What it’s like to work in Government

I’ve been working in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in the UK Civil Service for the last four years. I have been based in Whitehall, at 1 Victoria Street, close to the Houses of Parliament. I had internship stints in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the European Commission and HM Treasury.

It’s been a fascinating journey since I’ve joined BEIS. I’ve had the fortune of moving around a few different positions and gaining a wide range of experience in a relatively short amount of time. I started working on EU policy whilst the UK was still a Member State. I worked on the coordination of the EU Council of Ministers meetings. This meant working with Ministers and policy leads to create a briefing and itinerary for an international meeting. I even went with my Minister to Brussels to attend the Competitiveness Council and see how EU negotiations happened in practice.

Later, I was the policy lead on the European Accessibility Act, where I worked with analysts and lawyers to set our negotiating position for the EU file. This meant working closely with stakeholders and doing short and sharp analysis to ensure the best result for the UK Government.

At the end of 2018 I took a team lead role within the legislation team. I ensured that the necessary legislation was in place to ensure a functioning statute book by the end of EU Exit. In practice, this meant organising the delivery of over 40 ‘Statutory Instruments’ – pieces of secondary legislation to amend UK law. I learnt plenty about the complexities around legislation, and how government makes things happen in practice to ensure that policies thought up within Whitehall are actually put in place.

I’ve most recently moved into my current role within the Regulated Professions team. I take on a wider programme management role to ensure that a team of over 30 staff are delivering a wide array of work – be it from international negotiations, stakeholder engagement and policy delivery. My highlight in this role was writing the bid for a Professional Qualifications Bill; we were only one of a few successful bids and it’s fantastic to see this become a reality with the bill being introduced in Early May.

More wider afield, I’ve learnt a lot about the world of politics having seen the knitty-gritty process of Brexit unfolding from the inside. I’ve worked with Ministers and seen the different relative interests and pressures of government responsibilities.

I’ve also greatly enjoyed being immersed in the world of the Civil Service– I have gained a wide array of skills (including project management and leadership & management qualifications) as well as a chance to really make a difference to the public. I’ve been heavily involved in Diversity and Inclusion, first chairing the Faith and Minority  Ethnic (FAME) Network, where I had the opportunity to present to the Executive Committee and recommendations on Race.

I was my Group Diversity and Inclusion Coordinator, where I wrote and agreed with my Director General and Directors the first ever Group D&I Workplan, encompassing our ambition to create a more inclusive workplace for the 600 staff within the group.

I have particularly enjoyed being in BEIS – as far as government departments go, I find the atmosphere welcoming in particular, and the remit is very broad meaning there are plenty of opportunities to move internally and try something new. It’s why I’ve ended up staying for several years, rather than moving to another government department as other civil servants have done.

So whilst there have certainly been point where it’s been a challenging ride, if you ever get the opportunity I would certainly recommend BEIS as a great place to develop (or even start) your career. There are plenty of interesting pieces of work and a generally friendly and welcoming atmosphere.

Why Staff Networks are a force for good

Today is the National Day for Staff Networks. We celebrate the hard work that staff networks do in organisation’s across the world. Today also gives us an opportunity to highlight the hard work that goes behind staff networks, and in particular the countless time and effort of dedicated individuals often taking their personal time to make their organisation’s a better place.

Staff Networks, or Employee Resource Groups as they are sometimes called, are employee-led groups within an organisation. These are often based upon under-represented groups or protected characteristics, for example on race, LGBT+, Gender, Religion or Parental groups to name but a few.

Since joining the office workforce, I have found staff networks an invaluable and critical function within the business organisation. So much so I chaired the departmental race and faith network for two years, and am currently the Secretariat lead for the cross-government race forum!

The reason staff networks are so valuable is that they are a force for genuine positive support and change within an organisation. In a world where we often bemoan hierarchical structures with little opportunity to have our voice really heard, staff networks demonstrate a tried-and-tested way to really bring the voice of different staff together and give them to the organisation as a critical-friend.

With more emphasis and action towards Diversity and Inclusion, staff networks are often key sounding boards for HR initiatives that effect certain groups. For example, companies have spoken to their disability network to test products with a disability-lens attached. In other words, staff within the company can see how well the product would work for disabled individuals, and help ensure that accessibility features are in place. This is great for the organisation as it ensures a better-made product, whilst it also acknowledges and values the skills and experience that disabled staff have within the organisation too.

But at its best staff networks can go even further. In my time working as a network leader, I worked very closely with my HR to support, test and challenge new proposals, including on introducing new talent schemes, performance management measures or outreach initiatives on recruitment. In a space where HR budgets are tight, I could coordinate support via our volunteers to give valuable time and resource. Working in the Civil Service meant we had a wide-range of expertise including analysts, policy-professionals and event managers, meaning we could tap into a rich and vast set of experiences that would otherwise be left hidden away in silos within the organisation.

In my time, we gave critical feedback all the way up to the head of our organisation on the situation around race, building a movement to highlight and address systemic issues. Using data and analysis, we presented across Senior Management Teams, eventually leading us all the way up to the Executive Committee. I was even given the space to present a paper with a set of recommendations (all of which were agreed upon). It’s certainly not an experience I would have gotten without the recognition and creation of staff networks!

So today is a day to rejoice. Bringing people together in support of an organisation by making people’s voices heard is always an important thing to cherish. I do recognise that staff networks are often under-resourced or sub-optimally structured, however we must remember that these are essentially a free resource for the business ran by volunteers, and the amount they can bring to the table is far more than any set of external consultants trying to do the same thing!

So if you’re a member of an organisation with staff networks within them, I would really encourage you to get involved. A lot of blood, sweat and tears goes into maintaining them, and there is always a need for more volunteers. It’s a fantastic way of widening your own personal network, understanding more about the organisation’s objectives and give yourself an opportunity to pick up wider leadership skills. If your organisation does not have a staff network, why not set one up?

For further information about the National Day for Staff Networks check out https://www.nationaldayforstaffnetworks.co.uk/

Taking in nature to restore your wellbeing and energy

Last week was a Bank Holiday Weekend in the UK. Although the weather was quite hit-and-miss, I managed to go out to some local forests and woods over the weekend.

I must admit that I’ve never really paid that much attention to nature previously. I’ve grown up in cities, and tended to relegate visiting ‘green spaces’ to a walk at the city park or when on holiday to see the local exotic scenery. So I wasn’t really sure what I was going to get from popping out of the city to my local forest.

Perhaps it’s an added effect of the lockdown, but I found the opportunity to find silence in a forest unbelievably nourishing. Having spent most of my life in the space of a small apartment over the last six months, the freedom and release from covid-style living was extremely revitalising.

I found something reassuring in looking at the big tall trees all around me. It sounds a little silly in some senses, but the fact there are whole woodlands that have survived hundreds of years puts my own life in perspective. After all, the world is not going to end if I miss my close-of-play deadline, nor is our current situation under lockdown going to last forever either. Life will go on.

The fact that there was a whole ecosystem of life around me – the birds, animals, plants and bugs – also made me realise that the world doesn’t revolve around me either. My obsessions on my wants and needs aren’t all that important in the grand scheme of things!

I am someone who tends to find my burnout zone is when my mind is constantly looking for stimulation, including often when sleeping or just as I wake up. Unfortunately the lockdown has exacerbated my use of technology and social media, which has meant I am often over-stimulated, with little opportunity to release it.

I found going way outside of my usual habitat to a forest give me a massive piece of perspective on my life. I’ve also found I appreciate nature far more than I ever previously have because of it. With Spring coming and better weather (hopefully), it’s something I will look to do far more often, as I’m currently quite fortunate to be able to jump on public transport to do so.

So if you’re in need of some revitalisation, I would really recommend going out to take some nature. I realise not all of us can easily access big woodlands or natural spaces, but even going out to the park and popping in some headphones to play forest sounds can imitate the immersive experience.

When was the last time you popped out for a spot of nature for your wellbeing?

Why leaders need to actively build inclusive cultures in their teams

I’ve worked in a number of different teams, often led by ‘good’ people who generally work hard, are considerate, and have no explicit ill-meaning malice within them.

So why does it often go so wrong?

I have seen a number of new teams being created at a very quick pace due to wider work pressures and fast-paced nature in which business demands are changing quickly. This trend is not going to change either, with our working lives becoming more embroiled in shifts and rapid changes, organisations are becoming more agile in deploying teams quickly to respond to new opportunities or challenges.

Unfortunately, when teams are built up at pace, often little thought is put upon team dynamics and building a wider inclusive culture. And whilst practically nobody sets out to build a non-inclusive culture when setting up a team, this aspect falls through the cracks as lots of new managers grasp to understand their new responsibilities, so instead are focused that they are delivering to their job standards and proving they can do the job. From the team leaders perspective, this can quickly turn into command and control decision-making from the top.

Organisations do not help themselves in how they set up these teams. Generally, highly proficient individuals are selected to lead the team. This is potentially on promotion, rewarding these individuals for their hard work and their technical potential from other work.

Unfortunately, there is little within the workplace to highlight the importance of new-found management responsibility or the importance of building a team. As such, what often takes place is a strong technical deliverer (but average manager) gets promoted into a position of responsibility where they are suddenly the head of dozens of people or more. With little training and guidance around this area (or even consideration whether someone would be a good team leader from a people perspective in the first place), the seeds are sown for a poor team culture.

What often happens is that the new team leader operates in the same way that they did when managing a small team. This is particularly problematic because the way of working with a few people is very different to managing a large group of people. Whilst things like relying solely on informal conversations through coffee point chats or the pub for work conversations is less of an issue when it is a group of three, it does not work for a larger team. Instead, what it leads to is those with the direct access via these methods are thrusted into a position of exclusive access. Others outside of this group find it difficult to get their voice heard. Staff instead have to resort to turning up where their boss does to be ‘seen’ or for any of their ideas to see the light of day.

Sadly, many leaders do not realise that they are inadvertently creating an exclusive culture. It requires a good deal of introspection and thought for leaders to take stock of routes of access, and how relying on traditional communication methods (i.e. heirarchical messaging upwards) is fraught with the danger of them only hearing one side of the story from the people they interact with frequently. This leads to problematic decision-making due to a disconnect with what is happening throughout the team, and leads to a growing disillusionment and resentment from wider staff who are not part of the more exclusive club.

This usually manifests itself via worse employee engagement and satisfaction scores, leading to middling output. Higher staff turnover and its associated cost to the business is usually the result. It can also lead to siloed working and a lack of attention on all areas of a project. For example, areas such as team or project management, HR or finance may just get sidelined despite being critical functions. In all, there is little positive to come out of an exclusive culture.

So what can be done to improve the situation?

From the leaders perspective, they can look to re-evaluate how accessible they are to the whole team. An often used idea is having ‘open hours’ for anyone to speak with them anonymously about issues they may be having. Leaders could also go a step further, and try and book short catch-ups with more junior members of the team to get a better sense of the mood music from below. Leaders can also look to build more inclusive habits into their meetings, ensuring a more equitable participation from different people. They can also look to break down implicit hierarchical barriers by empowering more junior staff to give their opinions at regular intervals.

From an organisations perspective, much can be done to avoid the negative culture being built in the first place. Organisations can do much more to value, train and assess management capability within their performance management, and in particular when looking at promotions or job opportunities for their staff. Currently, organisations rarely genuinely consider whether people are likely going to be good at leading a team when putting them into a post, despite it being a critical factor in its success. An important way to do this is by instilling the importance of management and effective team working within their company values so that this is fostered throughout the whole organisation.

These are my thoughts. What good stories do you have around building inclusive team cultures, and conversely, do you have any horror stories?

Understanding ourselves during the rollercoaster of lockdown

The lockdown has been a tough journey. For some of us, it has meant the difficulty of losing loved ones and not being able to grieve as we normally would. For others, it has meant homeschooling and juggling job responsibilities. Some of us are worried about protecting our more vulnerable friends and family, meaning we haven’t been able to visit them in quite some time.

Some of us have felt the brunt of the pandemic economically, losing our trades and livelihoods, being left in limbo awaiting an unknown future. Others of us have kept our roles, but have had to quickly adapt to spending most of our time virtually, and often with additional work pressures than before.

Yesterday I asked a group of people how those who were introverts were feeling. For me, I found the first lockdowns easier – after all, as an introvert I’m quite happy sitting in my bunker for long periods of time. However, I’ve now gotten to the point where I’ve been inside for so long I feel like I’m losing touch with reality. It seems like a lot of introverts have been feeling this way too.

Whilst this is no doubt tough on the extroverts among us too, it’s interesting to see how they generally struggled far more at the beginning compared to the introverts. I don’t doubt the extroverts are still struggling too, but probably in a different way than some of us introverts who can find going outside more daunting the longer we are stuck inside.

For those that have been following me on LinkedIn, I’ve been posting quite a lot recently about feeling particularly burnt out recently. I highlighted the common signs for me – sleeping worse (and snoring more!), less motivation in the mornings, enjoying my hobbies less, finding my work and extra-curricular pursuits far less engaging and having tension stomach aches.

For better or for worse, I’ve learnt a lot more about my own trigger points and warning signs internally. For me, I tend to be a lot more disorganised with my thoughts, often interrupting myself mid-speech when I am overwhelmed. For those interested in the Myers-Briggs space, I have a co-pilot ‘extroverted feeler’, meaning I tend to have a heightened sense of feeling for others. When a lot of people around me are in pain, I tend to close the barriers simply because I do not have the capacity to cope with the feelings. In practice this leads to me ‘shutting down’.

I also tend to lose my physical connection with my body, meaning I am spending most of my time in my own head. I believe that the tension stomach aches have been my body’s way of telling me to start focusing on my body more, as I tend to neglect it when I am stressed via poor eating or lack of exercise.

These have been the signs I have found within myself. Some of this may resonate with what you are feeling, but much of it probably won’t either. As individual human beings, we are unique in our own way, and have our own wants and needs. On top of that, we’ve all been affected differently, so the degree to how difficult we’ve been finding it us different for all of us.

So it’s been interesting to reflect about how this situation has affected us all personally. Whilst I would not wish the difficulties we’ve had to endure on anyone, the silver lining is that it has given us an opportunity to understand more about ourselves. If we learn from this, we can look to come out of this as stronger and more resilient human beings.

I would also add that I don’t know anyone who has come out of the pandemic better off. This has negatively affected us in some way. So it is completely normal to feel low, upset or angry with the situation around us, even if you are one of the more fortunate ones for still having a job. We would not be human if we didn’t feel some sense of loss right now.

So take a moment to think about how the pandemic has affected you as an individual. What have you learnt about yourself? were there things that you found more/less challenging than you expected?

I would love to hear your thoughts!

Why you’re not hearing about Diversity issues in your workplace

Talking about Diversity issues can be pretty tough. In an organisation where it’s not the done thing, saying you are being treated differently can be extremely uncomfortable, particularly if you happen to be the ‘only’ in the room – whether that be the only woman, BAME person, disabled individual or something else entirely.

I had an interesting conversation recently with a group of coaches around clients from underrepresented backgrounds. Many organisations have a culture of raising these issues through a one-to-one with managers. Unfortunately, this usually doesn’t end particularly well for the underrepresented member of staff wanting to raise their concerns, as they tend to be brushed aside. But why is this the case?

To give an illustrative example, a woman may bring an issue about feeling treated unfavourably in the workplace by another male colleague, for example not being invited to workplace drinks, not being copied into emails or generally not being addressed in meetings with respect. The women follows standard procedure and bring this to the attention of their manager, who in this case is male.

The manager finds this surprising, and due to a lack of wider understanding around diversity issues can only process this issue in one of two ways. In his eyes, either this is a case of clear-cut sexual discrimination / sexual harassment case, and therefore a serious HR issue they need to deal with, or this is a misunderstood perception of the woman he manages, and therefore not a real problem.

Offices tend to be quite small, tight-knit and often cliquey cultures. What often happens is that this manager, knows the male accused in question himself. From what he can see, the accused is a nice, upstanding person, so what his female report is telling him does not correlate with his own experience. The male manager has also not seen any lewd or outright poor behaviour from the accused person towards women. This therefore leads him to conclude that he is not a sexist, ruling out the first option. The response that the male manager therefore inevitably gives is that this can’t be the case as John/Fred/Jim is a nice guy, and perhaps it’s just the female report misunderstanding the situation.

Unfortunately, the male manager is not aware that his experiences are very different compared to the female he manages. He therefore does not think to question whether his experiences would be a good reference point for this situation. He is also unlikely to hear about any individual issues against this person publicly either. Indeed even if several female colleagues have made complaints, these would be in their own one-to-one chats. No one will ever piece these together, as they are all held in separate, private conversations.

The issue then is put back onto the female as her fault as she misunderstands, which inevitably makes her doubt her instincts. This makes it difficult for her to feel confident in her job when she is told that what she is feeling is imaginary.

If she is savvy, she may speak to other female colleagues and get a better idea of this male colleague’s behaviour, and how to handle it. Whilst this helps, it obviously does not solve the problem itself, and these other females will also probably tell tales that they’ve raised issues but been brushed aside.

From the female’s perspective, at this point it is better to give up with the formal system as the one-to-one conversations are ineffective. Whilst she could raise it more formally via a grievance, she realises this will likely result in retribution against her, and she is unlikely to be believed in her claims.

Thus we find the full cycle of diversity issues not being addressed properly. It is worth pointing out that in this example, it is a man as both the manager and perpetrator, both of which are statistically more likely to be more senior in the organisation, whilst the woman may be in the minority. This is only exacerbated with other diverse characteristics, for example BAME individuals may not have other BAME people in the office to turn to in order to verify their experiences, simply due to a statistically lower amount in the population and therefore in the workplace.

So how can we break out of this cycle of not hearing from our minority groups in the workplace? A good start is via anonymous surveys, which collect diversity data to really get a sense of how people are feeling, and whether there are discrepancies between age, gender, race, sexuality etc.

Another way is to hold anonymous focus groups, building a safe space for these individuals to raise the issues in a group setting, and share their experiences. This allows for a more open dialogue than the often uncomfortable one-to-one conversation, though relies on a lot of trust and genuine engagement to get people to actually attend.

There are also other ways, including senior managers having an open door policy to discuss more private issues, or being more aware of how people are feeling and taking more care to actively catch-up with their staff when they are behaving a bit differently.

Of course, probably one of the biggest solutions would be to improve managers ability to deal with diversity issues . Unfortunately, basic managerial competency tends to be lacking in most organisations, meaning there is a lot to do in this space.

Those are my thoughts. Why do you think people don’t speak up about diversity issues in the workplace?

What Small Businesses can do around Diversity and Inclusion

We have seen far more resources going into Diversity and Inclusion than ever before, with a growing understanding that businesses need to tackle this as an issue as a priority.

Much of our focus has been on the large, multinational organisations and what actions they are taking. This does make sense, after all they have the larger market shares and influence, as well as the resources to genuinely drive better standards in this area.

But what about the small businesses? After all, in the UK, of the nearly 6 million total business population, 99% are Small and Medium Enterprises. Fortunately in many SMEs there has also been a growing interest in doing more around diversity and inclusion. Unfortunately though, much of the work of D&I practitioners focusses on culture change for large organisations, meaning that smaller businesses are left without much guidance or support that really benefits their needs.

I’ve been speaking to some local businesses about this recently. Some of the issues relate to a lack of resources to tackle this issue, a lack of expertise in this area or their regional location where there is less diversity in general. On top of this, simply surviving during COVID has taken been one of the most difficult battles for many local businesses, meaning additional aspirations on this agenda can be tough to justify.

That being said, it is worth stating that many of the strong business reasons for D&I apply for small businesses as well. For example:

  • Serving diverse customers is a way to diversify business revenues. Offering products and services for underserviced communities can open up additional opportunities for a local business.
  • customers have a growing societal conscience around Diversity and Inclusion. People may be put off taking services if they feel a business is not representative or is not taking action to support the agenda. This is particularly important for community-based businesses.
  • By creating an inclusive culture, businesses making people feel more comfortable working there. Happy staff = productive staff (and less turnover).
  • Attracting wider talent pools will help small organisations get the best talent available. This is particularly critical for small businesses in ethnically diverse areas who may not otherwise attract individuals from different backgrounds.  

It’s also not all doom and gloom for small businesses in being able to act in this area. After all, Small businesses are more nimble, and much more likely to be connected to their local community, giving them a closer insight into local diaspora and are better able to build genuine relationships with key community leaders for different groups. Multinationals on the other hand have a hard time getting passed being seen as ‘faceless’, and shifting priorities mean community relations can often fall by the wayside. Likewise, it is far easier to shift the internal inclusive culture of a small business, compared to a large organization employing thousands of people.

So with this is in mind, I have created a list of actions small businesses may want to consider. These are intentionally bitesize to take into account limited resources, as well as the relative strengths small businesses have:

  • Have you asked how your employees feel? Have you asked them what it is like to work in your business? How do they feel about diversity and inclusion?
  • As a small business, you are likely already well-linked to your local community groups. Explore these avenues further to get a better understanding of what potential customers are out there, and what needs are currently not being met for them. Take a particular look at those from different backgrounds you may not have considered before.
  • Review your promotional material and website. How representative are they of different groups? Would they appeal to these groups? 
  • See where you are advertising. Is there a way you can diversify your approach, e.g. getting in contact with local mosque, diverse community groups, ethnic diaspora local newspapers etc.?
  • And if you would like to go a step further, take time to see how diversity and inclusion can be incorporated within your wider business plan and strategy.

These are my tips for small businesses to take more action around Diversity and Inclusion. What do you think? Are there any actions small businesses have taken that you have been particularly impressed by?

Bringing a Coaching Approach to advocating Diversity and Inclusion

Last week, I wrote about how Diversity and Inclusion would benefit from a more rigorous Project Management approach. This got me thinking: what other areas can we take inspiration from to improve our approach to Diversity and Inclusion?

Many are aware of the benefits of mentoring, both for personal development and for giving advice around Diversity and Inclusion. Coaching however, is usually more misunderstood; and whilst a growing amount of Diversity and Inclusion professionals may offer coaching-type services, this may often turn more towards mentoring where experience is predominantly shared which, although potentially beneficial, does not fully embrace the full positive benefits of coaching.

So what is coaching exactly? The International Coaching Federation defines coaching as “partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential.”

In other words, coaching is about prompting the client to think for themselves around a subject, and the role of the coach is to prompt growth through insightful and powerful questions. Mentoring is more about knowledge transfer – the mentor is directly imparting information to the mentee taking their own experience as the reference point.

From my experience, coaching and Diversity and Inclusion go hand-in-hand. It is a way for individuals to come up with an understanding of the issue themselves, as well as providing actions they can take from the point of view of their own personal upbringing. It also makes the subject more accessible, and can bring in views from those who do not have an obvious reason to be interested in D&I (e.g. being white, straight, abled etc.)

Coaching is extremely powerful as it allows individuals to come to their own solutions, rather than being told what to do (something as humans we tend to dislike!). It also allows us to bridge the gap between a difference of experiences. I have previously ‘reverse mentored’ senior white leaders, and whilst this process was highly valuable for both of us, I was mainly describing experiences that the senior leader would find difficult to identify with directly; this led to a conclusion that ‘this was a nice relationship and something to think about’, rather than giving genuine growth to the senior leader in question.

I have since taken a coaching approach, and I have found this far more effective to overcome the obstacles they have around diversity and inclusion. For example, I recall working with one senior white leader who found this subject extremely frustrating and difficult to access: they cited the terminology constantly changing as an example of not knowing what to do. They also just simply did not understand the issue properly as they was not seeing it happen in front of them, and were too senior to see this playing out on the ground – even if the statistics did prove that this was happening.

Through a coaching approach, I was able to dig deeper into their stumbling blocks around the subject, give some prompts as to why this may be frustrating (which in this case was partly because it felt like that they did not care about their staff, which was not the case) and over the process of time get more comfortable talking about diversity and inclusion for themselves. It also allowed them to bring their own perspective and understanding of the subject.

By the end of the process I found that senior leader who was one of the biggest advocates for diversity and inclusion within the organization, and the outcome was far more effective than if I had taken an approach to constantly bang the drum to them about why diversity and inclusion was important.

So I personally believe that Diversity and Inclusion practitioners (and indeed anyone advocating around the subject) would greatly benefit from use a coaching approach, particularly when having a trusted relationship with seniors.

I believe it also better mimics how we as individuals got passionate about diversity and inclusion in the first place. For most of us, this required a genuine stimulus relating to an injustice we have witnessed or felt personally, which made us reflect on why inequalities are allowed to happen. Coaching allows us to give this experience to senior leaders who may not have experienced any of these issues, simply as they never saw it themselves.

I have all too often seen the passion of individuals around diversity and inclusion crossing over to becoming an impediment to positive change; whilst positive energy is certainly needed to drive the agenda forward, many senior leaders can be put off or intimidated by practitioners who can come across as intense or are seen as one-dimensional as their approach tends to always be to challenge the organisation. What is lacking here is the supporting function to bring a leader who has little to no experience in this area into a space of awareness and allyship, something which coaching is extremely successful in doing.

One area which I am currently working on (and need to get on with!) is writing a book bringing a coaching approach to diversity and inclusion with a new framework to prompt individuals to better understand these issues for themselves, whether they be white, straight, abled or not. Hopefully this will help bridge the gap for diversity and inclusion practitioners and give them a new way to successfully influence their senior leaders and bring positive change to their organisations.

These are my thoughts, but what do you think about taking a coaching approach around D&I?

Bringing an Agile Approach to Diversity and Inclusion Initiatives

We are seeing more businesses taking notice about the importance of Diversity and Inclusion. More senior leaders are genuinely engaging than ever before. This is also starting to be backed up by genuine resources, something that D&I professionals have cried out for over the course of decades. There is currently a wide proliferation of new diversity and inclusion roles springing up across many sectors – something that was not the case this time last year.

So it is fair to say that diversity is higher up on the agenda than it has ever been. The new stumbling block however, is what to do now. As the scale of the task becomes clear, it can be easy to get quickly overwhelmed with the amount of work needed, and how difficult it can be to make meaningful change. This is particularly the case when many issues stem from outside the workplace, which can often touch upon our wider society and upbringing.

With a growing professionalization in the space of Diversity and Inclusion, I believe more can be done to use project management principles to improve the approaches (and thus the success) of diversity initiatives.

Agile is a Project Management approach, originating from software but now commonly used in dynamic projects. This approach is different from common corporate planning approaches where the aim is to plan everything at the beginning, get approval from seniors and delivering the whole project in a ‘big-bang’ approach at the end, which tends to have mediocre success rates as it is increasingly difficult to plan everything at the beginning in our uncertain environment.

Instead, Agile is about delivering in smaller iterations and being adept to changes. The Agile Business Consortium define Agile as “able to move quickly and easily” or to be “able to think and understand quickly”.

From my experience, the best diversity and inclusion champions have been those that have been willing to work smart. Admittedly, this has often been forced upon them – with shoe string budgets and often supported by a disparate crew of motivated but voluntary individuals who can spare an hour here and there. But what is also evident is that this approach follows the basic principles behind an Agile mindset.

In other words, those that are more successful in this space understand the importance of trying different initiatives quickly (and not being afraid to fail at them) as the approach can always be modified once you have learnt what has gone wrong. Organisations often get stuck in getting the solution right the first time, thus spending months (if not years) agonizing over a potential solution. This leads to them both getting criticised for not acting, and when they finally do act, disappointing their stakeholders as the solution is a relatively small action in the end.

So to get Diversity and Inclusion initiatives off the ground, here are a few principles I’ve found that tend to work (and which are inspired by an Agile mindset):

  • Start small, and work to make the most of the resources and positive motivation you have available (even if that is only yourself or a handful of volunteers)
  • It is better to start initiatives that fail rather than getting stuck trying to find the perfect solution. You can learn from failure, you cannot learn from inaction.
  • Accept you will get things wrong, such as using outdated words or definitions. Learn from your mistakes and correct them as you go along.
  • Demonstrate value to the business, and communicate how Diversity and Inclusion links to the overall Business Strategy constantly.

Whilst the above does take Agile’s general principles, I also admit I do not reference a lot of other areas that are key to Agile (e.g. key roles and responsibilities, defined ways of working etc.) This is deliberate, as I do not believe organisations are quite ready to put in the resources to devote such a professionalised approach towards diversity currently.

However, as time goes on, I believe we can go further with using a more systemic approach to Diversity and Inclusion using Agile Project Management methodologies. An issue with current activity within organizations is that they can lack coordination, so I do believe bringing a more rigorous Project Management approach will be a way to improve interventions in the future as the D&I field matures.

Are you a D&I professional, Project Manager or simply someone who is interested in the subject more broadly? I would love to hear your thoughts and whether you agree/disagree!

Diversity – how it plays out in the boardroom

Below is a fictionalised example of what can often happen in the workplace when discussing diversity. Whilst this example is not ‘real’, it is a reflection of what can often happen when looking to address diversity through the corporate systems currently in place.   

A meeting is called. The main executives and HR are invited in. The aim is to solve the diversity problem. The agenda item is scheduled for 20 minutes. At this meeting it has been put front of the agenda, as it had been scheduled in previous meetings but was put at the end so was never addressed as time ran out each time. With a new deadline approaching, the board need to nail it down now.   

The meeting was called due to a new government initiative wanting to promote more women in the boardroom. This caught the organisation by surprise, and led to some thoughts about where exactly all the women are. 

HR do not usually attend, but are invited in. They have spent the last two weeks scrambling around to understand where the women are in the organisation. They have built an initial analysis. 

The meeting begins. HR starts presenting that women are particularly prominent in certain areas such as her own area, but otherwise are overly represented at junior levels, predominantly with receptionists and customer service workers.  

One executive butts in that this is not true for their department, as there is one woman on his leadership team who is very visible. 

HR note this point, and say that some women are making it to middle management but do not often progress further at a certain stage. 

Another executive jumps in to share his experience that the women he has worked with have generally worked well and have always been happy. It does not make sense that there is an issue. He suggests that perhaps this is simply an issue of time needed for change to happen. 

The chair jumps in to clarify why there seems to be a drop off rate on the middle management ranks. HR suggest this is related to women going off on maternity leave. 

Another executive jumps in on this point, expressing that the issue is that women do not seem to aspire to senior management, particularly when they have started families. He notes he was having a conversation with his receptionist on this exact point, and she stated that she was not interested in progressing within her career. 

The chair notes the point, but is not totally convinced. He asks whether any of their competitors have the same issue. The room mumbles and generally agrees that it is, noting that the last time they have recruited for high level positions women do not apply. There must be a lack of suitably talented women for the role. 

One woman is sat in the room. She is deputising for her boss, and is staying relatively silent. She is uncomfortable at raising a point in front of a room that is more senior than her. The chair, noting a woman is in the room, asks her what she thinks. 

She fidgets in her chair, before talking a little about some of her experience being one of the few women at her level. She did not have children, so did not face some of the challenges her other women colleagues did, who ended up leaving the organisation; though she finds it difficult to explain this fully when being put on the spot. Her comments are politely noted by the rest of the board members. 

The conversation continues, breaking down into a general set of opinions from different people, often with little coherence with one another. When it becomes obvious that time is running out, the chair pushes for a decision they can make. 

One executive exasperatingly remarks that they can’t solve an issue if women don’t want the jobs. Whilst the chair sympathises, he highlights that they must be seen to act in order to meet the expectation of promoting gender equality. 

As such, the chair pushes the board to decide that they commission HR to find a solution to the issue and will revisit the conversation in the New Year. The chair ends by highlighting his personal belief that gender equality is extremely important and is a priority of the organisation. He then moves to the next agenda topic. 

Have you seen this scenario happen?