This podcast features an engaging conversation between Mark McBride-Wright and Kirstie Langan, the Global Business Development Director at PDI. Kirstie shares her impressive career journey, from her early aspirations to work in the energy sector after a work experience at BP, to her transition into offshore roles and eventual leadership positions. She discusses the importance of mentorship, the evolving landscape of the energy industry, and the exciting opportunities in the decommissioning sector. Kirstie provides valuable insights on empowering teams, overcoming self-limiting beliefs, and her vision for creating meaningful career paths for others in the industry.
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Mark McBride-Wright 0:00
Hello and welcome to the safe leader podcast with myself, Mark McBride Wright and I’m delighted to be joined here today with Kirsty Langan, Global Business Development Director from PDI, limited energy sector director and mother of three, Kirsty joined PDI as Global Business Development Director in 2022 following a successful 20 year career, working on and offshore, predominantly for tier one contractors and engineering consultancies including technique, FMC, helix, ESG and Apollo, starting her Studies in oil and gas production technology, then laterally becoming a leadership graduate of Cranfield University. She has a wealth of experience and achievement in business growth and commercial direction, along with genuine flair for decommissioning project delivery and operations management. Kirsty is a vocal and passionate advocate for the energy sector who regularly engages with the media and politicians to help shape the future of the UK energy landscape. Kirsty, welcome.
Kirstie Langan 1:10
That was quite an introduction. Mark, I felt reasonably uncomfortable listening to that, but I thank you nonetheless.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:17
I think you and I have only met once in person. Yeah, when I spoke at the decommissioning conference in Aberdeen earlier this year, but we’ve engaged a lot since then through voice notes on LinkedIn and messages to one another. So I feel like I know you more than than just someone who I met once at a networking event,
Kirstie Langan 1:39
exactly, and you’re so sweet saying that we met, I would The truth is, I completely fangirl. You didn’t I, because I thought your presentation was so wonderful, and then I tracked you down, and I had to have you in my life. Yes, that’s what actually happened.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:54
Well, I know you say that, yes, I remember, yeah, but do you know? What do you know? What? How often do you give talks, and then you just feel like you’re talking in a vacuum, like to actually find out about the spark that you’ve initiated in someone’s brain, or that the neurons connecting in your brain from that talk, and then you talking so openly about what you did in the follow up post was it helped me have validation that I’m trying to guide engineering in this direction like there is can be quite lonely sometimes when you’re definitely and
Kirstie Langan 2:30
I think, you know, something I shared with you I remember that day was I obviously had a different vantage point, being in the audience and reading the room through the various stages of your presentation. And I really wanted to share with you what I could see from where I was sitting, and the journey that a lot of people were on listening to what you had to say. And it was just really interesting. So yeah, I had to reach out to you, and I’m glad I did,
Mark McBride-Wright 2:51
yeah, I’m glad you did on that point, actually, because I’ve made reference to that in some when I talk about the impact that I have in my speaking, because you shared that the physicality of the audience members, particularly the men, changed when we shifted from the LGBTQ rainbow flag stuff, then into the masculinity and engineering suicide rates, etc. You felt the tone and energy, and I could observe that from the stage, but the lighting, you know, there’s only so far you can see into the audience, so to get that perception from you was very, very valuable. So thank you. No, thank you. So let’s talk about how you got to, you know, be in that audience. You’ve had an impressive career span in various roles in business development and offshore work. What were you always drawn to the offshore industry? Or did you have other paths and come into a bit later on in life? You know what? Give us an idea of your of the young Kirsty, and what you wanted to be. And has it,
Kirstie Langan 3:55
I wanted to be a Spice Girl mark, and it just didn’t pan out, really so, and I was actually, I was telling someone the other day who was asking about my early career aspirations, when I realized the Spice Girl thing wasn’t really going to plan. I also fancy being a police woman, mainly because I found, I found the start of the bill, you know, the feet walking along the street quite hypnotic. And, yeah, I just, I kind of felt like I don’t know, I don’t know why. That can’t have been the only reason I wanted to be a police officer, but I went through a period of that, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, to be honest, and the career advice that I got at school, if I’m honest, it wasn’t terribly enlightened. And it was a bit of kind of you went into the library at lunchtime and you used some new system on this, or Commodore computer, whatever, and it told you, you know, everybody was going to be a social worker. So I, I don’t know, and perhaps social work would have been good for me, and, you know, I’ve got huge amount of respect for people that work in that field. But it seemed like all of us got a very. Similar thing, and I’m thinking, well, that’s unusual. We’re all going to be social workers, fair enough. And then I went to my work experience. So we we all got told where we were going for a week’s work experience when we were 15. And one of my teachers, who was was really supportive of me and felt that despite the fact I never did my homework, and I was a little bit disruptive in class, because I could work and talk at the same time, but a lot of people around me couldn’t, so I would be given trouble because my work be finished, and I had a great chat, whereas people around me, they would just had a great chat. So but, but this teacher recognized that she felt had potential and I was smart, so she kind of voted for me to get a really good work experience assignment, and that was with BP in their North Sea headquarters in dice and so it was hugely exciting for me. You know, I was, I was 15, I went to Debenhams in in Aberdeen to buy a pinstripe suit, because I felt that I really needed to not just go to work experience. I needed to look like I was about 40. And so I wanted to dress you needed
Mark McBride-Wright 6:05
posh space.
Kirstie Langan 6:08
I’d love to say it was as cool as that. It really wasn’t. I was going for middle aged executive. I really wanted to look like 100% you know, part of the workforce. The worst thing that could have happened in that week was people mistaking me for a school child, you know. So I got my pinstripe suit, got the bus, the 305 bus from tariff into dice every day. Mum did offer to drive me, but I said, Absolutely not. I cannot be seen arriving with a parent, so I need to embody the full sort of workforce piece. So anyway, and I went to the environmental department at BP, and I was just, I don’t know, I just found the whole environment just so exciting, and I can remember it so well. I walked through reception, and there were all of these people answering phones, you know, on the switchboards, and there were all of these clocks behind reception with all the different time zones. I was like, wow, I’ve arrived. You know, this is incredible. And it just felt, you know, like this thriving environment, and you could feel that there was really important stuff happening in this place. And it just felt really exciting. And I worked in the environmental the environmental department there for a week, and the lady who looked after me and one of the environmental engineers, she wrote my report and said that I’d done really well, and that she would encourage me to stay in education, and which I didn’t, and that she could imagine me having a really fantastic career ahead of me, which I have, thankfully but yeah, so that was really what kicked me off. After that, I got a little bit lost, and I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. Went off traveling quite a lot. I backpacked for a couple of years, and and then I decided I wanted to work in the health and fitness industry, which I did. I know it was bit random. I did that for a couple of years, but it turns out I just quite enjoy swimming and getting a massage. I don’t actually want to be a sports coach or a sports therapist, so I got a little muddled at that point. And I actually spoke to a group of young people about this recently, about sometimes understanding, you know, what your passions, what are your hobbies, and what, what are your career? Because sometimes they cross over, but not always. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 8:20
very good advice.
Kirstie Langan 8:22
It’s kind of like, what is the essence of the bits you enjoy and why and how would they
Kirstie Langan 8:28
fit in your life? Would that be in a recreational sense or an employment sense? So anyway, after, you know, done the traveling, had a bit of heartbreak, came home, bit lost, trained to be a personal trainer and sports therapist, sat my own business for a wee while. Did all right that, but it wasn’t my calling. And then I had, you know, I had a little bit of credit card debt and things from all this traveling, and I thought, right, I need to make some money right now and do something completely different. You know, where did I start out on this journey? What do I want to do? And that’s when I decided to go and work offshore. Wow,
Mark McBride-Wright 9:03
oh, so you went straight into you went into working offshore. Yeah, funny how the seeds that are planted earlier on in our life actually just stay in hibernation the Germany, and then all of a sudden the shoots start to come up. And that was a moment for you, wasn’t it? Rediscovering from your past something that you enjoyed, and then making that decision to that’s some good advice, actually, for people who maybe don’t open up their doors as much to opportunities for young people or anyone these days, because actually you’re investing in that person who might join you, not just next graduate recruitment cycle, but in 10 years time. You know,
Kirstie Langan 9:46
yeah, absolutely. And I think that,
Mark McBride-Wright 9:48
how did you move into offshore, then from
Kirstie Langan 9:52
so you Yeah, you’re like this. So I decided, you know, on on a Friday, that I wanted to work offshore. So kind of. Up to my survival for the Monday, you know, typical sort of cursive fashion decision has been made, right? Let’s, let’s execute. So I went and I did my survival training. And my survival course was full of people sort of saying, oh, you know, I did my survival training. I’ve never got offshore, so I’m doing it again. You know, four years I’ve been trying to get a job offshore. And I thought, what is that? No, I’m not. I don’t want to do that. I want to be offshore like this week. And so I hadn’t decided what I was going to do offshore. I just knew there was stuff going on out there and I would find something to do. But I needed somebody to give me a job to do. So it was all poorly, poorly conceived this plan. But anyway, I got the qualification, borrowed some money, got the qualification, and then I just spoke to everybody I’d ever met, basically to find out how I get offshore. And people said the easiest, quickest way to get offshore, if you don’t have a specific trade or whatnot, is to work in the catering crew. So I started door knocking all the catering companies, and I went to a company called Trinity, and Stuart McBride, who’s the top man there. I knew a few people who knew him, and blah, blah, blah, and so I found myself in his office telling him how passionate I was about catering, and he didn’t believe me at all. He said, Are you quite sure this is what you want to do? And I said, Absolutely, absolutely. So I want to be a stewardess, and I want to do it now. I will go tomorrow or this afternoon, anytime. Be great. And he said, I think you’re just using this as a stepping stone to get into something else. And I said, Yes, that’s also true. That’s exactly what I’m doing. And he said, You know what? It’s okay. That’s fine. I want to support you to do this. He said, I think I don’t know what it is. I think you’re going to do something. And he said, if, if me giving you an opportunity helps you on that journey, I want to do that for you. So I’m always very grateful to Stuart, and I often tag him and things. And I saw him recently at an institute director’s lunch, which was really lovely. So anyway, off I went to the uski Gorm for a four hour flight from Aberdeen, refueled on the Triton FPSO, and getting off this chopper to refuel when we’re on the Triton was so memorable. It’s kind of like that walking into BP moment. I was just like, walking through this process, and I was like, oh my god, the sound and the feeling, and, you know, just the North Sea all around us. And it just, I was really excited. And I was like, right? You know, I’m out here now. You know, this is, this is the start of great things. And I felt really excited. We had a slight issue with the aircraft, and ended up back in Aberdeen, and then it had to take a second flight out. So after eight hours traveling on a helicopter that day, I did make it to the US economy, which was one of the most aged assets in the North Sea at the time, but I was offshore. I’d made it, and I was ready to start my networking journey and find the great career. But what I didn’t realize was that I’d been sent out there to be on my own, on night shift, doing dishes because the dishwasher was broken. So again, wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but you know what? I did a great job, and I worked really hard, and I did the dishes the best I could. It was the hardest physical job, I think I’ve ever done that. But you know, it was 12 hours a day, obviously, and the shift work and everything, it was quite tough going. So I did that. I did a few trips, not always on night shift. I also I did some time in the laundry. I did all kinds of stuff. So I got a promotion. I then went and worked in the little shop the bond. I was selling the chocolate and the cigarette. So that was fine. So I was just trying to do the best I could with what was in front of me, do a bit of networking, meet some people, and figure out my next move, really. And then, and all the time I was applying for different types of jobs, administrative jobs, offshore. Could I be, you know, could I work in heli admin? Could I be a project administrator or something? Because I did have some administrative qualifications and various things by this point. And yeah, and I eventually got the phone call from from one of the agencies to say there was an opportunity on a diving boat called the Sea Well, to be a project administrator and but I was committed to making another trip on the on the blue home at this point to wash dishes. So, oh my gosh. What a moment. What a moment. So I said, I’m terribly sorry I can’t I’m going to do dishes on the blue home. And they said, Are you nuts? This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. You, you’ve been trying so hard for nearly a year, and you’ve got the opportunity, and this is a permanent job. I said, I can’t, because I can’t contact them and I’m due to check in tomorrow morning. I can’t do this. It’s not right, yeah, commitment. I just thought, this is not the right thing to do. I can’t just stand them up. So off I went to the blue home, and I landed, and they shouted to me in the heli admin. They said, Kirsty, keep your survival suit on. You’re going back to Aberdeen. They had a problem with bed space, and they didn’t need me, so I was surplus requirements. So I cried all the way back to Aberdeen on that helicopter. I had missed my moment. I was absolutely. Heart broken. And I thought, What a dumb move, trying to do the right thing. Look how well that panned out. And so I did another trip of the dishes. We will get past this part of the conversation. And and then six weeks later, I got a phone call, and it was again, it was helix, who operated the sea well. And they, said to this agency, who was that? That lady? Because they remembered why I’d said, No, the commitment, yeah, yeah. And they said the chat that we hired didn’t work out at all. Now, are you ready? And I said, yeah, no, no, no, now I’m ready. So I went to see well, and I was there for nearly three years, and that’s where I met Douglas Young, who was a wonderful offshore project manager, who was very supportive and encouraged me to study production technology and to broaden out what I was doing and really start believing in myself. And he taught me so so much, and that role kind of coordinating and administrating subsidy projects on that boat was really what, what set me up, and then the rest is kind of history for offshore. I was, I was off to technique for several years, worked on many different boats, doing different things. But yeah, that was kind of the start of all fantastic.
Mark McBride-Wright 16:16
And then, so then, so that shows you the importance of early door mentoring and sponsorship as well, theme potential and cultivating
Kirstie Langan 16:27
yourself out there and just asking for it. Yeah, you know, I don’t know if you saw the other day LinkedIn, when I was crowning Katy Perry, another, another highlight. But yeah, when I, when I was saying, you know, like she says in that Daisy song, why can’t it be me? Why not? Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I have chance? And I think having that, just feeling that ability in yourself to ask, yeah, I’d like to do that. Can I have that chance? Can I have that opportunity?
Mark McBride-Wright 16:57
Absolutely, absolutely. I always think of it as I used to say, my brother, like you need to accept a high failure rate, you know. So if you’re applying for five jobs at Cameron toll shopping center for a Saturday job, you know, and you think, Oh, my goodness, I’m not going to get one. And you only apply like, you need to be in every shop. You need to, like, off your CV, putting it in and going to loads and loads of places to try because, you know, it might be every one and 100 jobs that you’ll be offered, or something so, and
Kirstie Langan 17:27
I think you can, and you can also learn things from each of the experiences, or take something from the experiences. You know, I am probably better at doing dishes than I would have been had I not been a professional dishwasher for a moment there. You know, there’s all sorts of things in each of these experiences that you can sort of gather and put in your toolkit, and they can be really useful later on. It
Mark McBride-Wright 17:53
teaches you resilience failure, how you respond to rejection. You know some of the things that as you get further into your career, where you know this may happen more often and at a greater scale and have greater risk attached to it, based on where the stage you’re at in life, it makes you a lot more like, yeah, thicker skinned, I guess, and able to handle those moments when they when they come up, I think. So, yeah, and so with your, how would you then describe the we’re in a process right now where oil and gas is going through a bit of a ship where, you know, we’re shifting towards a greener future. We’ve got, you know, Net Zero targets to meet, and a transition to a renewable energy infrastructure. What role do you play, where you’re at now in that with the existing fleet, the future fleet, and what, what excites you about the opportunities that exist in in the energy sector in the UK.
Kirstie Langan 19:03
So I would say I’m a great advocate for talking about the energy sector more, more more broadly. I I rarely speak too much about oil and gas than a traditional silo sense. And I think it’s really important that we get away from this language. Because I think, you know, it’s one energy and, you know, we’ve got a responsibility to safely produce energy for the citizens of this country and internationally as well. So I feel like we’ve become very fixated on on the energy source. And it worries me when we speak to young people as well, that rather than talking about, you know, how can we make sure that you have wonderful careers where you use your incredible mind and do great things that make you feel fantastic, and you work with people who you enjoy, and it’s part of a really fulfilling life for you. How do we make sure that that is the nub of the conversation? Rather than, well, is it, you know, is that gas job, or is a hydrogen job, or is a nuclear job? You know, from an engineering perspective, I think we’re way too concerned with that, that more than we need to be. And I think, you know, talking more kind of, I guess, on an individual level, in terms of the broader political landscape, that’s completely different conversation. So in terms of the broader political landscape, I think it’s a huge opportunity for the, you know, the legacy workforce that have brought the energy sector to where it is today. You know, the skilled people in the offshore energy sector in the United Kingdom. It is mind blowing the depth and breadth of expertise that exists in this country, from an engineering perspective, anywhere in the world that I travel, when people know that I’ve come from Scotland, when I’ve come from Aberdeen, and I’m there to talk about engineering, it really means something, and that’s something I’m incredibly proud of. I
Mark McBride-Wright 21:00
found so, yeah, you can tell from my accent. I’m from, from Scotland as well, and but, but I’d only ever came to Aberdeen, and I did work in oil and gas, but I worked in oil and gas down in the south east, in the engineering design companies Aberdeen, I only ever visited as a student when I was looking at universities. I looked at Aberdeen University, but then I came up to give some talks. And what amazed me, like much later on in my career, and what amazed me was just how visible the engineering is, especially, you know, I came up in May this year for the decommission, and I just, like, even just getting off at the airport, you see engineering companies on the advertisement boards all around you, and you’re, you’re in the taxi or your car driving somewhere, and then you see um energy vans or or, you know, companies that are linked to the engineering sector driving around the it’s very visible. You know, it’s very, very visible. I guess is my point, compared to growing up in Edinburgh, where it’s not as visible, which makes sense, given that the city the difference in the cities like what job opportunities that are Edinburgh’s more financial and, yeah, absolutely.
Kirstie Langan 22:22
And I think it’s, it is a real kind of hotbed of engineering excellence here. And you know, we are a global center of excellence for energy engineering. There’s no question of that. And, you know, taking it one step further, you know, breaking it down a little bit further from a decommissioning perspective, we’re the best in the whole world at decommissioning, and I’m so proud of our decommissioning sector. And whilst we’re very busy developing new energies, which, of course, is absolutely key, some of these new energies are taking a little longer to get online than any of us would like, and our decommissioning sector is so important right now, whilst we get these new energies online, but from an employment point of view and a development point of view and an industrial export point of view, our decommissioning sector is something that, on a national and international scale, is so important.
Mark McBride-Wright 23:16
Can you just give our listeners a bit more of a intro or context of decommissioning, because I remember something that came up at the conference that it very much is like the second cousin that no one wants to be I do, no, well, it’s like a job that people fall into rather than I want to work In the decommissioning sector, and I think part of that comes from people not really being aware of the scale of the opportunity, or the scale of what’s ahead of us and what needs to be decommissioned safely, etc. So can you just give us a bit of an idea of of of that space? Yeah, absolutely.
Kirstie Langan 23:57
So. So decommissioning, I guess, in its simplest form, when we have used resources, particularly natural resources, we need to return the natural environment to child wars previously or whatever is safest to leave it. And decommissioning is everything involved, from taking producing assets. So an oil break, for instance, everything from from taking it from producing state until there’s nothing left, or whatever, relieving on the seabed is safe to be left, and it’s preferable to removing it. So that whole process is is absolutely massive in terms of engineering execution, risk management, project management, environmental management, you know, it’s a massive, massive piece of work. And when we’re looking at decommissioning the North Sea, for instance, the North Sea wasn’t necessarily built with with decommissioning in mind. So from an engineering perspective, it’s actually. Really interesting. And people sometimes have this misconception that’s either all reverse engineering, which is not, or that it’s just kind of pulling out, and it’s very straightforward, which it’s not. There’s so much uncertainty around what’s down there, and we don’t always have it right. What we expect, we don’t always see delivered. So that brings with it incredible challenges, and also, as we’re working to get better and better and better and more efficient at decommissioning, there’s a lot of really exciting challenges that come with that. So I would love if people start thinking of decommissioning as a real first choice for their career, because it’s such a special community to be part of it’s a really collaborative, wonderful community of people doing great things. So I love working in decommissioning. And, you know, my my company, about 70% of our revenue comes from decommissioning, and we love it. It’s a really special space to be in, and it’s really exciting.
Mark McBride-Wright 25:56
What, what? What’s the sort of what? What’s the industry worth you know, what happens to the asset when you bring it onshore? You know, if you bring an oil rig, tow it to a yard, and what’s the process to dismantle it? And you know, what did things get created out of it?
Kirstie Langan 26:18
There’s lots of different approaches, and this is changing all the time when it comes to repurposing. You know, there are some assets that get removed, kind of in a more complete sense. There are others that get chopped up in little, tiny bits and then taken out. It really depends on the nature of the asset, the integrity of the asset. There’s a whole, I mean, there’s such a spectrum of factors that have to be taken to account, war, depth, temperature, but just, I mean, there’s just a whole world of possibilities on what is optimal for removing an asset, and then when the asset comes on shore again, there’s a whole bunch of opportunities with what you’re going to do with it, whether it’s repurposing it, and even the style of demolition. You know, there’s explosive demolition, which is always fun to watch, if you, you know, if you’re into that kind of thing. And, you know, there’s, again, each of these things, there’s a world of possibilities. And when it comes to to reuse, even concrete mattresses, which the North Sea has a lot of, there’s some really interesting initiatives at the moment looking at how we can repurpose concrete that’s been used offshore, as well as all the steel. So yeah, it’s a really interesting space filled with great people doing cool stuff, and a sector that we can be incredibly proud of on an international sense.
Mark McBride-Wright 27:39
And I guess for people wanting to invest their lives into carving out a career in this space, it’s easy to think, oh, decommissioning oil and gas. But actually, I remember here like some of our nuclear fleet is now being decommissioned, and also like some of the first generation wind turbines, I believe, are now coming to the end of life and need to be decommissioned. But not just oil and gas, is it not at
Kirstie Langan 28:06
all? And decommissioning is bad word. The actual word, I think we need a new word, because it just kind of sounds like the end of the road, doesn’t it? And it’s, I think it needs a rebranding, because, and there’s a quote that I love, and poor Caroline, I trot this quote out all the time, but Caroline Lawford, who is a wonderful woman, and she’s a decommissioning leader extraordinaire and structural engineer extraordinaire and all around, lovely person, and she is a leader at CNR and is amongst the best in the world at what she does. And she she was once challenged when she was presenting about the longevity of decommissioning, and she said a line which I loved, which was, as long as there’s an energy sector, there’ll be decommissioning, it’ll always be the last thing on the list. And I love that. And I was like the simplicity, but it’s quite right. So as long as we have energy, we have decommissioning. And exactly the point you make. You know, we’re very busy decommissioning early turbines. And yeah, nuclear is going to keep us busy for hundreds of years to come. So there’s plenty to be getting on with. And it’s engineering, you know? It is engineering. We get so fixated on the silos of engineering, which is a little bit of a shame, because I think sometimes we think of these things in a bit of a binary sense, and we need to do that. It’s still, it’s engineering, it’s problem solving, and it’s a really exciting facet of it. So when it comes
Mark McBride-Wright 29:33
to having the workforce then, and the skilled workforce that’s needed for doing all this decommissioning in the years to come. And what advice would you give to women looking to break into the industry, or those that may be questioning whether or not they want to move trans you know, come into the industry later on in life, but from a different career background? You know what? Opportunities are there to have people in the sector.
Kirstie Langan 30:05
So I kind of sometimes struggle to give, like, gender based advice. I will give people based advice, I think, do you know what I mean? And it’s funny, because I’m a really proud woman in energy. You know, just the other day, I was speaking to some wonderful girls in shells, girls in energy program, and all this stuff is really important. But something in me, I just think I don’t know what to say just to the women. So I would say, generally, for everyone, the energy sector is filled with people who are the best in the world at what they do. It is such a highly skilled, motivated, incredible group of people solving the unsolvable problems and doing, you know, technologically, just unimaginable things every day of the week. And with that comes just this, this, this energy and and challenge and continual growth and development that I think is hugely exciting to be part of. And I would really encourage people to come and have their career and energy, because there’s just so much that, you know, so many places it can take you.
Mark McBride-Wright 31:16
Absolutely, I was reading, though that the number of women in the sector age 35 to 50. This is engineering in general, not just building down. We’re, you know, we’re, we’ve got the highest rate of loss of women in the sector than we’ve ever had in the age 35 to 50 odd age group. So the chemical engineer in me, when we, when we when we look at a simple mass balance, you know, what we’ve got coming in doesn’t equal what we’ve got coming out. We’ve got our you want more people coming in than we’ve got leaving the sector so we can get accumulation to help lead to more diversity, greater diversity of thought, more more role models, more opportunities. So why do you think people are women in particular, are leaving the sector?
Kirstie Langan 32:06
And you see, is it engineers, aged 35 to 50? Did you say yeah, or is it women leaving the workforce? I
Mark McBride-Wright 32:15
don’t know. I don’t know to what extent. Please do.
Kirstie Langan 32:18
I would expect that there’s quite a correlation with people having children, I would imagine, and I would be interested to understand those, those numbers a little bit better, because I don’t think we have a systemic problem in engineering where female engineers of this age group are leaving versus other. I could be totally wrong. I could be totally wrong versus other elements of the workforce. I think that that’s a bigger issue, societal issue, potentially. And I think, you know, cost of childcare, don’t get me started on that. You know, I think some of these issues play into that. But I would say we haven’t got enough female engineers. We know this 100% we do not have enough. They don’t exist. So, you know, this is really challenging. So in my business at PDI, our leadership team is majority female, our engineering team is not so we can control, to an extent, the gender split in the leadership team, which is multidisciplinary, but in the technical and discipline engineering team, it’s really hard because they don’t exist. And you know, that tells me this is an education challenge and a schools and universities challenge that we still haven’t really got on top of. But I referenced it earlier. But you know, Michelle’s girls and energy program and programs such as these are so important just to get hundreds and hundreds of young people, young girls, every year, opening their eyes to the world of engineering in a way they might not have. And that’s got to be a positive
Mark McBride-Wright 33:52
and when you’re delivering. But if you know, if anyone listening to this just hasn’t been involved on a program like that, or experienced the I don’t know, the warmth, maybe that it brings you being an external, you know, thinking, Oh, if this was my, I don’t know, 10 year old self in the room, and I was hearing this like, would this have chartered me on a different course type thing? You know, would you encourage people? Do you think enough of us are doing this sort of outreach to help raise awareness, to diversify our talent pipeline. I think we can’t
Kirstie Langan 34:25
do enough given the numbers. So if we think we’re doing enough, do a bit more, is what I would suggest. And I think bringing young girls into workplaces is really important as well, and and young people more generally as well. I think understanding just how exciting and interesting it can be. And, you know, engineering is, is problem solving, and it’s, you know, are you interested in fixing stuff? Are you interested in how things are made? Are you interested in everything around you? Of course, you are. And I think you can get a little bit confused with, you know, when I spoke earlier about, um. And you know, the core of what you enjoy or love. And sometimes that can be a little bit confusing. I remember years ago, there was a young a young guy who was with my previous company on work experience in our accounts department, and I said to him, you know, why accounts What led you there? And he said, Well, I’m good at maths. And my parents thought it’d be a good idea. Let’s look at math. And I said, are you really interested? Is do you think accounting is the life for you? And he said, Oh, don’t tell anybody. But I really don’t want to do this. I don’t think. And I said, Well, did you know that maths really important for engineering? And he was like, Well, no, I never really thought of that. And whilst, no disrespect to our accounts department, I absolutely took the guy hostage and spent my time trying to convert him to to the engineering side of life, and he just his eyes were opened. He was like, Oh my gosh. So I could still be good at maths and could still have a really lucrative career that my parents would be dead proud of, and I could be doing this stuff. Yeah, yeah, I’m quite interested in this. So that was really powerful and and again, like I say that, it’s not to say that maths in its purest sense, or accounts, accounts in its purest sense, is somehow second rate to engineering. Absolutely as an engineering is not everything in the world, but sometimes I feel that the core skills required for engineering careers, sometimes they’re overlooked as the component that they are.
Mark McBride-Wright 36:22
Yeah, no, yeah, totally, totally. Sometimes you just because engineering isn’t a subject that you study at school, not all the time. I know increasingly it is becoming. So it’s not, yeah, pure subject. It’s not a pure subject. So unless you’ve got a role model, or being on one or a parent or who works in the sector, or being on one of these insights, my realization was similar, actually, you know, I did a work experience at Edinburgh University in their geology department because I wanted to be a volcanologist. Then I realized that you had studied geology to become a volcanologist. This is not my this is not for me. This is very boring. No disrespect to any geologists out there, you do great work mapping subsurface, but you know, that wasn’t for me. And then I went to the chemistry department because it was a subject that I was studying at school. Saw that you could then do chemical engineering. So started like looking that up. And it was on a course that I don’t know if they exist anymore, and it was a head start engineering course that I did when I was 14 at Bradford University of Bradford, like, you know, we had to it was, it must have been about 2000 or somewhere 2002 and we had to make a straw wheel, like off the London Eye, the Millennium wheel, as it was called back then, and we had to, like, roll it down a hill and just out with straws. But that was great. It opened me up to engineering and that, that that was me then, on that, that track for for what I wanted to do. Yeah, they’re so, so important. I think we’re involved in a couple of projects just now where we’re doing STEM outreach, but I just yeah, my personal view is that it’s just still a bit too bitty and fragmented and inconsistent. Is it actually really returning the value and the impact that we need at the scale that’s needed? I’m not so sure. And I think that’s because the companies that then look at the metrics, are expecting a return like immediately, when actually, you know, you’re investing in these young people to influence our decision for like 2030 2035 onwards, you know,
Kirstie Langan 38:36
and I guess you can probably get a quicker return. I suppose if that’s if that’s a key metric for you with internships and all of this good stuff, which are also really important. And you know, we, we love our graduate program here at PDI, and we love having interns working with us as well. And we’ve got a number of interns the last few years. We’ve borrowed from from Robert Gordon’s University, and that’s just so cool to have these people spend part of their degree working with us for a year is a really cool thing. And again, just whipping them out of the academic environment for a minute and throwing them into this world and seeing if this is we can spark something in them that says, maybe this could be the life for you. Last year we had a summer placement student with us from one of the universities, and he we actually managed to get him offshore during his summer time with us. So we got him through his survival, got on a boat, got him offshore, and he’s come back and joined us as graduate engineer this year after completing his studies. And similarly, you know, last year we had for a full year, we had a in our marketing team, a marketing and business intern, and he did a great job for us. So I kept him on on a part time basis during his final year of study this year, so that he continue this journey. Because he’s absolutely loved it, and he’s, he’s managed to put so much into practice. Does, and just kind of had a different world opened up to him. So it’s, it’s really exciting. That’s
Mark McBride-Wright 40:04
brilliant. That’s also good. That’s also good with, I mean, the we spoke a bit about, part of the safe framework that I’ve developed since the the conference is this idea of sharing, of taking action, of feeling, and then being a source of empowerment for others and trying to really help, trying to really frame it in a way that safe leadership gets engineers trying to explore their own diversity story, first and foremost, like what have they got to to share with others so that you can build you know, become more relatable to one another, or about experiences that maybe you never actually knew one another had been going through. And I think that that is the energy within which the, you know, the tone in the room that we spoke about earlier when I gave my talk, and you saw the physicality of some of the men in the room become a bit more inward, you know, and feeling a little bit awkward, you know. So in that model, in safe leadership, this sort of con set that I’m trying to align with, EDI, where do you think there’s like, how, how can we move, how can we bring that into the sector? How can we help help men open up a bit more you know
Unknown Speaker 41:25
about their disease. It’s a really tricky
Kirstie Langan 41:28
subject, isn’t it? And I think I was actually speaking with with a male colleague earlier on, on a related, not the same, related subject, though, I do think that typically, we’ve got to be really careful when we talk about typical gender roles, right? Because I’m a typical I’m a single mother of three who’s director of engineering consultancy. So when it comes to kind of typical gender roles, women apparently are better at some of this communication stuff around emotions and so on so forth. But you get some great men as well who are so tuned into themselves emotionally and are really, really great at offering leadership in that perspective. And I do think that these men who are particularly good in this space. I really want to see them doing more with it, because I feel that when it comes to emotional issues, often women are looked to for leadership and the solutions, and sometimes it’s harder, I think, for the men who need to hear this stuff, to hear it from a woman, say it does that make any sense whatsoever?
Mark McBride-Wright 42:46
Yeah, it does. Do you know, I’ve forgotten the term. I read an article on LinkedIn that kind of relates to what you’re talking about, but more in the personal relationships in life, can’t remember what the term was. It was, it wasn’t mansplaining. It wasn’t it was like a word that was a verb with the word man at the beginning, but it was basically talking about women in the personal lives of eight couples, women taking up the burden of absorbing the emotional kind of like the mental load. Yeah, the mental load. Thank you. Yeah, like the mental load of, like, the men of their husbands or their fathers or sons, whatever, but mainly husbands, so. But actually, if men were better at opening up more to one another and then having, like, close male friendship, like, how many men actually have really close male friendship groups that they open up to, that they can share problems with. You know, it’s becoming more of a thing, but it’s nowhere near at the scale, really
Kirstie Langan 43:53
difficult, because I think a lot of men as well feel like, well, I don’t want that, I don’t crave that. I don’t desire that, but that, I would argue, is learned behavior. And I would say that, you know, because generation after generation, that that male experience isn’t defined by those meaningful, deep connections with one another, necessarily, I think that that unfortunately, has kind of locked out that option for a lot of men, potentially, who need it, and and that, for me, is really troubling. You know, I’m someone that I’m a mega open book, as you know, and that’s not to everybody’s taste, and that can be really jarring for a lot of people. And I do understand that, but I’ve come to accept about myself that this is how I am, and that’s their issue, if they don’t, if they don’t enjoy that about me and my openness, though, and I’m very fortunate to be able to feel safe to be open, and that’s largely because of how I was raised. My openness has bought me a ticket to support that I wouldn’t have had. Otherwise, you know, when I have gone through some of the most traumatic events of my life, I have, whilst it might have been uncomfortable, I have been able to open up about it in a way that quickly got me some support when I needed it. And had I not felt able to do that, I wouldn’t have had that. And I think to a lot of people that maybe it’s really difficult, that journey of opening up and then they don’t get the support. And it feels like a really kind of bad deal. You know what? I mean?
Mark McBride-Wright 45:28
It’s getting access to the life support mechanisms, the buoyancy aids, the, you know, yeah, totally, totally. I think there’s so much work to do in this area.
Kirstie Langan 45:38
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, with
Mark McBride-Wright 45:41
your focus on strategic leadership, then thinking about what we’ve said there. What are your future goals? How do you want more impact on the sector you’re working
Speaker 1 45:51
in? So I mean, I guess in terms of what keeps me
Kirstie Langan 45:56
going and keeps me excited is creating great career opportunities for people to join businesses that I’m a leader, and you know that that is what ultimately is really exciting for me, is developing services, selling services, winning work that ultimately creates an environment where people can come and develop themselves, develop their careers and have really exciting jobs, you know, in its simplest form, that really excites me. And if I can help people as well believe that they can be better than they think they can be, or they can achieve more than they think they can, then I think that is such a cool thing to aim for. You know, I’ve had, I’ve had the fortune to have leaders who made me feel like that, and that’s what’s helped me get much further than I might have. You know, my father, I always say, was one of my first great leaders, and he made me believe that I could do great things. And, you know, he used to say to me, Kirsty, you’re very fortunate. You’re one of the few people that can do absolutely anything you set your mind to. Now that may or may not be true, but being told that constantly, from a young age, you know, I believed he believed it, and that helped me believe that I could do more, you know. And when all of the negativity in my mind, like everybody’s mind, the self limiting beliefs which plague us all when they’re on the go. It’s really nice to think of dad’s voice saying, Come on. Why can’t it be you? You can do this. You’re capable. You’re one of the few people in the world that can do anything you say, you’re mine too. So it’s really nice to have that counter. And I would love to be the type of leader for the people around me, and I really hope I am, but I can always do better, but I want to be the type of leader that makes people think, yeah, I could give that a go. Could do that? Kirsty seems to back me.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:49
It’s amazing. You’ve inspired me. Your dad inspired me to be saying that more to my daughter,
Kirstie Langan 47:58
it’s important, you know? I really think, yeah, you know, it’s important we have cheerleaders. But I was talking about someone on my team, actually, earlier I speak to somebody else, and I was saying how I love empowering people. I think I, you know, I micromanagement is a really bad idea for a whole bunch of ideas, for a whole bunch of reasons it’s bad for the person. Absolutely, it stifles your own creativity and everything else. But it’s also really time consuming, and I generally do way too much, so selfishly, I need to get some of my time back, so if I don’t micromanage, then it helps me manage my own times, if that makes sense. And I was talking about the fact I I’ve got this, this young person in my team, and I really like empowering him, because it’s the right thing to do, and he performs better. And he’s really, really accountable, because he knows he’s got things that he’s absolutely responsible for. But I do it very clearly by saying to him, I’m going to give you this project to manage, because I believe in you. I know you can do it. And also, if any element of this goes south, this is all fixable stuff, and I’ll show you how it fits it as well. And he’s kind of like, Yeah, but do you want to double check? No, I don’t want to double check. Just do it. Do it. I trust you, and I promise you any element of this particular project I’m asking you to work on, ie, you know, a marketing campaign that we’re getting ready to go out or preparing for an event, or whatever it might be. I’m absolutely not talking about an engineering project
Mark McBride-Wright 49:23
at this moment. Put the guardrails in place. Yeah, I say, what’s the worst that could happen? And we’ll figure it out together,
Kirstie Langan 49:28
and I’ll show you how to fix it, because that will also be a fun learning opportunity. So I feel like giving people that sort of opportunity to really figure stuff out, but in a supportive environment where you’re given the right skills is, is a really cool thing to aim for.
Mark McBride-Wright 49:46
Okay, quick fire questioner now, oh my gosh, getting ready. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Unknown Speaker 49:57
Can I have two? Okay. Okay. The
Kirstie Langan 50:01
first one is, just ask. Just ask if it’s in your head. Just Just ask. Just ask question you want to do it. Just ask. So I love that one. And the other one is, be comfortable enough in what you’re really good at to not try and be really good at everything. There are other people that are better at the other stuff, and learn as quickly as you can what it is you bring to the party, and feel really good about what you bring to the party, and let other people bring their best, and it won’t be the same thing.
Mark McBride-Wright 50:37
What’s your proudest professional achievement?
Kirstie Langan 50:42
My proudest professional achievement, I would say this last two years here at PDI, this business, this has been really, really exciting. You know, we more than doubled this business last year, and I’ve had a lot of freedom here to do what I think is right in terms of developing new services and and making some really exciting developments with the business. So I would say this last two years, growing the business here at PDI has been the most exciting and rewarding part of my career so far. What’s
Mark McBride-Wright 51:23
the one skill you think every business development leader should
Kirstie Langan 51:28
have genuine empathy,
Mark McBride-Wright 51:32
tea or coffee? Coffee? What’s your goal to productivity? Hack,
Kirstie Langan 51:38
empower your team, gives you your time back
Mark McBride-Wright 51:43
with any leader past or present. Who would it be?
Unknown Speaker 51:48
Your dad? Yeah,
Kirstie Langan 51:49
he passed away a few years ago, and I know that it sounds, you know, a bit odd when I could choose, you know, a great spiritual leader or but honestly, I would love to have dinner with my dad.
Mark McBride-Wright 52:05
What’s the one thing you do to relax after a long day swimming? What the most exciting project you’ve worked on in your career?
Kirstie Langan 52:16
Oh, all time. Most exciting project? Oh,
Speaker 1 52:21
I can’t pick one. Do I have to pick one? One? I’ve given you two on another question, exciting, okay,
Kirstie Langan 52:32
most exciting project in my career, not necessarily for all the right reasons, but I was working on a diving vessel that was nearly finished being built, and we were doing construction work already. So we were completing building a diving system below deck whilst moving in and out of port in Norway and doing construction work at same time coming back alongside doing more work on the dive system. So we were basically in a building site and a live construction vessel mode. And it was so yeah, it was very fast paced. It was very challenging, but it was incredibly interesting, and unlike anything I’ve ever done before,
Mark McBride-Wright 53:16
what the one book or resource you’d recommend someone interested in leadership or business development,
Kirstie Langan 53:23
I would say, I do, like a Mel Robbins podcast, I must say, I do. I do enjoy that. Or I would recommend people read the safe leader by Mark McBride Wright, is what I would suggest.
Mark McBride-Wright 53:38
Thank you. What’s the one piece of advice. Finally, you would give your younger self
Kirstie Langan 53:46
that the main piece of advice would be lose the self limiting beliefs a bit quicker. Because, man, it’s exhausting and it just slows you down. So anything that you could do because you’re enough, and you bring a lot of cool stuff to the party, and you’ve got a lot of good things that you’re capable of, and you’ve got lots of value to contribute, and it’s, it’s more than enough. Well, yeah, well, that’s
Mark McBride-Wright 54:16
great advice. Well, I’ve really, I’ve really enjoyed our chat today. If, people listening to this want to get in touch, connect with you. Find out more about what you’re doing, what PDI does. How do they how do they do that?
Kirstie Langan 54:30
Please connect with me on LinkedIn. And I do receive quite a few messages and things, but I do my very best to get back to people. So yes, absolutely. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Follow PDI on LinkedIn. We’re pretty active. Wonderful.
Mark McBride-Wright 54:44
Well, what we’ll do is we’ll put the link to your profile and to the company as well in the show notes that accompany the transcript of
Unknown Speaker 54:52
this talk. Great. Thank you so much for having me.
Mark McBride-Wright 54:55
Mark. That’s all right. It’s been an absolute pleasure. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Pleasure, thanks, Kirsty, thank
E010: From Spice Girl Dreams to Engineering Leadership
Podcast Description
Read the Transcript
Mark McBride-Wright 0:00
Hello and welcome to the safe leader podcast with myself, Mark McBride Wright and I’m delighted to be joined here today with Kirsty Langan, Global Business Development Director from PDI, limited energy sector director and mother of three, Kirsty joined PDI as Global Business Development Director in 2022 following a successful 20 year career, working on and offshore, predominantly for tier one contractors and engineering consultancies including technique, FMC, helix, ESG and Apollo, starting her Studies in oil and gas production technology, then laterally becoming a leadership graduate of Cranfield University. She has a wealth of experience and achievement in business growth and commercial direction, along with genuine flair for decommissioning project delivery and operations management. Kirsty is a vocal and passionate advocate for the energy sector who regularly engages with the media and politicians to help shape the future of the UK energy landscape. Kirsty, welcome.
Kirstie Langan 1:10
That was quite an introduction. Mark, I felt reasonably uncomfortable listening to that, but I thank you nonetheless.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:17
I think you and I have only met once in person. Yeah, when I spoke at the decommissioning conference in Aberdeen earlier this year, but we’ve engaged a lot since then through voice notes on LinkedIn and messages to one another. So I feel like I know you more than than just someone who I met once at a networking event,
Kirstie Langan 1:39
exactly, and you’re so sweet saying that we met, I would The truth is, I completely fangirl. You didn’t I, because I thought your presentation was so wonderful, and then I tracked you down, and I had to have you in my life. Yes, that’s what actually happened.
Mark McBride-Wright 1:54
Well, I know you say that, yes, I remember, yeah, but do you know? What do you know? What? How often do you give talks, and then you just feel like you’re talking in a vacuum, like to actually find out about the spark that you’ve initiated in someone’s brain, or that the neurons connecting in your brain from that talk, and then you talking so openly about what you did in the follow up post was it helped me have validation that I’m trying to guide engineering in this direction like there is can be quite lonely sometimes when you’re definitely and
Kirstie Langan 2:30
I think, you know, something I shared with you I remember that day was I obviously had a different vantage point, being in the audience and reading the room through the various stages of your presentation. And I really wanted to share with you what I could see from where I was sitting, and the journey that a lot of people were on listening to what you had to say. And it was just really interesting. So yeah, I had to reach out to you, and I’m glad I did,
Mark McBride-Wright 2:51
yeah, I’m glad you did on that point, actually, because I’ve made reference to that in some when I talk about the impact that I have in my speaking, because you shared that the physicality of the audience members, particularly the men, changed when we shifted from the LGBTQ rainbow flag stuff, then into the masculinity and engineering suicide rates, etc. You felt the tone and energy, and I could observe that from the stage, but the lighting, you know, there’s only so far you can see into the audience, so to get that perception from you was very, very valuable. So thank you. No, thank you. So let’s talk about how you got to, you know, be in that audience. You’ve had an impressive career span in various roles in business development and offshore work. What were you always drawn to the offshore industry? Or did you have other paths and come into a bit later on in life? You know what? Give us an idea of your of the young Kirsty, and what you wanted to be. And has it,
Kirstie Langan 3:55
I wanted to be a Spice Girl mark, and it just didn’t pan out, really so, and I was actually, I was telling someone the other day who was asking about my early career aspirations, when I realized the Spice Girl thing wasn’t really going to plan. I also fancy being a police woman, mainly because I found, I found the start of the bill, you know, the feet walking along the street quite hypnotic. And, yeah, I just, I kind of felt like I don’t know, I don’t know why. That can’t have been the only reason I wanted to be a police officer, but I went through a period of that, and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, to be honest, and the career advice that I got at school, if I’m honest, it wasn’t terribly enlightened. And it was a bit of kind of you went into the library at lunchtime and you used some new system on this, or Commodore computer, whatever, and it told you, you know, everybody was going to be a social worker. So I, I don’t know, and perhaps social work would have been good for me, and, you know, I’ve got huge amount of respect for people that work in that field. But it seemed like all of us got a very. Similar thing, and I’m thinking, well, that’s unusual. We’re all going to be social workers, fair enough. And then I went to my work experience. So we we all got told where we were going for a week’s work experience when we were 15. And one of my teachers, who was was really supportive of me and felt that despite the fact I never did my homework, and I was a little bit disruptive in class, because I could work and talk at the same time, but a lot of people around me couldn’t, so I would be given trouble because my work be finished, and I had a great chat, whereas people around me, they would just had a great chat. So but, but this teacher recognized that she felt had potential and I was smart, so she kind of voted for me to get a really good work experience assignment, and that was with BP in their North Sea headquarters in dice and so it was hugely exciting for me. You know, I was, I was 15, I went to Debenhams in in Aberdeen to buy a pinstripe suit, because I felt that I really needed to not just go to work experience. I needed to look like I was about 40. And so I wanted to dress you needed
Mark McBride-Wright 6:05
posh space.
Kirstie Langan 6:08
I’d love to say it was as cool as that. It really wasn’t. I was going for middle aged executive. I really wanted to look like 100% you know, part of the workforce. The worst thing that could have happened in that week was people mistaking me for a school child, you know. So I got my pinstripe suit, got the bus, the 305 bus from tariff into dice every day. Mum did offer to drive me, but I said, Absolutely not. I cannot be seen arriving with a parent, so I need to embody the full sort of workforce piece. So anyway, and I went to the environmental department at BP, and I was just, I don’t know, I just found the whole environment just so exciting, and I can remember it so well. I walked through reception, and there were all of these people answering phones, you know, on the switchboards, and there were all of these clocks behind reception with all the different time zones. I was like, wow, I’ve arrived. You know, this is incredible. And it just felt, you know, like this thriving environment, and you could feel that there was really important stuff happening in this place. And it just felt really exciting. And I worked in the environmental the environmental department there for a week, and the lady who looked after me and one of the environmental engineers, she wrote my report and said that I’d done really well, and that she would encourage me to stay in education, and which I didn’t, and that she could imagine me having a really fantastic career ahead of me, which I have, thankfully but yeah, so that was really what kicked me off. After that, I got a little bit lost, and I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do. Went off traveling quite a lot. I backpacked for a couple of years, and and then I decided I wanted to work in the health and fitness industry, which I did. I know it was bit random. I did that for a couple of years, but it turns out I just quite enjoy swimming and getting a massage. I don’t actually want to be a sports coach or a sports therapist, so I got a little muddled at that point. And I actually spoke to a group of young people about this recently, about sometimes understanding, you know, what your passions, what are your hobbies, and what, what are your career? Because sometimes they cross over, but not always. Yeah,
Mark McBride-Wright 8:20
very good advice.
Kirstie Langan 8:22
It’s kind of like, what is the essence of the bits you enjoy and why and how would they
Kirstie Langan 8:28
fit in your life? Would that be in a recreational sense or an employment sense? So anyway, after, you know, done the traveling, had a bit of heartbreak, came home, bit lost, trained to be a personal trainer and sports therapist, sat my own business for a wee while. Did all right that, but it wasn’t my calling. And then I had, you know, I had a little bit of credit card debt and things from all this traveling, and I thought, right, I need to make some money right now and do something completely different. You know, where did I start out on this journey? What do I want to do? And that’s when I decided to go and work offshore. Wow,
Mark McBride-Wright 9:03
oh, so you went straight into you went into working offshore. Yeah, funny how the seeds that are planted earlier on in our life actually just stay in hibernation the Germany, and then all of a sudden the shoots start to come up. And that was a moment for you, wasn’t it? Rediscovering from your past something that you enjoyed, and then making that decision to that’s some good advice, actually, for people who maybe don’t open up their doors as much to opportunities for young people or anyone these days, because actually you’re investing in that person who might join you, not just next graduate recruitment cycle, but in 10 years time. You know,
Kirstie Langan 9:46
yeah, absolutely. And I think that,
Mark McBride-Wright 9:48
how did you move into offshore, then from
Kirstie Langan 9:52
so you Yeah, you’re like this. So I decided, you know, on on a Friday, that I wanted to work offshore. So kind of. Up to my survival for the Monday, you know, typical sort of cursive fashion decision has been made, right? Let’s, let’s execute. So I went and I did my survival training. And my survival course was full of people sort of saying, oh, you know, I did my survival training. I’ve never got offshore, so I’m doing it again. You know, four years I’ve been trying to get a job offshore. And I thought, what is that? No, I’m not. I don’t want to do that. I want to be offshore like this week. And so I hadn’t decided what I was going to do offshore. I just knew there was stuff going on out there and I would find something to do. But I needed somebody to give me a job to do. So it was all poorly, poorly conceived this plan. But anyway, I got the qualification, borrowed some money, got the qualification, and then I just spoke to everybody I’d ever met, basically to find out how I get offshore. And people said the easiest, quickest way to get offshore, if you don’t have a specific trade or whatnot, is to work in the catering crew. So I started door knocking all the catering companies, and I went to a company called Trinity, and Stuart McBride, who’s the top man there. I knew a few people who knew him, and blah, blah, blah, and so I found myself in his office telling him how passionate I was about catering, and he didn’t believe me at all. He said, Are you quite sure this is what you want to do? And I said, Absolutely, absolutely. So I want to be a stewardess, and I want to do it now. I will go tomorrow or this afternoon, anytime. Be great. And he said, I think you’re just using this as a stepping stone to get into something else. And I said, Yes, that’s also true. That’s exactly what I’m doing. And he said, You know what? It’s okay. That’s fine. I want to support you to do this. He said, I think I don’t know what it is. I think you’re going to do something. And he said, if, if me giving you an opportunity helps you on that journey, I want to do that for you. So I’m always very grateful to Stuart, and I often tag him and things. And I saw him recently at an institute director’s lunch, which was really lovely. So anyway, off I went to the uski Gorm for a four hour flight from Aberdeen, refueled on the Triton FPSO, and getting off this chopper to refuel when we’re on the Triton was so memorable. It’s kind of like that walking into BP moment. I was just like, walking through this process, and I was like, oh my god, the sound and the feeling, and, you know, just the North Sea all around us. And it just, I was really excited. And I was like, right? You know, I’m out here now. You know, this is, this is the start of great things. And I felt really excited. We had a slight issue with the aircraft, and ended up back in Aberdeen, and then it had to take a second flight out. So after eight hours traveling on a helicopter that day, I did make it to the US economy, which was one of the most aged assets in the North Sea at the time, but I was offshore. I’d made it, and I was ready to start my networking journey and find the great career. But what I didn’t realize was that I’d been sent out there to be on my own, on night shift, doing dishes because the dishwasher was broken. So again, wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but you know what? I did a great job, and I worked really hard, and I did the dishes the best I could. It was the hardest physical job, I think I’ve ever done that. But you know, it was 12 hours a day, obviously, and the shift work and everything, it was quite tough going. So I did that. I did a few trips, not always on night shift. I also I did some time in the laundry. I did all kinds of stuff. So I got a promotion. I then went and worked in the little shop the bond. I was selling the chocolate and the cigarette. So that was fine. So I was just trying to do the best I could with what was in front of me, do a bit of networking, meet some people, and figure out my next move, really. And then, and all the time I was applying for different types of jobs, administrative jobs, offshore. Could I be, you know, could I work in heli admin? Could I be a project administrator or something? Because I did have some administrative qualifications and various things by this point. And yeah, and I eventually got the phone call from from one of the agencies to say there was an opportunity on a diving boat called the Sea Well, to be a project administrator and but I was committed to making another trip on the on the blue home at this point to wash dishes. So, oh my gosh. What a moment. What a moment. So I said, I’m terribly sorry I can’t I’m going to do dishes on the blue home. And they said, Are you nuts? This is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. You, you’ve been trying so hard for nearly a year, and you’ve got the opportunity, and this is a permanent job. I said, I can’t, because I can’t contact them and I’m due to check in tomorrow morning. I can’t do this. It’s not right, yeah, commitment. I just thought, this is not the right thing to do. I can’t just stand them up. So off I went to the blue home, and I landed, and they shouted to me in the heli admin. They said, Kirsty, keep your survival suit on. You’re going back to Aberdeen. They had a problem with bed space, and they didn’t need me, so I was surplus requirements. So I cried all the way back to Aberdeen on that helicopter. I had missed my moment. I was absolutely. Heart broken. And I thought, What a dumb move, trying to do the right thing. Look how well that panned out. And so I did another trip of the dishes. We will get past this part of the conversation. And and then six weeks later, I got a phone call, and it was again, it was helix, who operated the sea well. And they, said to this agency, who was that? That lady? Because they remembered why I’d said, No, the commitment, yeah, yeah. And they said the chat that we hired didn’t work out at all. Now, are you ready? And I said, yeah, no, no, no, now I’m ready. So I went to see well, and I was there for nearly three years, and that’s where I met Douglas Young, who was a wonderful offshore project manager, who was very supportive and encouraged me to study production technology and to broaden out what I was doing and really start believing in myself. And he taught me so so much, and that role kind of coordinating and administrating subsidy projects on that boat was really what, what set me up, and then the rest is kind of history for offshore. I was, I was off to technique for several years, worked on many different boats, doing different things. But yeah, that was kind of the start of all fantastic.
Mark McBride-Wright 16:16
And then, so then, so that shows you the importance of early door mentoring and sponsorship as well, theme potential and cultivating
Kirstie Langan 16:27
yourself out there and just asking for it. Yeah, you know, I don’t know if you saw the other day LinkedIn, when I was crowning Katy Perry, another, another highlight. But yeah, when I, when I was saying, you know, like she says in that Daisy song, why can’t it be me? Why not? Why can’t I do that? Why can’t I have chance? And I think having that, just feeling that ability in yourself to ask, yeah, I’d like to do that. Can I have that chance? Can I have that opportunity?
Mark McBride-Wright 16:57
Absolutely, absolutely. I always think of it as I used to say, my brother, like you need to accept a high failure rate, you know. So if you’re applying for five jobs at Cameron toll shopping center for a Saturday job, you know, and you think, Oh, my goodness, I’m not going to get one. And you only apply like, you need to be in every shop. You need to, like, off your CV, putting it in and going to loads and loads of places to try because, you know, it might be every one and 100 jobs that you’ll be offered, or something so, and
Kirstie Langan 17:27
I think you can, and you can also learn things from each of the experiences, or take something from the experiences. You know, I am probably better at doing dishes than I would have been had I not been a professional dishwasher for a moment there. You know, there’s all sorts of things in each of these experiences that you can sort of gather and put in your toolkit, and they can be really useful later on. It
Mark McBride-Wright 17:53
teaches you resilience failure, how you respond to rejection. You know some of the things that as you get further into your career, where you know this may happen more often and at a greater scale and have greater risk attached to it, based on where the stage you’re at in life, it makes you a lot more like, yeah, thicker skinned, I guess, and able to handle those moments when they when they come up, I think. So, yeah, and so with your, how would you then describe the we’re in a process right now where oil and gas is going through a bit of a ship where, you know, we’re shifting towards a greener future. We’ve got, you know, Net Zero targets to meet, and a transition to a renewable energy infrastructure. What role do you play, where you’re at now in that with the existing fleet, the future fleet, and what, what excites you about the opportunities that exist in in the energy sector in the UK.
Kirstie Langan 19:03
So I would say I’m a great advocate for talking about the energy sector more, more more broadly. I I rarely speak too much about oil and gas than a traditional silo sense. And I think it’s really important that we get away from this language. Because I think, you know, it’s one energy and, you know, we’ve got a responsibility to safely produce energy for the citizens of this country and internationally as well. So I feel like we’ve become very fixated on on the energy source. And it worries me when we speak to young people as well, that rather than talking about, you know, how can we make sure that you have wonderful careers where you use your incredible mind and do great things that make you feel fantastic, and you work with people who you enjoy, and it’s part of a really fulfilling life for you. How do we make sure that that is the nub of the conversation? Rather than, well, is it, you know, is that gas job, or is a hydrogen job, or is a nuclear job? You know, from an engineering perspective, I think we’re way too concerned with that, that more than we need to be. And I think, you know, talking more kind of, I guess, on an individual level, in terms of the broader political landscape, that’s completely different conversation. So in terms of the broader political landscape, I think it’s a huge opportunity for the, you know, the legacy workforce that have brought the energy sector to where it is today. You know, the skilled people in the offshore energy sector in the United Kingdom. It is mind blowing the depth and breadth of expertise that exists in this country, from an engineering perspective, anywhere in the world that I travel, when people know that I’ve come from Scotland, when I’ve come from Aberdeen, and I’m there to talk about engineering, it really means something, and that’s something I’m incredibly proud of. I
Mark McBride-Wright 21:00
found so, yeah, you can tell from my accent. I’m from, from Scotland as well, and but, but I’d only ever came to Aberdeen, and I did work in oil and gas, but I worked in oil and gas down in the south east, in the engineering design companies Aberdeen, I only ever visited as a student when I was looking at universities. I looked at Aberdeen University, but then I came up to give some talks. And what amazed me, like much later on in my career, and what amazed me was just how visible the engineering is, especially, you know, I came up in May this year for the decommission, and I just, like, even just getting off at the airport, you see engineering companies on the advertisement boards all around you, and you’re, you’re in the taxi or your car driving somewhere, and then you see um energy vans or or, you know, companies that are linked to the engineering sector driving around the it’s very visible. You know, it’s very, very visible. I guess is my point, compared to growing up in Edinburgh, where it’s not as visible, which makes sense, given that the city the difference in the cities like what job opportunities that are Edinburgh’s more financial and, yeah, absolutely.
Kirstie Langan 22:22
And I think it’s, it is a real kind of hotbed of engineering excellence here. And you know, we are a global center of excellence for energy engineering. There’s no question of that. And, you know, taking it one step further, you know, breaking it down a little bit further from a decommissioning perspective, we’re the best in the whole world at decommissioning, and I’m so proud of our decommissioning sector. And whilst we’re very busy developing new energies, which, of course, is absolutely key, some of these new energies are taking a little longer to get online than any of us would like, and our decommissioning sector is so important right now, whilst we get these new energies online, but from an employment point of view and a development point of view and an industrial export point of view, our decommissioning sector is something that, on a national and international scale, is so important.
Mark McBride-Wright 23:16
Can you just give our listeners a bit more of a intro or context of decommissioning, because I remember something that came up at the conference that it very much is like the second cousin that no one wants to be I do, no, well, it’s like a job that people fall into rather than I want to work In the decommissioning sector, and I think part of that comes from people not really being aware of the scale of the opportunity, or the scale of what’s ahead of us and what needs to be decommissioned safely, etc. So can you just give us a bit of an idea of of of that space? Yeah, absolutely.
Kirstie Langan 23:57
So. So decommissioning, I guess, in its simplest form, when we have used resources, particularly natural resources, we need to return the natural environment to child wars previously or whatever is safest to leave it. And decommissioning is everything involved, from taking producing assets. So an oil break, for instance, everything from from taking it from producing state until there’s nothing left, or whatever, relieving on the seabed is safe to be left, and it’s preferable to removing it. So that whole process is is absolutely massive in terms of engineering execution, risk management, project management, environmental management, you know, it’s a massive, massive piece of work. And when we’re looking at decommissioning the North Sea, for instance, the North Sea wasn’t necessarily built with with decommissioning in mind. So from an engineering perspective, it’s actually. Really interesting. And people sometimes have this misconception that’s either all reverse engineering, which is not, or that it’s just kind of pulling out, and it’s very straightforward, which it’s not. There’s so much uncertainty around what’s down there, and we don’t always have it right. What we expect, we don’t always see delivered. So that brings with it incredible challenges, and also, as we’re working to get better and better and better and more efficient at decommissioning, there’s a lot of really exciting challenges that come with that. So I would love if people start thinking of decommissioning as a real first choice for their career, because it’s such a special community to be part of it’s a really collaborative, wonderful community of people doing great things. So I love working in decommissioning. And, you know, my my company, about 70% of our revenue comes from decommissioning, and we love it. It’s a really special space to be in, and it’s really exciting.
Mark McBride-Wright 25:56
What, what? What’s the sort of what? What’s the industry worth you know, what happens to the asset when you bring it onshore? You know, if you bring an oil rig, tow it to a yard, and what’s the process to dismantle it? And you know, what did things get created out of it?
Kirstie Langan 26:18
There’s lots of different approaches, and this is changing all the time when it comes to repurposing. You know, there are some assets that get removed, kind of in a more complete sense. There are others that get chopped up in little, tiny bits and then taken out. It really depends on the nature of the asset, the integrity of the asset. There’s a whole, I mean, there’s such a spectrum of factors that have to be taken to account, war, depth, temperature, but just, I mean, there’s just a whole world of possibilities on what is optimal for removing an asset, and then when the asset comes on shore again, there’s a whole bunch of opportunities with what you’re going to do with it, whether it’s repurposing it, and even the style of demolition. You know, there’s explosive demolition, which is always fun to watch, if you, you know, if you’re into that kind of thing. And, you know, there’s, again, each of these things, there’s a world of possibilities. And when it comes to to reuse, even concrete mattresses, which the North Sea has a lot of, there’s some really interesting initiatives at the moment looking at how we can repurpose concrete that’s been used offshore, as well as all the steel. So yeah, it’s a really interesting space filled with great people doing cool stuff, and a sector that we can be incredibly proud of on an international sense.
Mark McBride-Wright 27:39
And I guess for people wanting to invest their lives into carving out a career in this space, it’s easy to think, oh, decommissioning oil and gas. But actually, I remember here like some of our nuclear fleet is now being decommissioned, and also like some of the first generation wind turbines, I believe, are now coming to the end of life and need to be decommissioned. But not just oil and gas, is it not at
Kirstie Langan 28:06
all? And decommissioning is bad word. The actual word, I think we need a new word, because it just kind of sounds like the end of the road, doesn’t it? And it’s, I think it needs a rebranding, because, and there’s a quote that I love, and poor Caroline, I trot this quote out all the time, but Caroline Lawford, who is a wonderful woman, and she’s a decommissioning leader extraordinaire and structural engineer extraordinaire and all around, lovely person, and she is a leader at CNR and is amongst the best in the world at what she does. And she she was once challenged when she was presenting about the longevity of decommissioning, and she said a line which I loved, which was, as long as there’s an energy sector, there’ll be decommissioning, it’ll always be the last thing on the list. And I love that. And I was like the simplicity, but it’s quite right. So as long as we have energy, we have decommissioning. And exactly the point you make. You know, we’re very busy decommissioning early turbines. And yeah, nuclear is going to keep us busy for hundreds of years to come. So there’s plenty to be getting on with. And it’s engineering, you know? It is engineering. We get so fixated on the silos of engineering, which is a little bit of a shame, because I think sometimes we think of these things in a bit of a binary sense, and we need to do that. It’s still, it’s engineering, it’s problem solving, and it’s a really exciting facet of it. So when it comes
Mark McBride-Wright 29:33
to having the workforce then, and the skilled workforce that’s needed for doing all this decommissioning in the years to come. And what advice would you give to women looking to break into the industry, or those that may be questioning whether or not they want to move trans you know, come into the industry later on in life, but from a different career background? You know what? Opportunities are there to have people in the sector.
Kirstie Langan 30:05
So I kind of sometimes struggle to give, like, gender based advice. I will give people based advice, I think, do you know what I mean? And it’s funny, because I’m a really proud woman in energy. You know, just the other day, I was speaking to some wonderful girls in shells, girls in energy program, and all this stuff is really important. But something in me, I just think I don’t know what to say just to the women. So I would say, generally, for everyone, the energy sector is filled with people who are the best in the world at what they do. It is such a highly skilled, motivated, incredible group of people solving the unsolvable problems and doing, you know, technologically, just unimaginable things every day of the week. And with that comes just this, this, this energy and and challenge and continual growth and development that I think is hugely exciting to be part of. And I would really encourage people to come and have their career and energy, because there’s just so much that, you know, so many places it can take you.
Mark McBride-Wright 31:16
Absolutely, I was reading, though that the number of women in the sector age 35 to 50. This is engineering in general, not just building down. We’re, you know, we’re, we’ve got the highest rate of loss of women in the sector than we’ve ever had in the age 35 to 50 odd age group. So the chemical engineer in me, when we, when we when we look at a simple mass balance, you know, what we’ve got coming in doesn’t equal what we’ve got coming out. We’ve got our you want more people coming in than we’ve got leaving the sector so we can get accumulation to help lead to more diversity, greater diversity of thought, more more role models, more opportunities. So why do you think people are women in particular, are leaving the sector?
Kirstie Langan 32:06
And you see, is it engineers, aged 35 to 50? Did you say yeah, or is it women leaving the workforce? I
Mark McBride-Wright 32:15
don’t know. I don’t know to what extent. Please do.
Kirstie Langan 32:18
I would expect that there’s quite a correlation with people having children, I would imagine, and I would be interested to understand those, those numbers a little bit better, because I don’t think we have a systemic problem in engineering where female engineers of this age group are leaving versus other. I could be totally wrong. I could be totally wrong versus other elements of the workforce. I think that that’s a bigger issue, societal issue, potentially. And I think, you know, cost of childcare, don’t get me started on that. You know, I think some of these issues play into that. But I would say we haven’t got enough female engineers. We know this 100% we do not have enough. They don’t exist. So, you know, this is really challenging. So in my business at PDI, our leadership team is majority female, our engineering team is not so we can control, to an extent, the gender split in the leadership team, which is multidisciplinary, but in the technical and discipline engineering team, it’s really hard because they don’t exist. And you know, that tells me this is an education challenge and a schools and universities challenge that we still haven’t really got on top of. But I referenced it earlier. But you know, Michelle’s girls and energy program and programs such as these are so important just to get hundreds and hundreds of young people, young girls, every year, opening their eyes to the world of engineering in a way they might not have. And that’s got to be a positive
Mark McBride-Wright 33:52
and when you’re delivering. But if you know, if anyone listening to this just hasn’t been involved on a program like that, or experienced the I don’t know, the warmth, maybe that it brings you being an external, you know, thinking, Oh, if this was my, I don’t know, 10 year old self in the room, and I was hearing this like, would this have chartered me on a different course type thing? You know, would you encourage people? Do you think enough of us are doing this sort of outreach to help raise awareness, to diversify our talent pipeline. I think we can’t
Kirstie Langan 34:25
do enough given the numbers. So if we think we’re doing enough, do a bit more, is what I would suggest. And I think bringing young girls into workplaces is really important as well, and and young people more generally as well. I think understanding just how exciting and interesting it can be. And, you know, engineering is, is problem solving, and it’s, you know, are you interested in fixing stuff? Are you interested in how things are made? Are you interested in everything around you? Of course, you are. And I think you can get a little bit confused with, you know, when I spoke earlier about, um. And you know, the core of what you enjoy or love. And sometimes that can be a little bit confusing. I remember years ago, there was a young a young guy who was with my previous company on work experience in our accounts department, and I said to him, you know, why accounts What led you there? And he said, Well, I’m good at maths. And my parents thought it’d be a good idea. Let’s look at math. And I said, are you really interested? Is do you think accounting is the life for you? And he said, Oh, don’t tell anybody. But I really don’t want to do this. I don’t think. And I said, Well, did you know that maths really important for engineering? And he was like, Well, no, I never really thought of that. And whilst, no disrespect to our accounts department, I absolutely took the guy hostage and spent my time trying to convert him to to the engineering side of life, and he just his eyes were opened. He was like, Oh my gosh. So I could still be good at maths and could still have a really lucrative career that my parents would be dead proud of, and I could be doing this stuff. Yeah, yeah, I’m quite interested in this. So that was really powerful and and again, like I say that, it’s not to say that maths in its purest sense, or accounts, accounts in its purest sense, is somehow second rate to engineering. Absolutely as an engineering is not everything in the world, but sometimes I feel that the core skills required for engineering careers, sometimes they’re overlooked as the component that they are.
Mark McBride-Wright 36:22
Yeah, no, yeah, totally, totally. Sometimes you just because engineering isn’t a subject that you study at school, not all the time. I know increasingly it is becoming. So it’s not, yeah, pure subject. It’s not a pure subject. So unless you’ve got a role model, or being on one or a parent or who works in the sector, or being on one of these insights, my realization was similar, actually, you know, I did a work experience at Edinburgh University in their geology department because I wanted to be a volcanologist. Then I realized that you had studied geology to become a volcanologist. This is not my this is not for me. This is very boring. No disrespect to any geologists out there, you do great work mapping subsurface, but you know, that wasn’t for me. And then I went to the chemistry department because it was a subject that I was studying at school. Saw that you could then do chemical engineering. So started like looking that up. And it was on a course that I don’t know if they exist anymore, and it was a head start engineering course that I did when I was 14 at Bradford University of Bradford, like, you know, we had to it was, it must have been about 2000 or somewhere 2002 and we had to make a straw wheel, like off the London Eye, the Millennium wheel, as it was called back then, and we had to, like, roll it down a hill and just out with straws. But that was great. It opened me up to engineering and that, that that was me then, on that, that track for for what I wanted to do. Yeah, they’re so, so important. I think we’re involved in a couple of projects just now where we’re doing STEM outreach, but I just yeah, my personal view is that it’s just still a bit too bitty and fragmented and inconsistent. Is it actually really returning the value and the impact that we need at the scale that’s needed? I’m not so sure. And I think that’s because the companies that then look at the metrics, are expecting a return like immediately, when actually, you know, you’re investing in these young people to influence our decision for like 2030 2035 onwards, you know,
Kirstie Langan 38:36
and I guess you can probably get a quicker return. I suppose if that’s if that’s a key metric for you with internships and all of this good stuff, which are also really important. And you know, we, we love our graduate program here at PDI, and we love having interns working with us as well. And we’ve got a number of interns the last few years. We’ve borrowed from from Robert Gordon’s University, and that’s just so cool to have these people spend part of their degree working with us for a year is a really cool thing. And again, just whipping them out of the academic environment for a minute and throwing them into this world and seeing if this is we can spark something in them that says, maybe this could be the life for you. Last year we had a summer placement student with us from one of the universities, and he we actually managed to get him offshore during his summer time with us. So we got him through his survival, got on a boat, got him offshore, and he’s come back and joined us as graduate engineer this year after completing his studies. And similarly, you know, last year we had for a full year, we had a in our marketing team, a marketing and business intern, and he did a great job for us. So I kept him on on a part time basis during his final year of study this year, so that he continue this journey. Because he’s absolutely loved it, and he’s, he’s managed to put so much into practice. Does, and just kind of had a different world opened up to him. So it’s, it’s really exciting. That’s
Mark McBride-Wright 40:04
brilliant. That’s also good. That’s also good with, I mean, the we spoke a bit about, part of the safe framework that I’ve developed since the the conference is this idea of sharing, of taking action, of feeling, and then being a source of empowerment for others and trying to really help, trying to really frame it in a way that safe leadership gets engineers trying to explore their own diversity story, first and foremost, like what have they got to to share with others so that you can build you know, become more relatable to one another, or about experiences that maybe you never actually knew one another had been going through. And I think that that is the energy within which the, you know, the tone in the room that we spoke about earlier when I gave my talk, and you saw the physicality of some of the men in the room become a bit more inward, you know, and feeling a little bit awkward, you know. So in that model, in safe leadership, this sort of con set that I’m trying to align with, EDI, where do you think there’s like, how, how can we move, how can we bring that into the sector? How can we help help men open up a bit more you know
Unknown Speaker 41:25
about their disease. It’s a really tricky
Kirstie Langan 41:28
subject, isn’t it? And I think I was actually speaking with with a male colleague earlier on, on a related, not the same, related subject, though, I do think that typically, we’ve got to be really careful when we talk about typical gender roles, right? Because I’m a typical I’m a single mother of three who’s director of engineering consultancy. So when it comes to kind of typical gender roles, women apparently are better at some of this communication stuff around emotions and so on so forth. But you get some great men as well who are so tuned into themselves emotionally and are really, really great at offering leadership in that perspective. And I do think that these men who are particularly good in this space. I really want to see them doing more with it, because I feel that when it comes to emotional issues, often women are looked to for leadership and the solutions, and sometimes it’s harder, I think, for the men who need to hear this stuff, to hear it from a woman, say it does that make any sense whatsoever?
Mark McBride-Wright 42:46
Yeah, it does. Do you know, I’ve forgotten the term. I read an article on LinkedIn that kind of relates to what you’re talking about, but more in the personal relationships in life, can’t remember what the term was. It was, it wasn’t mansplaining. It wasn’t it was like a word that was a verb with the word man at the beginning, but it was basically talking about women in the personal lives of eight couples, women taking up the burden of absorbing the emotional kind of like the mental load. Yeah, the mental load. Thank you. Yeah, like the mental load of, like, the men of their husbands or their fathers or sons, whatever, but mainly husbands, so. But actually, if men were better at opening up more to one another and then having, like, close male friendship, like, how many men actually have really close male friendship groups that they open up to, that they can share problems with. You know, it’s becoming more of a thing, but it’s nowhere near at the scale, really
Kirstie Langan 43:53
difficult, because I think a lot of men as well feel like, well, I don’t want that, I don’t crave that. I don’t desire that, but that, I would argue, is learned behavior. And I would say that, you know, because generation after generation, that that male experience isn’t defined by those meaningful, deep connections with one another, necessarily, I think that that unfortunately, has kind of locked out that option for a lot of men, potentially, who need it, and and that, for me, is really troubling. You know, I’m someone that I’m a mega open book, as you know, and that’s not to everybody’s taste, and that can be really jarring for a lot of people. And I do understand that, but I’ve come to accept about myself that this is how I am, and that’s their issue, if they don’t, if they don’t enjoy that about me and my openness, though, and I’m very fortunate to be able to feel safe to be open, and that’s largely because of how I was raised. My openness has bought me a ticket to support that I wouldn’t have had. Otherwise, you know, when I have gone through some of the most traumatic events of my life, I have, whilst it might have been uncomfortable, I have been able to open up about it in a way that quickly got me some support when I needed it. And had I not felt able to do that, I wouldn’t have had that. And I think to a lot of people that maybe it’s really difficult, that journey of opening up and then they don’t get the support. And it feels like a really kind of bad deal. You know what? I mean?
Mark McBride-Wright 45:28
It’s getting access to the life support mechanisms, the buoyancy aids, the, you know, yeah, totally, totally. I think there’s so much work to do in this area.
Kirstie Langan 45:38
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, with
Mark McBride-Wright 45:41
your focus on strategic leadership, then thinking about what we’ve said there. What are your future goals? How do you want more impact on the sector you’re working
Speaker 1 45:51
in? So I mean, I guess in terms of what keeps me
Kirstie Langan 45:56
going and keeps me excited is creating great career opportunities for people to join businesses that I’m a leader, and you know that that is what ultimately is really exciting for me, is developing services, selling services, winning work that ultimately creates an environment where people can come and develop themselves, develop their careers and have really exciting jobs, you know, in its simplest form, that really excites me. And if I can help people as well believe that they can be better than they think they can be, or they can achieve more than they think they can, then I think that is such a cool thing to aim for. You know, I’ve had, I’ve had the fortune to have leaders who made me feel like that, and that’s what’s helped me get much further than I might have. You know, my father, I always say, was one of my first great leaders, and he made me believe that I could do great things. And, you know, he used to say to me, Kirsty, you’re very fortunate. You’re one of the few people that can do absolutely anything you set your mind to. Now that may or may not be true, but being told that constantly, from a young age, you know, I believed he believed it, and that helped me believe that I could do more, you know. And when all of the negativity in my mind, like everybody’s mind, the self limiting beliefs which plague us all when they’re on the go. It’s really nice to think of dad’s voice saying, Come on. Why can’t it be you? You can do this. You’re capable. You’re one of the few people in the world that can do anything you say, you’re mine too. So it’s really nice to have that counter. And I would love to be the type of leader for the people around me, and I really hope I am, but I can always do better, but I want to be the type of leader that makes people think, yeah, I could give that a go. Could do that? Kirsty seems to back me.
Mark McBride-Wright 47:49
It’s amazing. You’ve inspired me. Your dad inspired me to be saying that more to my daughter,
Kirstie Langan 47:58
it’s important, you know? I really think, yeah, you know, it’s important we have cheerleaders. But I was talking about someone on my team, actually, earlier I speak to somebody else, and I was saying how I love empowering people. I think I, you know, I micromanagement is a really bad idea for a whole bunch of ideas, for a whole bunch of reasons it’s bad for the person. Absolutely, it stifles your own creativity and everything else. But it’s also really time consuming, and I generally do way too much, so selfishly, I need to get some of my time back, so if I don’t micromanage, then it helps me manage my own times, if that makes sense. And I was talking about the fact I I’ve got this, this young person in my team, and I really like empowering him, because it’s the right thing to do, and he performs better. And he’s really, really accountable, because he knows he’s got things that he’s absolutely responsible for. But I do it very clearly by saying to him, I’m going to give you this project to manage, because I believe in you. I know you can do it. And also, if any element of this goes south, this is all fixable stuff, and I’ll show you how it fits it as well. And he’s kind of like, Yeah, but do you want to double check? No, I don’t want to double check. Just do it. Do it. I trust you, and I promise you any element of this particular project I’m asking you to work on, ie, you know, a marketing campaign that we’re getting ready to go out or preparing for an event, or whatever it might be. I’m absolutely not talking about an engineering project
Mark McBride-Wright 49:23
at this moment. Put the guardrails in place. Yeah, I say, what’s the worst that could happen? And we’ll figure it out together,
Kirstie Langan 49:28
and I’ll show you how to fix it, because that will also be a fun learning opportunity. So I feel like giving people that sort of opportunity to really figure stuff out, but in a supportive environment where you’re given the right skills is, is a really cool thing to aim for.
Mark McBride-Wright 49:46
Okay, quick fire questioner now, oh my gosh, getting ready. What is the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Unknown Speaker 49:57
Can I have two? Okay. Okay. The
Kirstie Langan 50:01
first one is, just ask. Just ask if it’s in your head. Just Just ask. Just ask question you want to do it. Just ask. So I love that one. And the other one is, be comfortable enough in what you’re really good at to not try and be really good at everything. There are other people that are better at the other stuff, and learn as quickly as you can what it is you bring to the party, and feel really good about what you bring to the party, and let other people bring their best, and it won’t be the same thing.
Mark McBride-Wright 50:37
What’s your proudest professional achievement?
Kirstie Langan 50:42
My proudest professional achievement, I would say this last two years here at PDI, this business, this has been really, really exciting. You know, we more than doubled this business last year, and I’ve had a lot of freedom here to do what I think is right in terms of developing new services and and making some really exciting developments with the business. So I would say this last two years, growing the business here at PDI has been the most exciting and rewarding part of my career so far. What’s
Mark McBride-Wright 51:23
the one skill you think every business development leader should
Kirstie Langan 51:28
have genuine empathy,
Mark McBride-Wright 51:32
tea or coffee? Coffee? What’s your goal to productivity? Hack,
Kirstie Langan 51:38
empower your team, gives you your time back
Mark McBride-Wright 51:43
with any leader past or present. Who would it be?
Unknown Speaker 51:48
Your dad? Yeah,
Kirstie Langan 51:49
he passed away a few years ago, and I know that it sounds, you know, a bit odd when I could choose, you know, a great spiritual leader or but honestly, I would love to have dinner with my dad.
Mark McBride-Wright 52:05
What’s the one thing you do to relax after a long day swimming? What the most exciting project you’ve worked on in your career?
Kirstie Langan 52:16
Oh, all time. Most exciting project? Oh,
Speaker 1 52:21
I can’t pick one. Do I have to pick one? One? I’ve given you two on another question, exciting, okay,
Kirstie Langan 52:32
most exciting project in my career, not necessarily for all the right reasons, but I was working on a diving vessel that was nearly finished being built, and we were doing construction work already. So we were completing building a diving system below deck whilst moving in and out of port in Norway and doing construction work at same time coming back alongside doing more work on the dive system. So we were basically in a building site and a live construction vessel mode. And it was so yeah, it was very fast paced. It was very challenging, but it was incredibly interesting, and unlike anything I’ve ever done before,
Mark McBride-Wright 53:16
what the one book or resource you’d recommend someone interested in leadership or business development,
Kirstie Langan 53:23
I would say, I do, like a Mel Robbins podcast, I must say, I do. I do enjoy that. Or I would recommend people read the safe leader by Mark McBride Wright, is what I would suggest.
Mark McBride-Wright 53:38
Thank you. What’s the one piece of advice. Finally, you would give your younger self
Kirstie Langan 53:46
that the main piece of advice would be lose the self limiting beliefs a bit quicker. Because, man, it’s exhausting and it just slows you down. So anything that you could do because you’re enough, and you bring a lot of cool stuff to the party, and you’ve got a lot of good things that you’re capable of, and you’ve got lots of value to contribute, and it’s, it’s more than enough. Well, yeah, well, that’s
Mark McBride-Wright 54:16
great advice. Well, I’ve really, I’ve really enjoyed our chat today. If, people listening to this want to get in touch, connect with you. Find out more about what you’re doing, what PDI does. How do they how do they do that?
Kirstie Langan 54:30
Please connect with me on LinkedIn. And I do receive quite a few messages and things, but I do my very best to get back to people. So yes, absolutely. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Follow PDI on LinkedIn. We’re pretty active. Wonderful.
Mark McBride-Wright 54:44
Well, what we’ll do is we’ll put the link to your profile and to the company as well in the show notes that accompany the transcript of
Unknown Speaker 54:52
this talk. Great. Thank you so much for having me.
Mark McBride-Wright 54:55
Mark. That’s all right. It’s been an absolute pleasure. It’s been an absolute pleasure. Pleasure, thanks, Kirsty, thank
Kirstie Langan 55:02
you. Bye, bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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