When I was invited to speak about this, I thought, why not? – after all, I must have done it – LAAT has an Executive Leadership Team of 6, and until February, 5 of us were women! (if you could hold Sam in your prayers because he’s going to find it different!)
Each of these women is a powerful, successful professional. (and Sam, too – but we’re not talking about him today)
But then I sat down to write and immediately found myself wondering how I’d done it. Was it, after all, nothing I’d actually, intentionally done but just serendipity – in which case I was going to struggle to fill the time!
Had I really done anything specific to enable women to grow and develop, to feel fulfilled and safe enough to stay?
Women in the Workplace 2024: The 10th-anniversary report compared top-performing organisations with others and listed the benefits to equity of specific practices in the workplace
- Menopause support
- Paid sick and family leave
- Support for in vitro/fertility treatment
- Support for adoption and /or surrogacy
- Flexible working hours
In LAAT, we do all of those things – some of them have never been used, but the fact that we have them signals our care, our understanding, our drive for equity.
The report continues:
“almost all surveyed companies provide critical support for employees who are parents, caregivers, or managing health challenges — (these) link to higher rates of happiness and employee retention. (and) are especially helpful to women, who are more likely than men to have caregiving responsibilities.”
Workplace flexibility is cited as another benefit especially important to women,
A report published in the Harvard Business Review – How Women Can Win in the Workplace says that the biggest barrier to women succeeding is lack of “experience capital”
“Experience capital can be gained through employer-provided learning and development programs, through job changes that challenge you to add new skills to your repertoire, and by observing how colleagues and bosses handle complex tasks or tricky situations. “
They describe the type of organisations which women should be looking for to boost their experience capital:
- companies in which all employees are offered education and training
- organisations that have a clear strategy for winning in their industry, involving employees in continuous improvement, and building a broad set of leaders and general managers.
- A company that actively helps employees move into new roles internally, invests in and values them,
It also says that
- “People are more likely to learn new things and be innovative and creative when they have colleagues who differ from them. Organisations with leadership teams that reflect diverse cultures and genders are more likely to make better decisions and be open to continuous improvement, which can increase their employees’ experience capital. “
Well, the language is different from English Multi Academy Trusts, but – Bingo. It’s what we do.
Diversity in its broadest sense -people with different stories/life experiences is, I think, at the heart of LAATs success when it comes to women in the workplace (I do have to say that employing people from different cultural backgrounds is more difficult in Lincolnshire – but we are not without our successes).
If we go back to the women on the Exec Leadership Team – They have all come to the exec team from different places- some with degrees, some with professional qualifications, some from education, some from different sectors. Some started with us and worked to gain experiences and further qualifications, which has resulted in them becoming part of the exec team; some were appointed to it.
We have horse riders, bingo players, runners, grans, introverts, extroverts, southerners, northerners, those who came from poverty and from middle classes, and no one hides any of it. We really enjoy the fact that everyone is different – accents, families, backgrounds, hobbies.
We have built a platform where everyone, no matter their story or their background, can succeed, and we’ve done this by being leaders who are comfortable in openly being truly who we are. Truly authentic.
And so, on reflection, that’s what I’ve done – I’ve led as myself.
When I was appointed to my first leadership role – as Diocesan Director of Education in Bristol, my boss in the Diocese of Bath and Wells (Aunty Maureen – no, not her real name) sat me down and told me that I’d have to be more ‘professional’. This was despite – a few months earlier, telling me that I was the best adviser she’d worked with, that it was all the schools in my area who attended our training and engaged most prolifically with the diocese. I knew what she meant. She meant what my mother meant when she insisted that there was only one way to be an effective woman in the workplace – the right way to dress for work (never sleeveless, always tights, navy’s best) or speak (no accents, no slang, no swearing) or how to present yourself (middle class – preferably upper, borderline subservient, gracious and charming at all times, often apologetic).
Aunty Maureen’s and my mum’s view of professionalism comes from a time that many of us have been through – when we had to be smarter than the men, suited like the men, serious like the men. Women had to out men the men – any sign of frivolousness or femininity would have you missing out on promotion. You had to use the jargon; you had to sound cleverer and better educated. There were games we played – ways we couched any suggestion –“ I might not have understood, but …
It’s probably not relevant, but… I was wondering if we’d tried…
When what we probably meant was, “For goodness sake, it’s the perfect solution, and I’m not sure why you just can’t see it!”
One of the joys of the last few years has been working with a group of professional women who are part of a different generation – who haven’t played the game and don’t see any reason to do so. Who get angry at mildly sexist, paternalistic comments from men of a certain generation in meetings – comments that I am so inured to I hadn’t even noticed – go them!!
I flirted with Aunty Maureen’s version of professionalism for a few weeks but decided I couldn’t do it – I take things extremely seriously – but I can’t do it without laughing, too. I find it harder and harder to be apologetic about who I am and what I’m doing, thinking, and feeling – hitting your 60s is a real superpower! One of the biggest compliments of my career was from the chair of Bristol when I was leaving “Jackie puts the hay where the goats can reach it” I happen to believe that it’s better to gain understanding from those you’re trying to communicate with than confusion – short words are ok by me – after all, wasn’t it Winnie the Pooh who said “It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn’t use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like “What about lunch?”! The Bishop of Bristol, at my last board meeting, stated that he didn’t think that anyone could ever have sat around a table in a meeting with me without leaving feeling that they were a friend. Hardly the mark of a consummate professional – but, for me, it’s all about inclusion and, therefore, high praise indeed!
We started LAAT when church MATs were barely a thing – no blueprint – and I was a teacher, not an entrepreneur, not a businesswoman, not a financier; I’d only led small teams. Being me, common sense, gut feeling and sheer dogged determination not to fail were all I had!
And, as it turns out, unknowingly, being me was the one thing that made the biggest difference to the organisation we built – being me -not, I hasten to add, because of who I am, I’m no one special. Not because I’m the perfect shape for the job; there are a thousand different types of people who would be perfect for the job – no, it was the most important thing because in showing people who I was, in leading with authenticity – I allowed others the safety to be themselves. And when people are safe when they’re not wasting precious energy trying to be someone they’re not, then they can flourish – and if they’re flourishing, then the organisation will be flourishing. Your organisation becomes one that is not just tolerant of and understanding of, but that embraces everyone’s individual story, their way of being! Inclusion can’t just be about a policy. If you build a place where people can be themselves, then you have built yourself a place where women will be appointable, will want to be appointed, will flourish, and because they are safe and confident, they will grasp opportunities to develop, and they’ll stay.
In that sort of an organisation, women can feel as confident as the men, and so they’ll shine as brightly.
But so will others – those who didn’t do as well at school but are making up for it now, those who come from different backgrounds, different cultures, and different sectors. If everyone’s stories are valid and valued, then it’s not only women who will benefit.
LAAT is not a woman-only zone, and thank goodness for that!
Of course being authentically you can make you vulnerable too – I had another chair who told me in exasperation that I should use more complex language if I wanted to be taken seriously. I’ve had people treat me differently when they’ve discovered I brought up my children in a council house. I am 100% sure that some people have derided me behind my back – but the benefits outweigh all of that – the benefits to me personally and to those I work with.
As a leader, I often say, “I’m just a barmaid from Weston-super-mare” because that’s where I started. I’ve been told recently that I should probably drop that now, that I should have moved on from that. And I understand the point. However, what if it encourages those who also started low if it underscores the organisations’ active belief in the worth of each individual to be just who they are and the power of our stories all being different? And anyway, some of my most useful skills I learnt at the bar!
So, what have I learnt from over 20 years of employing people, developing people, and retaining people?
I hope it goes without saying that Women must only be appointed on merit – if you want to appoint them then you have to have created an organisation where the best ones apply.
If you want to recruit differently – you have to be different – but authentically different!
Surround yourself with people better than you
And then allow them opportunities to get even better – leadership is not a competition which the leader has to win!
Allow people to be human first – put families first – it is who they are as a person, the relationships they have as parents, siblings, partners, children, their life experiences, their stories, that shaped them into what you saw when you appointed them. And women still get the lion’s share of the responsibility when it comes to childcare and elderly parent care. So, if there’s a child who needs picking up, a parent who needs taking to hospital, a first nativity, a graduation – you let them go.
When we say at LAAT – which we do a lot “we see you” (based on both the story of Hagar – a slave and a woman – and the Zulu greeting Sawubona) we mean it – we see all of you – your history, your needs, your skills and talents, your difficulties and successes and we see to enable us to offer the right support. Because seen, supported people do better – they thrive. And if they thrive, then they’re enabling those around them to thrive, and, for us, that’s enabling nearly 4,000 children.
We’re about to do a staff photo board for the central team (mainly because I’m old and it’s getting harder to remember who new members of the team are!) I am working on encouraging people to move away from their professional photo and instead have one that shows a bit of their story, whether that’s them and their dog, or in their cycling gear or with a good book or in their place of worship or surrounded by 154 soft toys which they’ve knitted for charity! When you actively promote a person’s right to be themselves at work, then you are actively increasing your chances of appointing women – because they’ll feel confident enough to show you all their skills, experiences and attributes, which means that they have an opportunity to actually be the best candidate for the job.
