"Help me get people engaged".  "No one is engaged with health and safety".  "Engagement around here is pretty low".  Requests like this and their variations are some of the most common things people come to me for help with.  Health and safety have an engagement problem, but it's not limited to that. Gallup says only 36% of workers in the US are engaged at work.  And no one agrees on how we define engagement in any case.  What do we do?

Ep189 How to improve engagement, with Andrew Barrett

The Safety on Tap podcast is for leaders (yes, that's you!) wanting to grow themselves and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  We bring you free-flowing ideas, perspectives and stories from interviews with only the most interesting people - to help you take positive, effective and rewarding action.  Nice!

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 This is a conversation about a really important mission to improve health and safety. It's also about extreme difficulty, persistence, and how being professional might actually mean straying far outside your one specific professional domain.   Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.    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 back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.   Today my guest is Gareth Lock. Gareth doesn't easily fit in a box or under a single label, as you'll hear in a moment. Military, flying, human factors, HOP, and diving.   I've wanted bring a conversation with Gareth to you for a while, for three reasons. First, the people I know and trust have said wonderful things about him. Second, he is generous - his writing, travel, courses, and social media contributions are a cut above the rest. Just following him on Linkedin for three months and that is like a mini-course on its own. And third, Gareth is tackling some wicked problems in the health and safety space, and I had to see what lessons he is learning from what is very tough work.   Here's Gareth: 

Ep221: Get outside your lane, with Gareth Lock

The piece you might be missing as you try to build new things and all your efforts for making change, might actually be deliberately blowing things up. Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.  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 back to all of you wonderful regular listeners. "Closing time, open all the doors and let you out into the world" The song Closing Time by Semisonic is one of those classic tunes of my transition into adulthood. "Closing time, one last call for alcohol So, finish your whiskey or beer Closing time, you don't have to go home But you can't stay here" After it was released in 1998 it was pretty common that this song was the very last song played in the bar or pub before the lights got turned back on and everyone had to leave. "So gather up your jackets, move into the exits, I hope you have found your friends Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end" It turns out that this anthem of the very late night party people had nothing to do with going out of drinking, or even going home. The whole song is a metaphor for the birth of a child. Lead singer Dan Wilson was soon to become a father as he was writing this song, and the literal meaning of the last song in fact came to be a much deeper insight into the realities of getting bounced from the womb into the world.

Ep220: What you are missing from new beginnings, with Andrew Barrett

Have you ever had an idea, or heard an idea, thinking it was brilliant, only to realise that the idea is not that new, and didn't come from where you thought it did? Welcome to the discipline of organisational psychology.    Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.    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 back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.   Industrial and organisational psychology, or IO psych as it is often called, is well over 100 years old.  It was labelled as the exploration of 'real life' psychology. It's official birth is suggested to be 1913, with the publication of the first text on the subject called Psychology and Industrial Efficiency, by Hugo Munsterberg.   How is it that such a field, with 100 years of history and research and development, is not that familiar to most of us working in health and safety?   Well today I hope that will change just a little, as I dialogue with Diya Dey, an organisational psychologist based in Melbourne Australia. Diya has experience in both consulting and working in-house, and is currently in a organisational psychology role focussed on organisational wellbeing in the Victorian State Government.   When I first met Diya, I found her curious, and generous. A great combination in my book, so it was only natural that I would invite her into a conversation with the Safety on Tap community about how industrial and organisation psychology relates to, and can enhance, work health and safety.   Here's my conversation with Diya Dey:

Ep219: Aligned goals, broader approach - Organisational psychology, with Diya Dey

Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep218 You seem to have answers for everything, he said to me.  He was 100% right and 100% wrong at the same time.  This is a podcast about how that can be, and how you can engage with better answers. Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.  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 back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.   Before you think that this episode will be a gratuitous brag about how good I think I am wrapped up in some parable of a story, stay with me for a few minutes.  When he said to me, 'you seem to have answers for everything', he WAS both right and wrong at the same time.                                                              He was right because to him, it did seem that I had answers for lots of the things we were talking about and working through in our coaching together.  He was wrong, because I wasn't really giving him answers in the way that questions are usually asked, or problems are usually solved with solutions.  What I was giving him was responses.  Responses to his question, to his story, to his context.  Responses aren't answers.  Responses are what we do when it's our turn, in a dialogue two or more people engage in a turn-taking exchange. Dialogue is an ancient word, very central to modern human experience, which comes from two Greek words put together: dia- translates to through, and logos translated to meaning, dialogos, or dialogue, the movement of flow of meaning through the people involved.  You can see turn taking all the time, which isn’t dialogue. It's more like tennis.  One person serves, another receives and returns the ball.  The object of tennis, and the object of a huge proportion of our interactions with other people, is to get to the end, to resolve the point, usually in favour of one person or the other.

Ep218: An answer for everything with Andrew Barrett

Full show notes: www.safetyontap.com/ep217 What does it sound like, to have permission to not focus on certain things in health and safety? What one concept are we missing from risk management that makes a massive difference? Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap.  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 back to all of you wonderful regular listeners. My guest today is Tim Lie.  Is he a safety professional? I ask him that, so you'll have to wait and see what he says.  What I can tell you is that his roles have included group HSE responsibilities, lifecycle alignment, culture, and capability.  You don't often hear those things in people's job titles, do you? I met Tim a while back when I was invited along to a national health and safety team workshop.  It took all of 2 minutes for me to be really curious about Tim.  He is broadly read, he has both a practitioner and academic background, he is an engineer who loves solving problems but is hyper tuned into the messy people side of business, and he talks in a way that gives you a deep insight into how his brain works, which is fascinating.  So that's why I wanted to introduce him to you! We had a wide ranging chat, dove deep on a few things but still covered a fair bit of ground.  I hope you enjoy, here's my chat with Tim Lie:

Ep189 How to improve engagement, with Andrew Barrett

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