Relationship-Centered Safety Leadership

In this episode, Mary Conquest speaks with Rosa Carrillo, a safety leadership and culture expert who’s also a highly acclaimed author. Her book, ‘The Relationship Factor in Safety Leadership’, is hailed by Edgar Schein as required reading to understand the foundations of "safety culture".

After explaining why she wrote this book, Rosa shares her 8 principles of Relationship-Centered Safety Leadership. Psychological safety underpins everything, and we learn how to achieve ‘true communication’ and why inclusion must precede workplace accountability.

Rosa focuses on the importance and interdependence of innovation, resilience, inclusion, and accountability and discusses how leaders' expectations impact workers’ contributions.

Trust is a constant theme throughout this compassionate discussion, and Rosa explains why this quality will help Safety professionals more than policies.

Rosa also introduces the concept of drift and its implications for safety management before highlighting the importance of continuously checking your beliefs, assumptions and biases.

One of the key messages is everything starts with relationships. Rosa elegantly shows us that relationships influence emotions, feelings, and beliefs - which determine safety decisions and ultimately, culture.

♪ [music] ♪ - [Mary] My name is Mary Conquest. I'm your host for "Safety Labs by Slice," the podcast where we explore the human side of safety to support safety professionals. We move past regulations and reportables to talk about the core skills of safety leadership, empathy, influence, trust, rapport, in other words, the soft skills that help you do the hard stuff.

♪ [music] ♪ Hi there. Welcome to "Safety Labs by Slice." Folks, today we have a well-known author in the world of safety and particularly psychological safety. I have so many questions for her that after a quick introduction, we're going to jump right in.

Rosa Antonio Carrillo is a dedicated champion of promoting safety, well-being, and inclusion in the workplace. She's the author of "The Relationship Factor in Safety Leadership," and is a highly respected thought leader in the world of EHS. Rosa focuses on coaching, teaching, and developing leaders.

Her international experience includes over 25 years in a variety of industries, such as oil and gas, pharmaceutical, nuclear, mining, and more. She also holds a master's of science in organizational development. Rosa is president of Carrillo and Associates, a provider for employee engagement, leadership development, and coaching services for leaders of companies that want to achieve high performance in EHS while delivering business results.

Rosa joins us from Long Beach, California. Welcome.

- Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. It's been a while in the making, but we did it.

- We did it. We got it happening. Okay. So in the meantime, I have had several guests on the show recommend your book, "The Relationship Factor in Safety Leadership." So it obviously resonates with safety professionals. I'm curious, what made you decide to write this book?

- Well, it basically recounts my 25 years of experience. As I've gone through, I collected stories, examples, and I actually have written many articles. And I decided one day it came to me that really the approaches that were successful were based on some very fundamental beliefs about human nature.

And that's when I decided to call it the relationship factor and the eight beliefs of successful leaders. And it's not just in safety, but because my examples were all from safety, I decided to use the title Safety Leadership.

- Okay. So that's what I wanted to start with, the concept of RCL, as you call it, relationship-centered leadership or safety leadership. So, for the audience, if they haven't read the book, can you explain what that concept means?

- Well, it means that if you want to be successful as a manager or a leader, you have to start by developing relationships with people that work with you, because so much of what we say works in organizations, for example, without trust and without open communication, we can't become aware of any potential problems or mistakes.

People are afraid to report near misses. And this has to do with the basic personal relationship between the person with power and the person without power, which leads to the question of psychological safety, right? And it would be hard for me to have psychological safety speaking with you outside of a relationship. And that's just basic in organizations.

Now, you and I are able to have communication through a formal relationship because you have a good reputation, and I trust you, and you trust me because you've read my book, so you have a certain level of confidence what I'm going to be talking about that I know. But without that, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

So, that's where it begins with the relationship. And that is what I noticed about the successful leaders. They know how to listen, they pay attention, and they act on the concerns and recommendations of their employees.

- We've spoken a lot on the show about psychological safety. We've looked at it from, you know, different points of view from different guests. As I was going through your book, there were a couple of questions that caught my eye that I thought were really interesting. So, I just wanted to ask them to you as a way of getting more detail about the concept of psychological safety. So, one of them was, can too much psychological safety stifle growth?

- That was a good one. And it was brought up by one of the leaders that I interviewed for my book. And I was caught a little bit off-guard at first because, of course, without psychological safety, you can't learn. But you can go too far because learning also requires a certain amount of anxiety. And this is really important.

And that is that human beings don't really like to change unless there's a reason for it. And usually, that reason causes a little bit of anxiety, right? From the small things of, you know, why am I going to start eating healthier? Well, because I'm anxious about my health. Otherwise, why should I change the way I eat?

And so, in our organizations, it is the same thing. If people are too comfortable, well, we call it complacency, right? If people are too comfortable, then they really don't have any reason to change. And, in fact, one of the first rules in change management is explain the why, communicate the why, because without that, nothing rolls.

I think that's good because there are probably people out there who think...who sort of dismiss the concept of psychological safety because they do confuse it with setting up an environment where complacency thrives. But you're talking about...it's a little more nuanced than that, right? Yes, you can go too far, but...

- Well, here's my latest insight and my personal experience, because I'm learning all the time as well since I wrote the book. And that is that real psychological safety, productive psychological safety, all right, which is what you want in your organization. You want people to bring up mistakes so everybody can learn from them. You want people to bring up their concerns.

If somebody really disagrees with an idea, you'd like for them to tell you upfront rather than pretend, oh, yeah, I'm all for it, you know, and then ignore the whole thing, which a lot of people tend to do. Silence is not agreement. Silence is not consent. But you can't really have true psychological safety without feedback, without critical feedback, without honest feedback.

So, I was in a meeting recently and I was doing a presentation, and later on, I got the feedback that I had been going over material that everybody was already familiar with. Now, if they had told me that during the presentation, it would've been a much more productive session for everybody, right?

And then we wouldn't have had a lot of angry managers storming around, you know, "Oh, they just wasted our time." And, you know, at one point, I'm going to have that conversation with them, and I'm going to say, you know, what was it about my behavior that prevented you from speaking up?

Because as a leader, you have to take responsibility. If people aren't speaking up, it's not their fault. It's not like, oh, well, you know, they don't have any courage, or they're just lazy. No, it has to do with the way you set up the meeting as a leader. And in that case, I was the expert, and I think experts have the same responsibility.

- The next question that caught my eye is one that I've actually wondered about quite a bit, and that is, does national culture affect psychological safety?

- Okay, well, that's an interesting question because we know that national culture affects organizational culture. I mean, if you tried to bring in your American values into India, you're going to encounter a great deal of resistance. And what makes people in India feel psychologically safe is going to be different than what makes Americans feel psychologically safe.

Well, at least we say we believe in freedom of speech, and we believe in individualism and we want people to take risks and speak up. We say those things and we do our best to live up to them, but we're human beings. But if you go to India and you try to espouse those values, you're going to just generate fear because you're threatening the whole hierarchy, the way of life.

And we have to learn how to meet people where they're at. Instead of always thinking they have to change and adapt, why don't I change and adapt and communicate with people at their level? So before I go in to work with an organization, what I do is I cultivate allies and I tell them, you are my cultural interpreters.

I'm going to be consulting with you, balancing ideas off of you. I'm certainly going to call you if I'm going to if I hit a bump, something I don't understand, some reaction that I don't understand. Because when you walk into a new culture, it's like walking into a room with a bunch of invisible furniture and you're tripping over the couch and you don't even know it was there.

- That's a great explanation. Yes. But then how does this affect countries where there are a lot of immigrants, such as the United States, the UK, Canada, Australia? So, if you're working in an organization where many of your staff may have grown up in a different culture, that's a little trickier, isn't it?

- Well, it is. It is. And a lot of managers are struggling with this because we're getting more and more diversity in our organizations. And in the U.S., even though we talk about the melting pot, and I mean, we accept more immigrants than any other country, we live up, you know, to our values and to our beliefs.

But when it comes down to the reality of it, it's tough. Diversity is very tough. And I get a little concerned about it when people idealize it as if, well, if you accept the philosophy, then you're all set, but you're not.

Because each of us has a lot of unconscious biases, that's just the nature of humanity. It's the nature of culture. These are biases that we do not know we have. So, I always tell when I'm doing my coaching is that the only way to go forward is to ask questions and listen.

Don't assume that you know already and that you understand. And so don't jump the gun and start going in telling somebody, you know, oh, well, you could do it much better this way or that way. Or like when I'm working in Mexico, I can't tell the managers to stop being hierarchical. You know, it doesn't work that way.

It's the culture, and all of the employees relate to their managers in that way. And so we have to figure out how do you get things done in a hierarchical society that does not... There's no flatness like there is in the U.S. in many cases.

- I think maybe even just by asking the questions, you're showing that you're interested and...because you're bound to mess up now and again, right? So, maybe just by asking the questions, people at least know your intention that you're trying. And maybe it'll be a little more forgiving if you do mess up.

- Well, that's your second fallback, the apology. Apologies are amazing, and they just help cut right through any mistrust or animosity. One of the things that people told me in my interviews when I was writing my book of the leaders, they appreciated, you know, "Gosh, I never had a boss before that apologized when they made a mistake."

It's such a simple human gesture. How often do parents apologize to their children? It has the same beneficial effect in a relationship.

- Yeah, agreed. I'd like to get in now to the eight principles that you discussed as the foundation of RCL, and go through them so you can tell us a little bit more of them. For some of them, I have some more specific questions, but I'd like to go through them. So, the first one is true communication takes place in the presence of relationship and trust.

And what I was curious about this was the idea of true communication. How would you define that as opposed to, I don't know, false communication, I guess?

- Communication that is understood, that's true communication. True communication is understood. So, I can be extremely clear in my explanations of the eight principles, but if I don't explain them in a way that you can grasp or understand, then we're not communicating.

And how would I know whether I'm communicating or not? It would be, first, build the relationship because that would allow you to say, that didn't make any sense. Especially when you're talking to a boss or an expert, somebody in a power position, you're very reluctant to say, "I didn't understand."

For one, you're kind of accusing the person of being unclear. It's an unspoken criticism. So, you know, you hesitate to do that. And for the other is, you may not even care whether you understand or not. And that's where the relationship is really important, right?

- That's true. That's true. I hadn't thought of that. Okay. So, the second principle is inclusion precedes accountability. I find this really interesting, I think, because I've never heard it put that way before. So, can you tell us a little bit more about that?

- Sure. It's one of those things I'm gathering stories about. I've interviewed thousands of employees, hundreds of supervisors, managers. I've had a lot of workshops where people have written down their concerns on flip charts and talked a lot about why trust doesn't exist in their organizations.

And so all of that just is kind of in my mind processing it for 25 years. And I'm sitting down writing and I'm thinking, wow, why should anyone take ownership or accountability if they were never asked for their input, never asked for their opinion, and never treated with respect?

Why should I cover your back?

- Yeah, that's interesting because even just the notion of accountability is debated, discussed, redefined within the safety. You know, I think traditionally, people associate it with punishment, really. And you're talking about it in a more, I would argue, modern way of just taking ownership of your behavior. So, yeah, that's interesting.

- Yeah. And also, it's ownership of your behavior, but it's also concern for the whole, for the greater good. Because if I don't do my part the way it's supposed to be done, it's going to impact the team. It's going to impact...I mean, that's what safety's all about. That if one person disregards a safety procedure or policy...not a policy, but a safety procedure, it could end up in a huge disaster.

So, it comes down to individuals holding themselves accountable because the boss is not there to hold you accountable and to direct your every action. And yet people expect others to hold themselves accountable when they are not treated like human beings.

The basics are missing. I'm not respected. I'm not included. Nobody listens. Nobody cares about me. So, I think I'll just form my own group. Maybe I'll form my own little clique, my own little group of people that we trust each other and we work together.

And the drawback to that is that we may not know about some of the greater dangers or some of the greater things that we're up against. And so we're acting in good faith, and then something blows up.

- On that note, like building on that, the next principle is that innovation, resilience, inclusion, and accountability are interdependent.

- And what was your question?

- So, yeah, well, just tell me a little bit more about it. And do you have examples that have that sort of stuck out in your mind as you were going through your career or even writing the book that really made the point to you that these things are interdependent?

- Yes. And I guess even because I wrote the book before psychological safety became really popular, even though it is mentioned in my book because I was already aware of the Google team's research and Amy Edmondson.

And, of course, I've studied Edgar Schein for many years who also talked about the importance of psychological safety for any kind of learning, any kind of change that when you're trying to transform an organization or change of culture as many executives would, you know, embark on these things, if people don't feel...you know, it causes a lot of anxiety.

So, if you don't work on the psychological safety piece first, that anxiety is just resisting all of your efforts. So, if you look at can innovation exist outside of an environment of psychological safety? No.

Because when you are concerned for your survival, or for your reputation, or for what people think of you, or what's going to happen, your mind basically closes off. It's not functioning at its full level. So, innovation is really declined. It's decreased because you're spending more time worrying about that email you got from your boss, you know, telling you that you failed than you are about coming up with new ideas.

So, you have inclusion also for innovation because, well, I'll tell you because it happened to me many times is that there are projects that I felt that I had important information to contribute, but I wasn't invited to the meeting.

I was excluded because...I mean, you get excluded for a lot of reasons. Meeting's too big. You don't have enough tenure. But to tell you the truth, Mary, a lot of times I have felt I was excluded because I was a woman of color and people have preconceived notions about what I can contribute. And many women have said this, that they'll say the same thing a man says in a meeting.

And when the man says it, it's suddenly the best idea since sliced bread, we all know about this. We don't have to go over that, but...

- I've observed that before. Yes.

- Yeah. But see, that's where exclusion really deprives us of innovation, because who knows what that person might have contributed if they'd been invited.

- Yeah. And you're unlikely to push further, right? Like, if you weren't invited to the meeting or you weren't listened at to at the meeting, you're unlikely to want to say, "Hey, I know you didn't hear me, but this is really important." Like, it causes friction, more effort for you to get your idea across.

- Yes. So, it causes a lot of stress for the person who has to speak up. There's another interesting thing about that because I'm finally gotten to a point where I'll say most anything that I feel needs to be said. Took me a long time to get there. However, what I found this is the downside of psychological safety is that it tends to cause a lot of anxiety in the room that I would say certain things.

And so I have to warn managers that everybody's saying, oh, I want psychological safety, but what that means is that people are going to be saying what they really think, what they really feel, and are you prepared for that? Because it may not be what you want to hear. So, do some personal work before you go into advocating psychological safety.

That would be my advice to managers.

- So that actually talks or sets us up well for the next principle, which is people are able and willing to contribute to the success of the enterprise. I've observed this too, but do you have any examples of where essentially just being asked, or even leaders being surprised by how willing their employees are to contribute?

- Well, I have to say that leaders who have employees that are willing to contribute are not surprised because they already believe that that's true. And it does not happen when the leader doesn't believe it.

Those are the expectations. There's been famous experiments that have been replicated many times where the teacher expects certain students to do better than others and those students always do better.

Even in the lab where it originated, there's a really great story of scientists who went in and labeled some of the rats that they had a high IQ, right? And other ones that they were average. And then when he asked the lab assistants to run the intelligence test, guess which rats did the best?

- The ones they could read their labels.

- The ones that had been labeled smart. And the reason that happens is because we treat people differently depending on what we expect from them. So, that's why I said no, leader that has that does not get surprised because that's what they're expecting.

Now, a leader who's never tried it before, which I've met a couple that I've been able to coach and they've tried it. And yeah, they were pleasantly surprised at how much higher the performance was. But I have to say that not many leaders are open to trying it.

So, I hope the new students, I want students to read the books and to be educated in this because they're right now... I was a professor in an MBA program, they never talked about these things. It was all about the bottom line and the spreadsheets and profit.

No classes on motivation or relating or building relationships. And I know that's not true of every MBA class, but that's the predominant curriculum.

- The fifth principle is people speak up to stop an unsafe situation if it is in their interest to do so. So, I'm most curious about that last part, if it is in their interest to do so. Can you tell me about that?

- And let's come back to the relationship piece, because if, first of all, are you going to listen to me and act on what I say? Because if you haven't in the past, I'm just not going to do it again. You didn't invite me to that meeting and I have a lot of information, but now I'm not going to give it to you because you disrespected me and you indicated that you don't value my...it's not in my interest.

Does that resonate?

- It does. I'm actually thinking of a pretty foundational experience I had in a company years ago where employees were asked to speak up and, you know, what can we do to make things more efficient? And we had workshops and people came up with ideas, and a few weeks later, the people who were most vocal were laid off.

That sent a very strong message to the rest of us. I can say I didn't stay at that company much longer.

- That really breaks my heart when I hear stories like that. But it's happened to me as well. And you speak up with the best intention of making the company better, and then you're let go. It's devastating.

- Yeah. They took it as criticism, I guess. One thing that I noticed in the book too is it says, a policy can't make it safe for people to speak up. Do you find that people kind of do that or leaders do that, they think, oh, well, I'll set a policy and tell people it is safe to speak up here and they sort of think, okay, I'm done?

- Yeah. Well, it's traditional. It's traditional. I mean, don't we have...in safety, we have a policy that safety's number one, that we're going to do everything in our power. And then, you know, the plan blows up because the policy doesn't do a thing for anybody. And it's written by a few people.

So, maybe it had a positive impact on the three or four people that wrote it. That's it. Because they had input. Goes back again. You know, I don't own anything. I don't have accountability for things where I have no input, where I'm not included. Unless I really trust you, Mary, and you really believe in it, I'm going to go ahead and believe in it too because I trust you.

And that's where the leader really becomes important because they're influencing people to either trust or distrust because leaders can be positive or negative.

- And policies as well. I would say the policy itself isn't the problem, it's a policy without any backup, without any actions backing up. Yeah. So, the sixth principle is about drift. Drift is a positive quality of adaptive human behavior. So, this really interests me because I haven't heard a lot about this.

Tell me more, first of all, briefly, what is drift and why is it positive? And maybe why does some people not see it as positive?

- Well, drift is basically, it's drift from procedures. So, you're going along and you're working, and after a while, you figure out, well, it's more efficient to do it this way. And so you change. And I noticed this in my work way before I started reading about it that people would really chafe when they were accused of not following procedure because in their eyes, they had improved the process.

You know, I'm not breaking procedure, they would say, I'm just tweaking it a little to make it work better. So, that's why it's positive because that's where innovation comes from. And we love it in everywhere except safety. Safety is frowned upon because these procedures are...what is it saying?

They're based on blood. They've been developed from as a result of fatalities and people losing limbs, et cetera. So, why would you stick your hands into a moving piece of machinery? It just doesn't make any sense.

So, what I wanted to communicate was that drift leads to innovation, as well as it has its downsides, because if you didn't know...you don't know why a certain policy is in place. It could be because there's some other processes you don't know about that are going on at the same time.

A lot of the technology...it's not transparent. It's okay. So you don't know what's going on, you know, on the floor below. So, you ignorantly violate or go against a procedure without realizing that it's connected. And that's what they call the loose coupling and close coupling, right?

Because when they're loosely coupled, you can violate a procedure many, many times without anything happening. And then all of a sudden, you violate it today and you have a disaster because systems came together that were loose, became tightly coupled.

- So, drift is on an individual level, could be positive, could be negative, but it's inevitable.

- It's inevitable but...

- Does that sound right?

- ...we are adaptive creatures. We are adaptive creatures. And that is how we survive. Now and then, we adapt in the wrong direction, and we have global warming and, you know, possible extinction of humanity. Now we have the possibility of correcting, adapting to using energy in a different way. So adaptability goes, it's not good or bad, depends on how you're using it, but it is part of human nature.

And if you start punishing it, you're sending the wrong message. You're just putting underground the activity so that people don't report to you, and say, "Hey, I tried out this new procedure and it really works better."

- Okay. So, the seventh principle is our prejudgments and biases can prevent us from finding the truth in what we see and hear. So, yeah, I'm just going to throw that out as is and ask you to tell us a bit more and dive a little deeper into that.

- Well, it's about bias that we see what we call reality is really influenced by our beliefs and our assumptions and our biases. So, when we look at people's behavior or actions, we can assume things about their character that may or may not be true.

And I think Chris Argyris, of course, introduced this concept with his ladder of inference that, you know, you see a behavior, but the interpretation of it is way up in the ladder based on your assumptions, your beliefs, your past experience. And that's why people react so differently to the same event in the organization.

You could say something to me that, you know, I would say, oh, yeah. You know, it doesn't matter. She's wrong, but it doesn't matter. But you could say the same thing to somebody else, and they might feel deeply hurt about it. And so that goes both ways.

So I'm the observer, and you say something that hurts my feelings or I feel is somewhat negative. If I don't take that step of asking you questions and clarifying and just work off of my negative assumptions, our communication and our trust level is going to deteriorate.

And what I try to do in organizations is say, don't assume that your reaction is the truth. It's your reaction, it's your interpretation, and you're not going to be successful at communication or building relationships unless you start asking questions about your perceptions. That's awareness.

- Yeah. I think humans have a tendency to, and there may be a name for this, but have a tendency to think that other people think the way they do. So, if you do a behavior that I think is rude or something, what I'm really thinking is, if I had done that, my intention would have been a negative one. So I'm assuming that your thoughts and your intentions are the same as mine, whereas for you, it might just be like, I'm just being clear, which is helpful, right?

- That's a good one. The control freak, right? Well, I'm just being helpful. And other people are going, "Oh my God, she's such a control freak."

- Well, but no, I actually mean like sometimes someone's speaking very directly.

- Yes. Yes.

- Genuinely intend to be helpful. They're just being very direct. And maybe that's...I've noticed cultural differences and then other people feel like that's rude. That's somehow an affront to me. But I think the assumption underneath that is everyone thinks the way I do.

- Right. Well, a good one is Latinas are accused of being overemotional. So, we call it passion or caring. And somebody else might be a little frightened by it because when people in their home get emotional, it has bad news attached to it.

So you're right. You're right. We do that based on our own experience, but it has another side to it, which you'll probably identify with. Margaret is always late to the meeting, so she's not committed to the team. You know, we should just ask her to resign. But I'm late to the meeting because I have to take my child to childcare. You know, I'm taking care of my mother who's sick.

So, we assign positive intentions to our own behaviors and negative assumptions to other people's behaviors for doing the same thing, that happens as well.

- Yeah. And actually, there's a name for that bias that I can't remember, but it was described as when someone speeds past me, they're a bad driver. When I speed past, I know what I'm doing.

- Right. It's their fault for going too slow.

- Yeah, exactly. Exactly. They made me do it.

- I love it. Yeah.

- Okay. So the last principle is that relationships influence emotions, feelings, and beliefs, which influence decisions. Can you give us an example?

- Well, I was trying to make emotions raise the credibility of emotions because we're told to park our emotions outside the organization in that if you get emotional or use emotion in your decision-making, you're not being analytical, you're not being logical.

And so it's just isn't possible to eliminate emotion. And some of the research by Damazio, which is enlightening, says that, in fact, humans cannot make a decision without the emotional function. Because when patients have lost that part of their brain, they can't even decide what flavor ice cream they want, because in the end, it's a gut reaction whether you want chocolate or vanilla.

And that's what ultimately makes that decision. And it's the same with people. You know, unfortunately, they tell us that we decide if somebody is worth getting to know in the first few seconds after we meet them, that's how fast it happens. It's a constant job to increase our self-awareness and try to keep those judgements from coming in. And to rely more on our gut feelings and our emotions, don't ignore them, but also question them because it's what drives people's ultimate decisions and ultimate behavior.

So, if you think I don't care about you, that's an emotional circumstance, and it is going to determine the quality of our relationship.

- So, you've got these principles, which are ideas. I don't want to say they're theoretical, but they're ideas. But you also have in the book, I'm just opening the book now, this fantastic table of very practical ways that a person could...you know, essentially dos and don'ts for implementing these principles.

I have some that I circled because either they're counterintuitive or they're really interesting, they just caught my eye. So, I want to go through a few of them since we have a bit of time. The first one, it's associated with the belief true communication takes place in the presence of relationship and trust.

And it's on the don't side of the list. It says stop giving people feedback and setting standards. So, to me, that sounded like, oh, really? So, I'm wondering if you can explain that a little bit.

- Well, I wrote that quite a while ago, so I have to get back in my head space there. Because throughout the book I talked a lot about not giving people feedback, asking questions first. Because if you tell first, you close off the communication and you also lose out on a teaching moment because if you ask enough questions, the person comes to a realization on their own and then they own it.

So, I believe that's what that was about.

- Yeah, that makes sense actually to approach things with inquiry and curiosity rather than statements.

- Yes, exactly.

- Another one that I liked was, maybe because I'd never heard it put this way, but surface the undiscussable. And that is associated with people will speak up to stop an unsafe situation if it's in their interest to do so. How does one surface the undiscussable and do you have an example of things that people sort of generally consider undiscussable?

- Well, I'm sure you're aware that there are many undiscussable subjects. And the problem with...some of them, it's okay. It's kind of like the white lie. You know, somebody's toupee keeps slipping off, you know?

- Yes. That guy's joke is funny. Okay.

- Yeah. Yes. Okay. Yeah. you know, I don't want to embarrass them. So we do that all the time. I don't want to embarrass that person or make them look like a fool or stupid.

But it's pretty dangerous when you're trying to run a business and people can't bring up certain topics that could be a criticism. And I think you really see that in the healthcare industry where 58% of the nurses said that they would not give a...they would not tell a doctor that they were making a mistake.

That really shocked the healthcare world. And then, you know, they went on to explain exactly how that took place, which was, oh, you know, well, I was demoted once before, or I had a friend that was fired, or people just stopped communicating with me.

They stopped inviting me to meetings. So, no, goes back to it's not in my interest, right? Because there's going to be negative consequences. Usually, it's not as, you know, glaring as that. I mean, that was a pretty drastic example. I see it in organizations all the time where people will bring up a sensitive question and then they'll say immediately afterwards, oh, but that's just me, or I don't really know if that's true.

Well, you may have another opinion. And when you see behavior like that, you can be pretty sure that people don't have the psychological safety to have a serious discussion about things that they're concerned about. I saw one recently where we were going over survey results and there was a survey comment from an employee, I don't know why you're promoting, you know, trust and open communication when we have a senior manager who criticizes their employees in front of everyone and treats everybody really badly.

So, everybody wants to ignore it because it's only one comment. But really the reason everybody wants to ignore it is because it would open up some very difficult conversations and nobody in that room was willing to push management into addressing that. So, meanwhile, whoever that manager is, is going around creating a toxic culture, hurting a lot of people because we haven't managed to create a climate where people can discuss these things and maybe look into it.

I mean, it doesn't mean you go and fire the manager, it means that you need to do some inquiry and have some conversation about that.

- I can see how bullying or harassment can thrive in that kind of environment. And those are difficult. They probably feel very undiscussable at times by certain people.

- Well, by just about 99.9% of the people. I see it all the time on surveys. I'll see that there's maybe one or two comments about toxic managers in the environment. And especially in nuclear, it can take 10 years for anybody to take any action. Meanwhile, you have so much stress going on in the organization and you can't afford to have that in a nuclear plant.

- I was going to say if there's one place that you want people to be focused, clear, calm, it's going to be when they're in charge of potentially dangerous technology.

- Nuclear workers are heroes. Most of them work in these very stressful, toxic environments, and yet they feel really committed to being careful and following the procedures and doing the work. So, you see a lot of burnout and stress-type illnesses in the nuclear industry.

- So, I'm going to move on a little bit. I do want to ask, it's only been a few years, I believe this was published in 2020, but have your views changed or have you had any pushback or anything interesting happen since you published the book?

- I have found that most people that I've communicated with relate really well to the book. I think it's because of the stories. I didn't make them up. And most people say, oh, you know, I feel like you were at my facility, or you're telling my story. You're describing my situation. That's because I've only told it like it is.

My most recent insight has to do with the missing piece in the psychological safety, which is the ability to have open conversation about...be able to give and receive feedback in the moment as opposed to the way we usually do it.

Save it up and, you know, wait till the survey comes out and then dump on the manager or whatever. We have got to figure out how somebody can raise their hand in the meeting real-time, and say, you know, I don't really feel like I'm being heard. Can you imagine a place to work where you would be able to say that?

- It would be a pretty great place to work if you could say that safely, right?

- And I did have that experience with...are you familiar with the ASSP, the American Society of Safety Professionals? I'm part of a committee to select the speakers. And I really pushed it to the nth degree on the whole topic of inclusion and diversity. And at one point, I said, "Okay, well, I'm just not going to say anything anymore because obviously nobody's listening."

And then everybody like, no, no, no. And everything just shifted. It became a completely different environment. So, I congratulate that particular team, but see, it can work.

- But it took some vulnerability on your part to say that because you're taking a risk that they would then say...they would judge you as, oh, well, she doesn't want to be helpful, or...

- Or let's get her off. Something like that.

- We'd do a lot better without her.

- Yeah. Yeah.

- But they know I would write a letter to the editor.

- You've set your expectations. You have a new book coming out, I believe, is it May 2023 that it's coming?

- Crossing my fingers that it comes out on time.

- Okay. "The Safety Leadership Strategy," so what's the central idea of this new book?

- Okay. During COVID, I was doing a lot of webinars virtually like everybody else, and I started interviewing safety professionals and learning about the stress that they were under because they were really carrying the load for COVID and prevention of spreading the disease. You know, when I went out to the sites, the managers were all working from home, but the safety professionals were on-site.

They were essential...we call them essential workers, right? And then it came to me because I've been working with them for so many years, and I have so many good friends that at least the people that...you know, I have met some that didn't fit this description, but most of the people I met that work in this field are very caring.

They want to help people. They want to take care of people. And so I thought to myself, this is a really overlooked resource in our organizations, the whole safety and health field because they tend to feel isolated, unheard. They're not invited to operational meetings the way they should be. All the things that we've talked about in terms of psychological safety, they tend not to have that experience.

You know, a few do. And I've talked to them as well. It's really wonderful when you find a job where some people value what you really have to contribute to the organization. In fact, the number one stress reducer is a boss that listens to me. And so I want to get that word out because it's not going to cost you extra money to improve the mental health of your people, especially of your safety professionals.

You know, if you start listening to them, you're going to see an uptick. And as we know from the previous discussion we had, when you start treating people like they're smart contributors, guess what you get? Better performance.

- What can readers expect in this book? Is there a lot of ideas, theoretical discussion? Are there practical how-tos or how is it oriented that way?

- Of course, I'm always practically oriented about how to create inclusiveness in the workplace, especially through micro practices because people tend to think that, oh, it has to be some big expensive program DE&I, but really it boils down to how we treat each other in each interaction.

So, little things like saying thank you, saying hello. One of the stories I had in my previous book was the GM that raised performance by having all his managers look at employees in the eye and say hello and use their name.

That's so different than most organizations who have like really intricate, complicated initiatives to improve safety. When I say to them, hey, how about just saying thank you and hello? Why they don't do it, I don't know.

Maybe do you have any ideas why that it's like an idea that they take up.

- Sometimes it can be shyness. I think sometimes it can be busyness. People are off in their heads thinking about other things. And sometimes, unfortunately, it probably is a hierarchical situation where they feel that they don't have to speak to someone who's considered lower rank.

- Well, it's true. I agree with you. I'm just wondering when you give them the information about the effect of these interactions. Well, I guess it's the same thing as, you know, don't smoke because you'll get lung cancer, and some people are still going to smoke and some people are still not going to say, hello.

- Yeah. Maybe some people also think that it's too simple. I find that solutions that are simple are usually the way to go. But maybe people feel, well, that's too simple. You know, that's ridiculous. It's so small.

But I don't know, maybe you'll find out in the next 5, 10 years of your research.

- Well, all I can do is put out the word and I hope because my book is inspired by the confluence of COVID, the murder of George Floyd, because it really spurred a huge interesting conversation about DE&I.

And then, you know, the Great Resignation that so many people finally just said, "I don't need to take this anymore. I'm going to get out of here." So that's what the book is about. If you want to keep the talent, this is what you need to do. And make health and safety central to your organization because these people have connections with people and can be a great influencer for you.

- Well, I'm going to wrap up with a few questions that I ask most of my guests. So, for you, if you had to choose one, because I know it's a long list, but if you had to choose one, what would be the most important human relationship skill for tomorrow's safety professionals to learn as they're training up?

- How to listen and what to listen for.

- Good. Yeah.

- You can say a lot more, but I [inaudible].

- You could. We could have a whole other podcast session just on that question, but we do, unfortunately, have to move on. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your career, is there one piece of advice that you would give to young Rosa?

- Don't be so hard on yourself. It takes time to learn how to influence people, how to communicate, takes time to establish trust and relationships. It'll happen. It will happen. That's what I would say to myself.

- Okay. And other than your books, which we've discussed, are there some valuable resources that you can recommend to our listeners if they want to learn more about any of the ideas we've talked about?

- Well, I'm on LinkedIn a lot, and I recommend that if you're not a LinkedIn member and you're interested in hearing all the latest ideas and what's going on, to sign up and start...you know, once you put in what you're interested in, you start getting those, what do they call them?

The posts. Because people, you know, have a lot of posts about safety differently, you can read Todd Conklin and also Sidney Dekker, The Field Guide. Those are very very popular books. Clive Lloyd wrote The New Safety Generation, which is very popular.

Tanya Hewitt wrote "Power to the People." So, there's tremendous amount going on right now about leveraging the human element rather than calling it a problem, the human error problem.

So, we're leaving all that behind and we're creating a better, more psychologically safe workplace through these new methods.

- For listeners too, I've interviewed Tanya Hewitt and Clive Lloyd. So, if you look back into past episodes and you want to hear a little bit more from them, that's where you can do that. Where can our listeners find you on the web? So, obviously, LinkedIn. Is there anywhere else that they should reach out if they want to...?

- I'm on LinkedIn a lot, so that's a place to reach me. I just learn so much. People post the most amazing information. They're very generous. Like, if you needed...you have a problem, they'll send you, you know, stuff to read and how to approach it, et cetera.

Then I have my website, which is carrilloconsultants.com, where I have a lot of my articles and lots of free information, you know, that you can apply right away.

- And we'll have that linked in the episode description as well.

- Great. Thank you.

- So, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks so much, Rosa, for sharing your ideas with us.

- Well, thank you, Mary, for pursuing me and making this happen. And it's been really a pleasure having this conversation with you.

- And, of course, thanks to our listeners for listening, sharing, rating, and reviewing the podcast. You can also find us on YouTube at the Safety Labs by Slice channel. And lastly, as always, my thanks to the "Safety Labs by Slice" team who make it all happen.

Bye for now. Safety Labs is created by Slice, the only safety knife on the market with a finger-friendly blade. Find us at sliceproducts.com. Until next time, stay safe.

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