Safety Heroes Podcast With Mousa Yassin

A young PhD student ran the numbers and found that the best-performing hospital teams had the highest error rates. That result made no sense — until she realized better teams don't make more mistakes. They report more of them.

Amy Edmondson, Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School and the researcher who coined "psychological safety," joins Mousa to trace that discovery back to its origin — and to break down why most people still misunderstand what psychological safety actually requires.

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⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:19 — Introduction

00:25 — The role of compassion, trust, and heart in her work

04:02 — Defining psychological safety: the belief that speaking up is safe

05:45 — Hearing Buckminster Fuller speak at MIT — and writing him a letter

07:12 — Becoming Fuller's "chief engineer" at 1980

09:35 — Working alongside Peter Senge, Chris Argyris, and Edgar Schein

12:52 — The hospital study that started it all: do better teams make fewer errors?

14:34 — The counterintuitive finding: better teams reported more errors, not fewer

22:10 — Two broken failure cultures: "failure is not an option" vs. "fail fast, fail often"

22:59 — The three kinds of failure: basic, complex, and intelligent

27:52 — How leaders should respond differently to each kind of failure

31:06 — Todd Conklin's insight on blame: "it isolates the learning"

34:36 — What people get wrong about psychological safety — it's not about being nice

38:52 — The three faulty mental models that undermine safety: perfectionism, invulnerability, and individualism

44:53 — Her closing advice: pause, breathe, and choose curiosity

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📋 EPISODE SUMMARY

Amy Edmondson didn't set out to study psychological safety — she stumbled into it as a second-year PhD student trying to answer a simple question about hospital teams and medication errors. In this conversation she walks through that discovery from the inside, explains why the concept is so often misapplied as "being nice" rather than holding high standards alongside real candor, and lays out the three kinds of failure from her book Right Kind of Wrong — only one of which organizations should actually be trying to increase. It's a rare chance to hear the origin story of one of the most influential ideas in modern leadership, told by the person who found it.

🗣️ KEY TOPICS DISCUSSED

→ The origin of the term "psychological safety"

→ Why better-performing teams report more errors, not fewer

→ Basic, complex, and intelligent failure — and how to respond to each

→ What people get wrong about psychological safety

→ The mental models that undermine safety: perfectionism, invulnerability, individualism

→ Choosing curiosity over certainty as a leadership practice

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🔗 CONNECT

Guest: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amycedmondson/

Host: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mousayassin/

Pixaera: https://www.pixaera.com

Safety Heroes: https://www.linkedin.com/company/safety-heroes/

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Send us a message!

If you like this podcast episode, subscribe here and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from our HSE community and guests. Connect with our CEO and host, Mousa, today to stay updated on Safety Heroes, Pixaera, and more. 

Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email [email protected]. 

Todd Conklin doesn't think safety is about preventing failure. He thinks it's about being ready to recover from it.

Todd — 30 years at Los Alamos National Laboratory as a senior advisor for organisational and safety culture, author of 14 books including The 5 Principles of Human Performance, host of Pre-Accident Investigation: The Podcast for over 12 years, and widely considered the godfather of HOP — joins Mousa to unpack why the best safety systems assume failure everywhere, and what database administrators, hospital researchers, and London bus drivers have quietly been teaching the safety industry for years.

The conversation centres on Kathleen Sutcliffe's research on patient deaths in hospitals: people don't die because of exposure to risk, they die because of a failure to rescue. From there, Todd walks through the reframes that follow — life-saving "rules" should be life-saving "controls," because one word puts the weight on the worker and the other puts it back on the system. "Stop work" should be "start when you're ready," because if you're counting on a worker to stop a job before it kills them, every other control already failed. And "speak up" programs are half-built without "listen up" — the question isn't whether workers are telling you the truth, it's whether you've built anything that lets you listen.

In this episode:

• Why the best safety systems are designed to assume failure, not prevent it
• Kathleen Sutcliffe's "failure to rescue" research, and what it means for how you measure risk
• Life-saving "rules" vs. life-saving "controls" — and why the word choice matters
• Why "stop work" is broken, and what "start when you're ready" replaces it with
• How blame — including self-blame — quietly kills organisational learning
• The London bus strike, "work to rule," and why you want thinking compliance, not rote compliance
• It's not about the speak. It's about the up.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 Introduction — the godfather of HOP

02:05 12 years of podcasting, and why human performance is "what's next"

06:24 Los Alamos: keeping the margin between disaster and normal as wide as possible

10:30 What database administrators taught Todd about systems thinking

15:11 Chaos monkeys — and the engineer who beta-tests by sitting on his keyboard

21:31 Why aren't they called eight life-saving controls?

22:44 Kathleen Sutcliffe and "failure to rescue"

27:13 Why "stop work" doesn't work

28:23 Start when you're ready, not stop before you fail

31:02 How blame stops organisations from learning

36:53 A well-designed system is invisible

39:34 The London bus strike: what "work to rule" tells us about real work

45:19 Closing — it's not about the speak. It's about the up.

🔗 Connect 

Todd Conklin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/todd-conklin-64b8a8a/ 

Podcast: Pre-Accident Investigation: The Podcast · 

Books: The 5 Principles of Human Performance and 13 others — search "Todd Conklin" on Amazon 

Host: Mousa Yassin — linkedin.com/in/mousayassin 

Pixaera: pixaera.com

Safety Heroes is the Health, Safety & Environment podcast by Pixaera. 

New episodes every other week.

Send us a message!

If you like this podcast episode, subscribe here and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from our HSE community and guests. Connect with our CEO and host, Mousa, today to stay updated on Safety Heroes, Pixaera, and more. 

Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email [email protected]. 

Angelo Spingardi runs HSEQ — health, safety, environment and quality — across Saipem's 118 operational sites worldwide, from offshore platforms to construction sites across the energy transition. He's been inside the company for 17 years, starting as an environmental engineer before being embedded into Saipem's safety functions.

In this episode he shared the personal loss that shaped his career, the leadership question that reframes how you investigate every accident, and the story behind Fail Safe — the film Saipem built to make human performance principles real on the ground.

We also get into why vulnerability — not authority — is what actually gets people to admit their mistakes, why "safety is a consequence, not a target," and how Angelo has gone 17 years without ever having to argue for a safety budget.

Timestamps

00:00 — Cold open: why empathy is the foundation of safety leadership

01:47 — Trust, empathy, communication: anchoring 17 years in HSEQ

03:09 — From environmental engineer to Group Director HSEQ — the accidental path into safety

04:25 — The personal loss that made safety personal: losing a friend at work

06:25 — Earning trust vs. imposing procedure: how to get a room to actually listen

09:55 — "Safety is a race without a finish line" — his CEO's metaphor

10:29 — Do leaders really see safety as an investment, or still as a cost center?

12:45 — The reframe: safety is a consequence, not a target

14:35 — 17 years, zero arguments about a safety budget

18:15 — The leadership accountability reframe: step back a week, a month, a year

20:39 — Inside "Fail Safe": how Saipem's near-miss reconstruction film was born

22:44 — Benchmarking against civil aviation and air traffic control

24:03 — Why storytelling and film beat slides and procedures

25:53 — What "Fail Safe" really means: humans err, systems must catch it

26:46 — Vulnerability as a leadership skill: "I screwed up"

29:11 — The "macho man" problem in construction, and why psychological safety is hard-won

30:02 — Playing the film for 55 distracted people — and watching the room go silent

31:24 — What makes a human-performance program actually work, beyond the video

34:05 — Staying grounded: how Angelo avoids burnout after 17 years running safety

36:00 — Close

Angelo Spingardi is Group Director HSEQ at Saipem, architect of the company's 2024–27 Safety Strategic Plan. In 2024, Saipem's TRIFR came in at 0.34 against a 0.41 target.

Send us a message!

If you like this podcast episode, subscribe here and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from our HSE community and guests. Connect with our CEO and host, Mousa, today to stay updated on Safety Heroes, Pixaera, and more. 

Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email [email protected]. 

Kathy Seabrook — Founder & CEO of Global Solutions Inc. and a standards architect on ISO 45001 and ANSI Z10 — joins Mousa to make the case that safety has always been the people side of sustainability. She walks through "impact valuation": putting the value workers create onto the P&L using data finance already understands. It's a conversation about money that keeps coming back to people as a great business decision.

In this episode:
• Why the harm-reduction argument has run its course 
• "Impact valuation" — pricing the value people create, not the cost of harm 
• Discretionary energy and the cost of re-hiring: making safety measurable 
• Why "what gets measured gets managed" keeps teams stuck 
• The one question to ask when you hit the boardroom wall

⏱️ Chapters
00:00 Introduction 
01:53 Heart, compassion and trust at the core of safety 
06:17 The chemistry class that changed her career 
09:42 "I just said yes" — ASSP, ISO standards, a career of saying yes 
19:48 What impact valuation actually means 
24:12 Discretionary energy: the 150% worker efficiency
26:16 Putting retention on the P&L (the $6,000 hire) 
29:32 An ergonomics business case a CFO can follow 
37:25 Why safety teams stay stuck 
42:49 The one question for a stuck safety leader 
47:01 Why safety is already inside human-capital metrics

🔗 Connect with Kathy Seabrook on linkedin
· Book: Connecting the Dots: Environment, Health, Safety, and Sustainability (Wiley, 2024)

Connect with the Host Mousa Yassin on Linkedin
Pixaera: pixaera.com

Safety Heroes is the Health, Safety & Environment podcast by Pixaera. New episodes weekly.

Send us a message!

If you like this podcast episode, subscribe here and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from our HSE community and guests. Connect with our CEO and host, Mousa, today to stay updated on Safety Heroes, Pixaera, and more. 

Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email [email protected]. 

Dan Hobbs did not set out to build a safety company. He and his co-founder Ciarán O’Mara started with a question: why do so many workplace fatalities get called freak accidents, when the CCTV footage usually shows the same behaviour patterns happening every day on the same site?

Four years later, Protex AI plugs into existing CCTV infrastructure at Fortune 500 sites in 36 countries to surface unsafe behaviours before they become incidents. Computer vision. Privacy-preserving. Not a dashboard, a diagnosis.

In this conversation, Mousa and Dan go deeper than the product. They work through the three mental shifts that decide whether an AI-in-safety deployment actually changes anything: surveillance to systems, reactive to proactive, and procurement to partnership. Dan tells the story of walking on stage in front of 300 union members expecting resistance — and the single sentence, from a senior union official, that changed the room. He talks candidly about the scar tissue from building an enterprise AI company: 92 flights in a year, legal councils that feel like Star Trek, and the co-founder dynamic that keeps him from flying too close to the sun.

For HSE directors, VPs of safety, and operations leaders trying to figure out what to do with AI before their executive team asks them again.

CHAPTERS

00:00  Cold open — Guardian Angel, not big brother

00:35  Who Dan is, what Protex AI does, where they operate

03:00  The founding story — the fatality that wasn’t a freak accident

06:00  The privacy reframe — see the forest, not the trees

08:00  The union stage and the Guardian Angel moment

09:45  ICP, deployment model, and what the first 60 days look like

13:00  Kentucky: the first site Dan saw someone nearly die

18:30  Build the plane as you’re flying — enterprise AI adoption

21:30  Protex Intelligence and the shift from dashboards to questions

25:00  Speed of AI versus speed of enterprise

28:30  What it is like scaling into the US as an Irish founder

32:00  How Dan is doing — 92 flights, yin-yang co-founding, and what lonely at the top actually means

34:30  What if everything goes right?

Dan Hobbs on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dan-hobbs-258998ab/

His company website: protex.ai

Send us a message!

If you like this podcast episode, subscribe here and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from our HSE community and guests. Connect with our CEO and host, Mousa, today to stay updated on Safety Heroes, Pixaera, and more. 

Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email [email protected]. 

What if the shell you've built to protect yourself at work is actually the thing holding you back — and putting others at risk?

Bryce Griffler is the co-founder of Safety Is For Everyone and Global Program Manager, Safety & EHS Assurance at Google. His journey spans systems engineering, leading critical national infrastructure manufacturing at BAE Systems through COVID, and building EHS programs at AWS.

His conviction: authenticity isn't a soft skill — it's a safety-critical one. The workers most likely to prevent your next incident are often the ones who don't feel safe enough to speak up. And imposter syndrome is quietly draining your highest performers every single day.

In this episode, Bryce shares the moment a senior leader challenged him with three words — "Why you, though?" — and how that shaped everything. He breaks down why psychological safety and physical safety are the same conversation, how to get buy-in from resistant supervisors, and tells the remarkable story of a Pride flag at a union plant during COVID that reminded him exactly why he does what he does.

Follow or connect with Bryce on LinkedIn | Learn more at safetyisforeveryone.com

In This Episode

• You are not employee number 789054: why who you are is what makes you effective
• The "Why you?" moment: the challenge that changed Bryce's career
• Authenticity as a safety tool: how being yourself reduces incident risk
• The shell we build at work — and why it's exhausting to maintain
• Imposter syndrome vs. self-doubt: knowing the difference matters
• Why imposter syndrome hits hardest on your highest performers
• Getting resistant managers on board: lead with data, not ideas
• Diverse tiger teams: why the uncomfortable room produces the best solutions
• The Pride flag story: what true inclusion looks like in a union plant during COVID

Chapters

• (00:00) — Welcome & introducing Bryce
• (01:27) — Bryce's core philosophy: you hired the whole person
• (03:52) — How Bryce got into EHS from engineering
• (05:13) — "Why you?" — the moment that changed everything
• (08:15) — Authenticity as a daily risk assessment
• (09:09) — Bryce's career: BAE Systems, AWS, and Google
• (14:04) — Management systems as a specialty
• (21:31) — Psychological safety and speaking up
• (25:45) — Building diverse teams for better safety outcomes
• (29:18) — How to get line manager buy-in
• (35:24) — The power of authenticity at work
• (36:32) — What imposter syndrome really is (and isn't)
• (38:24) — Telling your team "I have no idea what I'm doing"
• (43:07) — COVID at a critical national infrastructure plant
• (45:14) — The Pride flag story
• (53:48) — Bryce's closing message: get comfortable being uncomfortable

Send us a message!

If you like this podcast episode, subscribe here and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from our HSE community and guests. Connect with our CEO and host, Mousa, today to stay updated on Safety Heroes, Pixaera, and more. 

Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email [email protected]. 

What if the biggest safety failures in history weren't caused by reckless workers but by leadership decisions made years earlier?

Dr. Tom Krause is the Founder of Krause Bell Group and one of the most respected voices in safety leadership. Over his career, he conducted over 2,300 consulting projects across 60 countries, and after the Columbia space shuttle tragedy, his firm was selected to lead NASA's safety culture transformation. He worked personally alongside Paul O'Neill at Alcoa. 

His books 7 Insights into Safety Leadership and If Your Culture Could Talk are must-reads for any leader serious about building high-performing organizations.

Tom breaks down why blaming employees is the wrong reaction every single time. He shares the story of a plant manager changed forever by a 3 AM phone call — and how that moment turned him into one of the most effective safety leaders Tom had ever encountered.

We go deep on the hidden chain of decisions that precede every major incident, why your inner state as a leader ripples across the entire organization, and why most companies are measuring the wrong things.

We also get into AI — from cameras in factories to predictive risk modeling — and why Tom believes the question isn't whether AI is good enough, but whether we are.

Follow or connect with Tom on LinkedIn | Learn more at krausebellgroup.com

In This Episode

• Nobody should get hurt at work: what real safety leadership looks like
• The 3 AM phone call: the moment that changed a leader forever
• Why blaming employees is always the wrong answer
• Decision-making over behavior: the chain that leads to every incident
• Paul O'Neill's legacy: what made his leadership so rare
• The leader's inner state: how your energy shapes your whole organization
• AI in safety: the one way to use cameras that will make things worse
• Predictive risk: using AI to find the combinations of variables that accelerate danger
• The question isn't whether AI is ready — it's whether we are

Chapters

(00:04) — Intro & welcome

(01:29) — Why Tom does what he does

(03:06) — The fun behind the work: evolution of his career

(08:29) — The evolution of safety leadership

(09:10) — Paul O'Neill and what made his leadership rare

(18:28) — Fundamentals great safety leaders adopt

(19:25) — The 3 AM phone call that changed a leader forever

(23:06) — Decision-making as the real root cause of every incident

(27:24) — How cognitive bias shapes organizational risk

(31:58) — Leaders taking responsibility for every outcome

(32:32) — AI in safety: the right way and the very wrong way

(36:18) — Predictive risk and what AI can actually do well

(39:01) — The future of learning, upskilling, and point-of-work AI

(41:22) — What's next for Krause Bell Group

Send us a message!

If you like this podcast episode, subscribe here and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from our HSE community and guests. Connect with our CEO and host, Mousa, today to stay updated on Safety Heroes, Pixaera, and more. 

Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email [email protected]. 

Today, we're excited to share our latest Safety Heroes episode with Ergin Akbas.

With over a decade at AVANGRID managing EHS systems across wind farms, solar projects, and critical infrastructure serving 3 million customers, Ergin has learned one truth: systems only work when they're built WITH the people who use them, not FOR them. 

He shares stories about achieving zero findings during ISO audits, why his 6-year-old thinks he "makes sure people don't get zapped," and how Learning Teams are transforming incident investigations from blame to real improvement. If you're trying to build safety systems that frontline teams will actually adopt, this conversation is packed with practical wisdom. 

Time Stamp Guide:

(02:12) From Bridges to Wind Farms: How civil engineering led Ergin to realize safety is integral to everything

(04:34) Dual Risk Landscape: Navigating renewables construction and network operations across 26 states

(07:37) Systems 101: Why management systems are a journey, not software—and definitely not magic

(13:59) Beyond the Audit: Convincing leadership that real value happens every single day, not just certification time

(17:41) The Pencil Analogy: Why frontline workers are the sharp end—and must design systems WITH you

(24:03) Proving Effectiveness: Moving from training completion checkboxes to measuring actual competence

(26:26) Worker Voice in Action: Monthly Innovation Calls and Skilled Safety Panels that empower the field

(29:57) Compliance is the Floor: Breaking through the ceiling with risk-based thinking and proactive tools

(33:46) AI That Sticks: How supervisors kept using pilot apps weeks after the study ended

(41:46) Managing Change Methodically: Why telling people "what's in it for them" prevents reversion to old ways

(44:44) HOP & Learning Teams: Replacing root cause analysis with soak time, multi-stakeholder input, and zero blame

(50:29) You Fall to the Level of Your Systems: Building resilient frameworks that outlast any individual leader

(52:15) Planting Seeds: What a 6-year-old's "Daddy stops people from getting zapped" teaches us about legacy

Follow Ergin on LinkedIn to keep up with his latest insights.

Send us a message!

Send us a message!

If you like this podcast episode, subscribe here and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from our HSE community and guests. Connect with our CEO and host, Mousa, today to stay updated on Safety Heroes, Pixaera, and more. 

Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email [email protected]. 

Episode Summary

Fuzzy Bitar has led safety and operations at global scale, including serving as bp’s Senior Vice President for HSE & Carbon and chairing the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP). He’s known for a plain-spoken, human-first approach that keeps ownership where it belongs: in the line. 

In this conversation, Fuzzy goes beyond slogans. He explains why “good operations is good safety,” how to keep controls proportional to risk, and why supervisors are the highest-leverage node for culture change. We dig into coaching vs. compliance, adoption that lasts beyond pilot buzz, and the practical reality that VR wowed—but mobile worked when you need scale on site. We close with point-of-work AI: 60-second SOP summaries, incident-informed prompts, and micro-learning that shows up exactly when the job needs it.

Follow or connect with Fuzzy on LinkedIn

In This Episode

• Line-owned safety: why safety leadership is just leadership
• Proportionality > paperwork: more signatures ≠ more safety
• Where culture is made: supervisors, wrench time, and coaching loops
• Don’t weaponize observations: design for trust and adoption
• Adoption > hype: VR wowed; mobile worked in the field
• Point-of-work AI: summaries, lessons, and prompts in the moment
• Stability over shiny objects: iterate without churning the agenda
• Final advice: confident humility + scanning uncertainty hotspots

Chapters

• (01:30) — The moment safety became human
• (05:03) — Safety leadership is just leadership
• (06:00) — From “fail-safe” to “fall-safe”
• (10:50) — Proportionality beats paperwork
• (13:52) — Where culture is made: the supervisor
• (18:02) — Don’t weaponize observations
• (20:30) — VR hype vs reality (VR wowed. Mobile worked.)
• (21:38) — Simplify at the point of execution (point-of-work AI)

Send us a message!

If you like this podcast episode, subscribe here and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from our HSE community and guests. Connect with our CEO and host, Mousa, today to stay updated on Safety Heroes, Pixaera, and more. 

Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email [email protected]. 

Tim Page‐Bottorff didn’t “choose” safety—he was drawn to it, and has spent his career transforming how organizations think about risk, culture, and technology. In this episode, the ASSP Vice-President of Safety shares the defining moments that shaped his journey from Marine‐trained leader to industry innovator. You’ll hear how he turned PPE drills into gamified challenges, built trust with a simple “REAL” framework, and now leverages AI to spot hidden hazards. Along the way, Tim explains why compliance alone isn’t enough, how to ignite genuine engagement (and cut injuries by up to 71%), and why every safety leader must embrace both data and empathy to make zero harm a reality. Whether you’re at ASSP Safety 2025 in Orlando or leading an HSE team anywhere, this conversation is your playbook for building a safety culture that sticks.

(03:37) The Calling to Safety: Why Tim “didn’t hesitate” when the industry chose him

(17:49) Beyond Checkboxes: Shifting from compliance to purpose-driven training

(14:00) Culture Through Competition: Gamifying PPE drills for “go slow to go fast” results

(35:36) The REAL Trust Framework: Respect, Empathy, Accept, Listen

(22:14) AI as Partner: From site photos to automated hazard reports

(15:32) Engagement Metrics: How driving retention over retraining cuts injuries by 71%

(26:41) Global Safety Lens: Navigating varied regional appetites for innovation and spend

(30:49) Final Charge: “Take the hill” with clear objectives, collaboration, and relentless discipline

Follow Tim on LinkedIn to keep up with his latest insights.

Send us a message!

If you like this podcast episode, subscribe here and follow us on LinkedIn for the latest from our HSE community and guests. Connect with our CEO and host, Mousa, today to stay updated on Safety Heroes, Pixaera, and more. 

Do you want to be a guest on Safety Heroes, or know someone who would be a great fit? We’d love to hear from you. Send us a message on LinkedIn or email [email protected].