Trust, Adapt, Inspire

An intriguing conversation with Jono as we dove into his rich experiences in the military and his transition to civilian life as a health and safety advisor. The conversation covered the evolution of safety practices, the importance of cultural intelligence, and the significance of effective communication and adaptive leadership in diverse environments. Here are my takeaways,

 Cultural Intelligence is Crucial: Learning the local language and cultural do's and don'ts helps break down barriers and build trust with local communities.  

Preparation and Training:  Being well-prepared for international deployments helps to manage psychosocial risks and provides insights into local norms, essential for effective interaction and safety management. 

Effective Communication: Tailoring safety campaigns to the needs of specific cultural groups and ensuring messages are understood by all employees, regardless of language or other barriers, is essential for effective safety management.

Adaptive Leadership: Adaptive leadership is crucial for navigating diverse environments and ensuring safety.

Transcript

Greg: 0:01

Hi, everyone welcome to another episode of the Culturally 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 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 experiences 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's still full of diversity, people with different backgrounds, experiences and beliefs, all built on their figured world. In this episode we talk armed forces with Jono Johnson. Jono began his military career in 1980 when he joined the army as a regular force cadet, and in 1981 was posted to the Royal New Zealand Engineers as a driver. In his 20 years in the army, his career included two deployments with the UN to Cambodia and Bosnia. And he worked overseas in landmine clearance projects in Iraq, Senegal, France, Lebanon, Bosnia and Mozambique. Now a civilian, Jono is currently employed by the NZDF as a safety advisor at the Linton camp here in the Manawatu. Welcome to the podcast, Jono. Great to have you here.

Jono: 1:56

Thanks for having me.

Greg: 1:57

Yeah, so a really wide ranging group of experiences, no doubt in your military career. Just hoping you can tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are today.

Jono: 2:08

Yep. Okay. Greg, as you say, joined the army in 1980 at the ripe old age of 16, as the regular force cadets for cadet school was basically a youth entrance scheme. As you have the officer cadet schools to produce the future officers for the army, the regular force cadets school, the idea behind that was to produce the future senior non commissioned officers and warrant officers. That was pretty good and I guess right from the word go, that was where the whole health and safety thing started for me because as you can appreciate one year and for some cases two years, depending on your age the staff there were dealing with 180 hormonally driven teenagers, which they beasted for four to six weeks on our basic training and then gave us guns, so there is a certainly a bit of safety planning required on the range with that sort of thing. I will admit that the safety side of it was done a little bit differently than it is today. Of course, there was no health and safety at work act the Department of Labour. took responsibility for most of that stuff, I think, if I remember rightly. But of course, everything we did was, there was definitely a safety flavour with it, we hardly practiced anything without a safety brief beforehand. But anyway, so as you say, I did that. And then throughout my career I guess there's always been a safety background. Part of that was as a corporal instructing at the school of military engineering. Some of the subjects that we dealt with used heavy machinery or constructing field machines, like the old gyn and shears. Back in the day, if anybody still remembers what they are chainsaws of course. So there's always a safety component to that. And almost anything we did with that sort of stuff never started without a pop safety quiz. On operations, of course, the trip to Cambodia, we were teaching the Cambodian People's Armed Forces how to dig up their own landmines, in a nutshell, and dispose of them, which involved the use of explosives and a whole lot of standard operating procedures that go along with that, including the other aspects of mine clearance and Unexploded Ordnance Disposal, because you can't always pick the stuff up and take it away. And then in Bosnia we were part of the United Nations Protection Force, or UNPROFOR. We were working closely with the locals in three factions as If you remember, at that stage, there was a lot of moving parts to that campaign and a lot of different factions. So for example, where we were in a place called Vitez we had Muslims we had Croatians we had Serbs, then you get into the whole thing with Serbian Muslims, Bosnians and Bosnian Muslims. That was, oh my goodness, yes, a local guy that used to work with us, I was asking him about it and he said, look, stop, don't even try and figure it out because you'll never do it. So with that sort of stuff, and there was still, in some cases, fighting in some areas, there's obviously the risk management aspect was quite at the forefront for that. That's interesting times, that's for sure.

Greg: 5:30

Yeah, and I guess back then, as you say, the Health and Safety Act prior to 1992, anything health and safety came under the sort of the factory's regulations and laws, so that probably didn't really even get noticed by the Defence Force, you just did your own thing from a safety perspective?

Jono: 5:50

Yes yes, but there was always You know, that wasn't a get out of jail free card to go completely off the reservation, like the Health and Safety at Work Act today there's a an exclusion for us if we're under an operational activity, which, for example, could be something like Bosnia or Afghanistan or Timor overseas. Deployment. Deployment. Yep. The Health and Safety at Work Act does not apply to the New Zealand Defence Force then, however, there's still an expectation, not only from the government I think, but also definitely from the Chief of Defence Force and the Chief of whatever service you're operating under, that wherever possible, you'll do things in the safest, the safest way. As safe as reasonably practicable. As stupid as it sounds, when we were in Bosnia, when was that? 95, 96, health and safety was just starting to make waves. I think, quotation marks health and safety as we know it. And we had a chainsaw that, For some reason did not have the leather hand mitt on the top of it and we had a task to do a civil aid task, going to fix something for the local community and we wanted to use this chainsaw and somebody queried the lack of the hand mitt we found various reasons why we should proceed without the hand mitt, but ultimately the decision was made not for us to, proceed. And I think in a way it was probably the best thing because when you're doing things like that you can become very focused on the objective and it's just good to have those checks and balances there.

Greg: 7:21

And fast forward a little bit to more recent times. So you left sort of the service. You're a civilian now and offering health and safety services or employed by the Defence Force as a health and safety advisor and located just down the road here at Linton and I think you've done some safety work for other Organizations outside of the military haven't?

Jono: 7:44

Yeah I got out in 2000 after 20 years and went to work in Northern Iraq or Kurdistan, depending on who you talk to. So I was working for the United Nations Office for Project Services. They had a big mine clearance project in the north of Iraq and So that's I guess that's where I basically started that career if you like. So that was really that was my first Not my first experience with working with another culture, but my first experience working hand in hand by everything we did relied on what the Kurds were doing. For example, I was the survey officer, which meant that I had 12 survey teams and those teams would go out to find minefields basically. And they were all You know, indigenous, local people. My assistant was a local guy and my driver was a local guy, so it was very definitely full of full immersion, that's for sure.

Greg: 8:43

And we'll come back and talk about that a little bit further on. But you've obviously had some wide ranging experiences working overseas, obviously some challenging environments But obviously, as you've maybe indicated, an opportunity to connect with locals both at an individual level and a community level and obviously some parts of the world that were probably initially pretty challenging for you not your place of birth or upbringing or any of that sort of stuff. Have you got any sort of memories of particular cultural challenges that you had in some of those places around the world?

Jono: 9:20

I think not so much only places like that, like the post conflict places, but anywhere you go that's foreign to you, that speaks a different language that's a massive cultural challenge in the beginning. There's a huge sense of trust there. You have to trust what your interpreter is saying. Mainly for the fact that you want to ensure that he is getting everything exactly right. For example the interpreter that we had in Cambodia, the first interpreter we ended up nicknaming him Lucky because he, unfortunately for him he thought that he could take the lessons for us if you know what I mean, you know we gave him all of the lesson plans so he could read them and because sometimes things in English don't translate literally into whatever language, you're dealing with. So we gave him all the lesson plans so he could read them and understand, if he had any questions about the technicalities, because it's quite a technical environment. He would clear those up. Unfortunately for him, he got it into his head that he was better at the subject than we were. And there was a officer attached to us. In the first course. And, after about a week of lessons, he came to us and said, you need to pay attention to this guy because he is not saying what you are saying. Now, up until then, we didn't know this guy spoke English, so apparently the guy was so bad that this little, the little guy said to us, this captain's short little chap, he said to us, if you don't sort it out or he doesn't sort it out we will take him away and he won't come back. I don't know, I guess that's reverse cultural challenge because it became, it wasn't for their own, but we had no idea, as, as far as we knew, this guy was saying, what we were saying, we're going to go over here, we're going to hop in the car and we're going to drive here. But apparently that wasn't the message that was getting through. And I also had the same thing in Mozambique when I was working there. Yeah. Unfortunately the interpreter I had there, nice guy, nice young chap. There was a, but there was a shortage of English speaking people. in the town and for want of a better expression, he was the best of a bad bunch, last man standing sort of thing. And towards the end though I could, I understood enough Portuguese to be able to say to him, that's not what I said. Or some of the team leaders understood enough English to say, hang on, Mr Jono, this guy's not saying what you're telling

Greg: 11:46

And so that's that dealing with other service providers. I guess that the military had engaged to help you out with working in those parts of the world. And you've had some connection or you would have had connections with just local communities and locals and all of that.

Jono: 12:04

Yep. When I first started in Iraq we had a thing called back then it was called Mine Awareness Training. For example, in, in Cambodia, when I was still in uniform, when we were there, we used to do that for like non government organizations. If they were going to a certain area, we would get them into our Bring them into our office and we would tell them, okay, this is where you're going. We will give them a map. This is where the known mine fields are, and be careful when you're out in the field, stay on the roads, don't go off into the fields. All of that sort of, basically risk management training. Do's and don'ts, things to look for. The community, what we call the community liaison now side of it hadn't developed then. However, in Mozambique, the program I was working for, that was a huge component. Because of course, at the end of the day, what were we clearing minefields and unexploded ordnance for? We were clearing that so the communities could get back, claim their fields back and basically make a living. Yeah. Again. So we had a huge input to the community. Before we started operations in an area, we would send the liaison officers, the community liaison officers, and they would have a big risk education program, posters, pictures of mines. This is what they look at. They would have Examples of them that were, we'd taken all the explosives out we could show them what show the locals what they looked like. A lot of them knew what they looked like. It was successful to varying degrees. At the end of the day, you still had people who would find these things and pick them up. And for example, yeah, you had people picking up mortar bombs and bringing them to the police station because they didn't want them in there, in their field, no matter how many times you tell people not to touch them.

Greg: 13:43

I remember. I used to work in the waste industry and on a number of occasions, the transfer stations would have to be shut down because somebody's bought a load of rubbish in and they've found some sort of, old grenade or an old firearm or something. And yeah, I remember one Friday afternoon in Auckland, rush hour. That was the scenario this unexploded item had been found in the trash and the Armed Offenders Squad were based out in West Auckland and had to get from West Auckland to South Auckland in a rush hour to, sort this thing out. It happens here as well.

Jono: 14:18

Yeah, I've had a couple of occasions here as well where we've had to deal with that sort of thing. Yeah. And it's even You know, you'd think to yourself, man, how can that and the one I recall vividly was a a job we did in Karamea, down the south, on the west coast we were there blowing a a rock overhang off a cliff face for the Department of Conservation, because it was overhanging a dock walking track, yep, so anyway, that wasn't a problem, but one of the local cops turned up and said, oh, can you come and have a look at this thing that we found, which turned out to be a box of old jellignite. That's how old it was, jellignite. And it was sweating so. Oh yeah. Yeah, so that caused a whole lot of different we got rid of it in the end but yeah, that was a long day.

Greg: 15:01

So you talked before about the education that was provided to the locals around risk management and the stuff that you were doing, but of course I'm assuming that. People are still interested and still want to watch and get close to the action and see what's going on. How do you deal with that when maybe English is a barrier or whatever, cultural barrier there might be? How do you make sure that the kids stay away or that, the people that are interested in watching and how do you deal with that?

Jono: 15:33

Again this is where the community liaison people earn their money. And that starts right from the head person, let's say the mayor, alright? For one, the English, the mayor of the village, the head person of the village, it starts right at the top with them, and it goes right down to the literally the youngest person in the area that you're going to work for. And they all need to know the risks associated with a what we're doing and the risks associated with, the equipment that we use. We were using some big machinery like our ground preparation machines, like literally the old, you see the old flails on D Day. Variants of them and tilling machines. And of course, obviously, we had to really make sure that they understood the risk to themselves, yeah, it's your fields, but until we finish here, You can't go working in them. Plus we cordoned, we cordoned the whole area off. So we had to explain the marking system to them. And we had signs, danger mines, which is only good if your audience can read, but skull and crossbones is pretty clear in anybody's language. They all got the message generally. Yeah. Let's be honest that we've turned up. When the people had hurt themselves, after the people had hurt themselves, yeah. There was very rarely anything that happened after we left.

Greg: 16:52

Maybe to the extent that you're able to talk about this what sort of preparation are you given before you go overseas into certain countries around training, around cultural norms in places like Cambodia or Mozambique or Senegal or Lebanon,

Jono: 17:09

actually Cambodia and Bosnia were pretty good. Cambodia, I believe our deployment. I was on the first deployment to Cambodia. And I believe our deployment was the first deployment where they started introducing psych briefings, psychological briefings. This is all about psychosocial risk and stuff like that. This is what's going to happen while you're away. This is how you're going to feel almost for the day. They were telling you like at the six, at the three month mark, you're probably going to be feeling like this. And also don't forget that. Your family at home have got things to deal with as well. So they're going to be feeling like that. The cultural side of things Palmerston North has quite a large Cambodian community. So we had a really nice lady came out to teach us a bit of Cambodian before we went and some cultural do's and don'ts for when we get over there. We didn't, we weren't going in completely blind. And I have to say they work, and I think Kiwis for some reason, Kiwis. We're pretty good. We just seem to get on with everybody, so we're pretty laid back bunch and nothing seems to faze us very much and we just get on with people. And we also seem to have a, in some cases, a, we pick up the language quite quickly. The first thing, the first thing you learn is where can you get something, where can you get it. Get something to drink. What's the bad words? What words shouldn't you say? And you go on from there because like anywhere, if you go to a foreign country, if you can show people that you're making the effort to speak their language that's knocks down a huge amount of barriers right from the start. Bosnia was the same. We were very well prepared for that. We had a, because there was, and when we went to Cambodia, there was 22 of us, I think, as opposed to Bosnia, which was. Probably 120 plus, so we were very well prepared going over there.

Greg: 18:56

Yeah, you're right that sort of that at least an attempt to use some of the local languages is a good way to break down barriers and understanding the sort of the do's and the don'ts and the taboos. I've got to head off to Dubai in a few weeks to do a presentation and just doing some research about the dos and don'ts in, in that part of the world particularly from a presentation perspective. Yeah. And just trying to understand, are there any things body language wise that might be a bit of a taboo or a bit of a, a no. And the things that I should do. So it's all the sort of the same concept concepts. Any specific examples of faux PAs that might have occurred in any of those scenarios where cultural sort of mistakes have been made?

Jono: 19:52

Only for me yeah. In, in, in some parts. Of the Middle East, you have to be, because there's, how do I phrase this? So there's varying degrees of of how strongly Muslim or Islamic you are. The, some of the Kurds I knew for example, they were Muslim, but they were pretty relaxed. The women could walk about uncovered and actual fact it was just like walking around at home. If you like the women would dress pretty much exactly the same. In the summer, short skirts, bare legs which I was really amazed me that was up in the north. Whereas a mate of mine who was working for the same project, he was when he first came in they stopped for a night in Baghdad and he thought he'd go wander around the local markets and have a look. And he was in shorts and sandals and he ended up having stuff thrown at him at the market. In the market. Cabbages thrown because of the way he was dressed. That's one consideration that you have to take into account. The other thing of course is you don't, you obviously, shaking hands with a woman is not the done thing. You it's natural for us. Yep. And the first time it happened to me it, it really threw me, I went to, I was introduced to this lady I. Put my hand out to shake her hand and there was no, nothing. And I was like, wow, okay. Then I so it was, but it threw me, I wasn't used to that happening. On the on the other side of the coin in France, when you meet a lady for the, Instead of shaking hands, they'll kiss you, and I was not prepared for that at all. But certainly in the Middle East, there's a whole lot of stuff, if you're not prepared for it, it's a completely different environment, as I would say, as working in Africa, you can either work in Africa or you can't. A lot of people say, I think I'll go and work in Africa. For a couple of years, we'll think hard because it's not easy. And that's, there's, there's no racism there or anything like that. It's just and the Middle East, it's just complete opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. I'm not necessarily in a bad way. It's just different. For example, in, in what I found in Lebanon in particular, if everything has to be negotiated, if you're working in an office here, for example, and you want to do something management wants you to do something, you'll basically be told what you're going to do. And not from a military, I don't mean from a military perspective, because that's orders, But, from a general office environment, this is the plan, this is the way we're gonna do it. But stuff like that requires a bit of negotiation, a bit of negotiation.

Greg: 22:24

Let's bring it back to New Zealand. And how has the, those experiences of working in all of those countries helped you in your safety role here? I, is, are the people that you work with are they all Kiwis or is it pretty diverse?

Jono: 22:42

There, there's there's a diverse demographic in the army anyway. We're a very multicultural defence force now. But there's there's no political I don't think cultural faux pas in that respect because everybody's pretty Kiwi ized anyway, so it's, if anything, my experience working overseas has taught me how to communicate better. Particularly not so much in the Defence Force, but in the two jobs I had outside the Defence Force. I came down to earth with a bit of a thud, because the mine clearance industry is built on the back of military operating procedures, which there's very little leeway. And it's a very hierarchical and authoritative environment to live in. That sort of doesn't work outside of a military camp. So I had to wind my neck in a little bit, I don't mind admitting, as a learning opportunity, it was a great learning opportunity for me, Yeah, just talk to people basically, as well as I do, nobody likes a Nobody likes health and safety people in general, in your business. And they like them even worse when all they can do is bark at you.

Greg: 23:52

Yeah, I guess that leads into a little bit of a discussion around, around command and control versus trust and inspire, which is, taking the words from the Covey Institute, or Covey Foundation with Covey Jr. Writing a book by that, I think, by that title, Trust and Inspire, and the ethos being that, the days of command and control in business, should evolve into creating a trusting and inspirational workplace. Now that's a challenge, for the military. Because the military is about command and control. But then there's also, the stories that have been written by, and I can't remember his name off the top of my head, but wrote the book Turn the Ship Around. So he's a US nuclear submarine captain who really changed the way that he led the crew on the ships that he was in charge of to one which was more about engaging and allowing the crew to make decisions and just keeping the captain informed about what they were going to do, rather than being told what to do. Is that something, I guess you've touched on that a little bit in terms of your, your coming back to earth with a bit of a thud is that something that you see potentially happening in the military? Are they moving towards I guess they're never going to eliminate command and control, but more engagement and connection with those who are under their command.

Jono: 25:22

Yeah, there's there is a bit of a movement. With the just culture side of things. I think you're right. I don't think the defence, the Defence Force, whether people like it or not, has I'm gonna talk only about the Army here, because the Air Force and the Navy, I have to admit, are a little bit more relaxed. But, That's the way they operate. I don't have any problem with that. In the Army in particular, because it's the biggest, it's the biggest of the services. And what we're required to do once we get on the ground. Like for the, it's the same for the other services, but very particular for the Army. Although a lot of, I don't know whether a lot of people think of it like that, but you. Join the army and you are being trained so there is going to come a time when although during training, train hard, fight easy. If you're going to make any mistakes, make them during training so you don't make, you don't make the same mistake on the ground when you get out there. But when you get out on the ground and orders need to be given in certain situations, you, what you don't want, if you're a commander, is somebody trying to second guess you, I think, or having, trying to have a bit of a discussion as to how best you're going to achieve the objective, this is our objective. We are going to go over here and we were going, we are going to take that objective. If you have any questions, speak now or hold your peace and get going, you must've heard, and I watch countless YouTube videos about people talking and you always hear the same thing, and then the training just kicked in and then, that's what you want. You want, when something happens you want the training to kick in. You're going to think about it. Maybe there's people out there that don't disagree with me, but in my mind, you're going to think about it. Think about it afterwards. Yeah, to a point.

Greg: 27:10

Yeah, no, absolutely. And that talks a little bit to cultural intelligence in terms of reflecting on the experience. You've planned You've done all your research or training. You're in the situation and you're able to adapt to whatever's thrown at you, and then there's a debrief, and a lot of the time the debrief is where the learning occurs, not necessarily while you're doing the deed.

Jono: 27:42

Yep that in particular that was, wow, that was brought home to me very quickly. A month to the day after I arrived in Mozambique, where we had an accident, where a guy got his leg blown off by an anti personnel mine. So I had to, this team, it was my closest team, was four hours drive away. It's a big country. So we had to get out there. I didn't have an interpreter at that stage, so I was relying on the extremely limited Portuguese that I could speak. I was relying on the extremely limited English that my two operations supervisors could speak. Yeah. And when we got out on site I was given a briefing as best I could have been by the team leader. And because after the accident they pulled everybody back to the control point. So from then on it was up to me to to grab a metal detector and go forward into the now dangerous area, which was previously a cleared area, but now it's a dangerous area again. And and try and see what happened. I looked at these guys, I saw a lot of brown faces and looking back at my white face, there's so what are you going to do now? And I was thinking, and this is where I just thought to myself, okay, trust your training. You have to trust your training. Not only that, you have to trust these people here. It doesn't, this is the first time I met these people. I, five minutes before driving into the site, I didn't know any of them at all. They'd been doing it, what they're doing for a long time. So I had to trust that they knew what they were doing, regardless of what happened. To the poor chap that had his leg blown off. Yeah, so that was a massive learning curve for me.

Greg: 29:29

So just as we wind up, one of the things I tend to ask is if you've got one or two tips for health and safety people around engaging and connecting with people that are different to them from a cultural perspective, what are a couple of things that people really need to do to make sure that process goes well?

Jono: 29:50

Take an interest and more importantly show interest. And more and more if we're talking about New Zealand we are getting more and more culturally diverse and, it is no longer, again, quotation marks, just Kiwis working in the workforce. Now, there's a whole lot of other cultures and if you show an interest in what, particularly if you're working on the management side of things, if you are having a safety campaign for work. then try and look at it from the, in a place where I work in Palmerston North, there was a lot of Samoan guys working for us. So I tried to look at safety from their point of view, and how to approach it. There's also a number of Indian guys working with us. We tried to, if there was anything that needed to be written because, some of them didn't speak the best English. So we tried to get things written in Samoan and Hindi as well. Didn't need to do it very often. We had a couple of deaf guys working with us. So you really have to make sure that, if there's a team meeting I was there for about six months and looking at, they made meetings every morning and I used to go to them sometimes and look at these two deaf guys. And, after a while I went up to them and said to them, Do you understand what they're talking about? Oh, about 30%. From a safety perspective, that's not cool.

Greg: 31:10

And, it's really interesting that you make that point, and there's a health and safety professional out there who, posed a question recently around what percentage Of staff or workers, is it OK to not communicate with effectively? Now, the obvious answer is zero, right? But do we even think about that? Do we think about I've got to do a toolbox talk to 50 people? Wait, I'll go and I'll go and deliver it. How much do we need to think about whether there's a couple of people who have got, hearing issues or dyslexia or English is not first language or whatever it might be, so yeah, I think you. So you started off talking about curiosity, I think, taking an interest and then trying to, consider your message from the perspective of the people that might be in the audience, not necessarily your perspective.

Jono: 32:08

I think there's a massive moral obligation there as well. You can't, that sort of thing, depending on what, for want of a better expression, depending on what the job is. But you're obligated, from a safety aspect. If it if it's that much of an issue, you are obligated to make sure that your message gets through a hundred percent. I think. However you do that, sometimes you gotta think outside the box.

Greg: 32:30

Hey, Jono. Thanks so much for your time. It's been great to have a chat and I think you might be the first sort of person from a military background that we've had on there. So that's another first for this podcast. So thanks for your time and contribution and look forward to catching up again soon.

Jono: 32:50

Awesome. Thanks for having me Greg. My pleasure. Thank you.

Greg: 32:55

What an intriguing conversation with Jono as we dove into his rich experiences in the military and his transition into civilian life as a health and safety advisor. The conversation covered the evolution of safety practices, the importance of cultural intelligence and the significance of effective communication and adaptive leadership in diverse environments. Here are some takeaways. Cultural intelligence is crucial. Jono's experiences in a range of countries he has visited such as Cambodia, Mozambique, and Northern Iraq emphasize the importance of understanding and respecting local cultural norms. Learning the local language and cultural do's and don'ts helps break down barriers and builds trust with local communities. Jono underscored the value of the cultural liaison role and community education in ensuring safety in the range of contexts that he was in. Preparation and training. The preparation before deployment includes psychological briefings and cultural training. This training helped to manage psychosocial risk and provides insights into local norms, essential for effective interaction in safety management. Jono's story of being well-prepared for deployments to Cambodia and Bosnia highlights the benefits of comprehensive training. I suggest that this type of approach applies equally. We dealing with diversity in a domestic setting. Effective communication is another area of focus. Jono highlights the significance of clear communication, especially when working with interpreters in diverse teams. Misunderstandings due to language barriers can lead to safety risks. Tailoring your safety campaigns to the needs of specific cultural groups and ensuring messages are understood by all employees, regardless of language or other barriers is essential for effective safety management. And finally adaptive leadership. The conversation touched on the shift from a hierarchical command and control approach to a more collaborative trust and inspire model. While, the military often relies on command and control Jono notes a movement towards greater engagement and connection with personnel. Adaptive leadership, which includes effective training and fostering trust is crucial for navigating diverse environments and ensuring safety. So we've come to the end of this episode, thanks so much for listening. I hope you found something valuable that you can take away that might enhance aspects of your own cultural intelligence. I'll add the transcript from the episode to the show notes. And there'll be some other resources available as well. 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. Ma te wa.