The Culturally Intelligent Safety Professional

The Culturally Intelligent Safety Professional S2E4 Stories of the Kingfisher

• Greg Dearsly • Season 2 • Episode 4

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Briar emphasizes the importance of indigenous wisdom in shaping personal wellbeing and workplace safety. She drew from Māori perspectives and her study of rongoā (traditional healing) to highlight how reconnecting with Papatūānuku (Mother Earth) fosters resilience and mental strength. The idea that healthy people lead to safer workplaces is central—wellbeing isn’t just a “nice-to-have” but a foundation for safety and productivity.

Briar discussed the Power of Connection—To Land, Culture, and Each Other. Indigenous knowledge sees humans as part of, not separate from, nature. This deep interconnection is crucial for both environmental sustainability and personal balance. Briar shared how traditional practices, like blessing the land before high risk work, can influence workplace safety culture and mental wellbeing. Organizations should create space for genuine cultural practices rather than tokenistic gestures. Making sure there is understanding of tikanga (protocols) helps avoid disconnect or lack of engagement.

When it comes to Cultural Intelligence in Safety Leadership One of the biggest cultural intelligence mistakes safety professionals make is assuming knowledge or lack of knowledge within diverse teams. Instead of imposing a dominant culture, leaders should listen, learn, and empower different cultural perspectives. Briar compares this idea to the Three Sisters planting method (corn, beans, and squash working together). Similarly, different workplace cultures shouldn’t be blended into one but should complement and strengthen each other.

And lastly, Bringing Indigenous Knowledge into Everyday Work. Briar’s korowai weaving project is a powerful metaphor—by incorporating natural materials, traditional dyes, and storytelling, she connects her work to history, identity, and purpose. Similar approaches can be used in health & safety—creating rituals, storytelling, and culturally aligned practices can make safety messages more impactful. The key is integration, not assimilation—indigenous knowledge should stand on its own rather than be forced to fit into Western frameworks.

Finally, some Practical Actions for Health & Safety Professionals

1.      Learn basic cultural greetings and protocols for the cultures you work with—it shows respect and builds trust. 

2.      Involve workers in setting workplace tikanga (guidelines) that align with their cultural values, making safety feel more intrinsic rather than imposed.

3.      Recognize that not all indigenous employees will have deep cultural knowledge, so support their journey instead of expecting them to be cultural experts.

4.      Understand the cultural values that may influence risk perception, like the Filipino concept of Bahalana, which can impact safety behaviors.

This episode really explored how Small Steps Create Big Change - Briar’s experience with the book Braiding Sweetgrass and her international learning journey shows that change starts at a local level. Safety professionals don’t need to be cultural experts, rather they should take small, thoughtful actions—like acknowledging tikanga, fostering cultural dialogue, and supporting indigenous wisdom which can lead to big shifts in how workplaces approach safety and wellbeing.

Greg:

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 Okay, in this episode we're talking with Briar Moffatt of Whare Kōtāre. Briar's mahi provides mindset coaching services to guide you to lead a life of abundance, inspired by natural wisdom. Where we look at the rhythms of Papatūānuku, and for our non New Zealand listeners, Mother Earth, Mother Nature, to guide us to delve into our own inherent strengths and build resilience and mental strength to thrive. And I guess the tagline that comes along with that is providing a safe space and empowering space for people to reconnect with their own purpose and the natural world. Kia ora Briar, great to have you on the show.

Briar:

kia ora great to be here.

Greg:

do you want to you got a bit of an intro that you wanna do? Tell us about yourself.

Briar:

Yeah, sure. So I'll start, I guess with me ko Tararua te maunga, ko Ōtaki me Ōhau nga Awa, ko Tainui te waka, ko Ngāti Tukorehe te Iwi, ko Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga te iwi. No Ōhau ahau ko Briar Moffatt Toko Ingoa. So born and bred in Ōtaki and now living in the beautiful Ohau, and very proud Ngāti Tukorehe wahine nice.

Greg:

Nice. Most people don't, probably don't know where Ohau is.

Briar:

Ohau, oh yeah, in the mighty Horowhenua.

Greg:

Mighty Horowhenua, little beachside town about what, probably about 30 k's south of where we are now.

Briar:

Yeah, so halfway between Wellington and Palmy North. On the west coast.

Greg:

Nice vineyard there too. tell us about Briar. How did you come to we know how you came to be in Ohau but what about from a professional perspective? What's your life story?

Briar:

Let's go somewhere between Elevator Pitch and the Long Story. I guess where I am now with Whare Kōtari. So Whare Kōtari is home to Kingfisher. So Kōtari is that beautiful Kingfisher and they have just this beautiful strength, wisdom. They're also highly discerning of water systems. So if you're seeing Kōtari around, the waterways nearby are really clear and pure. And they tend to watch, look, gather information and when they're ready, they go. So they're this real Poe for me on just that strength of knowledge, and conviction of action. And they resemble abundance and luck and all that beautiful stuff, which I think we all deserve to have in our lives. So when I was starting my wellness company, I was looking for Tohu like that, and I was seeing a lot of signs there's a lot of Kingfisher around as well, and it's connected into our whānau. Started my wellness company after working in safety for about a decade in the construction industry in Aotearoa And through all of that I noticed that people themselves weren't necessarily well and thriving. And I was having to work inside systems where people actually weren't present at work necessarily. They had a lot going on in their minds, busy minds from home life, personal life and that people didn't really have the tools to regulate self in the workplace and, or in home life. So I was like, Hey, what if I go back to the start and work with the people and then I could contribute to safety through helping produce healthier people who could then turn up more focus because they were able to work through the challenges in their lives instead of maybe being distracted and also conversations can be had with less, I'm going to say ego, fraction when people know how to be in healthier and perhaps. Yeah, just able to have a challenging conversation and chat, open in the workplace to overcome problems.

Greg:

A recovering safety professional. Yeah! And I guess having worked in the construction industry with a lot of blokey blokes. That emotional intelligence, that being stuff of probably 15 years ago. Yeah. Didn't really exist a lot. It was all, we're all good, we can handle this.

Briar:

Yeah. I've heard people say, oh, mental health, I don't need that. Oh, actually, that's the thing we all aspire to. Yeah. Tell me how you're so good at it. Yeah. What are your tricks? Yeah. But yeah, it's been, Because I worked in transport straight out of uni, or polytech. I worked in the transport industry and then went into the mines in Aussie. So I worked FIFO in Aussie for a while, not in safety, but that was where my safety career kicked off. As a safety rep over there, and then Pike River happened in Aotearoa while I was there, and I saw the effect. Even on people who, we were in a gold mine and partners of people working in that gold mine were then extra worried about their partners coming to work in the safety aspect of it. Even though it wasn't a coal mine, didn't have those risks, it really fretted a lot of people. So I actually came home from that industry to retrain in safety to work in the gold mine. To, it's to give a voice to people and help them navigate the system that is expected of them in the workplace. It was where I saw me in safety. So it was always for the people, so that transition from safety into wellness kind of probably was a natural movement, but it was always for extending safety.

Greg:

And I suppose with with, obviously there's a well being thing, but obviously there's also that connection to The earth and the environment and you talk about Papatūānuku and Mother Earth and that connection and I guess just to fast forward to, one of the things that connected us a little bit more was, the Braiding Sweetgrass book. Those that haven't heard a book called Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Kimmerer I dunno how to pronounce his second name actually. Robin Wall Kimmerer. And as you look through the indexes or the contents page of that book was some really inspirational titles, isn't there? Really spark imagination. Maple Sugar Moon, Epiphany of the Beans, and the Gift of Strawberries. But the one that caught my attention, and it was one of the really first chapters, was Council of Pecans. And, um, just not only did I learn about the history of the pecan nut, which I think from memory, pecan actually means nut. In the indigenous language of north America, and so we're talking about a nut. But also about the history of colonization in that part of the world. And I guess you could almost write that chapter. On the pecan nut from an indigenous New Zealand perspective, and I don't know, maybe you could call it travels with the kumara or something. I don't know, because it's going to be a very similar story, I'm guessing.

Briar:

Yeah, there was so much synergy in between what I've experienced and learned in Aotearoa and studying Rongoa. Māori along, it just dovetailed into Braiding Sweetgrass, like while I was reading it. Best recommend ever by the way. Thank you. Like a pivotal life changing book where I just saw in it things that resonated in me that I was like, oh, I always thought that, but didn't even know I thought it like that. That's how I, that's so true. And then studying rongoa as well, seeing that it's all this Oneness with nature. We are not higher or lower. We are in it. We are part of the system. And nature has this beautiful way of healing and repairing. It will heal us. If the land is well, we're well. ko au te whenua, ko whenua te au. I am the land and the land is me. And without a connection with nature, we are disconnected. So connection with humans and nature is just crucially important for wellness.

Greg:

Yep. Yeah, so it's pretty. It's a pretty special book and some of those stories that she tells about about the upbringing of those people. And their connection with the land. As I say, there's the pecan story, but then there's a story about, I don't know, I think there was one about fishing in a pond and there's one about strawberries and there's all sorts of different things that, she's just a fantastic storyteller. And you got, as you say, it was a bit of a life changing read, and somewhere along the line you managed to get hold of this woman and about four or five months ago you ended up in the States on a workshop with her. What's it all about?

Briar:

Where there's a will, there's a way. If you're living in alignment with your core values, oh mate, you'll move heaven and earth to do a thing. But yeah, a few stand out. So from her book, I'd ended up growing a garden with the three sisters, which is corn and then beans and then squash. So corn goes first, beans grow up it. Yeah. And so I was like, Hey, this, I've taken action from this person's advice and I really connect with how she is and when I love to travel. And so I've switched my traveling from, I want to see at the seven wonders of the world to I want to go to places and learn. How indigenous knowledge is done there. So learning a lot here at home and then when I go places, what can they teach me? And so I vowed and declared to myself that when I went, I'd go for learning moments and went, surely she's doing a tour and tracked it down and yes, she was doing a three day what we call noho in New Mexico on a ranch, a 20, 000 acre cattle ranch in New Mexico. Abiquiu in New Mexico. And yeah, booked myself promptly over there and tied it in was able to visit some incredible humans in the States while I was there. And just knew that it would be worth going to. Yeah. And came away just, Empowered and uplifted and it was like this affirmation, a deep affirmation that the things that A, we're coming up against here in New Zealand aren't, we're not the only ones. Disruption of connection to land and self. is around the world in indigenous peoples, but that indigenous knowledge is so powerful. And so that's what she championed through all of it, was that indigenous knowledge going first and then backed up by Western science. So we'd call that mātauranga Māori, so yeah, send that out first. It's got all of that old, deep and ancient knowledge behind it and then support it with, with the new take that Western science can give to things. So they're not mutually exclusive, but just don't let the science rampage all over everything without a direction.

Greg:

If I recall rightly, you weren't the only Kiwi there?

Briar:

There was another Kiwi. Oh, was I? No, I was the only Kiwi, but there were two Aussies in the room. Yeah, about a hundred and something of us at this ranch. So yeah, quite a beautiful number of people to get around and start to build a network connection again. And we, the main tasking of it was sometimes when the picture is so big, it can become overwhelming. And then if we don't know how to take steps to action anything, we can close down and then just hit stall. And we don't do anything with that beautiful knowledge. So it was raise awareness and what's the plan? So what's your action leaving here from? And one of your ones was raise a garden, raise good kids and raise a ruckus. And cause we talked about, I wrote it down the other day. It was like this thing for me, it was global action at a local level. So we can't fix the world. But we can take action locally towards a similar outcome. And that just empowers and it gives for local nuance. Because not how they do it in America will work here, it will be similar, but you can't cookie cutter it. And it gives space for each beautiful indigenous nation around the world, of which we're all a part of some indigenous nation somewhere just letting it thrive and stand up in that local area. And rongoa, our rongoa teaches us that what grows locally for us is best for us locally as medicines too which promotes you to tend the land and connect with the land so that you know what's there and what's local and what can help you, which then you know what you're protecting. It's hard to be kaitiaki for something if you're like super disconnected, never get off the concrete, don't go outside.

Greg:

And so just thinking about some of those cultural aspects around indigenous you get involved in a whole heap of them, right? I see your social media content all the time and you're growing things and you're making things out of natural products and you've got something going on at Massey University where you're trialling with plant dyes and all sorts of different things and you're doing some weaving and there's a lot going on there.

Briar:

Yeah. There's always heaps going on in my world.

Greg:

And the korowai thing, you've talked about that. Again, we haven't spoken about it, but I've seen the content online about you've taken it to different parts of the world that you've been to. Just to, again, create some sort of connection with indigenous people. I think was Tahiti recently?

Briar:

Yeah. Yeah. So I started this beautiful korowai for intending for anyone connected with my business to be able to wear as an empowerment piece. So if you're doing cool things, whatever that means to you then. The design of it, and the thinking of it, and the weaving of it, and then the dyes that I used are from Rongoa Rākau. So I've taken the plant medicines that I like the most, and they were most connected at the time with, and then dyed the thread for my tani kō with them. So it tells this beautiful graduating story as well of, so from Harakeke to Mānuka to Tātaramoa, which is the bush lawyer, and then through to Golden Tainui. And then up to tōtara, so it's this graduating size of the nāhiri as well, so it's a movement as well. And then as I've woven her I've taken her to all the places that I go to, so she travels so it's again promoting movement and things, yeah, so I went to Tahiti. She's been to the Sunshine Coast a few times. Been over to the States. Been a few places all around Aotearoa. So I take her when I'm weaving her. And because it's a Things aren't It's Things have person, not personalities, but more like the sentient creature kind of conversation of our trees aren't an it. A lot, it's a lot easy to cut down an it. But when you connect with something and when we harvest we need to connect. There's a wairua piece of can I be here? Am I allowed? To take. And sometimes the answer's no. The forest will tell ya. If you're not following tikanga, the answer's no.

Greg:

Yeah, absolutely. And Braiding Sweetgrass talks about that actually, doesn't she? She talks about that a lot in terms of the connection, the relationship, the, yeah, between the farmer, and the land. And actually you would you went down the forestry path, and I remember I did some work for a forestry company. A couple of years ago and the health and safety person there, I think it was the health and safety person told me that they'd had a worker who was really anxious about going into the forest at that particular block. That they were working and it was because there'd been no no blessing of the land or the machinery and then when you read into the I guess is it the mātauranga or the tikanga around. Processing a forest, this goes way back to Tāne Mahuta and the process of chopping trees down. And the tikanga way. And if you don't follow that and you've got a bunch of Māori workers, it's probably not going to be particularly comfortable for them.

Briar:

I noticed even the Did this kind of instinctively in safety work and now I get what I was doing and some of the why. Which is sometimes like we have this wisdom inside ourselves that we don't always know where it's come from. But it's like it's our gifts. But I always, aimed to start any project that we worked on in construction following a process and Te Ao Māori gives us this process of starting with intention, following process, and closing with intention. And it's systems based. It makes sense, but it humanises and gives wairua to a work project. So we'd set up with intent, do a full walkover, and always have everyone that was going to be working on the project in the room at the start, barbecue, start up, and it just would go well. And you put everyone on the same page at the start, the conversations that needed to happen would just all happen organically, as they needed to at once. And then you keep going like that, and then when it's finished, and I don't think at that time we were doing karakia, but it was the, you're imbuing the worksite with intent, and then at the end of it you're closing it with intent, and you pack it all down and it's done, and karakia does that, when you open something and close something. And then inside it is safely held the intention or the process or the what we're here for.

Greg:

Yeah and I think a lot of Employees and a lot of employers sometimes struggle with getting that right because it does sometimes come across as a bit tokenistic.

Briar:

The dialogue cutting here.

Greg:

Just making sure that there is a legitimate, There's reason, there's understanding. This is why we're doing it. Not, oh, we're going to do this bloody karakia thing and because the book says I had somebody talk to me about a year ago saying, oh, we've been forced to put ngā mihi on all of our email signatures. You've got to do it for the right reasons and understand why you're doing it. And I guess believe in the fact that it's helping some people. Might not be relevant to everybody, but there's certainly people that will value that.

Briar:

Yeah, I think it's a beautiful way of uplifting knowledge too, having some of those framework expectations. I remember one job we opened in State 4 a while back. We had everyone there, iwi was there, we were starting out the project, Waka Kotahi was there, and then someone, a workmate said to me, If anyone has to speak, that's going to be you. And I'm like, I froze and almost puked because I was like, my heart stopped. I was like, I haven't got the reo. I don't know what to do and freaked out. And then it turned out he was just missing, but it really stopped me. And then I went, I'm never going to feel like that again. And put this onus on myself to learn a few karakia, and at least a basic waiata, which it turned out I didn't, I just, my brain stalled. And I could have muffed fumbled my way through it.

Greg:

But I think that's another thing that gets stuck in the tokenistic sort of thing too, isn't it? That organisations just go to the closest Māori and say, can you do a karakia or a waiata or whatever? And maybe there's an opportunity for non Māori to learn some of that stuff and say. And I just, I've got an example of that actually we had an INSHPO meeting in New Zealand in September last year. So I had people from Canada and America and UK and Korea and various other places, Australia. And we had coordinated and arranged for the local iwi to come and do a bit of a presentation. And Jodhi from. Te Ropu Marutau o Aotearoa was going to come and talk about some of the stuff that they're doing but they weren't going to be there prior to lunch, and so I just took it on myself to get myself a pre meal karakia. And as it happened, I think the place where we were at had one, on a stand next to where all the food was, but I didn't know that going in. But yeah, it's no harm in doing that.

Briar:

I've noticed, especially big groups, so like I've worked big construction site teams, and it tends to just put a pause in. It puts a stop before you start. Otherwise people kind of drift past and there's not the respecting of the kai that's been put out. And then, people just drift, where if you've got that framework, and someone does bless the kai, and that can even be Whatever. It's just a, hey, here's a thing. Someone put the effort in

Greg:

And I think the other thing that I learned through this process too was, and I've learned that a lot about, a lot of Tikanga protocols that I've looked into don't have to have religious overtones. The, actually the Karakia that I did pre meal was I guess about acknowledging the people that grew the product and distributed it and did the work to get it to the to the plate. And that doesn't have to, and I think sometimes that's a roadblock for some people, is that religious sort of connection.

Briar:

Interestingly, most of our karakia, or lot, are not religious as such, like that we're speaking to the Atua, which I guess is spiritual spiritual, yeah. Yeah, and I know it can be a hang up for people that don't like to do it if it's religious, but when it's simply blessing the land for giving us this beautiful kai and it's going to nourish our body, that's only good.

Greg:

Hey, we should bring this back to safety a little bit. Actually, the other one thing I wanted to ask you about was You, do you get involved in search and rescue around here?

Briar:

Yeah, I've been on the Horowhenua search and rescue team for a while, for a few years now. Yeah haven't been out on heaps of searches, but packed me bag a couple of times. Yeah,

Greg:

really? Yeah. Excellent. And how, a lot of training for that? Yeah, they're

Briar:

amazing. It's such an epic community, national group. So they teach, they, they really know how to train up their humans. They really know how to keep a community and a group and a family situation. So all the searching, tracking outdoor first aid, being that's just a few that I've done in the last couple of years. As well as they do big SAR X search rescue operations once a year normally, plus river crossing. So there's heaps of training goes into launching these everyday humans out the door to look for people when things have gone wrong, which is like this, the reason I joined it was that. I like doing stuff in the outdoors. I go on missions, whether it's running or tramping, and I'll do my best to prepare, to the best of my knowledge, check all the forecasts, make a plan accordingly, do my thing, and if something goes wrong, I know the team's there, and you can call or push the button, or I just got my PLB, and then you can push the envelope a bit, which is what humans tend to do but it's Be as best prepared as you can, and then if something goes outside of that, then people will come and help you hopefully fast enough. But then so I wanted to be a part of that, like providing that external safety blanket so that people can go test their limits, connect to nature, go outside, get off the footpath. Yeah. And in those first, when you're, what is it? Unconsciously incompetent. Mistakes can happen, right? And so you think you're prepared, but you don't know what you don't know, yeah.

Greg:

Nice. Here's the curveball question. Bring it back to safety. Two or three things that you think health and safety people should Can do to be more culturally aware, culturally intelligent, culturally competent, whatever words you want to use, just to be more connected to the culture of the people that they're working with because not everybody thinks you, as a health and safety person, or and, what do they call that? Mirror image fallacy? And just from your experiences and areas of focus, what do you reckon would make a better health and safety professional thinking about cultural intelligence?

Briar:

Wow. You asked me this in prep and I was like, where am I going to go with this? I guess not assuming what you know, or not assuming what people don't know. I've seen that happen a lot. Just assuming people aren't intelligent or aren't aware or aren't confident. There will be always someone in the group that is more competent than you ever imagined. And to find them, and ask them things. And then whether they do that, they don't have to do the doing though either. Sometimes it's find out the knowledge that's in your group. And then, Oh, I was making notes on the fiends and corn. I was like, I love this as an analogy. What can this be? And so like the corn, if that's the indigenous culture inside, inside a company, give it space to grow and get nice and big and strong and support it as opposed to telling it what to do. And so if the bean's job is to nurture and give extra nitrogen to the corn, it's providing that extra support, or whether it's a budget, or whether it's not just thinking that only Māori in the team need to do a thing. So we've worked with sites with a lot of fillies, a lot of Filipino workers. Epic! Mate, they are awesome, fun people. Loving humans who do real good with lots of food around. So there's all these different cultures. Learning how the culture works. Who's the, if there's, I'm going to say if there's an alpha, who's the leader? And how does that work? How do people, so in injury cases, people don't like to not be able to do what they normally do often. So some little tricks that we had was finding a job that was still giving them relevance in the team. So that they could be at work still, obviously if they weren't broken enough to still be at home. Just give them some validity because there'll be something beyond doing the filing. That still makes them feel useful in contributing and ticking the man card if it's dudes and then or just helping more. Then. To something tokenistic.

Greg:

Yeah. The Filipino, workforce is something that's been a subject on this podcast previously. A colleague of mine, Jane Fowles, who's in the dairy industry in the South Island. I've got a lot of Filipino workers. And Bahalana. It was one of the, one of the, I challenges to jump over. Bahalana means But for the grace of God, everything will be okay, right? And so that's a Filipino cultural concept. And so then you go and say, I've got a hundred Filipino workers just landed on the ground here with that at the forefront of their minds, but that's not how it works. We think about it, but I can't tell them that's wrong. So how do we integrate their thinking? How do we navigate that? And that's not the only place in the world that type of thinking exists. So just understanding some of that stuff like that is, and, I guess I'm not sitting here with the cultural intelligence hat on saying you've got to know everything about every culture that you might come across because that's clearly not practical. But if you knew one or two things.

Briar:

Yeah. Even some greetings,

Greg:

just a couple of words. Yep, absolutely.

Briar:

With Māori, tikanga is important knowing what tikanga are, knowing what, set the tikanga for the project you're working on. Help get the team to contribute to setting the rules or the tikanga. There's law versus lore right? So the L O R E will hold much more sway than LAW, when, because people get it, it's an intrinsic thing. So if you can get the team involved in writing the tikanga for the work that you're doing, and lining it up with stuff like whanaungatanga and manaakitanga, then you just, it feels good to work inside as well.

Greg:

There's a, actually just thinking about some of that stuff, there's a bit of a story and it starts with a question about where are all the hard hats? And I can't even remember who told me the story, but I use it all the time, and it's, you're on a construction site or a forestry site or whatever, a bunch of Māori workers there in the smoko room, where all the hardhats, maybe they're still on their head or maybe they're on the floor, and the non Māori supervisor comes in, takes his hardhat off, Puts it on the table, and immediately you've lost respect. Yeah. It's probably not something that a lot of people are gonna know or think about if they're not Maori. Yeah. But just, it's just a small thing that doesn't take much to remember. Yeah. That let's put some hooks on the wall or something, yeah.

Briar:

Because if you're looking after even basic in, in the workplace, if you're looking after a spiritual way to a health. Mind health and your tīnana and your whānau. That's already great. And can you take my nature to that? And that's the foundation that you're building that whānau of the workplace on. That looks after everybody safely, happily, empowered inside that. Then it's knowing little things like that. Helping the team set up the workplace. What's going to help you follow tikanga and not break it? And also not clutter the floor up with all the hard hats. Yeah.

Greg:

Yeah. Hey, cool. Anything else you want to add? Any pearls of wisdom? Anything you've been thinking about?

Briar:

I think one of the Main key things, and I'm going to loop it back to Braiding Sweetgrass, was this beautiful message of not blending cultures. Back to the corns and the beans. The corns will always be corn and the beans will always be beans. Yeah. You can't, it's not the merging, it's the how to get the mutual benefit from both. And that was this beautiful message that she had around not asking the indigenous cultures to come in and merge with the other. And that could happen within corporate and human value sets of going, this is what we want you to think like versus this is how you are. And then that's how your culture is or your peoples. So it's letting them be individual and not, cause as soon as you try to merge the two, the dominant one will win. So if that's a corporate going on, this is how you must think here. You're just going to end up with a whole bunch of unhappy people. And the indigenous culture that you're trying to awhi. Won't shine through because you haven't actually given it space to. So it's that letting it go first, give the culture in the workplace and whether that's people culture or the workplace, it's culture the environment and the nurturing and the nourishing, and it might take a little while. One thing actually, one lady said at the. conference that I just thought was epic was be careful too when you ask one of the indigenous people for the answer and if they don't have the answer straight away you're like oh you don't even know. There's been a lot of damage done with colonization so there's a lot of lost knowledge or disconnection from knowledge so as you said a lot of their peoples over there are having to learn their knowledge again so whakamā or that embarrassment about not knowing. So also that, that if you come in hot, expecting the Māori person on site to know everything about Māori, te ao Māori, and they might actually really shy away from that because they didn't get raised in it and they're just learning themselves. Don't make that a problem or look at them differently, like it's creating a safe space for them to explore their culture.

Greg:

Yeah. Awesome. Lovely place to end. Hey, thanks very much for your time.

Briar:

You're welcome.

Greg:

Great conversation and yeah, just the beginning of a year and we're all doing a bit of planning and I know you're doing a bit of planning and and scoping out where things are going to go. All the best with that and no doubt we'll keep in touch. Yeah, for sure. Cool.

Another powerful discussion on the culturally intelligent safety professional, which I've melded down into a few key takeaways. First, use indigenous knowledge as a guide for well being and safety. Briar emphasises the importance of indigenous wisdom in shaping personal well being and workplace safety. She drew from Māori perspectives and her study of rongoā, or traditional healing, to highlight how reconnecting with Papatūānuku or, Mother Earth fosters resilience and mental strength. The idea that healthy people lead to safer workplaces is central. Well being isn't just a nice to have, but a foundation for safety and productivity. Briar discussed the power of connection to land, culture, and each other, indigenous knowledge sees humans as a part of, not separate from nature. This deep interconnection is crucial for both environmentally sustainability and personal balance. Briar shared how traditional practices like blessing the land before high risk work can influence workplace safety culture and mental well being. Organisations should create space for genuine cultural practices rather than tokenistic gestures. Making sure there is understanding of tikanga, protocols. Helps avoid disconnect or lack of engagement. When it comes to cultural intelligence and safety leadership, one of the biggest cultural intelligence mistakes safety professionals make is assuming knowledge or lack of knowledge within diverse teams. Instead of imposing a dominant culture, leaders should listen, learn, and empower different cultural perspectives. Briar compares this to the idea of the three sisters planting method, which incorporates corn, beans, and squash all working together. Similarly, different workplace cultures shouldn't be blended into one but should complement and strengthen each other. And lastly, bringing indigenous knowledge into everyday work. Briar's Korowai weaving project is a powerful metaphor, by incorporating natural materials, traditional dyes, and storytelling, she connects her work to history, identity and purpose. Similar approaches can be used in a health and safety perspective, creating rituals, storytelling, and culturally aligned practices, which can make safety messages more impactful. The key is integration, not assimilation. Indigenous knowledge should stand on its own rather than being forced to fit into Western frameworks. Some practical actions for health and safety professionals. One, learn some basic cultural greetings and protocols for the cultures that you work with. It shows respect and builds trust. Involve workers in setting workplace tikanga or guidelines that align with their cultural values. Making safety feel more intrinsic rather than, imposed. Recognize that not all indigenous employees will have deep cultural knowledge. So support their journey, instead of expecting them to be cultural experts. And understand the cultural values that may influence risk perception. And we've talked about this before on this podcast, like the Filipino concept of Bahalana. which can impact on safety behaviours. This episode really explored how small steps can create big change. Bri's experiences with the book Braiding Sweetgrass and her international learning journey shows that change starts at a local level. Safety professionals. don't need to be cultural experts, rather they should take small thoughtful actions like acknowledging tikanga, fostering cultural dialogue, and supporting indigenous wisdom which can lead to big shifts in how workplaces approach safety and well being.

Greg:

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. 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.