The CQSP S2E9 - Blind Spots, Brave Voices, and the Power of CQ Strategy with Trisha Carter

What a great honour to speak with Trisha a real early adopter of CQ, our conversation explored the pivotal moments that shaped Trisha’s career, including her early insights into organizational dysfunction, her transformative experiences living in China, and her work helping individuals and organizations build cultural intelligence (CQ). 

We discussed the real-world applications of CQ in workplace safety, leadership, and organizational effectiveness, highlighting how metacognition and awareness of cultural dynamics can help professionals navigate complex multicultural environments more effectively. Here are some of my takeaways.

1. Shifting From Assumptions to Awareness

Description:
Trisha shares how living in China revealed the limits of her Western-centric organizational psychology training, sparking her journey into cultural intelligence.

Lesson:
We need to recognize that our existing frameworks may not apply universally. Building CQ starts with acknowledging and addressing those blind spots.

2. The Power of Metacognition in Cultural Strategy

Description:
Trisha emphasizes the importance of helping people reflect on their thought processes (metacognition), especially in navigating cultural differences consciously rather than reactively.

Lesson:
This teaches us that Leaders can improve cross-cultural interactions by teaching teams to pause, reflect, and plan their communication strategies rather than relying on instinct alone.

3. Navigating Power Distance and Voice in Diverse Workplaces

Description:
The discussion highlights how employees from high power distance cultures often struggle to speak up in flatter, low power distance environments like Australia or New Zealand.

Lesson:
What the learning?, Organizations should create psychologically safe spaces where contributions from all team members are expected, valued, and supported, helping them build the confidence to participate fully.

 4. Bridging Cultural Dynamics in Safety Leadership

Description:
The episode explored how safety protocols often clash with cultural expectations, such as the assumption that leaders will ensure safety on behalf of the team.

Lesson:
Safety professionals must balance procedural compliance with cultural sensitivity by adapting their communication and leadership styles to different cultural mindsets.

5. Moving From Diversity Statements to Culturally Intelligent Action

Description:
While organizations often promote diversity publicly, true impact happens when cultural intelligence is developed at every level—from executives to frontline supervisors.

Lesson:
Our final lesson, It’s not enough to "tick the diversity box." Building an inclusive culture requires investing in CQ capabilities across all levels of the organization, ensuring everyday behaviors match the stated values.

The discussion with Trisha unpacks how recognizing blind spots, practicing metacognition, navigating power dynamics, blending safety with cultural sensitivity, and turning diversity talk into daily action can transform how professionals thrive in multicultural environments.

Transcript

Greg: 0:00

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 For this episode, we head across the ditch and catch up with a New Zealander who resides and works in Sydney. Tricia Carter is an organizational psychologist, coach, trainer, podcaster, and explorer of cultural intelligence. Trisha is particularly interested in metacognition or as we say in the CQ world, CQ strategy. Trisha is a host of the popular podcast, The Shift, which is as the name implies, all about the shifts that people experience when they understand the impact that culture has in their lives. Tricia hales from Timaru in Canterbury here in New Zealand and something that we might discuss during the episode were her experiences as one of the original participants in the CQ Fellows program. I can't wait to get into this conversation, kia ora my friend, it's an honor to have you on the show,

Trisha: 2:07

Kia ora. Thank you, Greg. It's lovely to be here.

Greg: 2:11

So look, I still pinch myself when I realized that we are connected and we became connected, I think through Shireen Chua, who was actually the first guest I had on this podcast last year. And so I'm really keen to have a conversation about how you got into the CQ space. So yeah, really just starting at the beginning, what sort of set you on the path? Firstly towards org psych and then eventually exploring. CQ metacognition specifically, what was the turning point? Was there an aha moment?

Trisha: 2:46

There was a real shift moment for org psych. I had graduated with my Bachelor's of psychology and was trying to get work as a social worker and was not being employed. I'm so grateful for that because I would've been a terrible social worker. And I was working at Nurse Maude. Does Nurse Maude still exist? It's a, it was a, it's a aged care facility and I think it's Nurse Maude. And I was on the domestic staff and washing the dishes and I. We had moments where admin would come into the kitchen and make demands or express complaints, and I remember listening while the chefs cooks were having an argument with the head of admin who was telling us that the nurses didn't like something about what we were about the domestic, and I just was washing the dishes and I realized there's three tribes within this organization. They were the nursing staff, the admin staff, and the domestic staff. And it was like there were these massive gaps between us and none of us really listened to each other. And in that moment I suddenly thought, oh, I wonder if this is what organizational psychology looks into. And I went home that night and looked up organizational psychology and decided to go back for my master's degree and do the study. And on the very first day of that master's degree, I knew that this was exactly the field I wanted to be in. So that was that moment, washing dishes and thinking about how the organization was dysfunctional, that made me realize how much I wanted to learn more. Cultural intelligence. I have a distinct moment when we were living in China. My husband and I lived in China for some years, and that was the point at which I became very aware that all of my training in org psych so far had been based on Western models. I remember this moment of thinking only a tiny portion of the world thinks the way I think, and so many other people think differently. And then the next thing I remember saying to my husband after I had that revelation was we should have had some training before we came here. And so that was another of those moments around understanding culture. And then when I came back to Sydney from that experience, I got work as an international HR consultant. And part of what I was doing was designing that sort of training, and then it was probably about maybe nine or 10 years after that I had the first training in cultural intelligence, and I had a moment on the airplane coming home. Those moments of coming home from training back to you and just thinking through everything I'd learnt and just thinking that, this was a way of thinking about culture that really made sense to me and fitted in with all of the, say the psychology side. It just gelled and suddenly it felt like all of the training that I'd been designing previously, the work that I'd been doing had much more of a cohesion to it. So I remember being on that airplane, one of those liminal spaces. A where you think you're between places and you can suddenly see things so clearly. So that was another moment of shift of just being grateful for getting the cultural intelligence information. Metacognition, I had a series of coaching challenges with people where, and it was more often guys. This does not mean that I'm saying all guys, but it was often guys going, yeah, but I just don't think that much, Trisha, when I would be trying to unpack their CQ strategy and going, so when you're in that situation, what are you aware of? What are you thinking? And they'd be going, yeah, nothing really. I'm just. Just do. Yeah. And so I thought, oh, I want to help people unpack their thinking a little bit more and help them see the real value in that awareness and in the planning and in the checking. That's part of the CQ strategy. Yeah.

Greg: 7:07

I wanna go back to that the comments that you made about your shift after the Chinese experience and I guess some of that stuff is now being seen in some of the research that we're starting to see more visibly around leadership and I think Dave Livermore has put out some stuff that says, most of the leadership training is based on individualistic societies. Yeah. Whereas 70% of the world is collectivists. And we are teaching this stuff and one would assume that it's not really gelling. It's not. It's in total conflict, to the thinking that the collectivist societies would have around that, that topic. Interesting that it was something in that sort of org site space as well. That's, so that's, thanks for sharing that. It's that's really interesting. I just back on the metacognition thing and maybe your, observations around male thinking patterns might answer this question, but you talk about metacognition on your podcast and and obviously in a lot of the other work that you do those moments when people realize that the impact of culture. What's one of the sur most surprising mindset shifts that you've had? Or that you've not, that you've had, that you've seen somebody make around that stuff or around culture?

Trisha: 8:25

I think, and I've seen this one repeatedly, where it's people coming from high power distance cultures to a low power distance culture, which is Australia as and that sense of a greater value of themselves. And it's quite, in some ways, it's quite a wonderful thing to see because you can get the sense of people felt, oh, I'm not very important. And so my place in the society is lower down and I'm not a key leader. So then to recognize that in the new workplace they've gone into, their opinions are sought and they need to contribute. And there's a real sense of, oh, I, have ideas. I can share them, and then, so there's first of all this blossoming of. I am equally important to other people and I can contribute. And then there's a challenge because the challenge of contributing when previously you didn't think your voice needed to be heard can be quite a step. And so that the courage needed to speak up when everybody around you seems so confident and so comfortable in speaking out in a meeting. And now you realize that you are expected to speak out too, but you don't have that practice of it. And so first of all, there's this moment of wonder and appreciation that, oh, they wanna hear my thoughts and then it's, oh my goodness, I've got to share my thoughts. So it's both a wonderful thing and then a challenge. And it, I think it's life changing. That people can grow into that. I. Then the challenge is how to help them going back home again to back into a high power distance culture where they'll need to be aware, when do I speak out and when do I hold my peace? And how can I speak out without threatening my leader who then, might have a lot of power over me? So it's a really challenging shift to make both ways.

Greg: 10:45

I think there's a story out there. And I've ordered the book. I've pre-ordered the book. It hasn't arrived yet, but it's about Netflix, and it's about how Netflix set up shop in Japan. And probably experienced some of those things. They would go to a leadership meeting in Japan or a staff meeting and with a Western mindset and say, give us some feedback on what you think about whatever the topic was. And it was crickets, right? And so what they did was so the story goes was they went back and they redesigned all their employment agreements. Said, we will have meetings on such and such a day at, at such and such time, and you'll be expected to give feedback. And then, went and introduced that back to the staff and it worked to treat, because the Japanese culture, which sort of thrives on, instruction and and what do I need to do? And I'll do it type of scenario. Yeah. And apparently Netflix, Japan is one of the best parts of that business in terms of the staff feedback it gets, because the staff are not aware in advance of the expectation and understand what they're required to do in terms of, giving feedback on the spot, and yeah I'm really keen to for that book to arrive and and get the story straight. But I've seen some other commentary around it, around the place And I guess both in Australia and New Zealand, we see it, don't we? When high power distance people come to work for our organizations Yes. And everyone's the boss or sir, or Mr. Or Mrs. Or whatever it might be. And yeah, but I guess to, to see somebody who can make that shift, must have been a pretty cool experience.

Trisha: 12:31

Yeah. And I was telling somebody recently about our tendency to cut down the tall poppies and they were going, oh wow, really? You do that? And so for those of the listeners who may not be aware of the Australian New Zealand tendency to tear down tall poppies, the tall poppies are the ones that grow up taller than the other poppies and in a society where, you know things are valued, not being seen as being perhaps, I'm trying to think of how to say up yourself without saying it. You've said it now. Yeah. Okay. So it's wrong to push yourself forward in a way that it, in a way that's going, Hey, I'm just amazing and you should really appreciate me. And if you did that in a way, in a meeting, somebody would very quickly, subtly, and beautifully just remind you of your place. And I think that. Perhaps sarcasm that we have or that, those is quite interesting to see and can be quite amusing, but could also be a little bit of a rough reminder to somebody who might not be aware of it or not be prepared for it.

Greg: 13:40

So I work in safety as and we would assume that many of the listeners are from that space as well. And in that space we talk a lot about procedures and compliance. We try not to talk about that stuff, but, it's just it's part of the. DNA I think at the moment. But we don't typically talk about how culture shapes the way people interpret and respond to risk. So how can CQ help safety leaders better understand those, invisible drivers of behavior.

Trisha: 14:14

Yeah, it's such an important question, isn't it? And that's why it's so wonderful that you're focusing on this. I was thinking about the, preferences and the way we think, what we sometimes talk about as our values and how they shape us and even that very one about hierarchy and high power distance, in so many cultures, because the strength of a high power distance culture is that the leader is a caring leader who will take care of us. And so therefore, we might assume that the leader will provide a safe environment. And so it might not be my job to take care of safety, but I can trust that leader will have taken care of it for me. And so if we've got a mismatch between that expectation and reality, then there's a problem. There's also differences between, people's level of comfort with uncertainty. So some people are quite comfortable without processes and procedures and they like not to have too many and other people want to have them. And especially as you say, the safety field is one, we are defining processes and procedures as normally a way of creating a safe environment and almost putting guardrails up if you like. So for some people who are not comfortable with a lot of those things that can feel like they're being squeezed into a space they might not feel like they fit in. So that can be a real adjustment. Or somebody who's used to having those processes and then walking into an environment where it's basically go for it. Do what you like, the, that must feel very scary. And so there's those aspects which I think you must have already encountered. And I know in some of your previous episodes you've spoken about some of these things.

Greg: 16:06

Yeah, one of the again, another story from a colleague probably talks to the saving face sort of thing where I think it was a, an agricultural environment where the farm manager or whatever had asked somebody to drive a tractor up a hill and it was a New Zealander or a Western person, and they said no. Not me, I'm not doing that. And then a couple of other Western, or New Zealanders were asked and they said no. And it got to the sort of the Filipino and the guy said, drive the track, drop the hill, and off he went. Because of that, that I guess that that saving face thing of not wanting to embarrass the boss. There might've been made a power distance thing there as well. The boss asked me to do something, therefore I'll do it. And I think that if Western leaders don't think about that thought pattern. Then they're gonna get that compliance, or that, following the rules or doing what they're told or whatever it might be. Rather than thinking, gee, do I really want to take that risk? And I think that would, I think that would be quite prevalent out in workplaces.

Trisha: 17:11

Yeah. And because his expectation might be that, in the classic hyper environment, the leader is someone who cares for the people. And so their responsibility is to take care. And so they wouldn't ask them to do something that was unsafe, a good leader. So that model of good leadership in that. And I also wonder, if there's perhaps that individualist, collectivist aspect, so in some societies there's a sense of the group taking care of one another, whereas we expect people to hold individual responsibility for their own safety. That, yeah, that they will say yes or no.

Greg: 17:51

Yeah, I think the response from my colleague that was sharing the story was that the person asking the question should have stopped asking it after the first refusal. If somebody turns you down because it's it's not felt that it's safe okay, how can we fix that? What's what can we do?

Trisha: 18:06

Yeah. There's also the I mean there are, it's not just about the way people think we have, and working with people coming into Australia, I have to educate them. We have a very different regulatory environment than many other countries, and so often people just assume that the same rules and laws apply and then they can get very surprised by the real difference. And often if people don't go through a process of explaining, and in some situations, rules and laws might be there, but again, the thinking around rules and laws is different. And so it's much more particularist thinking rather than the sort of universal thinking we have around a rule in law that applies to everyone in all the situations. And no, you can't just say, yeah, but in this situation I need to do something differently. So yeah, so that we've got a different regulatory environment and a different history with unions and the way that they have worked. And so there's a whole lot of different things to unpack with people when they're, changing countries and cultures.

Greg: 19:14

You do a bit of that, right? You do a bit of supporting. Yeah. Migrants or people moving to Australia? Yeah,

Trisha: 19:20

I've worked with organizations who are moving people. And so that's part of what they expect me to prepare people for and to become aware, help them to become aware of because it, the person on the job is not looking at the person coming in the door thinking, I need to just inform them about all of this. There will be some things and you certainly. I think health and safety is a good area where people are, there is now a process around informing people and so that is a good thing. But yeah, there's a lot of things we just don't think, we just assume everybody knows.

Greg: 19:56

Yeah. I wonder if, and it's a not a question I know the answer to, but I wonder if the immigration services in either of our countries, when somebody migrates, they get taught about language and where the shops are and the doctors and the, that sort of stuff. Is there anything around workplace and workplace safety, I suppose is the, is what we're talking about that, that they might get taught about

Trisha: 20:24

Only if an organization provides it, so there's nothing automatic. There are some, so with some, I forget what New Zealand is calling it, but the Pacific schemes of bringing in workers, the government Oh, yeah, so the government expects some training for some of the, that level. But the rest of the level, it's up to the organization to provide, yeah, it's up to

Greg: 20:45

the organization. It's not the immigration services that provide that insight. Yeah. Interesting.

Trisha: 20:49

Somebody who is more aware both culturally and organizationally business wise, they might educate themselves. And I meet, in my work I have some brilliant people who have been in different locations. And so they'll be just, they'll have their own rubric if you like, and they'll be trying to work out where does Australia fit in the way things operate compared to the other countries I've lived and worked. And they're wonderful to work with, but so are people who know nothing because often they're just so open to learn because they are aware they need to do well at work.

Greg: 21:24

I guess that's quite a good move to the next sort of point of discussion and we know that diverse teams can outperform homogenous ones but only when the cultural dynamics are well managed. Yeah. What does it take for an organization, to move from simply being diverse to being culturally intelligent? And what are the, what are some of the roadblocks? What are some of the things that might get in the way?

Trisha: 21:49

It, and so first of all, there's a conscious choice to do yeah. So an organization needs to realize that just putting people together doesn't necessarily mean that they work well. And when we would say that about homogenous populations, but it's even more so with diverse populations because we have all the things we were speaking about before, different ways of thinking, different ways of operating, different history. So we are bringing all of these differences together, which will enable us to be more innovative, to think more creatively, to see things through different eyes, which will be our strength. But at the same time, we need to learn how to work well together so that those differences don't become a stumbling block, but instead they become a step up to be able to see things differently and better.

Greg: 22:40

It's interesting. I was just thinking about some work I did a couple of years ago where the organization recruited migrant workers and the leadership of the organization would go to the country and meet, the people and and I guess do the job interview. And so they seemed to have a good commitment to, to how these people were treated. The issue that I found was at a sort of a supervisory, middle management level. Where I could tell, because I just happened to be at a site where there was an interaction between, one of the western workers and one of the migrant workers. And you could tell that the Western person was frustrated with the approach of the migrant in terms of high power distance some language stuff. And the Western person was getting quite aggressive and shouty. And so I think that's, may well be that the organization puts up all of these wonderful statements about diversity and inclusion and rah. But how far through the hierarchy does that flow? And do they train their own people to understand some of those differences? And I guess that's probably where the value of some of the stuff that we do is that is, the managing director probably gets it. But is that message. Passed through

Trisha: 23:59

and it's, they might get the message, they might get the philosophy that we need to welcome these people and bring them in.'Cause it's good, it's gonna be good for the organization, but they might not have the capability. So we know, you and I, that cultural intelligence is a capability and we need to build those skills before people are going to be able to work well. Not many people intuitively work well with people who are different to them. And so it, it is a skillset that is built and it's built over time and it's built with some knowledge, but it's also built with, working things out through, through the whole process of getting sorted about. Our drive, our energy, getting the knowledge we need, being able to think about people in a different way, and then being able to change behavior. And that is the CQ model, and that's what those people at all levels. Management, supervisor, and I think the team too. So the team itself, how you welcome somebody, how you adapt to having people, especially if you have been more homogenous. And then suddenly, because we know how a team can quickly create the insiders and the outsider, and that is not a productive workplace when you've got that sort of tensions operating.

Greg: 25:18

And I think even at an interview level. If you think about a, even if you're interviewing in New Zealand or in Australia, and it's somebody who's not, who's a migrant or whatever and they come in for an interview and and the process that would typically be used may well be extremely daunting, may well be lacking in respect or acknowledgement or any of those things. Yeah. So I think trying to, I think it's on the, and this is another piece of, I guess research or who, who has to give way or who has to adapt to the needs of the other person. And typically the answer needs to be. The person with the most perceived power. Actual, or even actual power, depends on the situation. But if you've got the most power then you know, it's your responsibility to adapt to how the other person is best suited to being treated and that power dynamic I guess could change depending on which room you're in and you go from an interview into another room and all of a sudden you've lost all that power because there's somebody that's got more. So yeah. And I think, you talked before about trust. How does trust get built? And it's not built by the boss being a bit shouty at you because they don't understand what you are saying or any of those sorts of things.

Trisha: 26:38

That's right. Trust is built when you have the conversations and when you get to know somebody and when you are, as I think about the CQ drive, when you are leaning into somebody and positive about them not looking at them as if they're a problem or as if you need to, straighten them up so that they can be just like all the others. So yeah, trust is growen and it can take some time. Yeah.

Greg: 27:05

And so you've got this wonderful podcast called The Shift and you've had some wonderful guests on there and a few just on off the top of my head that, that spring to mind, Sarah Black Grace Boker-Mungkaje and Rick Petry, I think a lot about the Rick Petry story'cause it really resonated, I suppose with me. So Rick is working to help shift the CQ perspectives of his sector, which is the legal profession. And to steal your line, my quest is to to do the same for the safety profession as Rick is doing with the legal profession. And in talking about his profession and I guess the emergence of the need to be more culturally aware. Rick said, and I'm quoting from podcast,"we need to come to grips with a new reality and if you're going to have a sustainable career, this stuff is not an option, it's a mandatory part of it. If you don't take on that shift, you're gonna be outta business" and I guess what he's talking about there is people that run their own businesses really need to include cultural intelligence as part of their professional development and understanding, and so I guess with that in mind, and I think our listeners would be really keen for you to provide some takeaways and there's already been plenty, but any specific things a couple of things that safety people could do, thinking maybe about metacognition but enhance their own cq.

Trisha: 28:31

One of the things that struck me when Rick was speaking was how the very training that lawyers have. Sets them up to be combative. And it's just the way that lawyers are trained and therefore it's the way they succeed. But it's not the way that you build really good relationships with people who are different to you. And I. Also on my podcast I have Greg Dearsly, who has spoken about the training and the work that safety professionals do. And as you alluded before the focus of the industry is very much on creating almost the guardrails, I said the words, but it's around the processes and the structures that will keep people safe because you're dealing with real lives here. You, it's not businesses that are at risk, it's people's lives. And so if the training is to do that, and I agree, it needs to be, and that's what Rick was saying too, the training for the lawyers need to be because of where they're heading. And at the same time, we need to help them to see that if they're going to do that with a diverse population, with people who are different generations, people who are different races, people who are different ethnic groups, there needs to be a different focus. So there needs to be a shift away from. The processes and structures to thinking about how can we include these people in our work and how can we help them work perhaps within the processes and structures, recognizing that they might be coming to it with different ways of thinking. And so it's not necessarily saying you have to destroy your profession and what you do well, but it's how can you as individuals be open to doing things differently to support people who might be thinking completely differently to the way that traditional education has prepared you? In the same way that my traditional psychology education prepared me from a Western perspective.

Greg: 30:36

Yeah. Yeah. And that sort of discussion leads quite nicely because it's I guess it's talking about people like you and Rick and me and Sarah and Grace and however many others we don't know. But taking the CQ academic content and applying it in a practical way in our yeah. Sort of niche areas, and that is the goal or one of the goals of the CQ fellows. Program. Which you were an inaugural participant in. Yes. And with Dave Livermore. How was that? What was that two years ago?

Trisha: 31:19

So it was 2023. Yeah. 23. Yeah. Yeah.

Greg: 31:26

How was that experience for you being one of the first people on the on the program, I suspect you might have had some influence in how it was run.

Trisha: 31:38

Maybe. I think it, it was wonderful and the sense of collegiality with people from different places around the world working together, seeing similar problems in some ways, but very different in other ways. But I guess all of us wanting to work together to do better. So to bring our own whether it was our profession or our situations, and to say we can do this better, so let's bring cultural intelligence to it and let's see how we can apply it. And yeah, for me, as I was thinking about all those coaching situations that I'd been in with people, I wanted to have more structure around the thinking around how do I help people to think differently. How do I help them to shift their thinking? And so that's what led me to create the podcast, to help people unpack their thinking and see what we can learn from it. My process is nowhere near finished. I think it will be ongoing in many ways and I'm trying this season to bring more resources and processes out of it that people can apply very clearly. So hopefully that will be an outcome. I think the process of the CQ Fellows, because the the collegiality continues. And so now I have people around the world that I can reach out to and ask for help. I have people around the world that can support me in what I'm doing, and that is wonderful because you can't do cultural intelligence just with people who think like you. So you need to be knocked and challenged and have people think differently to you. So it's been wonderful. I have really benefited from the process and it continues, it hasn't stopped.

Greg: 33:33

I guess to that last point from my perspective, I've been speaking to mainly people in New Zealand, a couple of Australians and the honor of interviewing Catherine Wu in Singapore, but it's been, quite, quite a close knit group of people in terms of geography. But of course, I recent, my last episode I was interviewing Emma Jordaan in Dubai. Yeah. I've got a, I've got something booked in for an interview with somebody in New York and somebody in the UK and yeah your world just opens up to all of those opportunities and access to people who have got similar and different views and perspectives and experiences and I agree. It's just been a great experience. What are we five months in? And you just, yeah the monthly catch ups, you just look forward to those and hearing what everybody's been up to and their challenges and their BHAGs. They're big, hairy, audacious goals and jeepers, some of them are pretty big and hairy and audacious. So yeah, no it's a really a great product. Hey with, that's that's been really cool conversation. Nice to catch up again. You've just been on holiday, so you're ready to get back into it and and hit the ground running as they say. Yes indeed. Look forward to catching up again soon. And and yeah, just thanks for putting some time aside to come and have a chat.

Trisha: 34:55

Thanks so much Greg Kia ora ngā mihi and keep in touch.

Greg: 35:03

What a great honor to speak with Tricia, a real early adopter of cq. Our conversation explored the pivotal moments that shaped Tricia's career, including her early insights into organizational dysfunction, Her transformative experiences living in China and her work helped helping individuals and organizations build cultural intelligence. We discussed the real world applications of CQ and workplace safety, leadership and organizational effectiveness, highlighting how metacognition and awareness of cultural dynamics can help professionals navigate complex multicultural environments more effectively. Here are some of my key takeaways. First, we need to be shifting away from assumption to awareness. Trisha shared how living in China revealed the limits of her Western centric organizational psychology training sparking her journey into cultural intelligence. We learned that we need to recognize that our existing frameworks may not apply universally. Building CQ starts with acknowledging and addressing those blind spots. My second takeaway, the power of metacognition and cultural strategy. Trisha emphasizes the importance of helping people reflect on their thought processes or metacognition, especially in navigating cultural differences consciously rather than reactively. The lesson here is that leaders can improve cross-cultural interactions by teaching teams to pause, reflect, and plan their communication strategies rather than relying on instinct alone. Third, we learned about navigating power, distance, and voice in diverse workplaces. The discussion highlighted how employees from high power distance cultures often struggle to speak up in flatter low power distance environments like Australia or New Zealand. What's the learning, organizations should create psychologically safe spaces where contributions from all team members are expected, valued and supported helping them build the confidence to participate fully. My fourth takeaway, bridging cultural dynamics and safety leadership. In this episode we explored how safety protocols often clash with cultural expectations such as the assumptions that leaders will ensure safety on behalf of the team. The learning here, safety professionals must balance procedural compliance with cultural sensitivity by adapting their communication and leadership styles to different cultural mindsets. Finally, we talked about moving from diversity statements to cultural intelligence action. While organizations often promote diversity publicly, true impact happens when cultural intelligence is developed at every level from executives to frontline supervisors. Our final lesson, it's not enough to tick the diversity box. Building an inclusive culture requires investing in CQ capabilities across all levels of the organization, ensuring everyday behaviors match the stated values. The discussion with Trisha unpacks how recognizing blind spots, practicing metacognition, navigating power dynamics, blending safety with cultural sensitivity, and turning diversity talk into daily action can transform how professionals thrive in multicultural environments. 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..