E025: Why Inclusive Leadership Starts With Us

Mark McBride-Wright 0:00
Mark, hello. Welcome to the next podcast. Episode of the safe leader podcast. I’m your host. Mark McBride Wright, this is a single episode, a single recording of just myself. It’s a mini sword. We’ve reached episode number 25 and so I thought it would be good to do a reflection on what I’ve learned thus far, an overview of some of the speakers and where, where we want to take this. You know, what are the what are the next steps for this? So I moved to New York in August last year, and I really wanted to, I didn’t know what I was going to be doing. I didn’t know what I was going to be doing. And so I thought, Let’s build some community. Let’s have conversations with people for me to stay to stay connected. And why not? Whilst having those conversations, figure out some of their stories. So I am so the safe leader, share act, feel Empower, is this new brand. It’s a new it’s a new project that I’m essentially building out in my life. And so my book came out in May last year, so it’s over a year since it was published, and I have evolved my thinking even with the framework that we that we generated. And so the book came out before I knew that I was actually moving to New York. It was all quite fast. And so we relocated here in August, and I found myself in this sort of liminal space this so if you don’t know what a liminal space is, it’s an a physical area or a metaphorical area that is the space that’s in between two locations or two points in time, two defined moments. And so I left to be around, you know, I left my business equal engineers, which I’ve spent seven years building for my team to run in the United Kingdom. Now, I still support them from a distance and help with with operations, but in the general day to day work, workings, I’m not physically there to do to do that work. And so I thought, Let’s lean into, then the safe leader as a, as a, as a concept. Let’s go deeper with that. And hence, that’s why I’ve really pushed into my personal speaking website, Mark McBride wright.com, and that’s where I’ve I thought, let’s create a little ecosystem around the safe leader brand. So I started a newsletter, and I started the podcast. I looked on my LinkedIn network, where I’ve got 1000s of connections, and I’ve looked up people who have safety, who have leadership, who have diversity, equity, inclusion, you know, some of the key words mental health that really link all the themes that I like talking about, and I like focusing in in my work. And I filtered it down to 95 people. I think it was about 95 and then we reached out to people and started getting recordings booked in, and it’s been an absolute wonderful journey. The first episode started off with my dear friend Trish, Karen, who is the former director of the iche Safety Center, and she’s recently gone freelance, launching her own, her own business lead like Karen, and she shared some incredible insights on safety, first in high hazard industries. And what’s been really nice as I’ve gone through each episode is the conversation that we’ve had on screen, but also the conversation that I’ve had in the in the moments leading up to the recording, and also afterwards, there’s so much good intention out there, and people who have got incredible stories to share. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve seen some themes come up across across the work. Themes around resilience. Themes abound around accountability, themes around building community and building connection. And these are people that I’ve met across across my career, and so I was, I’ve been really flattered, actually, with people wanting to give up their time to to actually come and talk to me. So the structure of each episode takes us back to when the individual was in their formative years, at the start of their career, and reflecting on their journey to where they’re at now, what have been some of the key milestones, key influences in help shaping their journey and some people. People admittedly have had more of a privilege start than others, and some, in retrospect, realize that, you know, it took a lot of courage and a lot of energy to to get to where they’re at now. And what I’ve been able to do with some of these episodes is learn from people who are doing really good work. We’ve had some fascinating stories such as Emma Knowles on her journey at Britt Vic, working at the bottling plant and from working on a farm as like growing up and then becoming being inspired to become an engineer. I had an incredible story with Dame Don Childs, who I’ve known for a few years now, during her time as president at the Women’s Engineering Society in the UK, and she’s now the CEO of pure data centers group. And that that podcast episode actually led to some, some individuals, some organizations, getting in touch with me about about how we can support work that they’re doing, and how how work in building this new the new infrastructure that’s needed to really charge this new revolution, to charge The new AI revolution that in itself, is a building project that is going to require engineering, engineering teams, construction teams. You know, these are the types of projects that the safe leader is designed to try and support and help. Because when you get teams together, there’s often a dissociation that occurs between the individual and who the individual is, and then the culture of the team and the project. And it’s it’s good, inclusive leadership that brings the team together to focus on the task in hand. And I’m really interested in that area of leadership, that area of being able to show up truly and authentically as who you are in a psychologically safe environment where you can share what you want to share without fear of retribution. But oftentimes, I think people mask, people cover, people hide. They don’t share what they really think, for fear of, you know, something bad being said about them, or them being made to feel silly and on the spot. And I often find, like with leaders, they get so caught up in their head about how they’re going to be perceived on specific topics that they hold back, or they don’t share their vulnerabilities, they don’t share what they they don’t understand in order to learn. So I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned a lot from from the leaders who’ve who’ve joined this episode and who’ve joined this this podcast so far, and it was particularly pertinent to have Dame Judith Hackett be the most recent episode that I actually recorded, because Judith, someone who I look up to, she is such a role model for me personally, and if I can emulate even an ounce of what she’s achieved, I will be incredibly happy when I when I come to the end of my career and so so to hear her talk about the themes in the book and The themes that we’re focusing on, that the relevant and important gives me confidence, that I know I’m tapping into the right thing, that we’re touching a nerve That is a pressure point on how people are feeling right now, and because my context now is living in the United States, where there’s been a lot of pushback on Diversity Equity and Inclusion, I’m trying To reconcile. How do we still continue to make progress in workplace culture when

Mark McBride-Wright 9:28
the thing that we were betting on to help underscore and underpin is being ripped apart, torn apart, pulled apart, and I think there is still a way forward in this work with safety. I think safety is where it should live, in tandem with within human resources, I think for engineering, not just engineering for sectors, for the dominant workforce. The. Workforce culture is familiar with risk and high hazards, underpinning the culture, I think, being able to show up at work and being not just physically present, but also mentally present, you don’t want people physically present and mentally absent. We want everyone there focused on the job able to do the good job that they’re that they’re paid to do. I think that is where there is a this is where we need to land and house our efforts on workplace belonging and inclusion. And so I feel like my unique experience as a safety engineer, but also as a inclusion practitioner, makes me able to see these see these connections. And so it’s been very endearing working with clients who buy into this vision, and then who trust us, who trust me, to help guide their teams through those exercises, those discoveries. So so I wrote the book a year ago, and since then, we’ve been working on a new training course, the safe Leader Training Course, which I was absolutely thrilled to pilot our client, Rolls Royce SMR earlier this year, and we took lots of feedback on to help make sure we were landing it in the right way, designing it the right way, getting the right pedagogy, the right engagement. And we’ve got it to a point now where today we’ve celebrated a milestone where we’ve submitted it for certification to CPD, UK. So the hope is that, once certified, we will then have a product that can demonstrate that an engineer or an individual who’s been on it has has done that self development to get 12 learning hours towards their professional development. Of course, it’s a requirement being a chartered engineer or an incorporated engineer, being a licensed engineer in the United Kingdom to be continuing to do that investment in in not just the technical side of your profession, but also the the essential skills that come with with with Leadership, particularly on diversity, equity and inclusion. And so given that engineering has a majority male workforce, we’re not going to make any progress, any significant systemic, fundamental shift, unless we get the majority groups on side. And I’ve just got this slight inclination that despite all the good work that’s happening out there and the strategies that some businesses are deploying to try and diversify the profession in terms of talent attraction, I don’t think we’re given enough focus to change in the system that we have now working with the employees, the workers, the contractors that we have in the workforce now meeting them where they’re at, making them feel included in the conversation. And if we were getting that right, then we would see improvements in retention and a reduction in burnout, stress, workplace incidents, potentially. So if you’re listening to this and this, this resonates, this, this, this sort of touches a nerve, then I would, I would love to hear from you. I would love to hear your your perspectives. You know, I spent a good part at the beginning of my career building out what went on to become the United Kingdom’s largest network for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, bus engineers, inter engineering. And that had some impact. We had quite a lot of impact, actually. And then, as I shifted to build, now equal engineers, so I’m a group, an organization, that would apply equal focus to each strand of diversity. You could see people understanding it, getting it, nodding, yeah, yeah. This is important. This is important, but it never scaled in the way that I thought of it would have scaled by now. And I think that comes down to people not quite feeling like they they belong in our in the strategy that we had. And so I could sense that. I could sense that in the early days in 2018 and it was round about then that we did. We discovered the death by suicide rates from the Office of National Statistics broken down by occupation in the construction, manufacturing and process industries. You were statistically. More likely to die by suicide in those sectors than, say, a typical hazard, like a dropped object falling from height or electrocution. Things. As a safety engineer, I used to help it design out, eradicate, minimize, reduce the likelihood of happening to as low as reasonably practicable and then manage residual risk. Still so important. It’s, it’s the beating heart of high risk industries, hazard prevention, risk mitigation engineering. And so we did our own research, eco engineers on masculinity in engineering, we found similar results. One in five engineers reporting a work colleague losing a work colleague to suicide, and one in five engineers reporting suicidal ideation or self harm. Personally, that number went up to one in four when we did our survey during the pandemic. So I knew that something had to happen. Something had to shift. So that’s why we rewrote, I redesigned our strategy to one which is around engaging the majority. We still have our programs for, you know, getting more diversity into the profession, but we need to change the hearts and minds of those that we have in the profession to see themselves as part of the solution. And my gut feeling is that a lot of engineers, the majority of engineers, feel excluded in the push for more diversity, because what we’ve got wrong over the years, and the reason why we find where we’re at right now is because in the push for creating inclusion, we forget to include the majority group that desire to find your tribe, to find Your people, that when you do, you all come together. We’ve forgotten that for every action there is a reaction. And I think the tone of change in, you know, four, four or five years ago or so was very much, get with the program. If you don’t score, well, you’re going to be vilified. You’re going to be, you know, made, made aware of the fact that you’re not, you’re not really that committed. And I think what we’re seeing now play out politically, and a shift to the right in some places is just this reset. There’s this kind of pushback, where people have been pushed into a corner, and then they feel like that. I’ve always used the analogy of the villagers with pitchforks, you know, I imagine Beauty and the Beast. You’ve got beast in the tower, and all the villagers are coming at it. And I think that’s the sort of energy that we’ve had in some spaces with with the activism that’s moved into the workplace and and I think it’s just put a lot of people off, and which is one thing, but this, these statistics that we see on mental health, mental ill health, on suicidal ideation, on self harm, they they’re they’re not going down. They’re not going anywhere. They need to change as well. So, so it’s my view that I’m hoping what you’re hearing through the safe leader podcast is stories of people who are tackling this from different angles, who themselves have got frameworks that they use, stories that they share personally about their lived experiences, such that it encourages you to take some action. You know the safe leader stands the safe stands for share, act, feel and empower. What is the story that you’ve got to share? What is it that by you being open about a particular aspect of your lived experience, it then means that others could acquire learned experience about that. I’ll give you an example. I was working with a leadership team once 10 people in the room, and the topic came up about things beneath our waterline that we maybe don’t talk about in the workplace, and someone was vulnerable enough to share that they were, at that point in time, going through IVF. They were struggling to conceive, and it was really affecting their how they’re showing up at work. It transpired that two other people in that group, leadership team, were going through or had gone through a similar experience, but none of them knew it about one another. They weren’t talking about it. It wasn’t being shared.

Mark McBride-Wright 19:28
And so they ended up thinking, My goodness, well, if we scale this up to the organization level, how many people are actually being affected in our in our organization? And they did that. They did some, you know, pulse surveys and a campaign, and they ended up creating more inclusive policies around bereavement leave for child loss and extended, you know, time off if you needed, if you were going through IVF and and things like that. So it de stigmatized something that was on a. Lot of people’s minds, and I often find and I’m invited to give a keynote. And I give a keynote to a all male, or majority male audience, which is usually the composition of my audiences. I start peeling back the metaphorical onion. I lead with my story. I lead with inter engineering, and it’s nice, you know, people are liking it, you know, they see the rainbow flags and they’re okay, okay, but then we get to the masculinity and engineering data, and then you can hear a pin drop. You can tell that it’s relevant to their particular context. And I always get people who come up to me afterwards, or send me a direct message on LinkedIn and share some of their thoughts. They’re kind enough to share that insight. Or when we’ve delivered at client sites, there’s usually a personal story about an event that’s happened on that site with some sort of loss of life due to due to suicide. So the more we can talk about this, the more we can help align our inclusive work practices with safety and place equal focus on physical safety, on mental safety and mental health, as we do on physical safety, then that will unlock a lot of progress. So that’s my ambition. That’s my ambition for the safe leader. It’s to create a movement. It’s when you say to something, oh, I’m a safe leader. Oh, right, okay, share, act, feel, empower, cool. What’s your story? What is it that you you share with people? What is it that from looking at you, I can’t tell about you, but you then sharing something that you’ve been through creates more opportunities for interpersonal connection. It’s actually just like simple engineering probability. The more stories there are out in the world, the more the increased likelihood there is of someone hearing a story that links to their identity or who they are or what they’ve been through, and that applies to the white, straight, male majority that represent most of the engineering workforce. And I think we’re, we’re we’re not doing it enough at scale. Corporate strategies aren’t looking at safety in this way or any work that is being done on diversity, equity and inclusion isn’t being considered through this lens. We are fortunate enough in our client portfolio that we do have some clients that are trusting us to look at things in this way. And we’re now doing we’re rolling out some of our safe leader training with executives, with leadership teams, and then gradually rolling that out across their organizations. And so my hope is that we can come back to the continuing to do the talent attraction, to diversify the sector in the long term, but we need to retain the people that we have for as long as possible, and shift the culture of the workplace that we have today. And that is where this work fits right in. It’s about changing the conversation that we’ve been having thus far on dei aligning it with safety, and making it about safety. So is that it is, it is how we do our work. It is how we show up. It is the culture that we create when we’re when we’re in our teams, and the safe leader training course is one building block on that on that road, we are also, I’m also doing outreach to universities. So we’ve done a campaign to go out to universities in the US, Canada and in the United Kingdom, because when I wrote the book, I got this incredible kind review from Professor Karen Wolf, who works at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, and she shared how she’s using the book with her academic work, with her students. And so that was one of my intentions when writing the book. It’s how could this be used in the design studies, in the in the classroom, essentially. And so part of my visiting professorship, my Royal Academy of Engineering visiting professorship at University College London at UCL has involved using elements of it in the in the curriculum at UCL. So I’ve just recently finished delivering a course, some some a lecture on. On equality impact assessments and how they can be used in capstone projects at UCL. It’s 902nd year undergraduates go through the incredibly well organized how to change the world project. The theme this year was looking at what water sanitation in three different contexts, London, Ethiopia and Bangladesh. And so we looked at how to include safe leadership principles in their in their design, and also how they’re considering the end stakeholders that they’re doing the project for, but also the experience of them as a group, as a design team coming together, how are they creating a psychologically safe environment between themselves, between their peers? How well do they actually know one another by the time they’ve got to the end of the second year of their undergraduate degree? So it’s my hope that if we start bringing this thinking into our engineering education, then we start, then raising the bar of quality, of expectation of the engineers of the future. As they start to come into the into the workforce, they will start to ask questions of the employers of tomorrow and today. What are you doing on X, Y and Z? You know? How are you creating a culture where I can belong? Do I see people who look like me in your organization? And we’ve had some success on our equal engineers Pathways Program, where we’ve done mentoring with around 500 students or so, so we’re slowly building out. I guess it’s a transformation. It’s a sector wide transformation. It’s the classic up and down, up and down. You know, you you see the you see the journey of an entrepreneur, of a startup. And it’s not just a straight line towards success. It’s up and then it’s down, it’s up, and then it’s down. And of course, you naturally play more emphasis, put more emphasis on the fall downs that you’ve had than necessarily the achievements that you’ve made and the celebrations that you ought to have. There. It’s never an equal energy and that that has been just the last eight years of my life, running equal engineers and getting everything moving partnerships. You know, the number of times, I’m sure every founder feels like this. You know, if every sales agent, even, you know, the number of times you arrange meetings, you have meetings, but then the conversations just go quiet, or they don’t go anywhere. It’s incredibly frustrating. You know, I really do wish more time could be spent on doing the interventions, testing and trialing the impact of training at scale, creating, just in time, accessible content that people can use when they’re out on site, when they’re in the training room. So that’s the goal, that’s the ambition, that’s where we want to get to. So yes, if you’re thinking about any of that, then please get in touch. And as as an individual, what this move to New York has enabled me to do is have a bit of a circuit, break in, in, in my work rhythm, because, because I’m physically 4000 I think miles away, like very, very far, and I can’t actually get involved and do the work. You know, I used to deliver our training. I used to so I used to work in the business, and so now I’m having to work on the business and look very much helicopter and think about strategy, which is good, and it’s also given me time to do some self investment in my in my in my mental well being. So I took on a personal trainer about four months ago or

Mark McBride-Wright 29:12
so, and I am practicing what I preach. So the benefits that come from physical wellness also help mental wellness, and I felt so much better since doing that investment in myself and I’ve seen myself showing up as a father, as a leader, as an engineer, Just with more more energy and more more commitment. So I would encourage anyone to if you’ve been thinking about taking that investment, doing that investment in yourself is definitely worth it. And I’ve even joined a men’s walking group, actually, so we go for a walk for an hour or so, do a. Couple of laps of Central Park? Well, a bit of Central Park. Central Park is actually quite big every Tuesday at 10am and it’s a come as you are dipping and out. You know, there’s no obligation, and it’s just about building friendship. It’s not about sales or business development or anything like that. And it’s great. It’s been so nice to meet other guys, other men, and just connect on a level that you don’t really connect with. You know? I mean, I’m 37 once you get to this age, you it’s a stage of life where men don’t often make new friends. And I think that is the reality of a lot of men of my age and above. And I think, you know, that’s where we need to start creating those friendships, building those friendships, or evolving workplace relationships into deeper friendships, or understanding one another, and so relying on brain chemistry and neuroscience to help with that creating positive habits that then achieve that, that’s one of the things that really excites me. And I’m looking at covering a bit more in my in my work, so many sword 25 share act, feel empower. I want to ask you, who should I speak to next? Who do you want to hear? What voices do you want to hear on the show? Have you got any one that you would recommend? Would you yourself like to appear on it? If you would then just get in touch, send me a message, send me a LinkedIn message, or email me Mark at equal engineers.com and then we also have, I just wanted to do some announcements, so the safe leader open course is now available for for booking. So please, we’ve got various dates arranged around around the world. Currently we’re planning the United Kingdom, but we probably might have some dates in the US by the time this recording goes out. So check out the website, equal engineers.com, or check out my website, Mark McBride wright.com and if you want to get this delivered to you weekly, we usually publish every Thursday, Friday, um. We’re trying to get a bit more consistent in the timing. Please subscribe to the newsletter. You can find the subscription to the newsletter on my website, Mark McBride wright.com that’s Mark McBride wright.com and I’m sure there’s a way that we can make it appear as a magic button on this video or in the comments beneath whichever platform this this recording is is appearing On. So thank you so much for supporting the safe leader and being a listener, and I look forward to exploring more themes with you on future episodes. You.

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