Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#138 How storytelling can save lives (ft. Stephen Harvey)

• Season 1 • Episode 138

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Every October, workplaces across Australia shine a spotlight on safety during Safe Work Month. Posters go up, toolbox talks are scheduled, and inboxes fill with reminders about procedures and policies. For many workers, the messages feel repetitive, predictable and sometimes irrelevant.

In this episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast, we sit down with Stephen Harvey, a safety professional with more than 18 years’ experience across high-risk industries, to talk about how safety communication needs to change. Steve shares why traditional approaches (often legalistic, technical and dry) fail to connect with the very people they’re meant to protect.

Together, we explore practical ways to make safety comms stick, like weaving in humor and storytelling, and designing messages that feel human, relatable and timely. The conversation also looks at how organisational culture, leadership, and even the channels you choose play a role in whether safety communication is remembered, or ignored.

If you’ve ever felt trapped in the “tick-the-box” cycle of safety messaging, this episode offers fresh ideas to spark genuine engagement, shift behaviours and, ultimately, save lives.

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Nobody goes to work in the morning thinking I'm going to hurt myself today. And yet, in the past decade, there have been more than 1,880 traumatic injury fatalities in Australian workplaces. And more than 1.1 million people made serious workers' compensation claims involving more than one week of working time lost. Causes range from vehicle related incidents to falling from heights, stress on the body falls, slips, and trips being hit by moving objects or mental stress. In fact, claims for mental health injuries continue to increase, and as comms and change professionals, were often charged with rolling out communication and change activities aimed at preventing these incidents from occurring. But the way we do it. Well, it hasn't really changed much over the years, ranging from boring, legally speak safety notices to shock and awe tactics, like showing injuries to our workers. We keep doing the same thing and the definition of madness, doing the same thing and expecting a different result. So how can we use the power of communication to help make change meaningful? The type of change that really does make a positive impact to the point of literally helping our own teammates stay safe and well at work. Well, today's guest on the podcast is showing how safety comms can be done differently and just in time for safe work month, which runs during October. Steve Harvey is a forward thinking safety professional with more than 18 years experience across high risk industries. Hailing originally from Glasgow in Scotland, as you will hear from his delightful accent, he brings his own unique combination of safety, expertise, humor, and humanity to his work. Steve helps organisations who are ready to make the next step in change in safety by building leadership capability, driving that cultural transformation and embedding operational learning. He's known for blending research informed insights with a refreshing mix of humor and storytelling, and he's challenging, outdated mindsets and making safety more engaging, relevant and effective. And as the host of the Brisbane Safety Differently Book Club, Steve also interviews the world's leading safety science thinkers and turns complex ideas into practical real world strategies. We covered a lot of ground in this episode. Everything from some of the biggest challenges to some of the things he's seen that work really well. How you try and get people over the line to think differently about communication and safety. So less of the legalese and more of the humor and everything in between. I really love every time I get to chat with Stephen because he's just a delight, and I really think you'll enjoy this episode too. So without further ado, here's Stephen. Stephen Harvey, welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter. Well, I'm super excited to be here, Mel. Thank you. And looking forward to this conversation. I'm very excited to have you here and I've be wanting to have you for a guest as a for a while, so this is very exciting for me. But before we get into it, tell our audience a little bit about you. What do you do? How did you come to develop your expertise in this space? Ae bit about me. So I, as you can probably tell, I'm not Australian, although I've lived in Australia longer than I lived in my home city of Glasgow. So, um, I started off life as a, a car mechanic. That's how I got to Australia. And then I started working in safety in 2006. So I've been doing this for a pretty long time. And, uh, yeah, I love it. It's, that's probably strange to, to hear is someone, um. Everyone else would probably be like boo boo hiss. But I really love working in safety and, and I love helping people make sense of safety. Well, I love the way you make sense of safety, but before we get to that, let's start at the top. What are some of the biggest challenges when it comes to communicating about safety in the workplace? Oh, there's heaps of them. I think one of the biggest ones for me is we don't write like we're human and, and we actually write for lawyers. I think a lot of the time I've been involved in a lot of, when we've created safety alerts or whatever. We're, we've actually written them as if there are lawyers reading them and that doesn't make sense, right? And we use colours and numbers and all that sort of thing. Then we really should just try and have like a more human centred, remember who your audience is. Male, I think is what I'm trying to say here. Um, I sometimes feel that we just forget that and, uh, like there's so, there's just so much we can, we can do in that space. But I think the key message there is remember who your audience is and don't forget... That ever because we just, we, we give, we, we, we create safety alerts for the, for the senior leaders in the organisation when we should be creating them for the guys in the front line who can sort of make sense of it and we write too difficult. So my advice to teams is make it to human centred, but also. Use the right reading grade level as well. I think sometimes like we, we are right. Like I said earlier, we are right way and above more than what we should, so we should be using that reading grade level eight I think, when we are writing our safety documentation. So yeah, that's sort of some of the things, some of the challenges that I see. Just that in particular, wrong people getting the wrong information. And in the wrong way, like you were saying, it's often very high level. If you're talking to people who, you know, they're not in front of a computer all day, that's their job isn't literacy based, their job is on the tools, getting stuff done. Yeah. And another thing that I often, I see this, and I haven't seen any company correct this yet, and I'd love to do it. I'd love to do it. I've, I've had a crack a few times myself, but again, it makes organisations a bit. Or no, nobody else is doing this. We shouldn't do it, is we, we just create these bulletins, like a four bulletins, you know, and just we have numbers and colours at the top. We explain what happened and it just, it just doesn't resonate with people anymore. Like the people, people just don't wanna do it. But in safety, because we're so scared of ourselves, we think no one else is doing it. So we are gonna keep, we will just do it the way that everyone else is doing it. And I think that's part of it too. It's like this is the only way it's ever been done. It's the only way it can ever be done. And I found from a comms perspective, I've worked on lots of safety campaigns over the years with lots of different companies that I've worked in, and they've always just had the same approach. It's always, this is how we've always done it. So this is what we're gonna keep doing and we just need to get out a safety bulletin and we will have ticked a box. Yeah, that's it. Tick a box. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, well, actually what do you wanna achieve? Do you wanna keep people safe or do you just try and... and get the compliance thing done? Yeah. Actually, Mel, that's, uh, you've just prompted me to think that, so that, that happens a lot as well. When we give people the information, it doesn't tell us actually what happened. It's just almost like, Hey, you go, one of your colleagues has been injured. Or even worse, like an injured worker. You know, they don't even humanise it. It's like, Hey, I, I, anytime I write these alerts, I always talk about one of our colleagues... has suffered an injury, here's what's happened. You know, here's what we know, here's how we're, here's how we're gonna move on, here's how we're gonna learn from it. But too often it's just IW injured working, and people go, what does that mean? Good. So let's talk about that. In your experience, and I know you, you use a lot of humor as well, which some people might think is a little bit of a, uh, I don't know, a bit of. Opposite of what we should be doing in safety when it's such a serious subject is using humor. Um, so maybe talk a to us a little bit about the humor piece and then other strategies that you've seen work in your work. Yeah, totally. Yeah, happy to, happy to. Very happy to share a bit the humor thing, sort. I just get like I'm, I'm from Glasgow, right? We are, we are kinda naturally funny and I'd always wanted to have a crack at standup comedy and I'd just finished my degree and I thought, what can I do next? What's my next sort of. Thing that I can do. And I had a look at, um, psychology, marketing and human factors. And then I saw a standup comedy course and I thought, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna have a crack at it now. One of the major things that I learned from this is anybody can be funny. Anybody, you can actually train yourself to be funny, which is, I hear so many people saying they can't do it. And what I've really, really learned and after I, after I'd read, studied it and performed it. What I really like about comedy is you can actually make people feel seen and heard and you can shine the light on the crazy stuff and get away with it. And unfortunately in in safety, we do a lot of stuff that is pointless and meaningless. So I can get away by shining a torch on that and everybody can agree, Hey, yeah, that is kinda ship at what we do. And that's that, that that connection. So humor. It, obviously, it's a time and a place, you know, like you, you, you definitely can't use it in all situations, but if I'm ever doing delivering toolbox talks or training you, I can guarantee you you're gonna be having a bit of fun and you're gonna have be having a, a laugh. So. Definitely have a crack at it, see how you go. But some other things that I've done is like, I'm big on storytelling. I really, really try and hone that scale and I forever reading about storytelling and trying to get better at it. It's so important when I think about, we've been developing stories for tens of thousands of years and then it's only been the last sort of 30, 40 years that we've, I think we've forgotten our humanity and started using bits of paper and. Tick boxes to do this stuff. So storytelling is something that I've would really encourage. Safety professionals, in particular, anybody but safety professionals in particular. Like, I use a lot of cartoons, memes. I, I use my dogs in a lot of videos and people love the videos. They, they, they definitely love that sort of stuff. But I tell you what I have learned in safety email is shock tactics don't work. And we get a lot of people. I, I know a lot of companies will bring in people who have suffered injuries and I've suffered an injury in my, in my past. They'll bring in people to shock companies and they'll go, oh yeah, look, that will never happen to me. But that's exactly what happens when you bring someone in who's had a bit of shock factor. People go, that will never happen to me 'cause that guy was an idiot, or that guy was dumb. So we really need to hone in, hone in storytelling. Use images, cartoons, just try and do something. Just try and do something that, that other people are not doing. So that's kinda some of the things that, and I use, I, I've created like music playlists and that now, you know, just to, to, and cahoots, cahoot is the best. I love it. I love these ideas. And you reminded me of, and actually there's two things here. Sorry, I'm thinking out loud. The first one is. A, how do you get executives and senior leaders to agree to this stuff? Because oftentimes they're the ones who are going to be most risk averse and see this as a risky approach. Because it's not serious enough or what? Yeah. Oh, look, look, I'm going to, there's a couple of things to this. Make friends with your branding people. That's, that's what I would say. And look, unfortunately, a lot of time, the work that I would do doesn't go externally. And, and that would, that does create a bit of angst amongst executives if they, if we're gonna share this. I lit. For instance, I made like a cartoon safety alert, and I had to say to my boss, like, this is just for internal. If this, if a client wanted this, I would create it in the A four style boring, whatever way. Uh, I, I've got it. I'll be, I'll be honest. I'll just, I, I've beg for forgiveness later. I, I, I, I've done that too. I just take, I just take a bit of a risk. I had, I, I had, uh, once I created a PowerPoint slide deck and I used. The opposite end of the, the branding palette. You know how the companies have got their colour palettes, right? The colours that they never used. So I done that once and created a sort of, again, comic strip using our people, uh, and basically went away from the, the PowerPoint templates that we use. And honestly, people loved it. People absolutely loved it, but if that would've never seen the light of day, if it had to go external, that was just me delivering like an internal toolbox meeting sort of thing. But um, so yes, there is a wee bit of risk with that. You can't go too crazy externally unfortunately, but definitely internally. Go, go for it. Rip again. I'll go back to what said at the beginning. Remember who your audience is. You know, I like, I've had people say to me before, oh no, you can't use that word. You can't, you can't use that word. And I was like, but it's not for you. It's, it's for the guys in the field. I'm not talking about swear words, anything. I'm just talk, just talking about like everyday language that the guys would use. Yeah. And it's like, you know, let's, let's remember, I always do that every single time. Remember who the audience is, remember who's getting the message. Mm. And I think one of the things you also touched on with humor and storytelling is how our brains work. We remember stories. Our brains are wired for that. Something funny is like pressing a save button on your brain 'cause it's released a little bit of dopamine. And so it does seem counterintuitive that we're not playing to those neuro strengths when we are trying to get people to remember stuff. That's actually really important. I just don't understand it. Well, you know, like I, when I work with executives, melody, they love numbers. Mm-hmm. And they love colours like I was saying earlier, and, uh, you and I sort of talked about this before, but there's a book called Making Numbers Count. Oh, I love that book. And Oh, I know. It's the best, isn't it? It's the best. And I was having, I was having trouble cutting through to a couple of leaders that really had that. They were like, they were accountants essentially. And, and they, they had loved numbers, but I was able to use that book. To talk about. And I used ChatGPT and we'll chat chat about that too. But I use ChatGPT help me create numbers and turn it into a story. And I remember the lady going that, that was excellent. That's, we want more of this stuff. And I was like, yeah, yeah, we can, we can do that easily. So yeah, that's um, like the storytelling, it's so, so important. It really is. Yeah, it's, we have to do more of that case. Have to do, alright, a hundred percent. So can you tell us a little bit more about, you touched on make friends with the branding people, so this is also something I want to touch on because a lot of people who listen to this podcast are comms professionals, you know, internal comms, people change managers as well. And I'm sure there's been frustrations on both sides in terms of working with the safety guys. The safety guys wanna get their stuff out. They always think it's the most important thing. It is. But then you've got other competing priorities from other places in the business. What would you say in your experience, is the best way to get everybody on the same page? I, I suppose for me, Mel, like, because I have such a different weird view on the world as well, it's like they, they, they do get a bit risk averse, particularly when it comes to safety. But for me, I, I find it's just really important to build those relationship and just be, so, I pretty strong with, with, with, again, it's just about like who, who's our audience? Who's the people that are going to impact us the, the most, who are the, like, why are we doing this? Okay. And, but everybody wants a piece of the pies, don't they? Everybody's documents and that sort every, everybody's all important and, and the truth be told, that's why a lot of the time I create this stuff myself, but I get advice from the branded people. So like I or the corporate comms people, I would say like, here's what I want to do. I've got this idea. Boom, can you, can you take it up and fix it up for me? And then I send it out. Rather than I, I found that whenever I've tried to create something from scratch, it, it can be quite challenging. People are like, oh, we're too busy for this. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I kinda feel it's a skill. Marketing's kinda a skill or comms, it's kinda a skill you need to develop. I think if you work in my line of work, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Because if you don't, you just, you, you'll never get anything done. It's like, I mean, I, I kinda think I'm a, I am a bit creative anyway, but there's still so much I can learn. There's still so much I can do. But, um, everybody wants a piece of the pie, so I try and do as much work as I can and then just get the others to help polish it off. Yeah, yeah. And get a bit happy with that. And I think that you're onto something there. It's about that, um, understanding the comms teams are really busy. It does, not saying safety people aren't, but if you can make it easier for them and show them that you're willing to get their review and, you know, still have their eyes on it, rather than things just going out without their knowledge. That makes a huge difference in that relationship too. It's, you know, working together and understanding each other is very useful. So let's go into something a little bit more tangible. Mm-hmm. Could you share some of the examples you've done? Like you talked about doing a, a comic strip and those sorts of things. What are some other examples you've done where you think it's actually that really nailed it, that got people's attention? Uh, I, I didn't do this, but I was involved in the process of it. Of its design that we created a safety policy using a cartoon in one company that I was working with, and that shook people up. Yeah. That, that, that kinda, people were like, oh, you're not taking safety seriously. You're not doing stuff. You're not, you're definitely like, you're not taking this serious. Why would you put a cartoon? But once you explained it and said, look, it's just, it's just, again, it gets your attention. That's what we're trying to do with this. So cartoons, there's so many amazing tools out there. I, I use. Constantly use videos. I'm taking stuff off YouTube and I will adapt it. Let's just say I will, I will change it. I will make it different. I'll make it suitable to what we, we do here. I use quite often and something that's very successful for me is I and I, I don't do the work and I just do, the saving is I will follow strategically people on Instagram or Facebook, whoever sharing these kinda safety clips, and I will save them and I'll bring them up. I'll save them on a laptop and I'll put them on the screen and it just generates a con amazing conversation. Mm-hmm. And, you know, if you can guide that conversation, I'm very, so, I'm very big on that. I'm really starting to get in a, create my own videos now, which is, which is cool. I, again, that brain of mind, I dunno what it does, but I tell, I, I, I created a video, it was number a months ago, I had this idea of what would I love, history Mel. Like, I really love history and I, I love reading about, particularly the safety history. I just, just love it. And I, I created this video of, of modern safety professionals, went back to the industrial era and it was cool, you know, and they were having conversations in that language of the, like the, the 19th century. So I get, for me it's just about generating conversation. I think your mouth and your conversations are the best risk, the best risk assessment tools you can have. So, um, that's why I'm a big fan of the storytelling and, uh, yeah, just have a crack. Yeah, I love it. I really like, uh, you do this on LinkedIn, those on this day in safety. Shares that you do. And again, I love history as well. Full disclosure here, I'm such a nerd. One of my favourite shows is Antiques Roadshow, so I freaking love it. Um, but so when you share those automatically, I'm drawn in. And again, it's a story. It's, yeah, history is a story, and so I'm straight away drawn to that content as opposed to if you put something up that said, you know, don't walk on. A high scaffolding without safety equipment, who cares? It'll never happen to me. Right. I can tell you the story a bit on this day and how it came. Yeah. So too often what hap this is, this is boring safety stuff. Now Mel, here might cut this out, but what? But what happened is quite often companies don't look back in time. To, to the events that have occurred on, that have occurred in history. So when I worked at an organisation, what we, what they'd done was we would go back like a year, two year, to that day. And look at the events that occurred on that day or near enough that day and think, Hey, did we actually learn anything from these? Did we do it with these events? Did we change anything? And, um, you, you won't be shocked to find it. We, we don't. And I've just, I've just been playing around with London from, uh, from like, 300 years ago, and we are still having the same kind of fatalities, people falling off ladders, people, you know, it's, it's fascinating to see. Thankfully, we're not killing as many people. But yeah, I kinda like, but I just love looking back in time and thinking, what can, what can we actually learn? But like I said, we don't, we don't hurt that many people, thankfully. So we want to go back in time and learn and sort of just say, what, what, what can we learn from the great fire of London? So, yeah, I think, yeah, it's one of those things where probably the lawyers get involved, right? So we can't talk about that publicly. It's like, well, how else do, our people learn? If we don't share these stories? And not just our people, but the broader industries and sectors that we work in, don't we have a responsibility to help keep more people safe? Mel, I, I'd done a, gosh, it sounds a bit of brag here, but I'd done about work with NASA. Yeah. A guy worked with na, this guy who works with NASA, and, um, he was, he was really interested and he talked about this too, you know, like the lawyers get involved and saying, nah, nah, no, we can't share it. But sometimes stuff's just so high profile. And again, it, it's about that partnering with your lawyers and partnering with your, those teams and just sort of saying, what can we share? You know, there's surely we can share something. Surely we can learn, learn something, it's such a strange oxymoron, isn't it? That safety is the most important thing, but let's not talk about it. Yeah. I'm trying to figure that one out, and I've experienced that my whole career in a number of different organisations. You know, even you're dealing with clients and customers, you know, like we, we want to go through this. Pre pretending that nothing's happening, but the reality is lots is happening. Yeah. And, uh, so just how can we, what can we, what can we do to make it more engaging and fun? Mm. And one of the things I talk about in crisis comms particularly is 'cause I've had unfortunately had to work on crisis comms for workplace health and safety incidents and, and deaths. And everybody knows, you might not have said anything about it through your CEO email or whatever, but I trust me. The gossip mill has already gotten ahead of it, and everybody knows anyway. So if anything, you want to be the one telling the story because people believe the first story they hear, so you'd want to make sure it's yours. But it's also about how do you build trust with your audiences? And that's where I come back to. I know you've heard me wax lyrical about this, but those three t's of trust, like are you being timely? Are you being thoughtful and are you being transparent? And obviously. Transparency within boundaries, like respecting people's privacy and all those things. But if it feels like you're hiding something, the trust that people have in you starts to erode very quickly. And your reputation as an employer, as a business partner, as a leader is also going to erode very quickly. And that is so hard to get back once you've lost it. Yeah. Yeah. I just, when you started talking now, you made me think of that, the Dreamworld thing that happened there like a number of years ago. You know, though, that that company, they, they companies do. I, I actually, companies obviously don't want this to happen, but I kinda feel like we should start preparing for that. Like, what, what are we going to do? And it seemed like that organisation, it was evolving that they just, it was such a shocking, I, I see. I don't really like using the word accident, but it's such a shocking event. Mm, that, that they just didn't know how to cope with it and they didn't know how to communicate properly and they just made a complete ass of it, really, didn't they? Yeah. I'm sure as a comm specialist you can, it is actually one of the examples I used in my crisis comms training because it is an example of what not to do, to your point, uh, for those of our listeners who aren't unaware. The Dreamworld event, uh, when was that? Early two thousands or so. October, October, 2016. The Thunder River Rapid Rides. Yeah. So, so people, if people Google search that you'll see it on Wikipedia. Yeah. So one of the rides, water rides flipped over and really, sadly, like four people died. And it was just awful. But the way the company responded to it was absolutely appalling. Um, eventually they got in an external PR agency to help clean up the mess, but by then the damage is done. Yeah. And people lost their jobs, right? Yeah. You know, like there's not, not many people, uh, the, in the company, they, they just made a mess of that, and look, I, I kinda feel that's the kinda thing that companies don't want these things to happen, but maybe they should prepare for it. Yeah. And that's what we say to them. Deliver the message. Yeah. You know, the best way to manage, or I, I can't even say manage a crisis.'cause you respond to a crisis. Yeah. The best way to respond is to be prepared. And if you haven't already thought through that. Why not? You know, this should be part of your risk management sort of process anyway. But coming back to our topic, again, it's the mitigation. You don't want to get to that point, so why wouldn't you do everything you could to stop that happening anyway? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Totally. Actually, maybe you just, I was thinking, I've, I've, I, again, I talked a lot about the history, but I've been looking at some of the posters that companies used from like the 1930s, forties, and fifties. And I've been sharing them internally, you know, and just saying, Hey, look, look at this stuff, just to generate the conversation. Not look, don't just what, what we often do in safety and we a nightmare for this, is just putting posters up on the wall and walking away, and forgetting about them and, and, and companies spend a lot of money on that stuff. Yeah. It's like, how can we, how can we meet them like a focal point for discussion. Hmm. Mm. You know, and rather than just leaving them up there, well, boom, forget about it. You know, like, how can we use that? And that's why I kinda like, I've even started creating contemporary versions of these older posters. Oh, cool. Just to, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's, it's easy to do now. Well, let's talk about that. Yeah. Ai, you talked about ChatGPT before. What are you using AI for in your communication around safety? Well, I've probably been using chat GPT right from its very beginning. I, I'll be totally honest, as soon as I knew about it, I signed on. Actually, I just quickly, I remember, I, I didn't meet Brene Brown, but I went to a conference that Brene Brown was presenting at, and this is 2018, and she was saying, AI's coming. You better get fast on it. But it'll never replace humor. It'll never replace, replace connection, and it will never replace, like really that fundamental human connection. Uh, it's having a red hot crack at it, though. It is, isn't it? Yeah, so I was right on it from the very beginning, but what, how I use the AI now really is I create my videos from it. I've started creating my safety posters, so I will find these old safety posters, put it in chat, GPT and say, what's the font? What's the colour? What's the style of this? Can you reprint me an image like this? So I'm just using that. I, I, we chatted earlier about one of our favourite books, making the numbers count. Mm-hmm. Uh, I really, I, I, I would put in a lot of the stuff. Here's what I'm trying to do. This is the company I'm working with. Can you do something with it? And it does it brilliantly and then you just polish it. Don't just, I think too many people are just copy and pasting. Yes. And relying on it too much. I research it and then I put everything that I've got in and say, turn this into a story for me. And then I polish around it. Um, and I kinda feel, I think that's a good way to be with this.'cause it's not going away. In fact, I, lets say, yeah. I love it. Um, yeah, so like AI is just something I'm, I'm really just embracing it constantly and, and just doing things all the time with it. Um, so in terms, like I said, I really love it for the posters though. Mm-hmm. I've studied and, and I've had my dogs, I've got two, I've got two daschunds excuse me, and I have, I, I use the, the dogs and a lot of my safety videos and a lot of my safety posters and people love it. Everybody loves puppies. Humanised safety, honestly, gang, Humanise safety by using dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Actually, you were reminded me of um, oh before. Before I go into that, firstly very important question. What are the dog's names? Whiskey and Lessie. So the fair that's very Scottish. Yeah. The, the Scottish German Na, the Scottish German Daschunds Love it. Um, yeah, it reminded me of, uh, Queensland Police media and their social media. They became very well known for it post the, around the time of the 2010 floods here in Brisbane. And they've really run with it. They really set the scene for actually making... Government comms and very, you know, safety driven comms, So much more fun and personable and connecting with people. And I was talking to a friend of mine who used to be the Director of police media at Queensland Police, and he said, anything we do with police dogs in the readership on that just goes through the roof, the likes, the engagement, everything. You put a picture of a police dog on social media, it goes gangbusters. Yes, me actually talking about social media and government, social media, I actually think the government, Queensland government particularly, do a pretty good job of that. I dunno if you follow Street Smarts. Have you heard street smarts? No. No. So Street Smarts is like their vehicle and transport safety government department here in Queensland and uh, they do some brilliant comms. Yeah, a absolutely brilliant. Yeah. I, I really, I I do share a lot of their stuff and, and keep a hold of it, particularly it, it's fun, right? People can connect to it, engage with it, and have a laugh to it. That's it. Yeah. And while we're on the subject of social media posts, Queensland Health has also, they're also doing a great job on their social media. They use a lot of humor and it can be for something as simple as bowel movements, but instead of saying, you know, check this rah rah, they, they wrap humor around it and they have gathered a really big following on Facebook. Based on this humor that they're bringing into what are just health messages, you know, which could be very boring, very dry. Yeah. No to, to honestly, like I really, I think the standup comedy training that I've done has really transformed my safety practice. Mm-hmm. They really, my training's changed, you know, like I, I've got high energy now. I mean, don't get me wrong. If it's a practice, this stuff. Yeah, I, I just didn't need a booting angle, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, like I really have to practice it. And I'll be honest, I have practiced in front of my mirror whenever I'm training, you know, like I, I will practice how I'm going to interact with people and I, like, I bring, I will put, I use a rule of three quite a lot. I know that you, that you know about the, the, I'm sure everybody that listens to this would know about the rule of three, but I use that heaps in all my training and anything that I do and all my LinkedIn communications. You always see the rule of three. It's kinda just something I always do and I learned and I actually learned that from comedy. Yeah. And we had a Mandy Plumb on the show, uh, last year, I think it was, and she runs an improv company and she talked about how improv can be used to your point, to really enhance your communication because you have to think really fast. On the spot, but you have to get creative really quickly. And so it's training the brain, like you were saying at the top of the episode. You can learn to be humorous. It's just training the brain to think differently outside of the corporate worlds that we've been brought up in a lot of the time. Well, Stephen, we've covered a lot of ground, but I've got three questions that I ask every guest on these episodes. Are you ready for those? Let's go for it. Love it. Okay. What is one of the best communication lessons you've ever learned, and how did it change the way you approach communication? Oh, look, I'm gonna go back to what I spoke about earlier. Standup comedy and comedy and humour, changed everything for me. Once I learned about it, I kind of thought I should have been doing this earlier. We talk about levity, uh, brevity. You know, like I will find when I'm writing emails, I will definitely top and cut them back and, and take them out. And I do that in a lot of my, uh, comedy writing too. So yes, without a doubt, comedy getting to the point quickly, which I didn't do there, but you made it funny. Okay, second question. What is one thing you wish people would do more of or less of when communicating? Uh. Just remember, like, like I, I said at the beginning, Mel, I can, we don't write for the people that need the communications. I just kind of feel that we could get that balance right. I understand there's that the executives have that sort of pull and, and the, and the frontline teams have a pull. It's almost like there's two different style of comms that you need for, for these guys. I kind of feel mm-hmm. I definitely think that in safety, there's two different styles, but yeah, just like. Remember who your audience is and be bloody human. Yeah. I love it. And last question, who do you turn to for communication advice? Uh, well, it has to be you, Mel. Oh, of course. You are my first point of calling, your books and stuff like that. Um, but I, I generally, um, I, I, I, I've, what I've really started doing now is a lot of TED Talks. I've been watching how people communicate, how people are delivering messages. I'm always watching YouTube. I always watch like comedy and, and read comedy and, uh, and that's generally I, I, I, I've just been, I think my comedy training and, and just, it really helps me observe the world, so I'm always taking stuff in and that's generally where I've been getting all my information from, from YouTube and comedy and people like you who are amazing at it. Oh, thank you. Well, Stephen, it's been wonderful chatting with you. Quick shout out for your book club as well. Can you tell us just a little bit about the book club? Yeah, so I have a book club in Brisbane, which is called The Safety Differently Book Club. And we do not like Boringness. That's the reason why we brought Mel on. We wanted people who bring energy and, and, and who, who can make us smarter. And um, so then we're doing, I'm actually doing one October 24th and I've got one of your friends coming in now we've got Jade coming in. Oh, wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. I've really Jade Miller. Everybody give her a follow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Jade's Jade's amazing. And her book's amazing. And that, that's kind of what I've, it's safety differently for a reason. I don't want it just to be, I want us to become more grounded safety professionals. So reach out in LinkedIn if you wanna come along, I'll add you to our group and you can jump in and, um, yeah. Come and have some beers and pizzas with us. Yes. And I can confirm having been to one of events. Great group of people, very human people, and a lot of fun. So it's awesome. Yeah. Well, you they loved you. They loved you, Mel. Oh, bless you. That's why we had to get Jade. They said, we want less safety people, more people who are gonna be, make us better humans. Love it. Well, we'll pop those links in the show notes as well. Stephen, thank you for joining us on today's episode of Less Chatter More Matter. My pleasure. What an honor. Thank you.