The Culturally Intelligent Safety Professional Episode 8 Making Bread

In this episode we hear some really honest stories from someone who has guided people through difficult times in their lives whether that be through needing welfare assistance or have ended up in the prison system and now as someone who is passionate about the Pacifika community helping them improve their workplace safety outcomes. 

Afele Paea jumped straight into the deep end at 18 years old when he started working for Work and Income and followed that by doing a stretch at Corrections, on the right side of the bars.

Afele is a story-teller and he paints some wonderful pictures of his life and work, his messages to us all include, just be a good human and understand what stimulates those who you work with, that might mean doing some homework. If you are working with Pacifika peoples, make it visual, make it interactive, add some humour and, if you are like Afele and can bake a cake, take that along as well.

So, sit back and enjoy this episode that while it might create some sobering thoughts, is laced with a bit of Pacifika humour from South Auckland.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/afele-paea-33b2b614b/

https://www.worksafe.govt.nz/managing-health-and-safety/businesses/puataunofo/

Transcript

Greg: 0:00

Hey listeners welcome to another episode of the Cultural Intelligent Safety Professional, a podcast aimed at providing a platform where by 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. I'm Greg Dearsly your host and I have a range of guests lined up to talk to this year. We have people with experience across leadership, psychology, health and safety, education, and of course cultural intelligence. All of our guests come from a wide range of different backgrounds across the diversity spectrum including from different organizational context. In this podcast you'll hear stories aimed at helping you the listener enhance your cultural intelligence. You'll gain an understanding of how you can create trust when working in diverse environments and quite frankly, that's all the time, no matter how homogenous the place you work at might be it is still full of diversity people with different backgrounds, experiences, and beliefs all built on their figured world. Today I'm talking to Afele Paea who has come through various roles from Corrections, WorkSafe in the Puataunofo team, he's been a consultant and is currently the SHEQ Manager with Landscape Solutions. Fakaalofa Lahi Atu Afele, how are you doing?

Afele: 1:35

Fakaalofa Lahi Atu Greg. I'm doing good thank you, thanks for having me.

Greg: 1:42

That's quite a resume that you've got in terms of the range of roles that you've undertaken over the last few years. How do you go from being a probation officer to a safety manager? Tell us a little bit about your story and how you got to where you are now.

Afele: 1:57

Cheers Greg. Yep my first job was actually I guess under the table. I was doing some painting for some guys. That was my first job and he had me up on a scissor lift painting these beams in Onehunga in Auckland. And I knew nothing about safety at that time, all I knew I was getting a big feed out of it. And we were using external scissor lift or internal scissor lift on the outside and this thing was waving back and forth. So that was my first experience, with workplace safety and stuff or lack of safety, and I trusted the guy too we used to go to church together. Shout out to the bro, Denny. I'll forward it to him, but good dude. But yeah, that was my first official role was working at Work and Income and I was a case manager. So I was granting unemployment benefit and looking after unemployment beneficiaries, caseload was huge, they were ridiculous. At that time, it was like 250 people that are on the unemployment benefit that seemingly need to be readily available for work. For a 18-year-old it's a big role to take on. But who I saw coming through the door was māori and pasifika, and I could see and, not to go too deep into it, but with my old man and my upbringing I was quite familiar with that scenario of going into social welfare or work and income and asking for food grants and stuff, so a lot of that wasn't uncommon to me, except I was on the other side of the table. Best to be on the other side of the table and try and help. So that was my first role and it gave me a real appreciation I guess for seeing my community from that lens and seeing where I can help. So that's what I learned there. That second role was with Department of Corrections with Community Probation Services as a probation officer. You would think that the role wouldn't be transferable but it definitely does have transferable skills, you're managing risk, you're managing the risk of, They have different names now, but we called them offenders. We, the risk of the offender re offending, and we had to use risk assessment tools, which I still use now, actually. So part of the risk assessment tools was assessing three components their stable risk, their acute risk, and their protective risk. Those three factors I still hold on to today. And I've in my own way made it into my version of risk assessment to make it work for me in terms of workplace health and safety. That role was really tough. It got to the point where my manager saw that I was quite good at deescalating the gang members when they were coming or irate and hostile. Purely because they look like me, and because I grew up around a lot of them, and I wasn't intimidated off the bat. The physicality, yeah, they'll probably knock me out, but in terms of dealing with them and just being sincere, I'm like, man, I grew up with uncles like you guys. You don't scare me, of all things you're making this worse for yourself, mate. I just had a more empathetic, compassionate approach Still being stern and saying, at the end of the day, you're the one on sentence, not me. And managing those risk factors, asking about, how is your, how are your pro social relationships, and looking at assessing risk on that scale, and breaking it down. Corrections gave me some really good tools to assess risk which I then crossed over to WorkSafe, I secured a role as a health and safety inspector first which I've done for eight years that role definitely, I always joke about it when people ask, oh man, how do you get, like how you asked, how do you go from being a probation officer to health and safety and to that space, and I'm just like, I don't know. At Corrections, you're assessing the risk of the individual, at WorkSafe, you're assessing the risk of a scaffold. And to be honest, a scaffold's a lot more easier to work with than the guy resisting you every time he has to report in and do his programs and stuff. In that aspect, yeah, it was the skills were definitely transferable and a lot of it comes down to, what I've noticed, it comes down to communication, how you talk to people. Yes, you might have the answers, but it's not about just spoon feeding an answer. There were offenders there that I could say, man, you just need to do this, and that, but that's not gonna, they need to go on a journey. They need to go on a journey to understand why, what does trigger them, why they do need to manage themselves, because spoon feeding them the answer, if you're not there, it just creates a dependence. And it's exactly the same in safety, that I had observed, is that I would go to construction sites, and so I patrolled, I guess I won't get into detail about it, but I patrolled a certain area of Auckland, and just every probation health and safety inspector does, and there were just repetitive things, working at height, the site conditions, poor electrical safety, and poor consideration for the general public. And those were the key things that kept popping up. On top of the asbestos related stuff and the silica dust and whatnot, which were the focuses at the time with WorkSafe, I would see things there that, I would say, mate, all you need to do to be compliant is A, B, C, and D. If you don't, then I'm gonna have to issue a notice, either improvement or prohibition. But the thing is that, using punitive measures doesn't change people's behaviours. And, that's the thing, is year one of me getting my warrant and doing inspections, to year five, I think it was, five years into the inspector role, I was seeing the same company dealing with the same issues from year one. And I'm like, What the heck, and the thing is that there wasn't an appetite to change because, yeah, they just wanted to continue doing what they were doing, how they were doing it, despite you saying, hey, this is how you be compliant. It really does come down to trying to influence and trying to be Again, like I said, you can lead the horse to water, but you can't force it to drink. And there's so much times where, even with some of these offenders that I was dealing with, I was like, man, your kids, you've got to do the right thing for the next one. But those are my values, and I can't push my values onto them. For a better life for yourself, you need to make these better choices again, but they won't appreciate that until they go on that journey for themselves. It's a tricky one. It's a tricky one in terms of being able to identify those dynamics but my heart is in it. That's what I've always held on to. My heart has always been for the people. Whether I was granting benefits through grants or advances or full power in rent arrears to trying to, help some of these guys that were on sentence at corrections that were genuine, that didn't want to change. I'll say mate, I'll meet you halfway. I'll absolutely meet you halfway. If you're willing to make the right steps, I'll be there and dealing with WorkSafe. Yeah, absolutely. Those duty holders that needed to, it was quite cool in that aspect, because as a regulator, you had the, they listen when you talk, when you offer advice they do take that advice. They say, okay, you can offer them best practice guidelines and things like that to help them align. But whilst I was doing the health and safety inspector stuff and that's where I started to swing more towards a Pacific responsiveness because the Statistics for Pacific people in New Zealand. Very much everything that I've seen, unemployment, I saw Pacific people walking through the door. Incarceration, I saw Maori and Pacific coming through the door. And now even in the workplace, we're the ones being seriously injured in the workplace. I'm seeing the, I'll cross the board and I thought, oh I liked health and safety more than I did the corrections side of things. I got a bit heavy at corrections dealing with some high risk issues, high risk people that have done some high risk stuff from sexual offending and you have to write pre sentence reports for the district court judges, go into detail and identify, really analyse the summary of facts and getting their statements and seeing where their mindset was, that became a bit heavy a lot heavy, actually, to the point where I was like, oh, man, dealing with the scaffold is a lot easier than dealing with the recidivist offender, because all I need to do is tell the scaffold to make AB they already know. But then they get angry at obviously the builders, it's easier to deal with that because it's like a formula there. It's like a one plus one equals two. You can get it back in alignment with overnight sort of thing you can get the scaffolder back on. But with someone that has issues, you can change the behavioral change that does stuff doesn't have to change overnight. So I found that working at WorkSafe gave me a lot more. And like I said, so many more towards the pacific side of things, being a Pacific person myself, my father being Niuean and me growing up in my culture and my mum being Māori. Growing up in my cultures and understanding what protocols and processes are in place. And like I said, actually being able to empathize with a lot of the workforce, they were in the same position as my upbringing. I see a lot of similarities. We didn't grow up with much so it allowed me to actually connect them quite easily and empathize with them and see, oh, I know it's not an easy fix, but I'm in the fight with them. Yeah that's a big spurt of my career profile.

Greg: 10:47

That's cool and I guess just to carry on with that theme, obviously you've talked a little bit about culture, even just the cultural difference between some of our listeners maybe and some of the people that you've had to deal with in terms of probation services or other jobs you've had and your LinkedIn profile tells a little bit of a story about your thought processes and your connection to culture. And I want to quote something and it's something that you've put on LinkedIn, and we've been talking about it a little bit over the last few weeks. You wrote a little bit of a metaphor back in, 2021 and I just want to quote it back to you and it goes like this."All of this is racing through my mind. And I'm quickly internalizing everything, from my tone, volume, the speed at which the words exit my mouth, even to how I am sitting. In these split seconds, I haven't polished my metaphor, but I figure there's an honesty and a vulnerability in at least being in the ballpark of what I want to say, and letting the room indirectly help me get there." And based on that description, I can tell that you would score quite highly in what we call CQ Action. You understand the environment that you're in, and what it might be about the words you want to say, your non verbal behaviours. And your ability to tweak those to try and create influence to adjust your presence, your words and your body language and your ability to adapt seems quite well developed. Cast your mind back to that moment. August 2021. How did it feel to be around that board table, and what was the response from others in the room when you said your bit?

Afele: 12:35

Yeah, cheers mate. When I was writing that and I mentioned right at the beginning I've never done that before, and I just wanted to, I felt I had something to say. On the day, yes, but then afterwards I thought there was something bigger that I could I could fully capture, and that's why I chucked it on the page. I started typing it up, and at the time, it was my, those years going from an inspector into a principal advisory role, um, you're immediately coming off the front line and going into a strategic role and there were, I have a lot of self awareness of that stuff. So for me, I've always wanted to just put my best foot forward and I wanted to add value and I was looking for an opportunity. Like I said, I was confident. of why I was in the room because I know I could connect in with a lot of the workforce that represent those statistics. And when I was talking about those details that you were going on about too, the way I'm sitting and how I say it, it's because I want to be perceived properly. I want to be perceived in the right way. And I guess from some other experiences. I've had trouble with perception as to people look at me and they think I'm just a grunt, I'm this big dude, but the thing is, mate, a quick, a nice little quick story on that. I bake mate, I bake the most beautiful banana and chocolate cakes you'll ever taste. Yeah, I'm coming around. Where is it? When I was taking it, when I was taking it to work, when I was at corrections, they were like, oh, did your wife bake this? And I was like, no I baked it, mate. And they're like, oh, no a big grunt. Like you can't bake. And I'm like I just did, mate. You're eating you're eating what I've made. And and I'm not saying it's the perception that comes, but I guess it was a lot of, for me, there was a self-perception of do I deserve to be in the room? So I do want to be perceived properly. And then I just have to hold on to those first principles of trying to do the best for what I'm trying to achieve. I'm there to try and help my people be safe. And I saw an opportunity here. So I was like, Oh take a deep breath, breathe out. And then that was that whole process of me. I did go into finer details. I was being a bit dramatic to be honest, but in terms of trying to make it a bit more dramatic and more cinematic in that way, to the way I'm sitting in that's just me growing up on, 80s movies, to be honest. And that's the point I story told it, but yeah that's what was going through my mind was just trying to provide value, but at the same time be genuine and I am self conscious of all those things, my tone, speed at which I talk because like I said, some, there, there are self perceptions and perceptions that I don't want to be. What's that word? Not perceived ideally the way I don't want to be perceived. So I want to show people that I want to help, and I, and whatever it takes sort of thing. So I'm trying to be a strategic and being, like I said, in those earlier years, trying to be as strategic as possible, I would absolutely watch what I would say. And at the beginning of that article, I'd mentioned that. I think about things. I've learned that about myself. I don't just go straight off the bat. I process it because I know my internal process is that if I spit out things that just, my raw response to, a car crash happens in front of me or someone cuts me off and I, just raw response it's ugly. And I know that. I need to compose And by the time I sleep, like even overnight, usually I'll sleep on decisions and I've learned that about myself, that I'll sleep on it and then I'll have a totally different perspective by tomorrow. At first I'll be quite aggressive and quite raw and then I'm just thinking this is not working for me. For the first couple of times I tried it, speaking off the hip and some people they can speak off the hip and it's, it has deep insight and I'm like, man, I wish I could do that, but I don't. And but that's all right. I have that self awareness that I'll follow my steps in my process. So when I start thinking about things, people think I'm quiet or I'm, and I'm just like, nah, I'm just keeping myself safe.

Greg: 16:35

Absolutely. And I think again, I said, before I talked about CQ action with all of those, nonverbal and speech behaviors and all of those sorts of things, but actually a couple of things you've said there around understanding why you're in the room and thinking about why you're in the room and strategizing. That's another key component of this cultural intelligence concept about planning, when you're going to be in a multicultural situation. And of course, when I use those words multicultural, I'm not just talking about ethnicity, you've talked about coming from the front line to the boardroom, that's a different culture in itself. And so you had an idea of how you wanted to be portrayed or how you wanted to portray yourself in that environment. It's I wonder if it's not necessarily about perception, it's more about what you think, or how you think you want to be, or want to portray yourself. As well as maybe there was a little bit about how you think you should be but actually I think it's probably more about what you think is, The right way to behave for you in that environment. And it also sounds like you've done a hell of a lot of reflection on what you think, what you believe trying to understand your reactions and your responses to certain things. That, that's really cool. I love that story, that wider story that you told. You've talked about being a good cook, a good baker and for those that are listening, I'd certainly encourage you to go and check out Afele's LinkedIn profile and look for the article called Making Bread Making Me and just how you weave that story about the art of making bread into a story about health and safety and I think you decided, you talked about deciding to use that metaphor while you were sitting around that table. Have you always been a storyteller?

Afele: 18:22

Yeah, put short, yeah, I talk a lot of kaka there, Greg yeah, I've always tried to portray myself or portray my views. With stories, absolutely. Me and a quick little story, is me and my brothers, growing up, we, like I said, we watch a lot of movies. And we got this thing whenever we get together, all we're doing is just quoting movie lines line for line. And that's how we would have a full conversation of just going through a scene. In a movie, and it could be Rocky, it could be The Matrix, it could be La Bamba, but I'm going through me and my brothers that's how, we didn't have toys, mate, so we had to make up our own entertainment, and we would watch yeah, watch these movies and yeah, even to today, when we get together for our kids birthdays, we're all older now, and we've got kids, and, hook up with our siblings and stuff we're still doing the same, mate, we're still Portraying ourselves, not portraying but we're still talking in metaphors, we're still talking through either songs, like we'll even do this thing where we'll just Like randomly just test one another and say some and just say a line out of a movie and just say what movie is that and it would be this huge thing that would test one and it was a huge thing it's still a huge thing for us now that if we were to just pick up so to answer your question that yeah we I've always I guess portrayed myself in that way or you know I've portrayed my views and I've extended it to myself I guess professionally where I would share my views something as simple as the cartoons I used to watch growing up and would be in a team meeting and then I'll be, I'll quote, innocently, I'll quote, oh yeah, so they'll say, oh yeah, Afele you can team up with with Sula, James and Vase, and I'll be like, hey Voltron, because I grew up watching Voltron and I'll just say stuff like that to, to perceive what I'm, what's in my head. And I'll be like, hey Voltron, and then what are you talking about? And I was like, oh, sorry. So it's a Paea thing to be honest. It's a Paea family thing, but yeah, telling stories and it's become, even more so, prominent through my professional development and working at work and income, working at probation and working at WorkSafe where I've been able to gather a lot of professional stories now and be able to portray those views through proper lived experience, as opposed to trying to tell someone something, I'll chuck it into a story or a movie line or something like that. Just something a bit more palatable for their ears, or more relatable.

Greg: 20:48

So the other piece of that story, Making Bread Making Me, that I liked and the story, it was like full of moments that I'm going, wow, this is just, this is just great writing. And I've, I've said that publicly that I think you should do a lot more of it. But you said,"find what stimulates your workers and give them assurance that it's a warm environment to do" and I guess that's almost on that psychological safety side of things, but. I wanted to focus on the intent of that sentence and consider it from a health and safety professional's perspective and rather than considering it in the context of ethnicity I want to consider it in the context of cultural difference, but the cultural difference that might exist between your average health and safety professional and a senior manager. So not, as I say, not an ethnic discussion, But more an organizational hierarchy discussion. As I've said before, there is, there's obviously a, there's a cultural difference between those two positions within a hierarchy. So I think that statement that you made about finding what stimulates your workers, swap out the word workers for find what stimulates the manager or the CFO or the sales manager or whoever it might be, the leader of the organization and really just try and find out from them what spins their wheels. And then have the discussion about why you're suggesting this health and safety initiative and try and link it in with a story. So I think that how you can apply that statement that you've made across a number of different sort of scenarios.

Afele: 22:23

Yeah, definitely Greg. I think you've plucked it out there's a deeper meaning to that statement of stimulate your workers. What I'm saying, like what you're saying, it doesn't matter if you're Samoan, Niuean, Tongan, Cook Island, whatever, ethnic culture, find what stimulates the person. Because that's how you can extract the best out of them and it takes energy and effort to do that and it's energy and effort that I'm not seeing, to be honest, and maybe that's just within my own world, but I'm not seeing the effort to help people, invest their energy into it, into understanding what, what stimulates them, and for, what I can say is for a lot of Māori and Pasifika, that it very much is family mate. What stimulates a lot of Pacifica is family. I remember going to a company that shucks oysters, and I've done an inspection there. And they kept saying, oh, a lot of the staff, they had a lot of Islanders that were shucking and a lot of them were saying that a lot of the staff members are getting gout because they're eating the oysters. And it was a big deal because they would have a lot of their production line off because they love seafood, I love seafood. They love seafood and it's shuck one, eat one, nah, I'm not going to do that. But they, had thing that a lot of our staff and it was becoming an issue for the company that a lot of staff were taking time off because of gout. And then I, they said, we don't know what to do because we can't not have them not shuck these oysters. So what can we do? And they asked me for a solution and I was like you got a bunch of Samoans and Tongans and I said you need to really. This is what comes, this is the way I see it, this is what comes with that role. You're riding, you're like a kid in a candy store, so to speak, and they want to eat what's in front of them, so that's where you're getting a lot of the issues with, and that's what the job is. So what I said was, mate, you've got to change the whole, you've got to change the whole system. And they asked me how, and I said the best way to get the best out of the island men, because a lot of them are men get the best out of these island men is talk to the island wife, and they will definitely, and take the family on a journey. How about you take the whole family and say, for your guys health benefits how about you do a whole health push, a full on health push program, and involve the family, because the workers are only accountable from their job description, from 8 to 5, or whatever their time, but outside of those hours, it's the wife. The wife is, is the one that's gonna crack the whip and hold them accountable, so if you take the family on a journey, you Try that approach. And I said, because, she will definitely crack the whip if they can see that it's having negative health benefits. And if you were to do something like health testing, blood pressure and things like that and blood tests and see if there's any underlying issues and obviously approach it sensitively, but going on the whole journey and involving the family holistically might be a better approach and they did try it and they said, oh, it's really good. Obviously the way we're working at WorkSafe, so we put our finger in and take it out, we do an inspection and then leave if they're at compliance. I haven't been able to, for a lot of these interventions that I do, which is, which is now I'm outside of that space, I do want to check in and see how the progress is going, but I wouldn't have known if it was successful or not, but yeah, stimulating those workers and pulling on those those things that stimulate them. Like I said, Pacific Islanders, if we go to that circle, it's quite a simple thing. It's faith. It's family and those are pretty much your key pillars. So in terms of other positions and roles like management and stuff, if they're wondering why they're not yielding the outcome, then maybe they're not paying enough attention to their staff as to what stimulates them and putting enough effort into that.

Greg: 26:07

That's really interesting. We've been talking for a long time about the value of well being, wellness programs and, maybe 10 years ago it was just, corporate gym program and a bowl of fruit type of thing. And I remember doing some work with a guy who was a financial wizard from the US and he came out here and we were looking at the return on investment on well being programs. And one of the things that he says is, you need to understand the demographics of Your organization and apply the most appropriate well being programs to them. And as you say, with a Pacifica based bunch of employees, it's probably going to be things around blood pressure, cardiovascular health and those sorts of things. And maybe there's some spiritual related things that could be part of that as well, that will actually. Help them improve from a mental health perspective or a psychological safety perspective. And that could apply across many different ethnicities, many different cultures, that, that link to spirituality and those types of things. So yeah, I think maybe that's a podcast for another day but just understanding the demographics and maybe something about the lives both from a wider cultural perspective, but from an individual perspective as well.

Afele: 27:19

Oh yeah, you've got with Māori they have te whare tapa whā with a lot of Pacific, they have wellbeing models. They have wellbeing as to how we manage ourselves, our wellbeing. The Samoans, they have a matai system. A matai is a chief. And the process is to, if that's what that's their system. If an employer, they don't have to own that process, they don't have to go in and own that whole tikanga Māori and all of that stuff, but if they can extract things or at least pathway that worker to say, hey, if you're struggling with things with your mental health, go talk to your matai, or go talk to your kaumatua. Even with the migrants. I worked with a lot of Filipinos when I was at WorkSafe. I was saying, what systems and methodologies do you guys have to manage your guys well being? And if you just ask those questions, it'll actually open the door. That they've probably been waiting for the employer to open that door and say, hey, this is actually who I am. This is why I do what I do. If you want to get the best out of me, learn about me, And it doesn't mean to say that you have to embed that into the policy all it is just being responsive and being genuine.

Greg: 28:25

Yeah, absolutely that's super helpful, and I guess, we're almost at time, and I'd love to wrap up our session with any tips, and maybe you've already covered, there's been a huge number of helpful sort of scenarios that you've talked about, but if you think about, your colleagues, your health and safety colleagues out there in Aotearoa. Have you got any tips for them to learn about that they can embrace, that they can use to maybe create a more inclusive way of dealing with Pacifica workers when they're dealing with health and safety? A couple of go to things that they might be able to use?

Afele: 29:03

Yeah, for sure. I guess the first thing I would say is that if you're in a health and safety role, and I'm not trying to tell, health and safety professionals how to suck eggs, but if you're in a position like this, of all things, it is, it comes down to just, you gotta be a good human, upfront. You gotta care for people if you're in an industry or, a profession like health and safety. Because a lot of it will, the seed will grow out of that. So it is about compassion, because yes, the operation, you can, there's the two arms, there's operational, there's the side of the company that needs to get stuff done, 1, 2, 3, A, B, C, operationally we need to get this done, then there's the side of getting that done safely and a lot of them need to run parallel, it needs to run parallel, they need to intertwine, they need to be able to think, so just that first basis, like I said, not telling everyone how to do the fundamentals, but that's where a lot of it starts, that you have to care about people if you're in a role like this. And then the next thing I would say is yeah, we'll just go back to that stimulation. How would you stimulate your workers? And for Pacifica workers in particular, we're very visual, so if you're to use Pictures at a toolbox, don't bring out the SOP of eight pages or the SWMS of 75 pages sort of thing. Storytell it. Hey, we had an incident and show a picture and be able to discuss. What do you think? What would you have done in that scenario and have a session like that or make it visual, make it interactive and you'll get better buy in as opposed to, the supervisor just running through the agenda, the toolbox agenda sort of thing and no one's paying attention. Every time I try and I'm not saying I'm perfect at this, You asked me what my approach is, and it's very much, I do break the ice, and humor has always, even throughout the session, hey Greg, I'll try to make you laugh a bit, because it makes it a bit more enjoyable, I always use humor. So find out, again, the same rationale. Find out what stimulates your workers and with Pacific workers, a lot, things like using even if the professional was to invest in adult teaching as a qualification it'll give you some tools as to how, and that, I know they're not Pacific tools, but you can actually, influence them into a Pacific pedagogy sort of thing, as to how you teach and how you portray information. And you can use those techniques. Things like Pacific workers are very visual and kinesthetic learning, so what I used to teach at Puataunofo was around To help the workers retain the information, that will lead to comprehension, I would say something like, remember the two laws, and I'll chuck up two fingers, like the peace sign, and I'll say, everyone in the room, chuck up your two fingers and do the, and what does this mean? These two fingers represents the two laws. Then I've attached this kinesthetic action to that explanation, and you see it in their brain. Oh, sorry, I won't share that. I did share that one, but the funny one, mate, that I'll share with you, the kinesthetic one, and then I'll probably cap it at this, is with the health and safety regs, with the GRWM Regs, there's their workers are, if they don't, if they've been provided with their PPE, if they've been trained to use it, Then they have a duty and a responsibility to wear it and follow the procedures, the program around it. Legislatively, eh? In the GRWM Regs, and if you look at the infringement notices of it, it'll show that a worker is actually Able to be fined$500 and what I would do is I would say I'll chuck up a five and I know it's not a scaremongering because it's the law. It's out there already. So it's telling them what is already there. It's not trying to push a, like I said, a primitive agenda, but it was, but to have a laugh about it, I would say chuck up your high five. And every time one of your colleagues out in the field or whatever, and they don't have all of their PPE on, Chuck up your five and what that represents is$500 fine and the funny thing about it is straight after the presentation they're all looking at me giving me a chucking up their five straight away and but it's fun you know because like I said it's a kinesthetic way of learning but then it's so funny how oh yeah we've been doing the high five and I was like oh good for you mate but it's obviously it avoids them actually having to an inspector has to come outside and observe that and issue the infringement. It's never going to get, not never, it's not going to get to that level. It's a prompt. That's exactly what it's used for. Just like a speed camera, eh? A speed camera is there, you can see it coming, it's not as if you can duck it sort of thing. It'll cause you to curtail your behaviour, to slow down to the right speed, and once you're past the speed camera, that's another question, you've got to speed off again. But it's an accountability between staff to chuck up a five. So my whole point there is around Pacific groupers are very visual, very kinesthetic, very humorous and like a lot of visuals, eh? So if you can show pictures and have an interactive session of them, that's a good start.

Greg: 34:02

Awesome, awesome love the visual thing. And as you say, it's just quite timely that you talk about the speed cameras'cause I think it's been in the news today about, you know the police taking over responsibility for for speed camera management from NZTA and there's a big argument about where the signs are going to go and why the signs aren't up and as you say, it makes you slow down as you're approaching the camera but what you do after that is maybe a different story but,

Afele: 34:26

I know where all the speed cameras are in, in South Auckland, mate.

Greg: 34:31

Excellent. Hey, awesome, Afele thanks for that, it's been a great conversation, some really cool guidance, and I'm sure that those that are listening will take away a whole bunch of stuff from that. Any final sort of words of wisdom from the cooking school or any other metaphors that you can chuck our way?

Afele: 34:52

Yeah, I am cooking up another article there, mate, just by the way. Last time I had a conversation with you, you had reiterated to me that like I said, it's the biggest response I've ever had from a post and people genuinely like to read it, like yourself. I thought, oh I'll give him a crack.

Greg: 35:05

Awesome so what I'll do is I'll chuck your LinkedIn profile into the show notes and if people want to connect or just do a bit of reading, I'm sure they can do that. But yeah, thanks for your time and have a good long weekend.

Afele: 35:20

Yeah, cheers Greg, thank you.

Greg: 35:24

What a wonderful story or bunch of stories really? It started out with a Afele describing his experiences working with members of the community who need welfare support. And then he went on to guide individuals who have ended up in the prison system and how some of those lessons that he learned were translated into its various health and safety roles. There's something to be said for life experience and the impact it can have on success as a health and safety professional. Afele is right when he says it was easier to work with a scaffold system than it was to work with some of the challenges he had with individuals at corrections. It's a great analogy for the value of what I call essential skills. Yes, our technical skills as a health and safety professional are important. But these essential skills or sometimes called people skills are much more difficult to master. Afele seems to have been a master at some of these skills in his career. For me Afele is acutely aware of his own capabilities in the area of both emotional and cultural intelligence. You can feel it when listening to his stories, and apparently the man can also bake a cake. I think Afele's approach of sleeping on key decisions is an important and smart one. If he doesn't, he says it can turn up as a car crash. For me Afele is a leader. I would highly recommend you check out his LinkedIn profile and read his story, Making Bread, Making Me, which is a fabulous metaphor connected to how he sees his health and safety work. Afele's profile connection is in the show notes and there's also a link to Worksafe's Puataunofo page, this is an area where Afele worked for a period of time supporting Pacifica workers. So we've come to the end of this episode, thanks again so much for listening. I hope you found something really valuable that you can take away that might enhance aspects of your own cultural intelligence. I'll add the transcript from this episode to the show notes along with the other resources previously mentioned. If you'd like to talk about cultural intelligence. Get in touch with me via LinkedIn. I'm posting content regularly, so keep an eye on your feed and comment. If you see something that resonates. If we aren't connected. Send me an invite. If you want to hear more about CQ. You can follow and subscribe to this podcast, I would really appreciate it if you did that. And keep an eye out for the next episode. Next week, I'm talking to Michelle Wu from Advanced Safety. Michelle is also the founder of the Asian Business Health Safety and Environmental Network. Thanks again for tuning into the culturally intelligent safety professional. Ka kitei.