The CQSP S2E10 Work as Family, Safety as Learning: Cultural Intelligence in Action” with Moni Hogg

What a pleasure to speak with Moni, the conversation wasn't just about safety—it was about systems, culture, and the courage to do things differently. My key findings and lessons from this discussion include:

1. Work is Adaptive, and not Just about Compliance
   Moni shared how early career experiences taught her that safety of work isn't about ticking boxes, it’s about understanding the real-time complexity of work.
   → Lesson: If you want to improve safety, start by understanding how work actually happens, not just how it's written in procedures.
2. Learning Teams Unlock Real Performance
   Moni’s work with learning teams has shown that collaboration leads to better decisions, stronger controls, and more engaged teams.
   → Lesson: Safety professionals must become facilitators of learning, not enforcers of rules.
3. Cultural Intelligence Builds Real Trust
   In projects like the one with Pacific seasonal workers, Moni highlighted that meaningful engagement starts with cultural respect and humility.
   → Lesson: To truly engage people, you need to first understand—and value—their worldview, not just impose your own.
4. Power Means Responsibility to Adapt
   Moni emphasized that those in leadership or facilitation roles must recognize their influence and adapt to others—not the other way around.
   → Lesson: If you hold power—perceived or real—it’s your responsibility to create space for others, especially in multicultural settings.
5. Safety I and Safety II Are Not Opposites
   Using a powerful analogy, Moni likened Safety I and Safety II to Russian dolls—each layer adding value, not replacing the one before it.
   → Lesson: Don’t wait to “perfect” Safety I before trying new approaches—Safety II is not a replacement; it’s an evolution.

Moni's message is a challenge and an invitation: to stop chasing perfection, and instead start learning—alongside your teams, within your systems, and across your cultures. If we want safer, smarter, and more connected workplaces, this is the path forward.

For more of Moni's work see her book Discovering the New Vioew of Safety Using Learning Teams and the Horticulture NZ Case study using Learning Teams at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNmO_3nE4TQ

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 So this episode, we catch up with Moni Hogg, who is a senior health and safety specialist with over 20 years of experience, including roles at Fletcher Building and Rocket Lab. She specializes in the safety two approach and has spent a decade pioneering its methods in New Zealand. Moni has worked across various industries, delivering training and consulting in sectors like construction, agriculture, healthcare, manufacturing, energy and infrastructure. She's recognized for her leadership in the Safety two space, partnering with experts in Australia and regularly being featured in industry events, awards, and publications. Just quietly, I think Mon has also got a love for going fast, given that she's got a bit of an association with women in Motorsport, but that's probably a discussion for another episode. So kia ora Moni, great to have you on the show.

Moni: 2:10

Talofa Greg, it's fantastic to join you.

Greg: 2:14

So let's get straight into it before I get distracted about Motorsport,'cause that's quite easy for me to jump into discussions about Motorsport. You've been in the health and safety world for a couple of decades. So when you look back. What are some of the key moments or influences that have shifted your thinking towards the new view approach to safety that you spend a lot of time in?

Moni: 2:40

Oh, thanks Greg. Yeah, that's a fantastic question. I think everyone enjoys reflecting back on their career and the moments that kind of made the journey, and probably two key. Memories stick out for me. One is that as a young woman in the late nineties I worked with our tier one construction and infrastructure conglomerate, Fletcher Building, and I was part of a cadet kind of scheme and got the opportunity to work out in the housing subdivisions and in the operations teams as an entry level construction supervisor. Which at that time was quite groundbreaking and drew a lot of attention. I'll admit, and I was able to jump in and exercise a different set of skills in terms of building relationships with tradespeople and construction teams and suppliers and so on to optimize construction and it was a success and, I think looking back, it, it really informed my understanding of several things that are intrinsically important to safety two, which is to understand the messy reality of work. The fact that, there's variability in work every day and it's the expertise and the, I would say, brilliance of teams that actually makes challenging and complex work environments work in any given day, and, to succeed in those environments, we all have to jump in and work together and perform together. And I think that really set me up for later on down the track when I, originally heard Sydney Decker, who came to New Zealand and shared some of the research and the thinking that was going on in his mind at that time. When I heard all of that, I knew that actually what he was talking about reflected the reality of how work teams get things done and. So coming to the second memory that really built the last 10 years in which I've been involved in helping lead the safety two thinking in New Zealand is literally a decade ago, 2015, when I first heard Sydney, I thought heck let's jump in and trial some of these ideas out. And so you talk about my background in motor sport, I was racing in motor sport at that time. And you have to have courage to jump in that proposition sometimes as a female and back yourself and take that risk. And back in those days, I did take several risks to, to try out the ideas and they were successful every time. And I was able to, have the support from work teams and management teams who could see the potential in safety two. And as Greg here in New Zealand, since then we've been very successful with it.

Greg: 5:26

Absolutely what? Cool, cool. Sort of couple of reflections, and I guess if we fast forward to now you're a recent author, Published author and your book, discovering the New View of Safety talks about using learning teams to really unpack work has done. And I guess not just as it's imagined, as the sort of the saying goes. What surprised you most when teams are given that space to learn and reflect as a collective?

Moni: 5:59

Yeah I do a lot of learning teams and I teach learning teams, as you're aware, Greg, and we've had a really high level of adoption of the learning teams methodology, which was originally coined by Todd Conklin, and then very well supported by Sydney Decker and the whole Australasian safety differently community. I actually think it's a stepping stone. I've got a second book as well that I'm over halfway through now, which talks about the development from learning teams through to co-design with your teams through to eventually, where I believe we are heading in the future is to self-managing teams, which is something I've, I have trialed already and I think, we start out with learning teams, which are very reflective, and it's really about learning with the teams, collaborating with them on the solutions, and being able to really understand how I guess teams are actually performing.'cause currently I think that performance is masking some of the system vulnerabilities that we have in our organizations today. And how that performance could actually support critical control effectiveness rather than the lens of the faulty worker and what we need to do to con control that faulty worker in order to gain compliance. So I guess it's coming, right? Even back to, my, my younger years in the construction out in the field in construction. The fact is what we are trying to do with those learning teams is support those teams to become more high performing. And as we call it in New Zealand, it's a term that was coined. By our regulator, WorkSafe New Zealand, how to enable better work with our teams.

Greg: 7:46

Yeah. Just as a sideline, how was the process of writing a book? As you might know, I'm I'm about to dive into that process myself, about a month in. How was it for you?

Moni: 7:59

Ah, Greg. Yeah, go for it. I would really encourage it. Probably been one of the more one a highlight I guess for me with my journey. There was a fair few 4:00 AM mornings for me and working on the book during long weekends and holidays. So they tell you that it's a grueling process and it is however, if you carry on through it and keep marching towards your final goal once it's out there. It's just been a fantastic experience for me anyway. And. I think actually the writing of the book in itself is a journey because it's actually you reflect on everything that you've done. You really spend some time thinking about what would help and support others with those reflections. And then to put it out there and share it with others and have that good response to that is, wonder, a wonderful experience, I have to say. So I highly encourage you, Greg, and anyone out there who's keen to share their experiences. These days you can self-publish and with social media, you can get it out there. And there's a lot of supportive platforms to, to get the word out about what you've shared with others. And yeah, I highly encourage it.

Greg: 9:07

Yep. Cool. Yeah as I say, it's it's month one. There's been some pretty pretty tough targets that have been set by the person that's mentoring, leading, guiding me through the process. So we will see how that goes. And maybe by, I don't know, early next year. We might have something on the virtual shelf. So looking forward to that. Hey, in the safety space, we often talk and we're in some ways required to talk about worker engagement and worker participation. You've been on some projects and one in particular which, you did with Hort NZ I think it was, where those engagement pieces crossed a whole bunch of cultural lines. So what did you learn during that process around cultural intelligence and how it can meaningfully shape those aspects of participation that we really need when we're dealing with a multicultural group of people?

Moni: 10:09

Yeah. Thanks for asking about that project, Greg. And we spent probably around a year for the main part of the project. It was a pilot essentially in our horticulture industry here in New Zealand, and it was, as you've mentioned, supported by Horticulture New Zealand, who are the professional body that represent the growers and the owners within the industry, and they were able to secure funding from a ACC, so in New Zealand, that's the Accident Compensation Corporation, which is a essentially a state run work compensation scheme. So it, it was part of the injury prevention funding that they provide to initiatives that pass the criteria about whether it would potentially reduce injuries. And what we did is we wanted to combine a cultural competency lens with. The theory of safety two, and particularly learning teams since that's the methodology that's currently being used and we're building beyond it. That's been well accepted here in New Zealand as mentioned. And we really looked into, at the beginning who were the key workers in the horticulture industry. And people may not be aware, but we are very close to the Pacific Islands here in New Zealand and really. They're part of our wider community and our extended family, everybody that comes from the Pacific Islands, and they often migrate here to New Zealand for work, or they come specifically to the horticulture industry in what's called an RSE scheme, which brings in seasonal workers to support those seasonal industries. So we have workers predominantly from Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga, who come from their villages in the islands and perhaps spend three to six months in New Zealand in the busy parts of those seasons. So we wanted to really look at how we could, as you've mentioned there, engage with those work teams using cultural competency and safety, two ideas, and see if we could find some new ways to to really get that participation going, Greg? Yeah.

Greg: 12:28

And I think there's a video, isn't there? There's a YouTube clip about the, about, with some key sort of parts of that process that you went through, which I think we can probably share in the and when we issue this this podcast and put a link into that so people can, and have a look at that. How did you find it dealing with those Pacifica workers? I've just. Spent a few days in Fiji presenting at a conference. We know that a Pacific group of of people are very hierarchical in terms of how they think, they're a collectivist sort of culture. And and there's probably a very high power distance with many of them. How did you. Engage with them, how effective was your engagement and did it take a lot to maybe change your normal mode to be able to connect and get trust for them to be able to say their bit?

Moni: 13:26

Yeah. Great questions. And those were the challenges that we were expecting when we went into the project and what we did we, we actually ran three trials at three different. Horticulture organizations across the country to test it out and then, and get some results from it, which we have shared. In that video that you mentioned, Greg we had a professionally filmed and produced video to, to share the findings from both the participants and the learning teams from the islands plus operational management plus senior leadership to get their response. And they did talk about, how much it did build trust and built relationship with those work teams. So coming back to your question there about, how we actually pulled that off and created success from it. The, there was probably several key steps, and by all means, Greg, jump in if you want me to elaborate on any one of them. But the first one was that we wanted the project to be designed with a team of Pacific experts. So we gathered people from our ministry of Pacific Peoples from our Pacific team with our regulator, with WorkSafe, New Zealand, and we brought in some other subject matter experts from the Pacific Community Plus we in our, government we have a couple of services that are available and we have what's called Pacific Liaison Officers who are people that can jump in, who come from the islands and can interpret I guess the values and that lens and provide translation services. So we designed the project with them. I was the key facilitator and I have been involved in pacific Projects in the past. So I did have a little bit of prior knowledge, but I'll be honest Greg, and, as a New Zealander, a Kiwi, as we're called here with New Zealand European heritage, there's always a journey to go on to learn yourself. And I, I would, might be considered a safety two expert, but of course we all have to learn, I think. And stepping into another person's shoes is, can come with really fantastic intention, but you do have that opportunity to learn about another person's culture. So what we did is we engaged that Pacifica expertise in how to create cultural safety and the starting point there was to get the management team together who were sponsoring the learning teams and put them through a ministry, Pacific People's Cultural Competency session to really understand those cultural values that you talk about there. The, how they look upon a hierarchy and authority, what that collectivism means for them, and quite specifically how they like to interrelate in the working environment and the lens that they have on how they work together and how they work with perhaps, their bosses in New Zealand and we put together a roadmap of how we thought it could work and trialed that out and, learnt as we went. Greg, yeah, I could carry on, but perhaps you want to, you might wanna draw on some aspects of that I could elaborate on further.

Greg: 16:35

Yeah. It's interesting in the cultural intelligence space around research as a, piece of research that's been released recently. That sort of asks the question of whose responsibility is it to adapt? The way that they are when you're in a multicultural, environment the white European could say why don't they come around to my way of being and acting, they're in my country which is, somewhat a little bit aggressive and possibly racist. But I, I guess the research is saying that it's the person with the most either perceived or actual power that has the responsibility to adapt their behavior to, the other person. And that and that perceived power could change depending on which room you're in, and who you are with in that room. It could change as I say, depending on the others. So do you think that you felt. That you were perceived as the one with power and the one that should be that the others should almost do what they're told and follow your lead. That if, and if you hadn't jumped in, maybe that, might not have had quite the same outcomes that you ended up with.

Moni: 17:48

Yeah, those are great questions and I don't think there's a simple answer to that from my perspective and I think it depends on context, which I think you've alluded to and I guess I would suggest that those are things to be very mindful of when you are facilitating or leading a safety two style project, because how we would construct power in our own minds based on what the objectives are that we expect. Teams to deliver and the output that we expect in terms of production and the ways in which we expect people to work together, whereas it, one of the things that I learned is it became apparent to me that the Pacific Work teams put a sense of family before a sense of work. And I think that is, like you mentioned before, that kind of the perhaps indigenous worldview versus the kind of western worldview the collectivism versus the individualism. And one of the insights that I had, and just putting it plainly, is that the work teams talked to me about the fact that. In their culture, work is an extension of family. So when they come to New Zealand for the seasonal work, they adopt us as family when they're working with us because that's a value that they have. And sure, they might be away from home and so therefore they very much respect that, they're being treated as guests and appreciate that and so on and so forth. But their warmth and kindness and general rapport that they tend to establish with the work teams that they're working with in New Zealand does reflect that you become an extension of their family when you're working with them. Now, I think when what you're talking to that you mentioned before around those power structures, and we did talk to this in the, during the trials, is that New Zealand obviously was we had Maori who have been here in New Zealand for about, roughly about a thousand years. I quote you don't quote me on that, but somewhere in that vicinity. And then in the last couple of hundred years we've had, European immigrants who've set up and become, as you mentioned, essentially the dominant culture. The fact is that. What that's meant is that we've ended up over time becoming more corporatized in how we run work and how do you fit those family values into that, those sort of corporatized type systems. And they were some of the questions that came out during the process which we left organization's with, and we've certainly had the feedback a year down the track that they really changed the way that they worked with their teams as a result of kind of understanding those essential value differences and have been able to shift into looking at performance more from a win-win perspective, which has been enabled by that safety two framing, which looks at how do we, how are people already creating success with the work and how do we strengthen that as opposed to looking at those deficiencies? So that really was the reason why it was successful, just because it was an eye-opener for all of us to learn together about that. Greg.

Greg: 21:05

Nice. That's some wonderful insights into that that project. I want to, go back to safety two a little bit, and we see all the arguments on social media about safety one, safety two, safety 3, 4, 5, and six. And so do you think that those traditional sort of models of safety still have a role to play? Or are they becoming maybe a barrier? Rather, and that something that we need to bridge in modern workplaces. Is safety two, the be all and end all, or is there a combination? How do you see it?

Moni: 21:43

You're asking me that, Greg, you know what my answer's going to be on that one? No. They I make the analogy of it's like Russian dolls. You have the core, the initial Russian doll, which would be like safety one, and then you'd have a, an outer Russian doll, which would be safety two. And if you go for more of that it could be that adding the cultural lenses safety three, the third way. But they all work together. They're all nested within each other, and we certainly couldn't have. Safety two, without the success that we've had with what we've come to know and what symbolizes, safety One, which tends to be more around a real focus on critical risks and making sure that we've got really good critical controls in there, and really good control supports, the, along the lines of good training and support for competency and good work procedures and so on. So I think safety two really is an evolution beyond safety one that's not an and or, and I think I often hear. People feel as though they need to get their supposed safety one in order before they start on safety two. But I would suggest that the safety two methodology achieves the same outcome and objective just with a different method. And both are important in our modern day workforce is especially Greg these days where we've got, perhaps. I'm a Gen X, so I can label myself like that, the sort of Gen y millennial and Gen Z type workers coming up through in our workplaces with more and more decision making power and so on, that they tend towards those more collaborative, mutually supportive types of ways of working together and there really is that desire and that demand for us to shift into, to this type of lens. It's a journey that we're all on together and we're all learning together, which has been so exciting in the last 10 years, certainly here in New Zealand. And I'd suggest, you mentioned the safety 3, 4, 5, and six, that we still have a wee way to go with it. I think the more that we work out how to achieve that resilience, that building of capacity and resilience within our teams using more and more adaptive approaches. I think we're gonna be really heading into to good territory. Certainly I'm working more on methodology around how to co-design with your teams, co-design, control solutions, and how to measure resilience with those and beyond that to look in, look further towards the ideas that come through with the self-managing teams literature, which is around peer to peer accountability rather than that top down accountability and looking at how you can enable your work teams to come up with solutions, not just co-design them with you, but actually come up with their own solutions. And then business case for the capital expenditure that's needed to, create those improvements. So really drive, driving off the trust that we've been building through the learning teams approach through, into actual ownership by the teams. And I think that's why this important conversation that you are hosting, Greg, across lots of different organizations that you talk to and people you engage with. I think, that cultural competency is so relevant because in order to get to that sort of that ownership level, we really need to understand our differences and make sure we work together as effectively as possible.

Greg: 25:07

Yeah. Nice. And I guess just building on that a little bit more, your experiences with other safety professionals that you connect with, you work with and what sort of shifts have you seen when. You start to observe that they have started looking at things through the lens of complexity and learning and human performance rather than just that compliance lens, which arguably is a safety one thing. How have you seen any good examples of the aha moments that a few safety professionals have come across in their own work?

Moni: 25:42

Yeah, absolutely. I get the privilege of working alongside lots of different people in New Zealand and probably being part of the tribe that we've become down under here. Hey, Greg. And there's some fantastic work. I think we're in a privileged position where I would I would say a good 50% of organizations have formally adopted either safety two or some methodology that, that is safety two based. We are seeing phenomenal results across our organizations with that. But then the ones that have really gone on ahead and really jumped in and taken it very seriously, report the fact that, they have much more collaborative work teams. They have generally a sense of morale and also in addition, it's is that kind of improves business performance. Like one organization that I worked with quite closely, and they actually won the industry award for the contemporary use of contemporary theory. At the beginning of the journey, the work teams were feeling a little bit demoralized because they had some approaches where when there was human error, they were getting blamed. It was what we'd been teaching for some time with safety management. So the organization didn't really care about their teams and wanted to be doing the right thing. But that was how it was playing out. But, a year later was taking safety too, really quite seriously. The work teams were telling me that their their organization was the best to work for in the industry. And they had really quite a significant transformation. I actually got a hug from the director of the organization, the owner and director of the organization for the part, that small part that I played in it.'Cause I can't take any credit. It's really the work, the incredible work teams, who are out there doing the work, what we call mahi here in New Zealand. Day in and day out that, take the credit for that. But I think we are seeing that safety too can literally transform organizations and that's the challenge for all of us. And you mentioned, for safety professionals, I think it's a bit of a hero's journey. Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey where you really need to understand that to go out into your organization and to teach, teach your work teams, your management and leadership, and even your governance, how to interpret, what contemporary theory is saying around understanding complexity in our workforces means, you're really taking'em on a change management journey. And I think that you might get a little bit of resistance at the beginning, but it, because of the authenticity that sits in with the safety two approach people do jump into it pretty quickly. You've just got that kind of, that gap to get through where you are trying to figure it out and understand it yourself and trying to mentor your organization with it while you're still trialing it out and learning, but that the results are absolutely worth it. Greg, and I'm sure you've seen those sorts of results yourself too.

Greg: 28:32

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Some great reflections there. And I guess we then move into if somebody's listening to this that is maybe new to their health and safety journey or looking for something else to try and create some improvement in their own organization. Given the theme of the podcaster, the question is aimed around what's your advice around strengthening your own cultural intelligence? Cultural competency? Yes. They're different things. But, changing your mindset is there one thing or a couple of things that people could do to either change their mindset? Or some practical steps to that they could start today. And I guess one of them is gonna be read your book, Discovering the New View of Safety. So you can't use that one'cause I've used it. What else you got?

Moni: 29:27

Oh. Oh, thanks Greg. Yeah just as I'll treat that as a two part question. The first one, and I say this to a lot of the teams that I work with in New Zealand, I deliver a lot of training and workshops and events and so on across the country. You mentioned my Motorsport background. Look, I, I'd done most of the education that built my knowledge around what we might call safety one, but when I was transitioning into. These new view approaches. I was studying the likes of sports psychology, neuroscience even quantum physics. And, a lot of those types of methods which we don't traditionally teach in the safety world, ask us to shift our focus and to shift our focus onto what creates success. So essentially, a lot of the theory has been adopted from many different fields, and I think reading widely and learning from those other fields really enhances your ability to look holistically at organizations and what creates performance in organizations and wellness and safety to go with it. You've really build that broad base that enables you to mentor your teams. I think essentially when you jump into the safety two approach, you become a performance coach and I think it's important to, to learn those performance coaching skills.'cause you're asking them to, to perform in imperfect systems and to build, strengthen the systems to support that performance. But in terms of the educate, your education development around I look at that from a perspective of cultural competency. Personally I did go on a journey of, understanding other cultures by, in New Zealand we are very fortunate we have around about 45% of our population nowadays is either from, is either Maori, the original indigenous people that were here, Nearly 20% of the population plus Pacific Asian and Indian cultures. And, I spend personal time getting to know their cultures, perhaps visiting their countries, perhaps attending marae or churches where, that are predominantly from those cultures and understanding their lens. And then I spent a bit of time really working out how to connect with people. And I've always found personally that doing things like learning to speak a little bit in their languages, at the very least, learning how to greet people in, in their home language playing music or wearing clothing that might be from their culture and really seeking to, build what we call in Pacific, the Pacific culture is va, which is a space of mutual respect and support and, that humility, which Pacific people value so much in terms of I come to learn and appreciate who you are in these spaces and, want to work together collaboratively with you. I think there's a journey for even reading literature or going to cultural events and so on and so forth, to, to build that cultural competency yourself and to step into that.

Greg: 32:34

Yep. Yep. No, absolutely all agree with all of those things, as you say, reading or, we don't have any shortage of cultural events that you can go and experience. I went to the, I can't remember the name of it. The there was an Indian cultural event recently with, with paint powder that you throw up in the air and get covered in paint in your nice white t-shirt. And just seeing the ways that those types of events occur and what's important to those people. And I think, why wouldn't you do that? Because on Monday you're gonna go to work and you're gonna be engaging with people from those cultures you can't help it almost because that's just the makeup of New Zealand and our workplaces and I think would be pretty challenged to try and find ho homogenous workplace. In fact, I suggest that possibly doesn't exist. And so why wouldn't we want to go and try and understand some of the ones that we interact with the most? And we're not sitting here saying, we've gotta know everything about every different culture.'cause that's clearly impossible. But as you say, if you know how to greet somebody or use some part of a different language that's important to the people that you connect with on a regular basis, I think that's that's really important. So we we've come to the end. Is there anything else that you wanna, any final nuggets that you wanna add in terms of some of the stuff that you are doing, that you're interested in, that you want to do? As we wrap up?

Moni: 34:05

Yeah, I think probably my parting thought Greg would be that, hey, look if perhaps you are, you might be New Zealand based listening in, or you might be in one of the wonderful countries around, around the globe. And I. As New Zealanders, we tend to travel quite a lot. So I personally spent four years traveling the world and only got to see a small part of the wonderful planet in which we're part of. And I think we've got so much to learn together and in these kind of, dare I say, challenging times with the polarization that that kind of seems to be coloring a lot of how things are evolving at this time. I think it's really important more than ever to really connect with, anyone that might have a different lens or a worldview than you. And we might not always agree on everything or we, it's really about accepting and appreciating our differences and learning from each other. And I think that's part of kind of the journey we're all on as a globally connected community these days to, to really. To really embrace that and I think it's very important for our workplaces and, safety leads. It's a journey that we're all on in terms of how we support our organizations and the fantastic teams that we are part of. I've. In Maori language, we would say, I mihi you, Greg, which is, I acknowledge you for the wonderful work that you do in holding the space for this narrative, both in New Zealand and abroad. And I would encourage anyone listening too, that we've done really well with safety two, down here in New Zealand as a smaller country with 5 million people, we and our safety community is very well connected and we all know each other, don't we, Greg? We've done a lot and I'd really encourage anyone to seek reach out to us and find out more about what we are doing. We've done a prominent member of our community, Craig Marriott has published or supported the Institute of Directors to publish guidance material that is basically is riddled with the safety two language and basically encourages people to, to adopt the new lens. Our regulator actively supports safety two and has in fact had safety two based roles in teams. They're supporting everyone. And on top of that, we've, even in more recent times, we've had. Case law in our courts that are using that safety two language that you mentioned earlier, Greg, with the workers has done versus work as Imagined. Hey, we're making great guns here, doing really well. So get in touch with us. We're friendly, Kiwis happy to share our learnings and we'd love to do that. Do connect with all of us. Yeah. We are more than happy to share what we've learned and help support others. That's been my thought. Yeah.

Greg: 36:44

Yeah. No. Awesome. So I thanks so much for your time, money. We'll when we get the transcript for this, we'll put obviously connection to your LinkedIn profile so people can do that and connect with you. We'll put a link to the book. What's it called?

Moni: 36:59

Ah Discovering the New View of Safety Using Learning Teams? The next one is the Evolving, the New View of Safety using Self-Directed Teams. So that will include more of the co-design, the self-managing teams. So if you want to be in the loop when that comes out yeah, get in touch. Thanks Greg

Greg: 37:15

You've you've heard it here first on The Culturally Intelligent, Safety Professional, the title of Moni's new book. And we'll also put a link up to the YouTube video in terms of the project that was done for Hort New Zealand with a Pacifica lens on it. So once again, Moni, thanks so much for your time. Really enjoyed the chat and all the best.

Moni: 37:35

Thanks, Greg. It's been a pleasure.

Greg: 37:40

What a pleasure to speak with Moni. The conversation wasn't just about safety. It was about systems, culture, and the courage to do things differently. My key findings and lessons from this discussion include Work being adaptive and not just about compliance. Moni shared how early career experiences taught her that safety of work isn't about ticking boxes, it's about understanding the real time complexity of work. If you wanna improve safety, start by understanding how work actually happens, not just how it's written in procedures. Learning teams unlock real performance. Moni's work with learning teams has shown that collaboration leads to better decisions, stronger controls, and more engaged teams. Safety professionals must become facilitators of learning, not enforcers of rules. Cultural intelligence builds real trust and projects like the one with Pacific Seasonal workers. Moni highlighted that meaningful engagement starts with cultural respect and humility. To truly engage people, you need to first understand and value their worldview, not just impose your own Power means responsibility to adapt. Moni emphasized that those in leadership and facilitation roles must recognize their influence and adapt to others not the other way around. If you hold power, whether it be perceived or real, it's your responsibility to create space for others, especially in a multicultural setting. And finally, safety one and safety two are not opposites. Using a powerful analogy, Moni lichen safety one and safety two to Russian dolls. Each layer adding value, not replacing the one before it. Don't wait to be perfect in your safety one efforts before trying a new approach. Safety two is not a replacement, it's an evolution. Moni's messages were a challenge and an invitation to stop chasing perfection, and instead start learning alongside your teams, within your systems, and across your cultures. If we want safer, smarter, and more connected workplaces, this is the path forward. 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..