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SafeTEA Podcast with Nicola and Deborah
Join hosts Nicola Knobel and Deborah Pitout on 'SafeTea,' a podcast where the conversation about safety gets personal, powerful, and a bit of 'tea' is always spilled! In each episode, Nicola and Deborah dive deep into the world of safety leadership, viewed through the lens of inspiring women in New Zealand and beyond.
At 'SafeTea,' it's not just about policies and procedures; it's about people. Our hosts bring their unique perspectives and experiences to the table, engaging in candid conversations with remarkable women who are reshaping the landscape of safety in their fields. From trailblazing leaders to unsung heroes, each guest brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and inspiring stories to share.
But 'SafeTea' is more than just interviews; it’s a movement. Nicola and Deborah are here to empower and uplift, turning the spotlight on the achievements, challenges, and insights of women in safety. They delve into topics ranging from overcoming workplace obstacles to the importance of mental health and wellbeing, all while fostering a sense of community and connection.
Whether you're a safety professional, aspiring leader, or simply someone who believes in the power of women's voices, 'SafeTea' is your go-to podcast. So grab a cup of tea and join us for empowering conversations that aim to make a difference, one story at a time.
SafeTEA Podcast with Nicola and Deborah
S1E3: Resilient Leadership and the Quest for Wellness at Work
Join us in this enlightening episode of "SafeTea," where we sit down with the remarkable Nicole, Founder and Chief Courage Officer at Neon Shed. With a career spanning over two decades in communication and workplace health and safety, Nicole brings a treasure trove of experience and insights into creating psychologically safe and courageous workspaces.
In this episode, we embark on a journey that starts with an unexpected encounter with Henry, a python, in a chicken shed – a metaphorical foundation for our exploration of bravery and intuition in leadership. Nicole shares her transformative story of resilience against workplace adversity, leading to the inception of Neon Shed, a pioneering force in advocating for brave leadership and mental safety in the workplace.
Our conversation navigates through the often murky waters of psychosocial hazards. We dissect the tools and strategies leaders require to manage these challenges with empathy and care, moving beyond mere management to leadership that fosters team well-being. We delve into the realm of workplace mental health, revealing approaches that champion employee respect and safety, steering organizations towards a more productive and healthy future.
Adding depth to our discussion, we bring in insights from Dr. Donna Stemmer and her Workplace Support Program, highlighting key tools for organizations to meet legal responsibilities and manage incidents proactively. We also shine a light on the unique challenges faced by women in the workplace, particularly in combating burnout and establishing personal boundaries.
This episode is not just a conversation; it's a guide. A compass for those aspiring to cultivate a workplace environment that's not only empowering but profoundly safe and nurturing for every individual. Tune in to “SafeTea” for an engaging and educational journey into creating a sanctuary of safety and courage in the workplace.
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It's going good. I love the like the in-depth topic so we can deep dive into things that people don't talk about and it just relieves the issue, like we were so scared of these issues that we avoid it. But it's like doing the big scary thing and the big scary thing becomes not so scary. Like I. We have a resident well, we have three resident pythons and oh my goodness we love them right, Really Outside.
Nicole:Yes, of course outside. Yeah, they don't actually come into the roof because we don't have any trees over the roof or anything. But what they? What one of them does like to do. They're all named Henry. What one of them does like to do is he tries to sleep in the chicken shed during the day, so they're nocturnal. They come out there nature's pest control. So we say, hey, you've got to do a high five on the way in it Out in the morning and the afternoon.
Deborah:Oh my gosh, no when he loves.
Nicole:No, when he likes to try and sleep in the chicken shed, the chickens don't like it and we can't really leave him there because they need to lay their eggs in there and they won't do it if he's there. So we have to often get him out and we do that with a broom. So he gets, we hook him up and wrap him up with the broom he's not aggressive at all and we put him actually closer to the house, in the generator shed, which is where the rats come, so he can, you know. Oh, okay, do you pick him up? Well, the other day I'm like I want to be brave enough and courageous enough to not have to do it with a stick, right? So I watch YouTube videos and I do all these things. I'm like how do I do it? Do they bite? What's going on? I don't know.
Nicole:And the other day he was in the chicken shed, like in the door of it, and I just couldn't get him with a stick. So I went, okay, now's the time, and I'm like be the tree, I've got to be the tree. And I ended up picking it. It took 40 minutes because he was wrapped around there. So, and I'm pushing on him, I'm like come on, henry, we've got to do this together.
Nicola:My heart rate on my walk has gone up to 138.
Nicole:I mine didn't at all. I'm standing there going like this is cool, and he came out and his head was around and I just kind of moved it and he was. He knew what I was doing. We've created this relationship right over the last two years of being here, so he knows us. There was no aggression, no whatsoever, even though I'm poking him pretty hardcore at one stage. But I did the scary thing and the scary thing isn't scary anymore.
Deborah:Wow, that's a good lesson. Yes, now, now they've become your friend.
Nicole:Yes, they've always been my friends, but not touching friends, oh my God. But now. I'm a little excited about doing it again, right, because I've done it once, I can do it again. I don't have the feel.
Deborah:What a good story.
Nicole:Yes, so I will be writing about it Now. Chickens, who have never seen Henry eat another chicken or him eat anything, actually, because he comes out at night. They're still terrified of him because they've got that intuitive.
Nicole:this is bad and we get that at work, right, like you've got that feeling of this person or this situation is bad, I need to get there, but we've never actually seen it. Like sometimes we need to really listen to our guts. So the story of the chickens and the snake will come out soon, once I get a little bit of time to I love that so awesome.
Deborah:I love the fact that you're able to.
Nicola:I feel like that's a great introduction into this episode.
Deborah:It is, it is. I love that you can cut bits and pieces out of it.
Nicole:But, yeah, we have to be courageous and do the scary thing, because throughout my entire career I was always too scared of speaking up and too scared of having the conversation. But once you do like, sometimes you mess it up bad. But if you have that open heart and say, hey, I'm trying something new or this is the outcome I want to get to, then you go with that positive result that you want. People can feel that and you, yeah, you get to trial things and get to the right outcome that you want. But you've got to have the courage to do the next step, to do this something. Otherwise we say stay stuck, and stuck is not good for anyone's health. Yeah, All of the chickens.
Deborah:I do like the practical story though, because that helps people relate. Yes, I heard a story the other day around the organization as their aquarium and if the fish inside are our people and if our people, we have to constantly look after our people, because if they get sick it will kind of progress to the rest of the fish right, and nobody wants to have a sick aquarium.
Nicole:Yeah, and if you've got leaders pooping in the water, yeah, that's right. It takes a lot to clean out that culture. You got to redo the fish tank water and everything. It's hard to clean it.
Nicola:What about the goldfish, though, because goldfish grow to the size of their bowl?
Deborah:Yeah.
Nicola:That's true, that is true.
Deborah:Anywho, nice introduction.
Nicola:I'm going to say this all the way back. We are thrilled to have Nicole with us today, who is apparently she's going to tell us. She has been a leader in transformation and stakeholder engagement, rich history of roles across the Australian government sectors and pivotal in directing strategic projects, enhancing communication, fostering positive culture, telling great stories and you know, I think one of the key jobs you've had, which has been fascinating, is around. You know your service with the New South Wales government and I'm sure you're going to get into a little bit of that with us as well but kind of brings about that commitment to effective policy development and community engagement and making sure that we have all those good things in place. So you want to tell us from your perspective I think you're right words tell us a little bit about you and how you got, how you came here today.
Nicole:Yeah, it's an. It's an interesting. It's an interesting story. So everything that you experience gets you to where you are and while I haven't had all rosy experiences, I'm grateful for all of it because I'm now able to help people who also don't have rosy experiences.
Nicole:So, yeah, as you said, you know, my background is in communications and stakeholder engagement. I've got about 20 years experience in that and I've also got 15 years experience in work health and safety and workers comp. So I've worked for both work health and safety regulators in New South Wales, the workers comp insurer and the independent review office, and I honestly I loved it. I met incredible people with huge hearts doing great work and I was able to do some pretty amazing things as well. Like you know, one of the shining things that comes out for me is developing the world first Paralympic mentoring program for seriously injured people and, yeah, I was really able to impact seriously injured people's lives and make a make a positive impact, make improvements, and that's what I was going for. But unfortunately, I've also experienced things like bullying, sexual harassment and burnout the issues that unfortunately impact women at a higher rate in all of the organizations that I worked for, and I knew there had to be a better way and, as we were saying before, you know you've got to have the courage to do something different. And there's a lot of agencies and organizations and policies out there that tell employers what they need to do and workers what they need to do.
Nicole:But often the how is missing and people want to do the right thing, they want to have a great workplace, they want to not deal with conflict, but how do you do that? When it comes to psychosocial hazards and psychosocial safety, like those people, things are hard because if they were easy, everyone would be doing it and we wouldn't probably wouldn't be having this conversation. But, as you know well, both of you know. You know we've come a long way when it comes to physical safety, but the mental stuff we've still got a bit to go. So I started Neon Shed, which brings light to the dark sides of work based on my personal experiences. So I didn't want other people to experience what I have, and when I share what I do, I get their experiences, which are really unfortunate and a lot of them are avoidable. So these days what I do is I help eliminate psychosocial hazards and ignite the courage in leaders and teams, and I do that by giving them the tools and options to know that how, how do you have a safe workplace, how do you speak up, how do you manage conflict?
Nicole:And I'm talking a lot about psychosocial hazards, and it might be new to some people who are listening in, so I just want to just clarify what they are. I won't go into detail, but it basically is anything that causes psychological harm, so mental harm. Australia has a code of practice and that lists out all of those, so, but it's things that you know, everyone's experienced. So things like bullying, conflict or change management, low job control, violence and aggression, things that make you feel unsafe to go to work, not yeah, so that's that's kind of what I focus on the psychological stuff, the psychosocial, because I do feel like we, as I said, have come a long way when it comes to physicals.
Deborah:So, yeah, diving into the, diving into the tough stuff, yeah, I'm just looking at your kind of your diagram or your infographic on the seven dark sides of work and I think that you've articulated that really well, because we don't often think especially number four, if I think about office politics, right, that's something that people just accept these days and not necessarily think that it's anything to do with psychosocial. So I think there's a bit of education in there. And what are some of the tools because you spoke about the tools that you teach people what would you say are for the layman's person, me as a leader? I am coming into an organization and I want to grow as a leader. I'm very good as being a manager, but I'm not so good as being a leader in terms of exercising my empathetic listening, etc. What advice would you have for people going into that space or growing from being just a manager into a good leader that thinks about their people and the psychosocial risks?
Nicole:Yeah, I think there's a huge gap when it comes to going from being great at your job and getting promoted and leading people. We really don't have a leader's toolkit or a managers 101, there's. You get promoted because you're so great, but then these, you get the title and then you get the expectations on top of that to say, well, you're leading a team, now you have to know how to do all of these things. And unless you had a great boss who knew how to do these things and you had mentoring and coaching, we often revert back to what we know. And what we know is how we were parented or how we parent, because that's the first leaders that we had, and sometimes that's great, sometimes that's not so great, but we're not taught the tough things and I think we really need to introduce a lot of that into organizations. And it's hard because there's so much to do. We're so busy doing the work, which is really important, but if we get the leadership wrong and we can't empower people and we don't make the workplace psychologically safe, the flow on effect for that is so much more costly. So I actually do consulting and facilitation for organizations and coaching for women. I also do training in in person and online, but I have, based on this big, sticky issue, I have a program called the courageous leader launch pad, which helps to uplift and empower women, but also men, so that that positive flow on butterfly effect can help not only them but their teams and empower them to know what those icky things are that we sweep under the rug because they're tough and we just don't know what to do.
Nicole:So some of those things are you know, how do you deal with conflict when it's happening in your team? How do you deal with bullying if you're the one being bullied from within your team or from above, or from peers? How do you deal with difficult people? And then you've got the things that you've probably never had to do before and performance manage people. Or if you've got a poor performer, how do you do that? There are templates in a lot of organizations, but what I found and what I find is from conversations is it doesn't have the people part in it. There's a checklist and there's. You know, this is what you need to do, but the person sitting office at you is a person and everyone's different, so they may react to and respond to something that you said or the workload or they could have something going on outside and to get down to that nitty gritty and get down to who they are as a person and understand that isn't going to be on a checkbox or a checklist.
Nicole:And then you throw in what we're dealing with now, which we haven't really dealt with before, is the generational differences, and we now have every generation in the workplace. So how do you deal with that? And that you know, managing change is off of one of the things that just aren't done well and that's really difficult to teach. So we're expected to do these things. We're often not shown how to do them well or there's not time provided to teach people. And yeah, these are the tough things, like it's really difficult. I've heard from HR leaders and work health and safety leaders. These are the issues we're dealing with generational differences, poor performance, those interpersonal conflict. They're really difficult to teach and they often don't have the time to do that because they're dealing with.
Nicole:You know, the workloads that you guys have is just wild.
Nicole:So what I can do is I can come in and just give people the tools, the options, the templates, the activities, the coaching to get on top of the stuff, the tough stuff, and give people the courage and the competence to know what to do.
Nicole:So I give them lots of those hows and I give options, because it's not a one size fits all and it depends on not only the personalities that you're dealing with, but how you're feeling at the particular point in time, like we have good days and we have bad days. So how do you deal with that as an individual and as a leader, and how do you help your team do that as well? So, yeah, it's something that definitely needs more time and more focus, but these topics are tough, so I kind of just dive into the dark side. I dive into the tough stuff and my goal is to make it easier not only for the leader and their team, but to really partner with HR and work, health and safety, so that their load is lightened as well, so that they can deal with the everyday, everything else that's going on and, yeah, we can really work together and improve safety and wellbeing of their teams and organisations.
Nicola:I'm curious to know because you know we started off with a really great story and you know just kind of embodies. You know, when I met you over in Sydney you just have such a great effervescent energy about you. Yes, now what I'm curious to know and you can tell me to stuff off or not but you've held really senior leadership positions. How have you kind of balanced that effervescence with leading teams and creating those workplace boundaries that become really challenging for people, that kind of vulnerable leadership? What is your leadership style? Where do you sit on the spectrum of leadership Leadershiping? I love it Great term.
Nicole:Look, it has been interesting. Interesting Because I look young and I have been young in these roles and I suppose I am still young and I find it difficult not to be me. So it has been a challenge because my effervescence has been looked down on in some areas. So I've been in a job interview where I didn't get the role because someone said you laugh too much. Okay, and funnily enough it was a stakeholder engagement role and I'd already been doing the role and I'd been doing it very successfully. So that instance, someone wanted to employ their friends. So I just see it for what it is. But I also have it's a good and a bad. I have a dissenter's view and I've just finished reading the Power of no, the Courage to Dissent, by Charlotte Nemeth, I think, is her name.
Deborah:I totally recommend that book.
Nicole:It's awesome, I know right and I'm like oh my God, this is me. Yes, yeah.
Nicole:This is why I have so many problems in my life, but also this is how I'm able to fight for that success right. So I found I was quite self aware at a young age to be able to say, okay, why isn't this working? Why did these things work? And I want to have fun at work as well. Right, like, if you're spending this amount of time with people in the workplace, you need to be having fun. So that's where I come from.
Nicole:I come from having fun speaking up when things don't feel right and treating people like people. Like when you get to know people, when you get to know your team, you can't help but love them. You can't help but like them. You can't help but want to help them achieve.
Nicole:So, yeah, it has been a bit of a challenge, it has been difficult. I mean, dealing with people's personal agendas, their egos, the politics of it all is not a fun part of the job, but it's just something that you kind of have to navigate. And what I got good at was focusing on the outcome, focusing on the customer, like when all of the big egos came into it. I just kind of stepped back and put the objective on the table and it's really hard to argue with that, even when there aren't big egos in the room, and I often just kind of, yeah, see it for what it is. But it has been a challenge and it probably took me to burn out completely, to kind of be that turning point to say, okay, I need to make sure that I'm focusing on me as well as the team and the customer, not solely on them. Yeah, did you want me to share a little bit more about this?
Deborah:Yes, yes, yes continue.
Nicola:I'm curious to know as well like in your experience, especially around that burnout process. Right, we know burnout's massive at the moment and I recently listened to a podcast around how burnout is now atypical. Right, we have these typical views of burnout where it's like, oh, I'm feeling lethargic or whatever it is, and you have a lackluster approach to life. But now it's become a post COVID, it's become totally atypical and burnout doesn't look like what it used to look like. And we're now seeing you can't disconnect from work, you become hyper focused. You've got all of these other burnout traits that are brand new and tricky to spot because those also fall into that high performance space as well right.
Nicola:Yeah, I'm curious to know what, in your experience, what are some of the unique challenges you think women face in that space? And then also, from your experience, how did burnout look for you, like, what were those? What was that canary in the mind? Yeah, that's the canary.
Nicole:I just didn't listen to it. I think the challenges for women and I had it to, obviously being a woman and being in these organizations where look? It probably shouldn't have happened. But it's not unique to any organization. Most all organizations are the same. We have people and you can't control people. You need to empower, engage and lead people to be the best that they can and help them be self aware when they're doing silly things like sexual harassment, which is now highly illegal.
Nicole:But things like bullying, sexual harassment women experience them and they're on the receiving end of them more than our male counterparts, and there's been a lot of research around that and I feel like sometimes we go into that fight, flight, freeze and a lot of the time when it comes to sexual harassment, we freeze. We don't feel safe, so we freeze. We don't know what to do and often we don't even get out of the room if we don't feel unsafe, if we do feel unsafe. So I just wanna highlight to anyone listening here if you are experiencing sexual harassment, don't feel the fear of offending someone by saying something or leaving. Just get up and go. They've offended you. So make sure that you prioritize yourself and put your safety first. But, yeah, we don't say anything. And unfortunately, what that does is says to the person we're not gonna say anything next time. And if you witness it and you don't say anything either, it's scary to say something. So you can do something afterwards as well if you don't feel confident enough. But one of the things and the tools that I give witnesses as well is just go up to the person in the moment and say, hey, do you have a moment? And get him out of the situation. So it's something as small as that. You don't have to say, hey, this is sexual harassment, or stand up and feel unsafe yourself and feel like you might be targeted. But little things like that help the person know that you'll say something again next time and that it has been seen and that you're going to protect them.
Nicole:For me, I had experienced it multiple times. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to deal with it or how to manage it, and it was from male peers. It was from male supervisors and male senior people in these organizations. So how do you speak up when you're someone within the team and someone without that power?
Nicole:When I was in executive roles, I had much more confidence and I was able to say things before they even started, so that they knew where I stood from the start and knew not to play with me or play anywhere around me, because I would say something and make sure it was known and stopped. But this, my burnout, happened pre-COVID and I didn't listen to myself, I didn't listen to my intuition, I didn't speak up multiple times and I had multiple experiences of all of the psychosocial hazards over years I would say you know a decade. I wasn't getting support from management. No, as I said, I also didn't know how to take proper control of the situations myself and it kind of it culminated when I was at would have been my favorite job and I was making such real positive change. But there was a lot of change in the organization that wasn't handled well and the workload was ridiculous. It was just too high and I, being an overachiever, I wanted to do it all and I wanted to do it well, but I was getting over 200 emails a day and I was managing 60 programs and events annually. Plus I had bullying from above and I was being undermined from below. So I not only had to try and keep on top of my job, but I had to kind of fix the problems that were being made within the team as well.
Nicole:And after about 12 months of working like this you know, working 12 hours a day to try and get on top, no lunch breaks, which was very silly most weekends, and it always ends with something right there was a serious incident that happened within the team. I went to my boss I'd already, you know, been performance managing and saying, hey, this is what I'm doing, what do you recommend? These are the things that I'm trying to achieve, and trying to achieve a positive outcome and I was dismissed. I was basically not supported, even though I had made significant success for the company and the workload I was managing was huge. I was basically discarded and at that point I was 48 kilos. I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating properly because I didn't have a proper routine and I was trying to do more to get on top, to achieve, to then be able to go oh, I can have a break now because this thing's done and I'll have some time off when or I'm doing this process of performance review. So once that's done, you know, then we'll be able to have some time to recruit for a better like all of these things.
Nicole:That just never happened. So my mind and body basically just said at that point that's enough, we're not supporting you anymore. And I had to step back. I had no boundaries when it came to work. I would sleep with my phone next to me. It would be on, silent or off or something. But as soon as I rolled over I and dragged myself out of bed, I would be looking at emails, trying to get on top before I got into work that day. So it was actually the workout call that I needed that I didn't know I needed because I had a few months off. I needed it to recover and then re-prioritize.
Nicole:So I saw a psychologist, which was amazing, and she just highlighted a few things to say well, where's your self care? Where's your social life? Where's you know your time with your husband? Where's your outside activity? What's going on? And it just showed me, no matter how hard I worked, the organization will always do what it thinks it needs to do to protect themselves, and often what's considered the easiest path, which unfortunately, isn't actually the easiest path and it's often much more costly. And some of the organizations that I've worked for in the past were all over the news consistently.
Nicole:But out of that experience I was able to re-prioritize my body's now very different, where it doesn't even allow me to get close to that anymore. When I'm getting a bit too overworked or a bit too stressed, it's like, hey, we're gonna go have a nap now. The chickens also help me do that. They start squawking at five o'clock and wanna come out, so I get an hour or two outside with the chickens, shoes off, grounding, and I've set up life where I have a better routine, a much better routine.
Nicole:But it was that situation and all of the situations there that led me to starting to design and develop tools to help others know what to do if they experienced it. But also the other side of it is how do you help the organizations do that? Because when you look at all of these issues, there's not one side there that says, okay, I'm gonna go to work today and make it really difficult for this person, or I'm gonna go to open the shop and make it less profitable and make it less safe. Like organizations want to do the right thing, it's just we get stuck in the busy, exactly how I did. We don't focus on the right things and we just don't have the tools to know how to do that or the options to know how to do that. So I didn't know it then, but that horrible experience was the makings of the start of Neon Shed. So while it wasn't great, it led me to where I am today and I'm grateful for it, and my goal is to help people not get there again.
Deborah:And I guess Nikola and I work for organizations that, while they're not perfect, there is the opportunity to not have that time with your family and have flexi working and it really does make a difference. Now I'm thinking about the organizations that are kind of stuck in the old way of thinking, and I've heard and met quite a few different health and safety professionals across the country and across the world and a lot of them. They have leaders who are kind of stuck in the old way of thinking and the old way of managing, in other words, and have quite graphs, the fact that you need to make sure that you look after your people and their ability to perform, which means perhaps looking at flexi working, looking at how people can be more productive in other ways. What advice do you have for those people? Cause, as far as I'm concerned, you've got a very growth mindset to understand. You're always growing.
Deborah:Nikola and I have a growth mindset. We always growing as leaders. But there's often those generations that come from a different way of leadership and they haven't progressed because they haven't kind of worked on themselves to progress as a leader. What advice do you have for them or people experiencing their type of management? I'm not gonna say leadership, I'm gonna say management In terms of progressing, because I often find that health and safety professionals, specifically advisors who are new to the business or have come into health and safety as a career, and then they have a leader who manages them in a certain way. That's not really conducive to empathetic way of leading in that way.
Nicole:Yeah, look, the reason they're doing it is because it's worked for them. It worked for them years ago because that's how a lot of organizations worked and it's often, as I said earlier, the way we were parented. So when we're stressed, when we're overworked, we go into habitual, we go into automatic, and automatic is what we've done year on year, what's worked. So it's how we're parented and how we've got to where we're at today. If a child screams and throws a tantrum and after the end of that gets a loli to shut them up, they're going to continue to do that to get what they want right. So we see we're basically just big kids in the workplace and unfortunately, or fortunately, society has changed. And if you're not where you are, where you wanna be, and your team isn't where you want it to be as a leader, you need to look at how things are going. Is it working for you and do you want to grow and improve? What did work in the past isn't working in the future, and I do feel society has moved really quickly over the last couple of years. So give yourself a break.
Nicole:I think the finger pointing is happening a bit too much and it also shame and blame doesn't change people. It doesn't fix people and that's what has been used a lot everywhere and we need to kind of get away from that. We need to have self-awareness but also be open enough to say let's help you change. And how do we do that? The issue comes when people don't wanna change and, unfortunately, if it's for someone senior in the organization and they don't wanna change, it's really difficult to change. But what I'm seeing now is the impact on the organization is too much that people above them are getting rid of even senior leaders who have been able to get away with almost like the dictatorship for quite a long time. They're getting rid of them because the impact is too huge. So, as I said, some of the organizations that I've worked for in the news all the time.
Nicole:So what do you want to see for your team? Do you want to see more success, see more profitability, see more productivity, see more engagement? And if you're not seeing that, what's stopping that? And before you go to, they're not doing enough. We can't change others. All we can do is change ourselves, and often the cap on a team or an organization is the leader's growth and ability.
Nicole:So before you point your finger at your team or others. Look at yourself and how you can grow and improve. So that's the first thing that I would recommend is some of that self-awareness and ask your team. Have the courage to ask your team how things are going. Don't hold a grudge. It is kind of it's scary to get potentially negative feedback and unfortunately, we haven't really been taught how to have difficult conversations. So if you need some help with these sort of things, I'm definitely available to do that, but be brave and just say how are things going. What do you think might make a huge impact to our team if we were to change? What do you see would benefit If you could? I love this question. If you could wave a magic wand, what would you fix? Today and your team are on the ground and they know more than you do, and you want people in your team who are better than you at their job, because if they're not, what is the point of you?
Nicole:You're here to yeah, you're here to make people the best that they can be. That is. Your sole focus as a leader is to empower them to be the best that they can be. And I feel one of the sticking points that happens when we move from being in the team to leading the team is it's not about you doing all of the work anymore, which is such a relief. When I figured that out, it was such a relief. But you feel, when you start off that way, you feel slack because you feel like you have to keep this workload up and then continue to lead these people who are doing all different things and have different personalities and they're saying a different language sometimes. But when you don't have to do all the work, you can drop that, you can delegate more and you can focus more of your energy on helping other people be the best that they can be, rather than trying to dictate and manage and control. And yeah, as I said, it worked previously, but it won't get you to where you need to go and unfortunately, it's causing damage and it's causing harm.
Nicole:So I know that that might be a bit confronting for some people, but that's great, because we need to look at ourselves and say is that what I wanna be doing? How do I wanna be perceived, how do I wanna be seen? And it's not about Molly coddling anyone or putting cotton wool around your team. They're adults. You're working with adults, so we need to treat them that way. But yeah, we really need to look at what would our work eulogy be? How do you wanna be seen and perceived if you were to leave? Do you wanna be cheered because you're gone, or do you wanna be? Do you want people to cry that you're gone because they absolutely loved working with you, or would people even notice if you were gone? So maybe, yeah, maybe, have a think about that as well and see how do you wanna be perceived and what impact do you wanna leave on the organization.
Deborah:Yeah, I think leaders have such an opportunity to be mentors and coaches in a good way, and by creating that sense of trust, I mean you employed someone for a reason right, For the skills and the personality and who they are. Why would you not trust them to bring to the table new ideas? So, from my point of view, being a creative leader and enhancing and creating those environments where people thrive, that makes me happy, truly happy, rather than having people sitting there measuring their compliance or measuring their and monitoring them every second of the day as to how much time they take to go to the bathroom or to take or for because they're not feeling well. So, yeah, I totally agree.
Nicole:Yeah, and that just goes back to being a parent. Right, you are not their parent, they're not your child. You don't have to do that. Some people feel that they do because maybe things have gone off the rail. But we need to know how, we need to understand and build relationships with people so that you understand who they are, what they're going through. Sometimes they just need to be the slack. Like we know, when we have something going on big outside of work, we can't concentrate properly when we're in work, and vice versa as well. So you take work home, you are working from home, so we need to look at people as a whole person and just find out more about them. What do they wanna do, where do they wanna go and how can you help them get there? Because if you see that as your role, rather than dictating the jobs and the tasks and the hours, you will get so much more success for not only the team but the entire organization.
Nicola:I'm also curious to know what are some of your specific wanna say your specific behaviors or habits or things that you're doing on a day-to-day basis to kind of elevate your own leadership and make sure you maintain that growth mindset and you maintain that kind of non-burnout phase.
Nicole:Yeah, I'm a constant learner.
Nicole:I have to be like reading or learning more about topics that excite me, so I've just finished reading Tim's book about psychological safety as well. I'm always looking at how can I be better in what I'm doing, who's great in what they're doing, how can we work and leverage together and networking with people like the two of you and women in safety. And, yeah, I always have to be moving forward. I suppose I wanna be better than I was yesterday, like I sent out my E-News last night which shared my goals for the year, and it's about being better than last year and improving safety and making things easier for people for the future. And how can I do that for this year? And what keeps me going is it's the clients and the connection that I have with people as well.
Nicole:I'm always talking with people and organizations about their struggles and what I love is when I can share with them what I do and how I do it to make their life easier, and just the look of relief on their face, like I just put myself in their situation, because I was there so many times when I was a leader, when I was a team member, and I wish I had someone like me or someone doing these things, where I could go to and have a chat with and say I'm having this problem, what could I do, what are some of the options, what are some of the solutions? And to be able to have someone to bounce ideas off, to work with. And, yeah, just have like, for example, the look of relief on a leader's face when they have the tools to know how to coach rather than manage and empower their team and when they feel successful in what they were doing. Like you struggle so much with an issue that could be quite small, but it becomes a big issue because we don't deal with it, because we don't know how to deal with it. And, as I was talking about before with Henry, once you do the thing, then it becomes less scary and you're able to do it again and you're able to help people again as well.
Nicole:So also the look of excitement on board and executive spaces when they know how to measure and manage and improve psychosocial safety in their organization, because the legislation now says that they're liable for these things. So the legislation comes out, and it comes out with these rules and regulations, which is designed to improve everything for everyone. It's not about getting someone or getting the organization and finding them if they're not doing the right thing. It's about improving safety for the organization and for the worker. But, as I said and as I do, it's about those hows and giving the how for a potential target or a witness or a leader or the executive, and working alongside HR and Work, health and Safety on the sticky stuff, because you both know your days are so busy, full of so many things.
Nicole:So to have someone who just deals in the sticky stuff, in the dark stuff, in the yuck stuff, and be able to pass that on, I often get looks of joy and delight when they go oh gosh, I don't have to have this generational conversation or I don't have to teach someone how to deal with performance manager or these sticky stuff.
Nicole:It's the joy that I see and I'm able to provide and the impact that I can have to support people and the growth. That that's it Like. It's just planting the seeds and those positive ripples to make real change, because when you look at the big picture, the big picture is just too scary. So I've bitten off this chunk and, yeah, looking to support people and organizations where I can to help people look that way all the time, but I just get excited when I read books like you know the Power of no and understanding the mindset and understanding people better and then being able to help other people understand people better. Because if you know what you're dealing with, then you know how to deal with it better, and the how is easier when you know the what and the why.
Deborah:Yeah, you spoke a little bit about measurement, and I think that's something that us, as health and safety and wellbeing professionals, struggle a little bit with. We often look at the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. How many people have attended EAP or what are the themes that we're seeing out of EAP In your experience? What are some of the lead indicators that you would look at from a psychosocial safety perspective?
Nicole:Measurement's a big thing because we don't really have a way to do it. So if you can't measure it, you can't manage it and if you don't find the root cause of the issue, you can't even begin to fix the solutions. And what we do is we try and band aid the symptoms. And the symptoms are the psychosocial hazards. So the symptoms are bullying, it's conflict, it's poor leadership. These are symptoms of the root causes and being able to measure and manage them when it comes to psychological and psychosocial safety, is often done through surveys, through results like EAP, and unfortunately, they often don't give you the results that you need. Because, hey, I've worked for many organizations where you look at the results and I saw one of them sadly a recent one that said that people thought that the action on survey results, the score was 25%, so only 25% of people thought that there would be any action on the survey. So people often don't even do the survey because they know where it's going and nothing was done in previous years, so why would this year be any different? And again, it's not that the organization does these surveys or looks at these results and says, cool, we're not going to do anything with it, it's just that they're so busy doing the day to day work. And how do you do that? How do you find the root cause? How do you find the reason and the problem? Often, the two main root causes are behavioral issues, often from senior and I say that because the fish rots from the head, right, if you see your manager do something that allows the organization to be able to behave that way and that really sets the tone and sets the culture. So it's hard to go against management, even if it is positively, you really have to work hard to do that. So it's often behaviorally or it's a system or structure issue which allows these problems to happen. So the performance measurements that are being used are often not measuring the right thing.
Nicole:And what I'm pretty excited about is I've partnered with Dr Donna Stemmer from Over your Way in New Zealand and she's actually been working on the measurements and management, measure and managed. Sorry, let me start that again. She's been working for over 30 years on how to measure and manage the intangibles and she's worked with over 800 organizations designing and refining how to do that. And I started down that track and I went oh my God, this is really difficult. I shared with her. We met about 18 months ago. I shared with her what I was doing and the target support side of things as well, and she said look, this is what we're doing here. Let's partner, let's work together.
Nicole:And I obviously jumped on that, because what it does is it provides organizations with their legislative requirement to meet their legal obligations for managing and measuring psychosocial safety, but it's able to identify the root causes. So it's able to identify where the issues are and why they're happening. Because if HR and Work Health and Safety have and the executive have the why, then you can focus your efforts there and make real change rather than trying to mandate the solution. So there's been some incredible results in New Zealand already, like, for example, one law firm was able to reduce their litigation fees by the annual amount of litigation by $550,000 to zero in six months. Wow. One retail organization had an 80% reduction in absenteeism and a 60% decrease in workplace injuries Like, that's, physical injuries as well because of the increased engagement. So what? So the program's called the workplace support program.
Nicole:It provides neutral support for organizations and for individuals, and what it does is it empowers individuals to take responsibility and ownership and be able to fix these issues themselves early. So they do it early because they know what to do, they know how to do it and they have the confidence to be able to do that. But the reporting and the recording side of things are managed by the system as well, so it's not managed in-house. So people feel more trusting in where the data is going and they're basically more open and they provide better feedback and better ability to get to those root causes. But it identifies the perception but also the reality, because a lot of the surveys that are out there just go on perception, because that's what people are providing. Right, you get the really positive people and the really negative people and then you've got to try and push the middle guys in to say we really need this feedback so that we can have a really good understanding of what's going on in the business. But you get the data. That just doesn't allow you to do the best with it. But it really excitingly you know every organisation that's implemented the program has seen an increase in productivity, profitability, trust and engagement and a decrease in employee turnover, stress, leave complaints and workers' comp claims. So it's been a huge win-win for people.
Nicole:I've also been providing support for individuals as well. So, as I said, I don't want people to experience what I've done, what I've experienced, but this program kind of solidifies that as well. So for staff, they get an independent incident reporting app to document the issues. They also get that knowledge base so they know how to manage issues themselves but also understand things like what is and what isn't bullying. Like there's a continuum there and it's not just one thing and it's not just he said. She said it's about identifying. Okay, well, that actually is managing poor performance. That's not bullying. That's maybe just how you perceive that.
Nicole:But what we also do is we provide options coaching. So it's not counselling like EAP maybe, but it's trauma-informed work, health and safety coaching and it's where required. So if someone needs to have a chat about, okay, this is where I'm at, this is what's going on. We help them identify and understand their options so that they can find the best solution for their needs, and sometimes that's helping them find another job, like I've got feedback saying you know, gosh, I feel confident now in managing these issues myself so it doesn't escalate. And thanks so much because I've realized that this organization just isn't for me and I'm going to look for another job.
Nicole:And people then have the courage to communicate without getting emotional and focusing on the outcome rather than the issue, because we get so stuck in the injustice, or the perceived injustice, that we get in that loop and it's just not helpful for anyone. So what we do is help people get out of that loop and go. Okay, what's your objective? Where do you want to go? What are the here are the options available to you, and half of the time, that conversation is all that's needed so we're able to de-escalate issues before they become an issue, which is why you can get such huge decreases for these organizations, and we're able to provide organizations with themes and mapping incidents and where that root cause of the issues are and where people are on the employee hierarchy of needs too.
Nicole:So, having that real foundation, that real understanding, that real in-depth view, rather than just trying to band aid symptoms and band aid this person being a bully or this person's claimed that this person is a bully, so let's move them on. There's just too much going around in circles. That can be stopped if you focus on that root cause, and one of the beauties of this platform, too, is that they can identify false claims and serial perpetrators. So yeah, because that's one of the big issues that people talk about. Right, it's like, well, how do you know if they're telling the truth? Well, this is able to identify false claims and if you have someone in the organization who is showing behaviors that they shouldn't, the data is kept secure.
Nicole:But and the emotion is removed and the facts are provided to the organization so you can go to the individual and say, hey, we've had multiple instances of these behaviors being reported. We don't accept those behaviors and this is what we're going to do to move forward. So it removes the he said, she said. It removes the fear of someone being kind of outed if they were to report an incident, and it also removes the defensiveness and the emotion on the part of the other person as well, because it's just about the behaviors and the things that are being displayed.
Nicole:It's not about, well, this person's attacking that person. It's about this is what we've seen, this is what we're getting and this is what we want to do to move forward. So, yeah, it's, you really need to be able to have the right tools and the right support to be able to get a better outcome, and for too many years, I've seen surveys, you know, not only in government agencies but everywhere. And we're just doing that. We're doing the same thing. We're trying to band aid symptoms. So let's let's get out of that loop, that out out of that cycle, and make real change and real impact for organizations. That's what we're excited about doing.
Nicola:Love that. Well, we kind of have gotten to the end of our chitty chat, chin wag today, so I thought what I'll quickly do is just close us off and then you can tell us where people can find you, find things that you do if they want to contact you where to get you. So one of the things we do finish off our podcast with is we would love for you to describe to us, without telling us what it is, some stuff that is currently in your handbag, and we will try and guess what it is.
Nicole:They might be easy. There are multiple similar things to ensure that I don't get hangry Snacks. So many snacks.
Nicola:How many snacks?
Nicole:I think there's probably a seven or eight.
Deborah:What a good selection.
Nicole:It's something else that needs to go with that as well, because when I eat that many snacks, I need something else. Water, yes.
Nicola:I think there needs to be a word for like thirst angry, because I get thirst angry, yeah for sure. If I'm thirsty, I am the worst. Well, it was. It was lovely having you on. Where can people find you?
Nicole:Best place is LinkedIn, so you can find me, or neon shed on LinkedIn, so, nicole Turnbull, you can contact me directly as well, nicole at neon shedcomau, or jump on the website neon shedcomau. So I'd love to hear from you. I'm here to help. I love the tough stuff. So the tougher the situation, the better. And let's help not getting the media, let's help not do damage, let's help repair the harm and really make workplaces psychologically and safe so that you can get the best for you and your organization. So, looking forward, to it.
Nicole:It's been lovely to meet you.
Nicola:Nicole, thank you and for everybody else, please feel free to join us next time for more candid conversations with remarkable woman and reshaping the leadership of safety. Until then, stay safe, stay empowered and keep making a difference, one story at a time.
