Guest Episode: Women Offshore Inclusion Summit

This week, we're sharing an episode from our friends over at the Women Offshore podcast!

Erica D'Eramo of Two Piers, and Tanya Tarr of Cultivated Insights join the Women Offshore podcast to discuss their upcoming collaborative workshop at the annual Women Offshore Inclusion Summit, which will be hosted in Houston, Texas, on September 18th, 2024.

The conversation dives into inclusive leadership strategies, the importance of self-care for managers, and the benefits of debriefing after high-stakes events. Erica and Tanya also debunk common leadership myths and offer insights on creating safer, more inclusive work environments. Tune in to learn more about the Inclusion Summit and how you can foster leadership growth in your organization.

Episode Transcript

Erica D'Eramo (00:05):
Welcome to the Two Piers podcast. I'm your
host. Erica D'Eramo. Today'sepisode is actually a guest
episode. So rather than share atwo peers podcast episode, we
are sharing a recording from thewomen offshore podcast episode,
so you can also follow theirpodcast. They've got tons of
great content, great material onthere focused on closing the

(00:28):
gender gap in the water, andthey are friends of two peers.
So we'll be sharing an episodefrom their podcast where myself
and my co facilitator TanyaTarr, talk about the upcoming
inclusion summit workshop thatwe'll be holding coming up this
September 18. So I look forwardto seeing you next episode, and

(00:49):
from here on out, you'll belistening to the women offshore
podcast episode.

Christine MacMillan (01:00):
You are listening to the women offshore
podcast. I'm your host,Christine MacMillan on today's
podcast, I get to talk to Ericaand Tanya, who are going to be
our workshop host at theinclusion summit this year. The
inclusion summit is being heldat Shell in Houston, Texas. The
date is September 18, and thetime is from 10 till 3pm I hope

(01:23):
that you can make it. Go to thewomenoffshore.org website and
click on Events to find out moreinformation and to register for
the inclusion summit. This eventis not going to be recorded and
is not going to be able to bewatched virtually. And so if you
want to go, you need to be therein person. This is tailored for

(01:44):
HR professionals and C suiteleaders, but everyone is
welcome. So if you have the timeon September 18 to be in Houston
at the inclusion summit, this isour third annual event, and we
are excited to welcome Tanya andErica to the podcast today to
share about what they're goingto be speaking about at the

(02:05):
inclusion summit. Good morning,ladies, and welcome to the women
offshore podcast. Thank you somuch for being here.

Erica D'Eramo (02:11):
Yeah, thanks for having us.

Christine MacMillan (02:13):
Yeah. So I'd love to just dive right in
and let you introduceyourselves. And today we're
going to be talking about yourupcoming workshop for the
inclusion summit. So I'd lovefor you to introduce yourselves
each and then talk a little bitabout how you formed this
collaboration.

Erica D'Eramo (02:27):
Yeah, absolutely.
So my name is Erica D'Eramo.
I've actually been on the womenoffshore podcast before. So
great to rejoin you. And foranyone that's attended the
annual conference, yes, youwould have attend. You would
have attended one of ourworkshops. So really excited to
be back in the swing of thingswith the inclusion summit. My

(02:52):
background is actually inengineering. So I started out as
an engineer, working in thefield, working in the energy
sector, spent a lot of time onfloating vessels, both as an
engineer and then as operationsleadership, and then found
myself wanting to support theindividuals that like me looked

(03:13):
around and didn't see peoplethat looked like them, didn't
really have a map to for what agood, sustainable leadership
style might look like for them.
So that brought me to form twopeers, which is both a coaching
and consulting business, andwith that, I ended up meeting
Tanya through some of herworkshops. So I'll hand it over
to Tanya to introduce herself.

Tanya Tarr (03:35):
Hi. I'm Tanya Sujong Tarr. I have no experience in
offshore drilling whatsoever.
I'm a huge fan of everythingthat you all do. I think it's
really important, obviously, forour infrastructure and
everything else. I do have a lotof experience in being in spaces
where I don't look like anyoneelse in the room for 20 years.
So I'm trained as a behavioralscientist, and spent some time
working with military familiesand families of deployed

(03:57):
soldiers. And then a bulk of mycareer actually was working in
electoral politics andlegislative advocacy, most of
that time with labor unions,public sector labor unions, so
the American Federation ofState, County Municipal
Employees and the AmericanFederation of Teachers. I left
that in 2017 and started my ownlearning and development
company. I also kind of as anaside, but very much kind of

(04:20):
related to what Erica and I bothdo. I suffered from very severe
burnout, workplace burnout, as Iwas trying to understand
educator burnout, and we hadsome really good breakthroughs
there. But it was very like,okay, seeing this on all angles.
So, you know, as I was I beattype two diabetes, and as a
result, I actually got certifiedas a health coach in 2015 and

(04:42):
then kind of had that on ice fora little while, but cultivated
Insights is my is my trainingcompany, and I just sat for the
national board exam for healthand well being coaches. And so
now I'm in addition to teachingfolks about strategic
communication, negotiation. Andalso good, positive, sustainable
workplace practices. I'm also anexecutive health coach, and so

(05:04):
that's kind of where Erica and Icame together in thinking about,
how do we talk about well beingand wellness in a way that's
robust, that, frankly, is alittle bit muscular. It's not
about green smoothies. It'sabout leadership, and, you know,
not for nothing in my personallife, I I've been practicing
Muay Thai, traditionalkickboxing for the last nine

(05:25):
years. I am now a certifiedreferee and judging official. So
when I talk about wellness andwell being, it's through the
lens of martial arts, okay,which is kind of a new or a
different kind of perspective.
But we're excited about thisworkshop at the summit. We think
that it's going to deliver somereally good tools for folks.
Yeah,

Christine MacMillan (05:45):
this is like such an amazing
intersection of your two skillsets to come together and
present for the inclusion summitleaders who are going to be
there. So the audience istypically our HR managers and
the potentially the C suitepeople are going to be in the

(06:06):
room. And so what are the topicsand themes that you're going to
be presenting to them so thatthey can see what is important
for health and wellness, and,you know, just mental stability
and communication and all thesetopics that you just covered.
Tanya, how are you going to getit through to them? And like, an
hour and a half workshop

Tanya Tarr (06:27):
or talk really, really fast,

Erica D'Eramo (06:32):
thankfully, it'll be a three hour workshop. Oh,
okay, okay. There will bebreaks. But actually, when, when
I first reached out to Tanya totalk about this idea, we started
collaborating on a day longworkshop, because there is
really just so much materialhere, especially when you're
looking at people in in theoffshore industry, so people who

(06:56):
work in remote environments, whoare isolated from their
families, from their supportnetworks, sure, they have their
secondary family offshore, butthat was the that was kind of
the original seed that wasplanted and and so it has
evolved for this event to reallyfocus on inclusive leadership
styles for folks who are eitherin the office or offshore. So

(07:20):
the people who are the supportfor offshore, the HR managers,
the executives and and not justthrough a gender lens, right,
like through this is applicablefor for anyone. And the way
we'll be doing it is definitelythrough some interactive
activities and and keepingpeople, people engaged,

Tanya Tarr (07:37):
yeah. And I think, you know, if you look at the my
portfolio of clients and who Iserve. It's really it's really
diverse. I work with globalcorporations. I work with small
businesses. I help coach peopleI one of my clients is a stay at
home mom who's dealing withchronic illness. I think the
through line of all of this isunderstanding that if you manage

(08:01):
other people's time, that acouple of things, one is you've
got to take care of yourself.
You've got to put that oxygenmask on yourself first. And
secondly, that when you do that,not only does that communicate
positive behaviors to anyonethat looks up to you or that you
manage, but it creates ahealthier ecosystem. And the
benefit of that, you know, to bevery direct, and this is

(08:22):
absolutely something I say toevery CEO that I work with, this
is not about just a feel goodmoment. This isn't about mood
elevation. This is aboutcreating the strongest
organization where people feelprotected and safe. Because
ultimately, what we're trying todo is create a safer work
environment, because we know inhigh stakes situations like

(08:43):
offshore drilling, a mistake cancause a fatality, can cause loss
of millions of dollars perminute, yes, per minute. So this
is really sort of, as theysometimes refer to it, a triple
bottom line situation,ultimately having the management
I mean, yeah, individuals andindividual contributors, we want

(09:03):
them to be safe and healthy, buthaving helping managers and
executives understand what arethe signs to look for, right?
And how do we manage criticalrisk points like transitions,
right? So a lot of what I'msharing in this workshop with
Erica is stuff that I learnedwith military families and on
political campaigns. You have topay attention to transition

(09:26):
points. Those are the biggestrisk, risk points, and also to
understand that let's underlet's look at leadership and the
mechanics of leadership in wayswhere we are protective, right,
but we're not over bearing, andthat we kind of just disprove
some of the myths that are outthere. And I think to not only

(09:48):
do we want to create moreinclusive spaces, and obviously
the the CEO and C suite folks,you know, they are the biggest
pacesetters for that, right? Butthat every leader can create an
inclusive space, a tiny littleecosystem where people feel seen
and heard, and that by beingseen and heard, we're going to

(10:08):
reduce those errors or injuriesthat create larger problems.

Christine MacMillan (10:14):
Yeah, there is like a great trickle down
effect, so you're going to beable to get in at the higher
level and share this messagethat of the importance of
creating these environments, andthen hopefully the message will
trickle down. And so can youjust mention that there's some
myths that need to be debunked?
Can you share a couple of thosewith us?

Erica D'Eramo (10:33):
Yeah, I think I'm gonna pick up on one of the
comments that Tanya made aboutthis. This being, you know, seen
sometimes as a soft issue whenreality, a lot of the research
that's been done around safetyin some of these high stakes
environments shows that, youknow, unsurprisingly, there is a
high correlation betweenoperational discipline and

(10:56):
process safety, right? So thatmakes sense. We all kind of know
that inherently followingprocess and procedure, and
having your ducks in a row leadsto less process safety outcomes.
But the really interesting thingis that personal safety, so
injuries, health issues, that istied to trust in leadership, so

(11:17):
that is really the predictor ofof how your performance will be
in terms of whether people getinjured, you know, going about
their day to day work in some ofthese high stakes environments.
So that translates, I mean, ifwe look at kind of the pyramid
that we all that we all knowfrom the safety world, that

(11:39):
translates into the office aswell. So how people go about day
to day, really, and what theirwell being looks like in their
work environment there arethere's a high correlation there
with trust in leadership. And sothis conversation around
inclusive work environments,it's not just a soft thing, like

(11:59):
it literally ties to the metricsand can be measured in a variety
of ways. So I think that that'sone of the myths that I would
love to debunk, that this iskind of a feelings issue when,
yeah, there's, there'sunderlying science behind this.
The

Tanya Tarr (12:16):
other big myth is that Erica and I have talked a
lot about, is, you know, themyth of the lone wolf as a
leadership style, oh, highlyauthoritarian or isolated,
rugged individual as the oneleading the ship. And there are
so many examples, first of all,especially in the military
world, where that's not aneffective leadership strategy,

(12:39):
not to mention this wholeconcept of the the lone wolf is
actually garbage science. Oh,wow, yeah, totally garbage
science. Wolves act aggressivelywhen they are in captivity,
okay? When they are out in thewild, they actually hunt and
move as a team. And it's usuallya husband and wife Wolf, right?

(13:00):
So they pair the pair. Yeah,they're mated pairs. And so I
think a better model that we'regoing to present is the concept
of the adaptive alpha, which issomeone who is able to be
responsive and have very deepsituational awareness. I this
weekend, in fact, I watched avideo about the psychology of
dogs. I promise this is relevantand one of the evolutionary

(13:22):
psychologists in the video wastalking about how it's actually
survival of the friendliest, notsurvival of the fiercest, or,
you know, the fittest, fittest,right? Yeah, that actually in in
ecosystems that are successfulin evolving over time and
surviving, are the ones thatactually share resources, and I

(13:43):
think that that's very true inhigh stakes situations as well.
And like friendliness can beinterpreted in a lot of
different ways. One big riskpoint that we'll be talking
about is actually thedemobilization part. We tend to
be very good on readiness for anevent, but where things kind of
fall down and where maladaptivebehaviors start to emerge, in
other words, like substanceabuse or binge drinking or stuff

(14:05):
like that, that happens on thedemobilization part. So that's
after the handshake when they goback shore right, that sometimes
there isn't an attention beingspent to the demobilization
cycle. And so when managers areable to to sort of be more aware
of those things, and in somesense, be friendlier to their
staff, right to them, sort of beprepared to go offshore onshore

(14:30):
that that it actually isn't justabout positive emotional
feelings, but it's actuallyabout a stronger team and
smoother operations. So, and I

Erica D'Eramo (14:40):
think that to build on Tanya's point about
getting you know this, thisoperational readiness piece for
for folks that work on thewater, they'll know about doing
a wash up or an after action, orkind of do, doing a reflection
after an event happens. And Ithink that that starts to
understand the importance ofthat emotional D. Mobilization,

(15:00):
taking the learnings, it reallyhelps the team bond. It helps
create that trust, and it helpscreate a learning environment
rather than punishment. Yeah,exactly, a punishment
environment. And so we'll belooking during this workshop to
build those muscles in for forfor folks onshore as well,

(15:22):
right? That's just as applicableafter a high intensity period,
for folks in HR, for folks inleadership. And usually it's
like, Okay, it's done now we allgo relax. But how we're
recognizing what's happening inthe team in our bodies really
affects how we then decompressand demobilize, and whether we
do that in healthy ways, or,like Tanya mentions, perhaps

(15:44):
maladaptive ways, which areunfortunately, much more common
in work environments wherepeople are rotating so where
they they have a, you know, a 28day hitch or a 14 day hitch,
yeah, and yet We still see it inthe office environment as

Christine MacMillan (16:03):
well, for sure. So I think that this is,
like, a great example of, Iexperienced this out at sea, you
know, I went worked on ships,and we had an incident. We had a
fire. And after this reallyintense, you know, it was like a
very short period, but thenafterwards, there was no, like,
coming together, and let's learnand and make sure that
everyone's on the same page andfeels good about this. It was

(16:25):
like, almost the aftermath wasmore scary than the actual fire,
because I felt like we had nosense of togetherness or ability
to communicate about it or learnfrom it. It was like, Oh, you
didn't happen. You know,everyone was, like, too nervous
to talk about it. And so I thinkthat if we could get the leaders
in the room to understand thatthe evolution of the friendliest

(16:48):
survive and those that shareinformation the best are going
to thrive in situations, I thinkthat we can see a lot more
success for everyone, andthere's not going to be that
sense of fear or lack of trust,is that, am I on the right
track?

Tanya Tarr (17:03):
Oh, absolutely, yeah. The other thing too,
that's fascinating to me is I'malways trying to understand the
neurobiology of behaviors,because it's not just reacting
to, say, anxiety or stress, butlike, what are the things we can
actually do? To quote Erica,because I put this on my wall,
what increases the probabilityof a resilient positive outcome,
and there are behaviors thatwill trigger the production of

(17:26):
really positive brain chemistry.
So Christine, in your example,if there was a debrief
conversation where folks wereable to talk about what happened
and specifically talk about,what could we do better next
time, not only does that producea very strategic positive
benefit to the learning of theteam. But neurobiologically,
what's going to happen is we'retrusted individuals having that

(17:48):
conversation. We're creatingsomething called mirror neurons,
which is a very specific neuronthat we we experience the
emotion of safety when we createthose bonds with each other. It
also is producing oxytocin.
Conversation between trustedpeople produces oxytocin, which
is a connection hormone, andthat literally, and I'm like a

(18:10):
broken record, I find theselittle factoids, and then I
can't shut up about them.
Oxytocin production actuallyhelps strengthen the physical
tone of our hearts. It literallyhelps us guard against heart
disease. So it's not just againabout emotional connection, but
it's actually about a strongerteam and then a stronger
physical body as a result ofthat conversation. So as much as

(18:32):
maybe leaders or managers don'twant to spend the time on that
conversation because just abunch of conversations seems
like wasted time, operationallyspeaking, it is a huge positive
investment on multiple levels.
And so we hope, through theinclusion summit that we're
helping arm arm people with thisinformation, but also convince

(18:54):
managers and C suite that like,yeah, actually it takes, it
means a lot, to take the 15 or20 minutes after an event to
debrief and to demobilize. And Iknow it's true too with some of
my clients, I work with 911dispatchers, and that is like a
really important thing for themto do as they leave their shift
to talk about what happened. Imean, these folks, every day,
they're talking to someone who'shaving the worst day of their

(19:16):
life, you know, and being ableto chat that out with other
dispatchers actually reduces thelikelihood of secondhand trauma.
So if we're thinking aboutanother positive benefit, it's
is if a team, you know, on aninstallation, experiences
something very traumatic, beingable to have a conversation
about that reduces thatlikelihood of secondhand trauma,

(19:36):
and again, goes to the strengthof the team, which ultimately
goes to the strength of theoperation and increased
profitability. Wow.

Erica D'Eramo (19:42):
I think the other piece that's coming through here
too is this element of likeintegration. So as you process
it, you're integrating that intoyour real life, and not kind of
compartmentalizing it. And sothis is when we see folks that
have a rough hitch or a roughday. The Office, right? And they
go home and they're like, Oh, Ijust need to crack open a six

(20:03):
pack, right? Because that'llhelp wash that away. That's
because it's not like we aren'tsitting with that. We're not
kind of coming to terms with it.
We're not integrating it intowho we are, our identity, our
past, experiences, all of that,and how we operate as a team. So
when I hear you talk about thisevent that happened, and there
was a fire, and then there waskind of nothing I'm hearing like
a lack of integration, right?

(20:26):
It's not getting built into thelearnings and how the team now
operates. And so, yeah, that'llthat's kind of, that's a thread
that we see throughout this.

Christine MacMillan (20:36):
So this has been great. I know we don't want
to give away all of your secretsbefore the art workshop, and
you're going to go in a muchdeeper dive for those that are
in attendance at the inclusionsummit. And I am fascinated by
this. I feel like 2024, hasbecome the year of communication
for me and strengthening my owncommunication skills within

(20:58):
myself, within my team, withinmy family. And so I think that I
want to show up for this in abig way and hear what you have
to say. And so for those thatcan't be at the inclusion
summit, but they want to learnmore from you and about you, can
you share your contactinformation, or at least your
websites where people can comeand learn more about you?

Erica D'Eramo (21:20):
Yeah, absolutely.
So the best place to findtwopiers is probably our
website. So it'stwopiersconsulting com, t, w, o,
p, i, e, r, s, and we're on thesocial media things as well. So
Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn,etc. Okay,

Tanya Tarr (21:37):
great, yeah. Oh, and my company's cultivated
insights.com and I think thebest place to reach me is on
Instagram. So I'm at Tanya tarT, a n, y, a T, A R, R, and
every couple of days I postanxiety relief and stress
management tips based off ofscience. So I'll watch a
phenomenon, and then I like tobreak down the science of why

(21:57):
stuff works.

Christine MacMillan (21:59):
That is really cool. So is there any
last pieces of advice that you'dlike to share with the women
offshore community today beforewe wrap this up?

Erica D'Eramo (22:07):
I think our advice would just be to give
yourself some space. Really,there's a lot going out on and
out there in the world, andeverybody's handling a lot more
than we think we are. So that'smy one word of Yeah,

Tanya Tarr (22:20):
you're a badass.
Whoever you are listening tothis, you're you are a badass.
You show up every day and doreally difficult work and and
come to the summit and do somefun stuff with us and show up
for yourself too. You deserveYeah.

Christine MacMillan (22:34):
Thank you so much, ladies. I hope you have
a great day as

Tanya Tarr (22:37):
well. Thanks for having us. Thanks. You.