5:53

Really good question, look, I'm gonna be broad and I think we've had conversations about this in the past, but singling it out and just saying dyslexia is a difficult one, I think my advice on this would be applicable to anybody with potentially every kind of disability as such, or neurodiversity or whatever you.

6:11

Keep it simple, keep it simple and concise.

6:15

When I say that, take the complex and rip out apart the bits that really needed.

6:20

So every one of us has got like a finite amount of information load you can take in.

6:25

I think with dyslexics I'm not gonna speak for every dyslexic, but for definitely for me, I like the visuals I learn from touch and kinetic learning, I like technical information, but not everyone does.

6:38

I think when someone keeps it diverse, so you're not just drained on a piece of reading.

6:45

Definitely I can't handle the dystopia, and I don't think many of us could.

6:48

If I came in and said, here's my training, and it's all in just like size 12, Times New Roman here just read this and tell me what you thought.

6:54

You'd be like, nah. So yeah, nice big visuals.

6:58

Keep it simple and talk to the points that you're doing.

7:00

And then practical, if you're talking about rope safety, get the ropes out and start tying some knots or showing people how to do'em.

7:07

If we're talking about confined space, photos, visuals, a short video.

7:12

Talk about your expertise and I always say stories, literally I'm a sucker for stories.

7:18

If you tell me a story about it. I'll remember it.

7:20

I remember all the Todd Conklin kind of videos and stuff.

7:22

I remember all of those advisory sessions. 'cause he tells a whole long story.

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And he just come away from it remembering all these and I can then retell that story.

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And I think us as human beings psychologically go on the storytelling thing as a means of actually doing it.

7:35

So those tools, keeping it simple, making a story, visualizing and you're covering all your bases there.

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You've got specialities in all people.

7:43

And I guess we're starting to see a lot of that conversation happening about how to make a toolbox talk more engaging.

7:51

Gone are the days while maybe they're not gone, but they should be where there's a supervisor standing up at the front of the room with a JSEA yelling at a bunch of guys on the building site, most of whom are hiding behind their dark glasses and some of them are standing 20 feet away and are not particularly, engaged in that discussion.

8:08

So the visualisation is I think becoming more and more something that, that people are learning to do.

8:13

Talk to that point. Thinking about this with what's called equitable outcomes or whatever, we've got lot of Filipino workers and then laborers, all sorts of people from different backgrounds.

8:22

And I think the reading age of construction industry is like 12 average.

8:26

I always think about if it's too hard for me, it is.

8:29

It's too hard for others as well. And I love that whole practical, grab the people out, the audience, grab a ladder, put it on the ground, put the person lying on the ground, ask'em to join in, make a little drama or whatever, and talk to your point of this is what ladder safety is.

8:42

Or maybe grab some harnesses and clip'em onto a fence and say, no, it doesn't go on the fence, this is not an anchor.

8:48

I'm visually showing them where it is a good anchor point where it's not a good anchor point.

8:52

I'll let read the book, read the manual on this before, just if you have props and you are using those props and those are the props that they really see in the real world, brilliant.

9:02

That's cool. So I'm in the moment I'm delivering my presentation or my induction in whatever form this presentation might be.

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How might I tell that somebody in the audience might be struggling to interpret what I'm saying or read the content that I've provided to them, whether it be on a screen or on a bit of paper.

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Or even if there's some sort of test, we're a little bit fascinated, aren't we with the 20 questions after the training session.

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And you've gotta write the answers down in some way because we think that's gonna prove that I've read and understood the content.

9:36

How am I gonna identify that if I'm standing at the front of the room and one of my teammates or classmates or workers is having a hard time.

9:46

It's a really broad one I think. I think there's two parts to this I wanna answer.

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One is not be afraid to ask the room whether anyone is struggling.

9:53

Whether anyone is or straight up just asking, is anyone got any?

9:57

And I think a lot I saying that some people will just not tell you straight up.

10:01

Don't tell you, someone like myself would be like, hands up, dyslexia.

10:04

These are all you need, but to tell, I think you can start seeing the body language of people drifting, switching off playing.

10:10

Technology these days playing with your phone. You've got day dreaming.

10:14

You start looking off, you've got the left-hand side. If you see people reminiscing something or learning and remembering.

10:19

But I always think if you, every now and then interject with a question about has anyone ever had any similar experiences, what are your thoughts?

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Or picking on a person that looks like they're drifting and not in a bad way, just saying okay, so we've just talked about this or whatever it is, and not punishing necessarily for switching off because actually brains drift.

10:36

We are listening and we're hearing, but we're also reminiscing of something that is apparently like relevant to what you're talking about.

10:43

And I did it you were literally talking right then I do it right then.

10:46

It is not because I'm being rude, it's because my brain goes off on a little tangent and starts thinking about things and reminiscing the times to answer your question.

10:55

The written test stuff where you're like, what was on line four of seven and what did Jim's name and what color t-shirt was he wearing?

11:01

I'll be awful at that. Recollection of words on paper aren't my forte.

11:07

So if you know someone can't do that necessarily so well, is there another test for competency?

11:13

I'm always into the physical. Show me, play around with it.

11:16

Can you actually do that knot can you actually do that clip?

11:19

Show me that you can screw that. Run me through visually, run me through practically what it is.

11:23

If the forklift needs to have a check in certain way is the check sheet the best way?

11:26

Is it just showing me that this is taking it in?

11:30

I think point, looking at people in the audience.

11:33

They might not just have a, you'd say special need, but they might not have dyslexia.

11:37

They might not have it. I don't know. They could just be switching off because your conversation's not that enlightening.

11:43

I dunno it could be that they're struggling.

11:46

And if they are struggling, I think that again comes back to that open conversation of recognizing that you could have a number of different disabilities in the room or neuro diversities in the room.

11:58

And I don't think you could go through naming every one of'em.

12:00

Do you have this? Do you have this? Do you have this? Do you have this? And if they're not forthcoming with that, then you are just gonna have to keep it simple play to all the different kinetic learning.

12:08

I think maybe we'll make a comment about this later but the whole neurodiversity thing is an invisible issue, isn't it?

12:16

You can't see it like you can maybe some other forms of diversity.

12:20

So you don't know, as you say unless somebody's willing to tell.

12:24

Now that's really really valuable stuff.

12:26

I guess thinking about the next piece, you know reflective practice is a really important part of our professional development, we've done some planning we've delivered our training session or whatever it might be.

12:37

The next piece is that piece of reflection and how did it go and what are some of the questions that I might ask myself if I have been in that room and experienced that sudden awareness that there's somebody in the room that's not feeling included?

12:54

What are some of the questions that I might ask myself in order that next time I'm better prepared?

13:02

I think I've been in these situations. I've gone and this is me going off on an information grab.

13:08

I go off and try and learn. I kind try and go, what is it that I am dealing with here?

13:14

I'm dealing with the whole of our nation of all the different possible variations of disabilities or neurodiversities and so on.

13:23

So I would go off and go say someone, you specifically talk in the context of dyslexia, and someone certainly found out that was during the class and you don't feel like they were included or you didn't prepare your material ahead of time.

13:37

There's a wealth of information out there online.

13:42

I think we talked about the design by Dyslexia stuff.

13:44

I would go out there and learn a bit about it. This great websites, this great understandings of what their strengths are.

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And not taking it as a what are the negatives of this ability that I have to try and make my material fit.

13:56

Its actually what are the positives of that ability, what are their abilities and strengths and how do I play to them?

14:01

Rather than thinking, how do I play my material down?

14:04

It's, how do I make it more creatively engaging?

14:08

How do I make it more like problem-solving?

14:11

I think some disabilities, dyslexics love problems.

14:15

They love problem solving. So give them problems to solve.

14:17

Give them some task work to do. I went to a really interesting training session the other day held by Land Search and Rescue.

14:24

There's two guys that ran this thing, and I remember this being one of the best overall.

14:30

They encompassed, I think, every type of disability and.

14:34

We were straight outta the room, running around finding flowers and a stone and a rock or whatever, and you come back in and then the next minute we're sitting down and if, but every single part of the entire day was a part of training.

14:44

It was how they communicated to you, how they pointed, how they got people to stand up, how they did a, like a book work lesson, and so on.

14:52

I reflected on that whole training session. It wasn't mine that I didn't give, but I reflected on, I said.

14:58

Variation is key, you can't please everybody.

15:01

Yes. So try and do something that any everyone can engage in.

15:06

And I can't remember all the different types.

15:08

There's a kinetic learning

15:09

VARC isn't it?

15:12

Visual, audio, reading and kinesthetic.

15:15

So when I used to deliver training and SOPs and stuff in manufacturing.

15:20

I'd ask people what they're thinking and they often, they didn't even know.

15:22

So then I'm like, okay, here's the SOP that was worthy.

15:27

Here's a little competency testing that made you understand whether you read the thing or not.

15:32

And then you go out and you start playing with a buttons on the machine.

15:35

Then you visually tell'em, no, don't touch this thing it hurts you.

15:38

You can touch this one, and there, this is what we're gotta do.

15:41

And then you run'em through and then you give'em some time to go and fail.

15:44

Because I think it's important to fail. And then say.

15:47

Failure's not bad. Cool, did you learn from that mistake?

15:50

And break it right down to simplistic and imagine you're trying to teach a child.

15:56

If you haven't got kids, you haven't got'em. But yeah, think about the whole, I always say the dishwasher test.

16:00

If you're trying to explain to someone how to use a dishwasher, right back to the beginning of this is what I expect, this is my outcome I wanna see.

16:07

And then you put it in there and you show your kids how to do it, and then they fail and they be kids and that.

16:12

I think we're adults. We'll just do same as kids.

16:17

Yeah. To come back to your question is don't be harsh on yourself reflecting.

16:20

Just try and make it very different.

16:22

Variation. Cool. I just wanna reflect back on, there you go.

16:26

I wanna reflect back on what you said right at the beginning.

16:28

You talked a little bit about. I guess your experiences of finding out that you were a dyslexic person and that it was, sounds like that was quite early on in your schooling time and I think back to, the New Zealand experience and I went to a presentation by a chap who works in the education system here in New Zealand.

16:49

He's not dyslexic himself, but his brother and his father were, and one of the things that just floored me with his presentation was that the Ministry of Education in New Zealand didn't recognise dyslexia as a thing until 2007.

17:05

Now, that was only. 15 years ago or something and you know, and you've used the term, and I know you don't like using it, but the special needs term, which you've you've used it because that's what you were brought up as thinking of yourself as a special, where you were in a special needs class and you had to do a special needs this, that and the other.

17:25

And that's, I guess that's not what we're about these days.

17:29

And neurodiversity is this new sort of term that, we try and use.

17:34

But yeah, I wonder if in New Zealand we're like many things a little bit behind the eight ball with some of the development of understanding this stuff.

17:42

We talk about health and safety is 20 years behind the uk and and then you find out that this dyslexia thing has only been recognised by the government, effectively as something that needs to be.

17:56

Understood only, 15 or 16 years ago, as I say, it floored me when I heard that and I guess it just makes you wonder how kids that grew up in New Zealand prior to that have developed in their careers.

18:09

And I know in the UK, I believe dyslexia is specifically mentioned in the anti-discrimination legislation, apparently, this is what this guy mentioned.

18:20

He had been in the uk and and had researched and done a lot of work in that space.

18:25

And yes, okay, New Zealand, we've got our own anti-discrimination laws, but.

18:30

Generally, they're not particularly specific in terms of what types of discrimination.

18:35

It's left up to the imagination, in most cases.

18:38

So yeah, it just, it's maybe it seems that yet again, we're a little bit little bit backwards sometimes in some of these things.

18:45

So we are almost at time but what I'd like you to do, if you can is maybe give us top three or four tips that you might have for individuals, health and safety people teams within a workplace to make sure that the things that they're doing is more inclusive of people that, that might be in that neurodiversity sort of space.

19:06

Have you got any top tips? And you've mentioned a few of them already, but maybe let's just reflect on those.

19:12

So many, keep it simple that's my go-to thing.

19:15

And I don't mean it in terms of just dyslexia, but.

19:19

Everything we do everything we do within safety, safety's complex right, doesn't mean we can't be clear about it.

19:26

And when I say simple, I don't necessarily mean making it bare bones and not it's clarity.

19:31

And I mean that in every single part we do when we're developing complex documents through to SSSPs, JSAs, all these things, SWMS, whatever you wanna call'em, through to communication.

19:48

If we're communicating with each other, we're trying to include everybody.

19:52

We've gotta, I always say bring our information to the lowest denominator.

19:56

So if I've got a, I'm not picking on Filipino workers its just because I have been working with a lot of fantastic people.

20:01

Incredibly intelligent, but we're trying to include them in our information flow.

20:05

We've also gotta include dyslexic and other neurodiversities.

20:10

We've also gotta include people with limited, like project managers with a lot going on or blooming CEOs with so many things and safety is literally just a nugget of what they do in their life and you've gotta get some key information across.

20:23

So keeping it clear, keeping it simple. And I think safety will win a lot more of our battles we're trying to achieve.

20:29

And then, for those of safety professionals out there or those trying to include them.

20:34

Dyslexia is a superpower like it really is, I'm trying to implore, I always try and be open with people so that it's used more in common language, that we've, recognizing that I'm proud of everything I do, dyslexia is literally assisted me to be where I'm today.

20:48

I would never be anywhere near. Had I not recognized it or been recognized earlier on, but it's a superpower.

20:57

And I wrote some of the things down I mentioned to you earlier on, but like visualizing, these are things that statistically on these websites that like made by dyslexia, they're like eighty-four percent of dyslexics, incredible visualizations skills, connecting, exploring, imagining, communicating, reasoning, skills, lateral thinking, complex problem solving and interpersonal skills and like just to name a few.

21:20

Those are things that employees are looking for and not to be necessarily thinking of it as a disability.

21:27

I know we use the term sometimes throughout this book, and it is a huge ability as long as we know to capture it.

21:34

And then I think my final kind of third thing, being more practical and not creating safety for safety people.

21:41

So we're trying to make safety for inclusivity of it.

21:44

It's a communication tool, we are communicators and we're influencers at heart.

21:48

We, we are trying to. Push the good word of getting home at the end of the day.

21:52

To do that, we often need to do practical skills, we need to get people to buy into our ideas.

21:58

We need to influence stakeholders above and below and to communicate with those people or those masses of people, whatever we need influencing skills and we need communication tools.

22:11

And I think if we think like you're doing here now.

22:15

Getting people thinking about how we communicate with people with neurodiversity is a great way to just realize how we can communicate with our entire nation to our entire workforce.

22:24

Whether they've got neurodiversities or not, or whether they're just at any stage in their career or life or whatever..

22:31

Look that's awesome, and I think we've heard lots in a whole range of different conversations around how if you do things.

22:40

To be inclusive of people with a neurodiverse situation actually, it suits the majority, if not all of the rest of the population because it's all about simplicity, it's all about clarity and those sorts of things.

22:56

So that's awesome. I think you've mentioned it a couple of times and we'll put it into the show notes.

23:01

A link to the Richard Branson's Made by Dyslexia.

23:04

So we'll put a link to that. I think they've got a website and they've got a whole bunch of resources that, can be helpful.

23:10

I think I've done one of the training courses, which I shared on LinkedIn a few months ago.

23:14

I just, I think it was actually an hour long, so it was, it was quite comprehensive.

23:18

To just to go through that and understand some of the concepts behind that.

23:22

But look, I think that's been really super helpful.

23:25

And we, I just, repeat again that, that neurodiversity is a bit of an invisible form of diversity.

23:32

It's not. Visually apparent.

23:36

And if you are delivering some sort of training session or just engaging with another person it, it just may be that your message isn't getting through because you haven't taken that into consideration as to how you might need to change your behavior or your delivery or whatever it might be.

23:52

So really valuable stuff and it is about inclusion and it's been awesome to chat and thanks very much for putting your time aside today.

24:01

And anything else you wanna just finally finish off with any pearls of wisdom or are we done for the day?

24:07

I don't think there's anymore. I just. If you're dyslexic and you think you might like safety, I think it's a fantastic career choice for them.

24:15

I think with somebody with it is that kind of superpower I think is so much enjoyment and ability to play with the great brain that people have.

24:24

Awesome cheers Tom.

24:25

No worries. Thank you much.

24:28

What a great insightful discussion with someone who has experience on both sides of the subject.

24:35

Tom shared some real insights into how we can be more inclusive of dyslexic thinkers in the work that we do.

24:42

Tom talked about starting out in his creative career in digital media, having known a little bit about as different approach to thinking.

24:52

There was a bit of a moment for me during our chat that has shown the impact of how historically people that are different have experienced the world.

25:02

Tom made reference to being special needs and the impact that the use of that term may have had on a young person growing up.

25:12

Tom found a creative outlet for his creative mind in the work in health and safety and he's passionate about trying to evolve how we implement the various approaches to ensure inclusivity for all workers.

25:25

Tom shared advice on ensuring that you're training presentation material is kept simple and concise, but all of this is also delivered in a range of ways to suit what is most likely a really diverse audience regardless of where you are or what business you're in.

25:44

Think about how you assess understanding.

25:47

I think many would agree, a bit of paper that says, please sign here to confirm your understanding.

25:54

Is entirely ineffective. Tom's words we're pretty clear, as a dyslexic person recalling words on a page isn't his forte.

26:05

I think my takeaway from this discussion was Tom's mindset that his dyslexia has got him where he is today, and that's because he recognized early on that it was his superpower.

26:19

I think you will learn so much from this discussion and a lot more, if you listened to it.

26:24

So I'm not going to dissect it any further than this.

26:28

Grab a coffee and immerse yourself into Tom's world.

26:34

We've come to the end of this episode. Thanks so much for listening.

26:38

I hope you found something valuable that you can take away that might enhance aspects of your own cultural intelligence.

26:45

I'll add the transcript from this episode to the show notes and there'll be some other resources available as well.

26:52

If you'd like to talk about cultural intelligence get in touch with me via LinkedIn.

26:57

I'm posting content regularly so keep an eye on your feed.

27:01

And comment if you see something that resonates.

27:04

If we aren't connected send me an invite.

27:08

If you want to hear more about CQ you can follow and subscribe to this podcast I'd really appreciate it if you did that.

27:17

And keep an eye out for the next episode. Next week, we talked to a Afele Paea who has come through various roles with Corrections WorkSafe and the Puataunofo team, he's been a consultant and is currently the SHEQ manager with Landscape Solutions.

27:35

Until then, thanks again for tuning into the Culturally Intelligent Safety Professional.