Engineering Inclusive Excellence

Hello everyone, my name is Joanne Lockwood and I am your host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people that simply had a conversation around the subject of inclusion, belonging and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehapen.co.uk. That's S-E-E Change Happan dot Co dot Uk. You can catch up with all of the previous shows on iTunes, Spotify and the usual places. So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf and let's get going.

Today is episode 93 with the title engineering inclusive excellence and I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Claire Angliss. Claire is a leader of learning for large engineering organisation and is also the owner of her own inclusive coaching business. When I asked Claire to describe her superpower, she said she is honest and delivers clear talk backed up with action. Wow. Hey, Claire, welcome to the show.

Hi Jo. So nice of you to invite me to talk today.

Absolute pleasure. We've worked together in the past and it was an honour to invite you along and even more of an honour for you to accept. Thank you. So, Claire, engineering inclusive excellence, tell me why we chose that as a title.

Well, Jo, as you know, I'm the head of learning for Thales in the UK and we've been looking at engineering excellence within our business and leadership for a long period of time now. And when I talk about engineering excellence, I'm really talking about a place where everyone feels valued and that they can contribute their best. So all of that head in for any engineering organisation, in delivery for the customer, of course. But a place where people can achieve and thrive and feel that they belong, feel that they're trusted, feel that they can contribute and be their most authentic selves, that they feel they want to be at work.

That's easier said than done, isn't it? I mean, we hear this buzword, bring your whole self to work. And I always say, well, that's easy to you, easy for you, because the further you are from the bell curve of normality, the harder it is to bring that whole self, isn't it?

That's why I chose my words really carefully there, Jo, because I said that you choose to do. Because I think I had a conversation and I'm trying to remember where it was. It was a couple of years ago now, at a learning conference I was at and I was listening to a speaker there who was talking about bringing your whole self to work. And I was thinking, the same as you. That's really easy if your whole self is something that's well accepted or very, I guess, the norm of where you work. And they were talking about a really senior leader in a large, organised, complex organisation and saying that they'd been talking about how you were your most authentic self at work. And he had been sharing that he couldn't possibly be that. And the reason was that his extracurricular activity was one that maybe others wouldn't understand and wouldn't accept.

And being a very senior leader, he decided that he wouldn't share that. His choice of extracurricular was to be naked in the woods with other people that like natureism and love to be outdoors naked in the woods. So he made a decision not to share what his extracurricular kind of hobies were outside of work. And I guess that's where I share my words really carefully. It's of what you choose, of what is comfortable. And I would have loved to get to a place, Jo, as you know, where we could really be our most authentic selves. But it's always about what you choose to share about you, because there will always things about everybody we choose not to. So I think that's important, that as HR and learning leaders, we're really understanding that you can't possibly be asking that of everybody.

No. And picking up on that particular example, the natureism, this person's sort of weekend community and hobby, or their lifestyle, whichever makes them happy. It's coming in to work on a Monday morning or having taken some time off. So what did you get up to? And then immediately this person's having to cover, mask, hide what they've done, sanitise their response. And that's a huge cognitive load for people to have to process it. You say they choose to share that or not. By choosing not to share it, they choose to create a story and a myth, which is even harder sometimes to maintain.

I think that's absolutely right. I guess what I see as our kind of role to play is to help people to be able to share the things that they feel they'd like to and that they can balance with. This is something that's really important to me, and I don't want to mask this. It causes me more distress if I do to. Actually, I'm a senior financial controller in a large organisation and this is what I choose to do at my weekends and actually the outlying kind of balance in what would happen if I did choose that. And actually it's private to me, I don't really want to. I guess that's where I'm coming from. It's more.

If you choose not to share that because for you, it's just not something you feel comfortable sharing, then I'm okay with that. But what I don't want is for people clearly to be not sharing things that then causes them pain not to share.

Yeah, I completely agree. And the pressure to out yourself on everything, if you like, can't be there either. And just because someone maybe is gay, bi, lesbian, it doesn't need to bring that to work. If you're comfortable saying, actually, it's none of your business who I sleep with, who I have relationships with. I don't feel the need. I'm not hiding myself, I'm just choosing not to share that. It doesn't matter to me.

Yeah. And some folk, it's a big part of who they are and it's what they want to share. I guess it's like any of us. There are things that I might choose to share. When I was going through a divorce, did I choose to share that at work? Not with everybody. With the people that I felt needed to know to support me, but not with everybody. And that was testament. When I changed my name from Mortimer to Anglis back to my maiden name, the amount of people that congratulated me on getting married, there was far more awkward conversations about congratulations on being married than there was probably that if I'd have had the conversation that I was divorced, but I just felt it was no one else's business and I didn't really need to.

So when people push for people to share everything, but it's a really inclusive space and you can share whatever you want to share your truth, I think that is always with choice, and that should be made really clear that it's not an expectation that you do that, but if it's right for you, then you can.

Yeah. And I think the key thing really is you should have an ultimate expectation if you do decide to share something, people go, wow, excellent. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you for trusting me. And that's the kind of the reaction. It's not sort of like, oh, oMg. Or sort of run for the hills.

It's kind of a, yeah, okay, actually, so and so down the corridor, it has a similar lifestyle, have a chat with them and suddenly there's a network built up and you suddenly feel fine that other people can share that as well. And obviously went through the same thing obviously went through the same thing seven or eight years ago. Where you end up building up this huge backstory about everything. And wherever the old adage is, it's always easier to tell the truth because you never have to remember what the lie was or what the fabrication was. And I found myself going away for weekends and my social engagements, and people would say, what'd you do last night? I said, well, I went for a stag weekend, which at the time wasn't technically a lie. It wasn't technically a truth. It was kind of an easy way of saying I went away with a load of people to Blackpool for a bit of a stag weekend. The fact it was a load of trans women having a weekend away, trying to explore themselves and have some time out, you end up making the story up and then you finally do share something and it becomes people then feel a bit lied to if you're not careful.

You've been deceiving me, you've been telling me this all this time. So, yeah, it's that really fine line between lying to people about what you're doing and choosing not to share, hasn't it? And I found that was a real awkwardness where people said, oh, you've been lying.

I guess we do that though, Jo, don't we? To protect people somewhat as well, because people tend to want to help. So if you tell someone something, they then tend to feel like there's something they should do about it. And I think that goes back to your point, how to react when someone shares something like that with you. Because if you'd have shared your truth, I wonder how many people would have wanted to help or support or talk about what you were going through that were totally unequipped to do so. That would have been actually of hindrance at that moment in your life, rather than help, potentially, but actually, how we respond to someone when they share their truth with us, or are open about who and what they choose to do. I guess it's a case of us not feeling like we need to help support, fix or do something with that person and just say, thank you for sharing that. Is there any support, like, from me, maybe is a good question, rather. Oh, that sounds really interesting.

Tell me more. I really didn't know. I'm so sorry, Jo. You're going through all this because actually that wasn't how you were feeling.

It's interesting, you mentioned a couple of things there. So you mentioned that our human need to fix and the sympathy and the, oh, you're brave, or you're so courageous. Everyone's obviously well meaning, but they're not actually responding to you. They're responding about themselves, aren't they? It's all about them. Oh, you're so. It means I couldn't do so. You're courageous means, oh, wow, that scares me. And then this listening to fix, isn't it sort of like, let me help you.

Let me solve your problem, because you're obviously not intelligent enough to fix your own problem. You need my suggestion to fix it for you. And I can say something and they're going to go, wow, Jo, I could have done that without you. How amazing.

Yeah, I agree, Jo. Yeah.

I was chatting to someone on a podcast this episode last week, Greg, and it's coming out a couple weeks time. And he was saying that when he was going through a really dark time and contemplated suicide at some point, and when he was telling people about it, he said it was really hard to find people who would just say, thank you for sharing that. Do you want to talk about it more? Do you want to explore it? Rather than the natural reaction is what can I do to help? Or what can I do to fix it? Actually, just listening to me, let me understand why I'm in this dark place. Give me space to speak, is what it is. And it's really hard to not chip in with an answer than that. And I think that's the challenge.

Yeah, that kind of takes us as well. Sorry, Jay. That takes us to this kind of leadership piece as well, because that's about that connection being based upon, I guess, love, rather than a need to lead or fix or nurture. And that's around that genuine kind of empathy, compassion, genuine care. And I'm not suggesting that someone that offers support isn't offering that care, but actually, when you really think about what someone else needs rather than what you need in that moment, quite often it is someone just wants to talk and share what's going on for them, or they're just telling you because you asked a question, right? If someone says, what did you do at the weekend? And you said, well, as you said, joe, I was with a group of friends, and it was a group of trans women exploring and taking some time out together, I guess you wanted to share that if you felt that with me, you could share that. And that sounds like an interesting weekend. Did you have a good time?

Yeah, exactly. And it was. But I think you're right. I wasn't comfortable enough in my own skin or where I was heading in my life. So that private weekend wasn't necessarily something that was worth sharing at that point, because I didn't know what it meant. I had no context. If someone asked me a question about it, I couldn't answer any question about it. Just was.

So you're right, I wasn't hiding myself specifically, it was just nothing I wanted to share. So you mentioned earlier the concept of allowing people to thrive and belong, and I'm a great believer in those two words. Firstly, thrive. I should succeed or fail based on my own merits. And the environment around me allows me to succeed or fail on my own merits or gives me a comfort, blank insecurity to be able to work around that. So the work you do in your organisation at the moment, you really are focused on creating those environments, aren't you?

Yeah, we really are. I think things started. We've always been really passionate about inclusion and I think the beginning, like most organisations, we probably were talking about diversity at that. Know, if we rewind years back, we were definitely talking about having diverse communities rather than inclusion. And I know that we've spoken before about this, Jo, but I think one of the things that really hit a lot of organisations potentially through the lockdown was the whole ed I kind of topic and became very commercial. There were lots of people popping up all over the place that claimed to be ed I experts and lots of folk that have some lived experiences that wanted to be involved in the conversations with corporates. And I think at Thales we were really curious about, well, what does that really look like for us and why would we be doing this? And one of the things that I became quite curious about was figuring out how you talk about Ed I in a business context. So how do you talk about the real kind of sensitive topics rather than just the real obvious ones? So we have measurements against gender and there are some complexities in our organisation because we're a global organisation as to data that we can kind of select and collect, Jo.

But ultimately we had some gender targets, but beyond that there was little else. And I know that across the UK business we're really passionate about the topic of inclusion being beyond gender. So we started to think about, well, what does that mean? And I think one of the things that a lot of organisations are struggling with is to create a business conversation around Ed and I, not a conversation around it would be really great if we had diverse communities because, yeah, that would be really great. But folks struggle to put then measurements around that and what's ethically right to measure. How would we measure then? Would we need everyone to disclose? Would we need to have the conversations, Jo, that you and I have just been talking about, would we need everyone to share? Would they feel safe in doing that? What comes first? Do we create a if environment for everyone to share and then we need disclosure and then we can do this and that stops people having the right conversation. So I definitely think the maturity at Thales has been around how we talk in our organisation, around the importance of Ed and I and why it's important to us as a business, not just as an HR topic or as a diversity topic. So, yeah, we've been really passionate and been gaining a lot of momentum over the last couple of years, actually, as an example, in bringing in people like yourself, Jo, to talk to our leadership community, to help them to relate and understand to what inclusion really looks and feels like from a leadership perspective.

I'm listening to what you're saying there about the focus, maybe over the last two years, around the COVID period, if you like, a lot of people talking around diversity, and I think it started off the Equality act, the Racial Relations Act, Discrimination act. It was all focused on characteristics, all focused on providing support, workplace adjustments, a pay gap analysis, focus on gender, focus on race, disability, with a bit of LGBTQ plus thrown in the background. And we're all focusing on single strand initiatives, how to employ more women or how to increase our ethnic diversity, or whatever it may be, without actually putting the structures in place around the belongingness, the welcomingness, the culture. And I always get frustrated when I'm talking to people about their hiring needs. Oh, we want to hire more diverse people, I say, okay, define what you mean by more diverse people. Do you mean people not like you? What do you mean by more diverse? So do you mean more women, more black people, more women of colour, more queer women, more lesbian women? What do you mean by that? Okay, unless you could be specific about what you're trying to achieve. Just by saying we want to hire more diverse people doesn't mean anything. It's not a quantifiable, it's a broader cohort or broader diversity of people in the funnel.

But what do you mean? What's your objective? And I agree what you're saying there about the business benefit or the business objective, without overshadowing the people element. It's kind of got hand in hand, isn't it? But very often people don't have a trajectory. I talk about trajectory rather than a target or a quota. It's a statement of intense, statement of direction. Bit like the World Economic Forum talking about 70 or 80 years for gender equity in the western world. What the steps to get there because we're not achieving them. So it's more about the steps to get somewhere than it is around the actual target, as long as we're showing those steps incremental and making a difference.

And I also think that Jo, that businesses are waiting for it to be perfect before they take action. So they're tentatively saying we want it to be a diverse business, but they're really worried about exposing themselves to not be perfect. So we're not perfect at Thales, we know that. Can we do more to make our culture more inclusive? Absolutely. Of course we can and we will continue to do so. Do we have a diverse group of talent in our business right now? We do, but not where we would like it to be. And when you say, well, where is that? Well that's a place where I sit around a board table and I see and feel difference in the room and there's a collective intelligence of difference. And that therefore means I'm not talking about gender or race and ethnicity.

It's a lot more than that. It's about neurodivergence, it's about all of those topics and differences. And therefore I think you can't really have a strategy that's one dimensional. So you can't say, okay, this year we're going to be focused on ethnicity, or this year we're going to be focused on this. Totalis Veterans is a really important pool of people that we want to be included in our workforce. So there's various different pools of people that we want to be attractive to. And I think it's that intersectionality and understanding where all of the crossovers lie. And that's if we can create a safe, trusting, psychologically safe environment for people to work in, then if we talk about that, if we share outside of the organisation and inside of the organisation what we're doing to get to that place, then we will naturally start to attract talent from all different organisations that are not doing that, that are not being overtly explicit in what they're doing.

So we've recently launched a number of new policies that support people in our environment, to leaders to have the right conversations and employees to have the right conversations. And we've won awards for those and we're really proud of that because does a policy change a culture? No, of course not. But it does mean for somebody in the business that might be, let's say, transitioning, that they can find that policy and say, what are my rights here? What should I expect this to feel like at work? And I know that's a topic that you and your wife have spoken at Tulis about. And that's really helped us to scope out what our thoughts are as a business and how we support people, because that's really important as leaders and as a business, we understand how we should do that. Right. So you need the policies, but you also need to then talk about that and say, we have these new policies, and this is what we expect of our leaders when someone in their team is talking to them about transitioning. Here you go. This is what we expect from you.

And we're really clear that we measure that and we look at it from both sides. The experience of the employee and the experience of the leader. I think, Jo, that does help for people to understand what the culture should feel like and whether or not it would be a safe place to have that level of open conversation and disclosure that they might need to have.

People generally get it. Let me explain what I mean by that. So do they understand why it matters, all the things we talk about, Edi, HR, positive experiences. Do you think people truly get the why, or are they just maybe latching on to wokism and politically correctness and we can't say anything these days? The average layperson is going, this is just too complicated today.

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. I don't think they do get it. So in the communities that I kind of am part of, like, say, learning communities, HR communities, I would say that probably about 70% of people still don't get it. And I think in a business it's even less so. I'm really clear when I'm talking about Ed and I that what I'm talking about is this collective intelligence notion. So that we've got. Let's take a problem. Let's take an example in a business.

So you've got a problem, you're trying to solve a problem. Who would you best select to be around the table to solve the problem? Now, of course, if it's a technical issue, you've got the technical dimension of the people that will have the knowledge of that technical capability. But other than that, the same people from the same backgrounds, with the same lived experiences, with the same tenure of service, with the same sexuality, with all of those characteristics of the same, are they going to come up with different solutions? Probably not. But then if we start to think, okay, well, let's think about who else we might invite into this. Maybe we bring a graduate in or an apprentice that's not been in the organisation for a long period of time. So therefore they don't know what the rules are. And there's some real benefit in being a novice. So let's bring them into the conversation.

Let's bring Jo in who might have a completely different Lyft experience to us, who might be used to thinking differently and might be used to having to navigate change and complexity and difficulty in an organisation. She might have a completely different view on this. So if you start to think about who you've got around your table for problem solving, if they all look, feel and smell the same, you're quite likely to get a very similar answer to your problem. But if it's a different set of folk, then actually who knows how you might end up solving that problem? And that takes you then to innovation, right? So the importance of innovation in business is huge. So why would you choose to have people that are all the same in your organisation? So when you kind of explain it like that to people, most people then go, oh yeah, that makes real sense. So we're not doing this because we want x amount of females in our business, or we want x amount of veterans, or we want to include trans people in our organisation. What we're saying is we want better problem solving and innovation. I get it now, of course, why would we not want people that think differently? So they're neurodivergent people that have had different lived experiences.

And I think that helps people to understand why Ed and I is so important. Inclusion is so important in organisations and businesses. But I don't think they get it yet, Jo.

No. And do people actually, we use the word get. Do they get it how difficult it is sometimes to be a person of uniqueness, whatever that may mean to that person walking to a room of difference or the norm, if you like. So being the first black woman in senior leadership, being the first openly gay man in a role or something, just looking at tv culture, we look at what goes on, strictly come dancing and the pushback around same sex couples and different presentations, and we see this all over the place where somebody has to break the ground, somebody has to walk that path first. And that's not for everybody. Not everybody is a groundbreaker or a path clearer. So that's a real challenge where you are in a monoculture, for want of a better way of describing it, or a limited culture, to try and expand that culture and allow people to bring their whole self to work or have psychological safety in their environment without people being tokenized. It's a real challenge to grow that demographic, isn't it?

It really is. And that's why I truly believe it's not up to those communities to make the difference. So is it up to. I've been growing our internal Thales black female leaders for a number of years. And is it up to them to drive the agenda for black women in our organisation? No, it's not up to them. It's up to everybody. And that's why leadership and leadership development is so integral for businesses in this space, because it's the space that the leaders create in the organisation for people to feel they can belong. So it's not up to a new female black leader to walk into a room and change the demographic in that room and change the way that they're seen.

It's up to the people in the room to do that. They have a part to play. Of course they do, but it's up to all of us. Go back to your initial question. Do I think that people understand that? No, not wholly. We've definitely been having that conversation. And as part of the leadership programmes at Thales, we have collective intelligence as modules within the leadership development and we also run events, live events, Jo, like you were part of for Thales, where we talk about that and we openly talk about the challenges with leaders and how we expect people to lead in our organisation. And I think it's up to organisations to get firmer on that and measure it and make sure that the leaders are creating that space and making that change.

But it's certainly not up to the individuals solely to be groundbreakers. I wouldn't be expecting somebody to do that. I think there's a fatigue in that. That is an interesting kind of discussion, Jo, which is how often can you walk in a room and have that conversation? And how often should you have to without then me being the person that raises that as a topic rather than you, even if you're in the room.

I'm involved with an organisation and we have a low representation of people of colour across our organisation, and that inevitably means we have a lack of. Just put it in business context, a lack of talent pipeline. So we don't have the level of people coming through with their professional skills, we don't have the level of people coming through who want to take on leadership or influencer roles or people who want to come and win awards or be seen on speaking about certain topics. So when you look at it through the optics of race or colour, then you look at it as a very white heavy organisation. Gender balance is pretty good, but it's very white. And the problem I'm facing is how do we create an organisation where people do want to join, or they're put off at the very early stages by looking at going, oh, this is a very white organisation full of old people. It's not for me. How do we break that first ground and get a footing or an advanced party of people who go, actually, we believe you, that you want to make change.

We believe you're not trying to tokenize us, we believe you're trying to give us chance. So you need a very, I would say, a type of person who's willing to be that groundbreaker, provide their support. And that's the real challenge I'm facing. And I'm just interested to hear your thoughts on that in your own organisation.

Yeah. So I think it is a challenge, but I think it's one that requires follow through, Jo. So I think it's great to have the attraction campaigns and reaching out to different groups. So in your example, to groups of people of colour, but then you've got to demonstrate that actually, when they join the organisation, that's not it. So then you need the right level of development programmes. You need to show that you do talent reviews that are very specifically focused on colour, maybe, or ethnicity. Then you need to demonstrate that you have the right level of partnerships and that there are people within the senior leadership team that are willing to sponsor and to grow the talent within that kind of pipeline. So I don't think it's a one hit wonder, and I don't think the other part of it is nobody would want to be the spokesperson for an organisation where they felt that was the case and that there were targets placed upon.

Let's talk about it from a female perspective. I don't want to work in an organisation that says, well, we wanted 30% of our senior leaders to be women, so therefore we're going to promote Claire because we need another woman and she seems to be the right person from the talent review we've done. So I get the job not through merit, but because I was a woman. And then if we were to look and say, well, if there are no development programmes, then for me to go on. So once I get that role, you don't really want me there, because you're not supporting me to grow and develop, but you want me to do all of your campaigns on LinkedIn and you want me to do. So. If you have an organisation where someone feels like that, why the hell would they want to stay and why would they want to join? The first thing they're going to do is look for other people in the organisation that either look like them or that are from other marginalised groups so that they can see what the business really is doing. So I don't ask our female black leaders to have their photographs taken altogether and do big ad campaigns for attraction.

Why don't I? Because they would be the same group of women that have their pictures taken for everything else. Because we don't have a swell of women that can do that. It would be inauthentic and it would be the wrong thing to do. Do we want to grow our talent from that port? Absolutely. We're really passionate, but we want to do that because people want to join. They feel that they'll be promoted and supported and developed. So I've worked on looking at all of the right talent reviews with my talent colleagues and we've looked at the right selection process to make them accessible. We've looked at our early careers programmes to make sure that we've got young black talent coming through our early careers programmes.

We looked at executive development so that people can see, when you get to a certain level, do we want you to progress? Absolutely. As a business. We've also spoken about on our gender pay gap release. We also released our ethnicity pay gap. We don't have to report on that, but we want it to be really clear that this is an area we're really passionate about and we can measure it. So we have, and we've shared that and we shared that ahead of having to, because it's really important to us that we attract ethnic talent. So I think it's just really important, Jo, that it's not looked at as an attraction campaign, it's looked at as a holistic business opportunity. Rather know we need to attract more black talent into our pipeline.

So therefore we need to recruit from a certain pool or get a certain recruiter to help us and give them some targets. It's so much more complex. And if we talk to people that are joining our organisations, they are looking at all of those things. They're not looking at, will I get the right level and will I get the right pay? They're looking at will you develop me? Are there other people that you can demonstrate you do that with? What else is there and available? Who are the people that interview me? What did they look like? Were they like me? Did they talk about your psychological safety or did they talk about your ethnicity? Challenges in the business? If I raised it, did they want to talk about it when I raised it? So I think that's the other thing is to be really prepared that if you're going to interview a black woman to join your organisation, she may well ask you what you're going to do to help and support her and what you're doing for others and be expectant of that, because people want to be champions and these are the days where people can ask those questions in interviews. So I think we have to be really prepared that we can tell a great story of what inclusion really feels like for a candidate. If you're interviewing. I've ranted loads there, Jo, but I hope you can about that.

No, I completely concur. I do. And I picked up on a word you said quite early on in that was the word merit. It's this whole perceived. I'm going to use the BS word, the BS word of meritocracy sometimes, where it's perceived to be a meritocratic process, but often it's not always. And I'm sure as an organisation such as yourself, you must have been working on. When you talk about the talent development and the talent identification sort of process you do, you are focusing on merit in there. But many organisations, who defines who's the best person for the job? Often the incumbent or the person who's running the team that they've always run, it's not often done sort of through a peer review or a wider review.

And then merit, if you like, is subjective and that's the danger sometimes, yeah, absolutely.

And that bias creeps in, doesn't it? I think this is where having a really good, robust talent process helps organisations to ensure that the right person is selected for the role. And do we always get it right? I'm sure we don't. I wouldn't ever profess to be perfect at this, but I do think if you have, as we've been saying, a collectively different group of people running those talent reviews, you get different, diverse thoughts on the individuals that you're talking about. So if it's run by senior leaders that might have limited access to those people on a daily, weekly basis, then you're likely to only get what the person has chosen or the person who leads that person has chosen to share about them. If you've then got maybe a customer, or if you've got someone that regularly has interaction with that person, that brings another view. I remember being in talent reviews, not at Thales, I would say, but with other organisations where people will, you know, I haven't really heard much from them this year. They haven't really been doing anything extracurricular they've been quite quiet. I would expect them to have been running this, this and this.

And you think, well, wait a minute, they've been on a major programme and been deploying resources all over the place or been leading projects that might not have been on the agenda of the senior leaders or kind of on their radar, but they've been actually delivering for our customers really well. And that might not have been seen, but it's definitely happened. So having the voice of the customer as well in things like your talent reviews is really important.

You mentioned that the organisation has a 30% target, et cetera, et cetera, and you find yourself sucked into that target and positioned because you're a woman, to hit that 30% target. Some of it's got to be psychological from your perspective. I'm not just using you as a hypothetical. You not. So you specifically where you feel that you are past the target, where is there an imposter syndrome there that you don't believe you have the merit to succeed without the target? Is there a kind of a chicken and egg there?

Yeah, first of all, that was an example. So there are no 30. In my coaching business, I talk to. Actually, quite a lot of women that I talk to will feel like others believe that they are in a role because of their gender and from an ethnicity perspective, definitely, and actually a disability perspective. When I've been coaching people with disability as well, they have all spoken about feeling a little bit of that impostor syndrome. So maybe I wasn't the best person, but I happens to be the person that looks like me or that has a disability. So that's probably the reason why I'm here. And that's really tough on people, and it really lays heavy, and I think we need to be really cognizant of that when we are talking to people about promotion and inclusion in our business, but also not.

And not only for them, but for everybody around them, because there is also clearly a message to others that might be part of a norm group. So in industry and in engineering, that might be kind of middle aged white male. There is a message, isn't there? If we're talking lots around inclusion, there's a message that by inclusion, we mean women, we mean black people, we mean transgender, we mean neurodivergent, we don't mean you. And when I talk about inclusion, I am talking about everybody. So when we talk about inclusion, what we should remember is that the messages need to be heard by everybody, that we want you all included. We're not excluding for the need of inclusion. So, yes, I think that weight lays heavy, but it also weighs heavy on others. So when someone gets a promotion and others tell a story to themselves, well, that promotion was given to that person because she's a woman.

That can be really hard for that person, because if that's truly what they feel at the time, they also have to work through that. Why do I feel that? Who gave me those messages? What's the story I've told myself? How am I now going to report to that person as a white male when I believe the only reason they were promoted was that they're a female? When I went for the job and I didn't get it, but she got it because she's a woman. So there's also the whole fallout of inclusion, that people that don't feel that inclusion is part of what the business is doing for them as well.

So does that play into the myth, if you want, or the misconception that hiring for diversity is hiring second best because you must be second best because you're a diverse candidate, wherever that may mean. Is that a pervasive thinking? Maybe amongst the majority?

Yeah, I don't know if it's amongst the majority, but certainly people that I coach that talk about impostor syndrome, I definitely think they all would say there was probably a better candidate. That doesn't actually end up being true, by the way. So when you get to the real crux of the challenge, it really isn't about the fact that there was someone better. And I absolutely know, in any organisation I have worked with, definitely in Thales and in any other organisation, I speak to leaders. Nobody, nobody is making decisions based upon gender, ethnicity, sexuality. No one's saying we need that candidate because everyone is hiring on merit. Everyone's hiring the best person for the job. Do they want to see a diverse pool of people? Absolutely.

Will they go out of their way to find them, put targets on recruiters, all of those things? Yeah. And they should, because without that, sometimes you don't get to see everybody. Are they hiring the best person for the job? Always, as far as I have seen, I don't think I have met anyone that has openly said to me, oh, yeah, we gave it to that person and because they're black or we gave it to that person, do I think it goes on? Maybe, but not in the organisations that I have worked with or spoken to. Has anybody ever said, well, we're absolutely not going to give it to anybody that's male, because this person needs to be a female? I think there are times where you might want to make that decision because you want the diversity on a board, for example. So you might want to deliberately say, we are wanting to attract a female into this role because we know that we're missing that. And I think that's okay to do that if the person has the qualifications to do the job, but not if they don't.

So, positive action versus positive discrimination. So we're saying legitimate means, but again, does that. I'm going to come back to the meritocracy thing. If we're setting out the role profile, the job description, the success criteria, in a certain way, then only someone who's done this role for ten years in a similar sort of company, with a similar sort of team and a similar sort of product range could ever succeed. And typically, that person isn't black or isn't a woman. Therefore, the talent pipeline of the candidate pool is narrowing itself down because the requirement spec is so defined. So how do we hire for capability and growth, rather than just hire for. Done it before?

Well, we've just done something similar, actually. A colleague of mine, Kirsten, has been running a programme called Code First Girls, and we've been partnering with Code first girls, which have given us some amazing talent. And that's around looking for people that are looking to reskill to come into engineering, not necessarily been engineers. So the background, Jo, is that they might not necessarily have ever been in engineering, but we're going to take them on and train them to be engineers in software. So if we'd have written a job spec, as we would do for that role, you would expect a level of understanding. So this is really about the organisation saying, at what point and where in our business does experience or qualification not necessarily matter, where we can train people ourselves to have the skills and capability that they're going to need to deliver for us. And I think that's what starts to make businesses different and accessible. So by bringing in that cohort, what we're saying is we're really open to talk to people that might not have the right background.

And there are some roles where you can do that, and there are also some roles where you know that talent really exists. So 50% of the roles at Talus last year were non engineering roles. So whatever story talis would have told themselves about the talent pool, as far as diversity was concerned about engineering, it's only 50% true. So we know that and we say, okay, so in that pool, we accept that it's going to be more of a challenge to get the diversity that we're looking for. So therefore we might need to be more specific. But in this 50% of the roles, that's not true. So what are we going to do in those roles to make them more accessible? So I think there are some roles, Jo, you can really do that in and you can remove the barriers. You need a really great talent acquisition team, you need people in the organisation to be challenging and it's really hard for specialists in their discipline.

So, for example, a safety engineer to accept that somebody might not need x amount of years experience, if that's what they've been used to. And you need people to be able to ask the right questions and challenge people in the organisation to say, why is that so? And what background might they, might they come from? If they weren't from a defence background, for example, what other background would be okay? And slowly you start to see change. None of this happens overnight. I think you've probably seen that. And slowly, slowly start to see people say, oh, that really worked well. That worked well. We worked with the prince's trust good number of years ago now it must have been about six years ago to bring in young people that were not in education or employment. And the reaction in the business at the time was really mixed.

Lots of people were super excited and some were really worried. What sort of person would I get in my team? Am I the right kind of leader? Would I be able to offer the right level of support? All of them were well meant, well positioned, like we spoke about very first on wanting to help and support people. The reality, of course, of the people that joined us were that they were really capable, great people, and a lot of them are still in our organisation and they've been promoted and they've mobilised and they're recognised as talent. So I think it's a long winded answer, Jo, but I think there's loads you can do to break that down. I think the first thing you need is to start asking yourself the questions. Why? Why is that important?

Obviously the same with people who have been in the care system all their lives, had an extremely unsupported background, people who have left the criminal justice system for whatever reason, there's an instant stigma and employers are very reluctant to give people a chance. What if they're risky? What if they're not? There's a default. And I think, as you say, it's about getting the hiring teams to start cutting through the myths, misconceptions, the biases, the beliefs they have and then start looking into the humanity of the person and say, okay, what's this person's capability? What are their core values? Okay, they've had a tough life and they may have done things they're not proud of when they look back on it, but actually, I hate to say, victim of circumstances, not the way where they were evolved in the circumstantial upbringing which led them down a path, and that could happen to anybody. So it's looking at that person's real core drivers and steering them away from that life and saying, actually, if you give someone a different opportunity, they make different choices.

Absolutely. I would add though, Jo, it's not just the recruiting part of your organisation, it's absolutely everyone. So if you're an assessor on an early careers programme, if you're an assessor in an interview, even if you're not part of the talent acquisition team, it's everybody's role to say, actually, I think that this person has more to offer. I think interviewers forget quite quickly that the skill is also part of the interviewer to get the right answers from the interviewee. So if you're feeling like that person's not got the experience, if you feel like that person's not being able to give you the right examples to your competency based questions, it's part of your role as the interviewer to try and help them to do so as well, so they can be their best. But it is also, if I'm sat having a coffee with a colleague and they're talking about a role that they're recruiting for as a leader in our business, and they turn around and say, well, I'm just not getting the right level of experience, I will also challenge and say, well, what is the right level of experience and why is that? And what else could it be? And where else could you look? And who else could you ask? And what if they had only 60% and you needed to develop the rest, how would you do that? And it's my job to do that, not as a head of learning, but as a colleague and appear to my friends and colleagues at work. It's not just the role of the talent acquisition team of every single person in the business. We should all be asking those questions of each other and saying, who else did you see?

Yeah, it's being open to be challenging people as to why people weren't selected, as opposed to just challenging people of the people who were selected. It's asking people why. So what didn't you see in them? Yeah, what was the rejection criteria? And I think we're busy people. We got huge, great short lists and long lists to go through and we tend to give people not enough time to see into the heart of them. And I think what we often do is look superficially and sometimes we got the best person for the job. Great, we've moved on. But what about our corporate responsibility, social responsibility to get people back into employment, to help looking at the environment out there, our cultures and our society out there and being a great employer for everybody, not just a great employer for the typical incumbent, if you like. And that's a big challenge.

And that goes all the way back to that first part of our conversation around it being a psychologically safe place for people to be able to speak their truth. And if we're able to do that and we're okay with who we are and we can be all right with how someone else is and kind of lead from that place of love, then you can openly how you feel about something and say I appreciate you may have already selected the person. Did you see anyone of colour on your list or have you spoken to jo? I know she was really interested in that role. Is there a reason you might not have spoken to her about it? And doing so from a place of love and care rather than critique? I think having places, it sounds very idealistic, but having an environment where people feel more able to have that level of conversation is where I think heads of learning, HR strategists, that's the kind of focus for us. It's helping the organisation to get to that space. Because then imagine a place where people could speak their truth when things weren't going to plan on a project and someone could actually fess up and say, this isn't quite going to plan, boss. Rather than hiding it and worrying about it and trying to fix it in silos, we would be able to talk more openly. And certainly talis, that's something we've been really focused on over the last couple of years, really trying to help people to be able to talk more openly and everything we're doing is to get us to a place where that is more possible for everybody.

I think by doing that you create in your talent, attraction, recruitment, marketing, your employer value proposition, your employer branding, all the stuff you're putting out there, you start to create an authentic truth about you are a place that is welcoming, psychologically safe. Because we know that people from marginalised minority backgrounds, underrepresented backgrounds, voiceless backgrounds, tend to have a high level of imposter syndrome or limiting belief. I could never work for there, they'd never accept person like me. So you've got to tell these stories. That breaks down that apprehension about the initial stepping into the funnel, if you like.

Absolutely. And that's why we've been at all different events as well, trying to make sure that we're reaching out to lots of different communities. So we genuinely want to see you rather than this is a campaign that we're doing to widen our diverse pool. So you're right. It's about storytelling. It's about us telling our stories and our employees telling our stories and making sure that people really understand what the motivation is and being truthful, Jo, that we don't have it 100% right. And I know that if there are people at Talus listening to this podcast, which I hope they do, there will be critique. People will say, well, it's not like that all the time.

And there are pockets of places where it isn't like that maybe at all for some individuals, but the intention and the clear target is to get to a place where we are able to do that. And all of the intention is good to get us to that space. Yeah.

It's about finding that North Star, painting the picture, creating an aspirational journey of what fantastic looks like, and then trying to inspire people to join you on that journey in a scale and a velocity that works for everybody, really, isn't it?

Absolutely. And that's where then you hope that your internal colleagues are listening to that and saying, great, I want to be part of this place. I want to stay. I want to grow, I want to bring others in. And then you hope that the talent that's looking around thinking, I'm looking for a new opportunity, start noticing you more and wanting to join your business and the talent that, by the way, are working for your competitors that maybe feel that their business isn't being quite so transparent, that their business isn't talking about topics and being honest about where they are and what they want to do and where they want to get to say, well, why isn't my business doing that? I'm either going to go and have a conversation with them and say, hang on a minute, this business over here are doing it. Why aren't you? And we get a lot of that. We were at the UK black business show this year, and there were a lot of people that came to our stand to talk to us that were surprised, first of all, to see Thales there, delighted to see Thales there, and then saying, well, my employer's not here and you are. I don't understand that I need to talk to them about why they're not here.

And that wasn't a gimmick for us, that was a genuine reach out talent. We genuinely want talent. And actually what we can do in that process is also help individuals go back to their businesses and ask those questions. And maybe their businesses also start going to these events, also start reaching out for talent. What we do is create a swell. I think it's really important that it's not just for our own businesses we're doing this. It's for the economy in the UK, it's for all of the social impact that you spoke about, Jo, and it's about our society being able to realise its full potential. So it's not just about.

It's not all about Tyre.

And I think we have to recognise that communities talk to each other. If you talk about the veterans community, there's a strong veterans community, they will talk to each other and go, oh, I got a job at Talus. It's an absolutely amazing place. You just see their talent pipeline, the development prospects, their stats, especially if you're a young black woman exiting the Royal Navy as an engineer on a ship or something, you're going to go, wow, I found a belongingness here. And that's the story you want to paint, isn't it? The belongingness is, for me, one of the measures is you want to evangelise about your role to other people and share the love and bring other people. Why wouldn't you want to recommend the organisation if you love it so much, if you want to keep it a secret? So I think that's the magic source we want to try and find, isn't it?

I totally believe so, yeah.

It's been a fantastic conversation. We chatted for about half an hour before we went live and I'm sure we could keep chatting forever and I'm sure we will catch up again soon, have a chat. So how do people get hold of you and how can you help others in the industry?

I'm really happy to receive any LinkedIn messages from anyone that's interested in talking about this topic further or if you want to link in with me to talk about what Thales are doing. If you're a Thales employee and want to link in, that's great. If you're not equally happy for anyone to get in touch and talk more on this topic.

So search you on LinkedIn. Claire. C-L-A-I-R-E. Anglis A-N-G-L-I-S-S. So just search you on LinkedIn. Is that okay, brilliant.

Brilliant. Yeah.

Well, thank you so much. And thank you to you, the listener, for tuning in again to the end. I really appreciate your time and your attention. Please do subscribe if you're not already subscribed, to future episodes of the Inclusion Bites podcast. That's bits. Please tell your colleagues, your friends, please share the links. I have a number of exciting guests lined up that I'm sure you'd be equally inspired by over the next few weeks and months. And of course, if you'd like to be a guest yourself, please drop me a line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk

If you've got any other suggestions on how we can improve, that will also be welcome. So, finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood, and it's been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today. Take care. Catch you next time. Bye.