The Wellbeing Hour #37 Ubuntu: Speak up, Speak out! Challenging Inequality

Text transcript

[00:00:00] 

[00:00:21] Amy: Welcome everybody to the Headtorch Wellbeing Hour with me, Amy McDonald. 

[00:00:25] Angus: and me, Angus Robinson. We’ll introduce our guest in a few moments. As you settle in, we are recording this and you will be able to listen to it as a podcast on all the podcast channels, including Spotify. At Headtorch, we work to develop mental healthy cultures and the Wellbeing Hour is a really important extension of our work. 

[00:00:46] I’ll be back a little later when we field your questions to our guests. Amy. 

[00:00:52] Amy: And we look forward to hearing those thoughts and your questions. For those of you joining us live today, do add those to the chat. Before we go into that, I’ll be asking a few of my own questions such as what is the role of the ethical engineer? What’s the first question to ask if you think you are being bullied?

[00:01:14] And, what have you focused on to redress the balance of people with colour in engineering and leadership? Today’s session is called Ubuntu, Speak Up, Speak Out, Challenging Inequality. And for this conversation, we are super excited to have Ollie Folayan MBE, with us here today. Academic, chemical engineer, and trailblazing advocate for equality, diversity, and inclusion. 

[00:01:45] Ollie, we’ll hear shortly your story. Before we go any further though, we’d like to share the question that you are posing us all today, and it is this one, folks. “If you could say something radically honest to your boss right now, what would it be?” We were joking earlier, weren’t we Ollie, that perhaps we should put a PG certificate on today’s question, but there again, maybe not. Let’s just roll with the punches is what I say. Let’s hear what you’ve got to say, folks. Do add your thoughts and responses to the chat. So let me introduce you formally now if you like Ollie. We first heard you speak, at the Scottish Engineering Awards dinner some years ago. 

[00:02:32] And your words there at that event, Ollie, and the sentiments, they were absolutely fantastic, they really made their mark and we are super honoured and delighted that you are here with us today. 

[00:02:43] Ollie is a visiting professor to the School of Science and Engineering at the University of Dundee. He is, hot off the press folks, Head of Process, now at Costain, construction and engineering company. And he is also, as if that’s not enough, he is also the co founder of AFBE UK, which is the Association for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers, a fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers, Ollie’s authored five international publications in the field of combustion and engineering and worked on major CAPEX front end engineering design, detail design and commissioning projects. 

[00:03:32] For his service to diversity and inclusion, Ollie was awarded the D & I Award by the Institute of Chemical Engineering in 2021, and last year he received his MBE in the King’s First New Year’s Honours List. Ollie, it’s an absolute delight to have you with us here today. 

[00:03:53] Ollie: Thanks for having me, Amy

[00:03:55] Amy: Do share your, your mystery object with us and tell us a

[00:04:00] little bit more about yourself 

[00:04:02] Ollie: Okay, so, my mystery object, and you know, I really should have come here with an actual object, but what I’m going to show you is a picture, and that’s this. And no, it’s not a Pink Floyd album or anything like that. It is a dispersive prism, and I’ve chosen this because of, really what I’ve been thinking about lately. 

[00:04:29] The good thing, the interesting thing about prism is that, yes, it’s a solid object with very defined boundaries, but what it does is that it takes the white light that comes into it and then reflects that in different  colours. And I think that is quite analogous of how we receive information, what we think about ourselves. 

[00:04:54] The solid boundaries, I think, for me, describe what I aspire to, which is to have very clear principles and very clear values and, clear boundaries of things I would not do. And, I think I’ve spent my life trying to figure out what those values are. And to challenge myself also to ask if I’m actually living by them. 

[00:05:17] But the other aspect around light is, I think of light as knowledge, the information that comes to us. And we’ve never had a time when there’s been such an abundance of information and views and all of that coming through to us and what can often happen is that we can accept that one thing that we’ve always known as the final, the truth, 

[00:05:41] this is what it is and nothing more. And what’s great about a prism is that it then reflects the multiplicity that exists within that light. And so this idea of nuance and having, multiple ways of looking at the facts that we receive and even the beliefs that we have, is something that I keep aspiring to, to challenge my own underlying assumptions, 

[00:06:05] and that’s why I’ve chosen prism. 

[00:06:08] Amy: Wow. Thank you so much, Ollie. Absolutely brilliant to have you with us here today. As I said, today’s session is Ubuntu, Speak Up, Speak Out, challenging inequality. Do, as I said, folks, do add your thoughts, comments, questions to the chat, and we will come back to those a little later on. 

[00:06:31] Thank you. So, Ollie, you talk there about nuance. Tell us a little bit more about, the nuance you feel that you’re bringing to the workplace. 

[00:06:45] Ollie: As part of my job as a, as an academic, if you like, the work that I do at the university, we have a course, called, What’s the Point of Engineering? And what we do as part of that is we try to talk about the different aspects of engineering. Um, the, uh, the good that engineering can do, we ask our students, what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think of engineering?

[00:07:07] Do you think about structures? You know, say civil engineers. Do you think about making money perhaps? Do you think about safety? Do you think about the benefit of society? And what’s often, been, Interesting is very rarely does, for the benefit of society, come to the top of that list of why people think they are engineers. And then what we then try to demonstrate is the fact that being an engineer actually requires a It does enormous amounts of good, but it also often requires very moral, and ethical decisions. 

[00:07:44] And so we then start to talk about this question of ethics. What does it mean to be an ethical engineer? First of all, it means not sacrificing cost and schedule, not sacrificing good engineering, sound engineering on the altar of cost and schedule. It means ensuring that what we produce provides very little risk to the people that will use it. 

[00:08:06] So risks are reduced to as low as reasonably practicable. But it also means one other thing. It means asking ourselves who’s around the table when certain decisions are being made? And really that’s where this idea of inclusion comes in. So you can look at the very essence of engineering and you can find in that

[00:08:28] the case for better ethics in terms of the long term, sustainability of the projects that we work on. And you can’t talk about ethics without then talking about what it means to be inclusive and what it means to serve the whole community, not just the chosen few. 

[00:08:47] Amy: When you’re working with the students, how much are you watching the penny drop in terms of that inclusivity when you’re having these conversations with them?

[00:08:56] Ollie: It’s been quite interesting that many of the students we speak to are just starting the course and most of the time they’re thinking, Is this really for me? Most of them have come onto the course thinking, I’m going to try this for a year and see if it’s for me. And after every session you can just hear them say that I never thought about these two things in the same context. Engineering and the good that we can do in the world. 

[00:09:23] I mean, you can take the very platform that you and I are having this conversation on. Before 2020, very few of us worked with Zoom or Teams. Now not nearly a day goes by without it. And that came about because this African American woman called Marian Croak worked with her colleagues at Google to create the voice over internet protocol, which means that we can then send signals over the internet and, gave us Skype and eventually Zoom and Teams. 

[00:09:52] Now if we go back to a few years ago, and we think about what the workplace would have been like if we didn’t have these platforms. More people may have had to go into the office, and that rate of spread of the virus would have increased significantly. And so, it’s one of the ways in which, somebody looking at a number of algorithms and working out a software actually has amazing, potentially amazing consequences for people and society, and the world. 

[00:10:25] And this is why, when we talk about ethical engineering, that inclusive aspect must be part and parcel of it. You know, you take the Grenfell disaster in London and to take what happened there and most of those people were compliant in theory when they added this cladding to the buildings. But we could have saved a lot of life there if somebody had gone beyond compliance, 

[00:10:49] and again, thought about the resources of the people that live in that area and thought about the social good it would do if we just went that little bit extra. So this is why I think so and I’ve often seen that the students when you’re having conversation with them young people care about these things. 

[00:11:05] They care about the world. They care about giving to the world. And so when we talk about this, it actually persuades many of them that engineering is the right place for them. 

[00:11:15] Amy: Wonderful. Yeah, it’s about having that holistic viewpoint, isn’t it? It’s having, it’s having a vision, you know, really thinking it through, thinking it forward, I guess. 

[00:11:25] Ollie: That’s right, that’s right. Thinking about the end user, thinking about the communities which are affected by our projects. And also thinking about the ways we can involve them in that process of our engineering design. So, It’s got wide ramifications, but, it’s also what we’ve always done as an industry, and many of the lasting projects that exist today exist because of that approach. 

[00:11:49] Amy: That’s quite a big nuance, just going back to the original question that I asked you. 

[00:11:53] Ollie: Yeah. 

[00:11:54] Amy: So let’s roll back in time. You come from a family of engineers Ollie. In your father’s family, what number of engineer was he?

[00:12:03] Ollie: he told me he was engineer 23, number 23. So. 

[00:12:09] Amy: 23. 

[00:12:10] Ollie: Yes, so it was like Forrest Gump and you had Bubba, who, whose family knew everything about shrimp. And he says, my father did shrimp for my grandfather. Well, it certainly felt like that within this extended and polygamous family that he was raised in. 

[00:12:25] Amy: Wow. So it’s really, it’s in your blood, isn’t it? It’s in your, it’s in your bones to, to be an engineer. What was the book when you were nine years old? What was the book that inspired you to be an engineer?

[00:12:36] Ollie: Yes, I usually disappoint people by saying it wasn’t those many uncles and aunties that actually made me an engineer, it was a book I read called Mark of the Cobra, in which there was this evil genius who could use solar energy and chemicals for world domination. And I thought never mind what I’m learning in Sunday School about how to be a nice person, 

[00:12:59] that’s who I want to be like when I grow up. I want to take over the world. But thankfully, I have been transformed and my views are now very different. So I no longer have my plans for world domination. 

[00:13:14] Amy: I don’t know. Well it sounds like your plans for world domination have a very ethical basis. that’s perhaps the difference between you and the, what was he called?

[00:13:26] Ollie: Yeah. The evil genius. Yeah. 

[00:13:27] Amy: Evil genius. there we go. So you have a, you’ve had a, and you continue to have a glittering career in engineering but you’ve also been faced, haven’t you, with huge challenges along the way?

[00:13:40] Do you want to tell us a little bit about where that started in your working life?

[00:13:45] Ollie: Yeah. So, so all through my career, I’ve had a really interesting set of programs that I’ve been involved in. I usually see engineering as a way of thinking and as a way of approaching the world. And I’ve had the opportunity to do that all through my career, and I’ve also worked with some fantastic and amazing people of all backgrounds who have supported in many ways, who I constantly learn from, and that’s one of the great things about actually working in the engineering sector. 

[00:14:17] But at the same time, I also had some challenging experiences that started from the very first day. So I usually explain that on my first day I sat there with my boss, the person who was going to be my boss, and he wanted to know a bit about my family. And I remember saying that Well, my father was an academic who, worked on an industry project and then wanted to go into, go back into academia. 

[00:14:45] And I remember when I said that, his first comment was “well, failed engineers teach. ” And at the time I thought that’s a bit odd to say given that we just met and I didn’t think too much more of it, but then by day two, I was getting comments like your PhD is not worth the paper that it’s written on. 

[00:15:05] This is day number two. So I hadn’t had a chance to actually demonstrate anything. And then what followed was a few years of quite, a toxic environment in, in, in the workplace. And you know, one example that. I sometimes, cited was when my nephew was born. It was quite normal practice for people to have a photo of members of family. 

[00:15:31] People still do that as a wall screen on their computer. And my boss would come over to my desk and look at the picture of my nephew and he’d go, “That’s an ugly baby, that’s an ugly baby. ” And continue to say that until I felt pressure to take them the, the photo. He was quite happy to display on his when he had his child and it was just the regular, we would complete scopes of work and we would be told, well, that work could have been done without you. 

[00:16:03] And, at the time, there were people who would suggest that maybe there was some sort of, you know, other people in the office would notice and they would speak to me behind his back to say, why does he treat you like that? And at the time there were others who would imply that maybe this was a race thing, but I refused to accept that was 

[00:16:26] the reason. I’d met people who very quick to go to race as a way of explaining away sometimes what is a legitimate criticism and I thought, I don’t want to be like one of those people. But then over time, I started to come across other people, similar backgrounds, also having these experiences. 

[00:16:46] I started to hear the way people in the workplace, people of  colour would be spoken about when they weren’t there. And, my sister started her industry career four years after I did, and was working in another company and was also having a constant experience of sexist and racist innuendo on a regular basis. 

[00:17:09] We were also living in Croydon at the time and, there was a lot, particularly around serious youth violence affecting young black boys. And so we had a bit of a, a challenge. We thought well, we could do with mentors ourselves because when I looked within my organization to say, is there anyone I can speak to, share some of these experiences with, there wasn’t really anyone. 

[00:17:33] So we could do with finding some of those mentors, but we also wanted to be role models within our community, it was quite common at the time to have an athlete or an R& B singer as the best example of somebody who was successful. And I remember at the time we were thinking, well, we’re not Jay Z, but you know, we are engineers and that, that could be, that, that’s good enough. 

[00:17:53] and so it was those two things to find mentors and then to be mentors that led us in 2007 to found our organization and we started off with programs in schools and so on. Yes, the AFB. 

[00:18:07] Amy: If I can just interject there, Ollie, thank you very much for sharing what sounds like a horrendously painful experience for both you and your sister and, you know, the other colleagues that you were talking about who were being bullied there. Can you tell us a little bit about the impact that had on your health?

[00:18:28] Ollie: So after a while, I started to have these, just anxiety quite regularly going into work. It had a real impact on just mental state of being and, It was also just that sense that I felt at the time that I had no agency within the organization. I couldn’t do anything about this. 

[00:18:51] I looked at the company sort of hierarchy, if you like, and I thought there is nowhere for me to go with this. And so, generally I put up with it. And that eventually, took a toll, not just on mental health, but then triggered some of the challenges, health challenges that I still deal with today. 

[00:19:11] So those are, that, that was, you know, a lot of it distinctively happened around that time. I

[00:19:17] 

[00:19:17] Amy: You felt there was nowhere you could go. So you ended up just, you lived with it, you lived with having to deal with this horrendous behaviour. And so what finally made the shift then for you to either move away from there or be able to speak up?

[00:19:35] Ollie: Well, I eventually left, left that place, and I, I never spoke up, actually, in that particular situation, and half the time, what I was thinking at the time was, do I actually have a case here? Half the time, I was thinking, I’m probably the one in the wrong here. 

[00:19:54] And so because of that, I didn’t even feel that I could go and speak to someone about it. And when I did want to speak to others about it, I thought, well, they all speak to each other quite, in a very sort of, friendly way and so there’s no way they’re going to want to hear what I have to say. 

[00:20:11] And, and it was those kinds of things that eventually had that impact. 

[00:20:18] Amy: I, You know, I think it’s horrendous that there wasn’t, you didn’t feel that there was that, there was that person, even just one person, you could go and, you could go and speak to about what was happening. And I think that’s all too common, isn’t it? If we don’t speak about it, we start to think about, it can whirl around in our head. 

[00:20:38] And sometimes it’s absolutely the right move To move, to go, you know, if you can’t, if you can’t shift it on. What’s the first question would you say that if somebody is being bullied, whether it’s racism or you know any other form of bullying, what do you think the first question is to ask if you think you are being bullied?

[00:20:56] Ollie: Well, first thing to ask is what is actually happening here? So, because there are times when a, a person is critical of somebody else and that criticism may be based on something, legitimate. It might be that a person is not receiving the training that they need or isn’t applying themselves, or probably needs to have a conversation as to whether this is actually the route that they should be going. 

[00:21:23] So, for me, the first place to start is that. And sometimes I speak to mentees who are going through similar experiences or challenging conversations with somebody at work, and we all know that happens in all workplaces. Sometimes you have issues around performance that need to be discussed, 

[00:21:42] this is why appraisals are there. And so the first question I ask this person is, do you believe the boss is acting in good faith? And sometimes they say, yes, they act in good faith. So then what we do is we work out what we need to do to improve. But that is the first thing that people need to ask. the question is, does the punishment fit the crime?

[00:22:07] The thing that I’m supposed to be doing wrong here, am I getting a disproportionate response? Is it fair? And sometimes having others that you speak to in the workplace who can look objectively and ask some of these questions is important. And then, at some point, you’ve got to accept that there is something going on here. You know, once you’ve run out of, you know, you, a person knows that they’re trying and they’re doing everything that’s been asked to do, but maybe the goalposts keep shifting, or, things are done in an abusive, way, in a way that’s rude. 

[00:22:43] There’s often some sort of humiliation, quite regularly. Having to deal with these feelings of shame and embarrassment quite regularly. Once, once you establish that is what is happening, the next thing people must do is agree with it. Give the problem. Define the problem. 

[00:23:00] Give the problem a name. Half the time, most people are saying, well, it’s probably my fault. I’m probably at fault here. So that is the next thing that people must do. The first question that people must ask. And then the next thing you must ask is what am I going to do about this now

[00:23:14] who can I speak to about what’s happening? Because the next time, you know, years later, I had the same experience and I went through exactly this process of understanding what was happening, doing something about it by speaking to somebody else in, in the organization who was of a senior enough level to understand what was happening, and 

[00:23:40] it had a very different outcome. And so, so it’s going through that process of, you know, what’s actually going on here, and you know, talking it through with others who can be objective and who can be fair. Defining the problem once it’s happened and then charting what your next steps will be. 

[00:24:00] And to always understand that you have agency. You’re never in a position where there’s nothing you can do. You always have agency, and it’s always better to try . 

[00:24:11] Amy: What I’m interested in, in that second organization, what was different there that was saying to you, I can go and speak to someone?

[00:24:21] Ollie: I just learned from experience. I had time to reflect on, on, on what happened, and I summed up the courage to actually go and speak to somebody and to explain. And my approach there wasn’t to go to this person and accuse the other person. It was to describe the impact of what was happening on me. 

[00:24:45] The difference there is when we center what our experiences are and explain exactly how that may be stopping us from giving our best at work. It makes it a very different conversation from going over to a boss and accusing others. I mean, there are some things that are overt and beyond question and, you know, in a healthy workplace, you wouldn’t be the first person to go off to the boss to say there’s something going on here that isn’t right. 

[00:25:16] But In most other cases, it’s the, I’ll call it the enemy you can’t see. This thing that you cannot describe. What we can always describe is the impact that certain things have on us. And if we can describe that, we can start to find a way towards a solution. 

[00:25:32] Amy: Definitely, yeah. The more specific, the more specific we can be, citing those specifics, and as you say, actually not pointing the finger, just but saying actually this is what’s happening for me right now, the more we can do that, the more powerful it is actually, there’s less wiggle room, right? When you can say this happened, you know, and this is what’s going on for me. 

[00:25:53] So that together with your sister’s experience was what drove you both to, to setting up the association, for Black and Minority Ethnic Engineers?

[00:26:03] Ollie: That’s right. That’s right. 

[00:26:05] Amy: so, 

[00:26:05] Ollie: we had our, 

[00:26:06] Amy: bit about what the AFBE does. 

[00:26:08] Ollie: Yes, sure, sure. So, at the time we had a conversation, there was a particularly challenging day at work and I got home and, my sister and I got talking and really it’s where this idea of the association came about. And then what we did was we spoke to Colleagues that we knew, got a number of emails together and we sent this email out and the email went to so many places. 

[00:26:37] I was in London at the time and so getting an email back from someone in Aberdeen felt like I’d, we’d just heard back from the end of the earth is how it felt. and we got about 50 people responding immediately to say that they were really interested, that this is the right thing that we should be doing. 

[00:26:55] And what that email contained was more of the sort of working, conditions. So from the very beginning, we address the issue o fworkplace experiences and workplace cultures. We address the fact that there weren’t that many people in senior management, people of  colour that we could, look up to. 

[00:27:16] We, spoke about the under representation and the fact that there were few role models in just popular discourse around engineering, particularly people of  colour. And so when we had our first meeting, everything that we’ve gone on to do, we identified already as an issue. And they fall broadly under three areas. 

[00:27:40] There is the question of attraction into STEM, and quite early on, we would run events in schools and, we would meet young people whose aspirations were primarily because of everything that people in their own family did, and meeting us gave them an opportunity to look at another example or another option. 

[00:28:08] And so that question of attraction, that question of being able to work in schools, work in communities in which more young people can see multiple examples of people who have got into engineering from various backgrounds via various routes as well. The apprenticeship route as well as, as a sort of the traditional, university route, was very important. 

[00:28:32] The second aspect was to do with the fact that many of the people who get into jobs then have huge challenges getting into work. What the evidence shows is that one third of all UK undergraduate qualifiers, are from a black and minority ethnic background. So one third of all British engineering students, home students, undergrad students, are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. 

[00:28:59] But if you look at the industry, there’s 9%. So there’s a pipeline there that is leaking. And so we, and so that that talent retention, was a, an important part and we’d also identified this issue around leadership. So, we did a survey in 2017, looking at the top 100 engineering companies and looking at what black representation looked like on the boards of those companies. And our assessment was that

[00:29:27] it was lower than 0. 3 percent. So when you consider the fact that 31. 8 percent of all engineering and tech undergrads are Black and Minority Ethnic, so that’s about a third, you then look at the number that get into industry, so the industry has nine percent, and then the number of people that then eventually aspire to leadership is lower than 0. 3%. So we run programs to address all of those stages. 

[00:29:56] For STEM attraction, we’ve got a program called Making Engineering Hot, which we initially thought about calling Making Engineering Sexy, but maybe not, we’ll call it Making Engineering Hot. And in Scotland, because we’re quite serious people in Scotland, we call the program Next Gen. 

[00:30:11] And so, and we’ve got that. For the retention piece, we have the transition program, which is a program that was set up in 2012 in Aberdeen, but is now being done all over the country, and it’s looking at, mock interviews, mock assessment centres, CV reviews, and tying that up with mentoring so that the people that come in to the program then get to meet people in the industry who can be mentors to them. 

[00:30:43] And that program has been hugely successful. We did a survey some years ago and it showed that we had a 70 percent success rate of people who come on the program are able to secure jobs within a year within the sector. And then we’ve got the, Transcend or Leadership Program that looks at that latter end of careers and tries to inspire senior technical professionals who desire to become leaders, we try and inspire them along that route. 

[00:31:11] So, so those are the three areas, attraction, retention, and progression, and all the programs we’ve run, which have now benefited more than 20, 000 people since it started, are aimed at those three objectives. 

[00:31:25] Amy: What an amazing, what an amazing gift you’re giving to, you’re giving to everyone, right? If AFBE had been there when you were, starting out in your engineering career, what difference do you think it could have made to you know, that first experience?

[00:31:43] Ollie: Exactly, it would have made a world of difference, just understanding what was going on. And these days, I have conversations with engineers, with, younger engineers, and sometimes I remember once hearing, the experience that someone was having, which is the experience is quite familiar of working very hard on something and not getting the credit for the work that you have done. 

[00:32:09] And I was listening to this person and it reminded me of a lot of my experiences. And I remember staying up till around 2am just working on helping this person to basically draft, articulate what their experience was so that they could then communicate that to their manager and I remember asking myself, why are you still up at 2am doing this?

[00:32:36] And I realized I was maybe reliving or living vicariously through this person some of my own past experiences. So people sometimes ask, what is the real driver behind what you’re trying to do? And, you know, it is a process of, almost, reliving and correcting some of those experiences that we have had and maybe providing a response where initially I had none for myself. 

[00:33:04] And, and it’s that process, that is, is actually quite a healing process of being able to say that I may not have had this experience, but I’m making sure that somebody else isn’t going through this. 

[00:33:18] Amy: Definitely. Speak up, speak out, right? That’s what you’re

[00:33:21] enabling 

[00:33:22] Ollie: right. 

[00:33:22] Amy: to do. 

[00:33:23] Ollie: That’s right. 

[00:33:24] Amy: Ollie, absolutely fantastic. Let’s have a look at some of the comments, questions, thoughts, people have been responding to your initial question there. Angus, you’ve been sifting through those questions, what are people’s thoughts?

[00:33:42] Angus: I think there’s a question I’d like to ask Ollie. So I remember I was originally an engineer and as a undergraduate student engineer, I was at uh, uh, Uh, um, a presentation by a consultant engineer who was working in the North Sea actually. And he said during that, that there was a project he was working on, and they were going to lose a certain number of people on the project. And lose, as in the people were going to lose their lives building the project, right?

[00:34:13] And that was almost at that time, it was a fact. It wasn’t acceptable, but it was a fact. And I think now you know, with the transformation in terms of health and safety and that just doesn’t happen any longer, it’s very rare, but how do you see the landscape changing in terms of your own experience in the engineering world?

[00:34:36] Ollie: That’s a really good question. And, you know, that experience of people almost pricing in fatalities as something that will happen is actually not entirely unfamiliar in that sense, that does just happen. I think we’re having the conversations now in a way that we never used to before. Even from the time we started AFBE and now, I used to joke that talking about ethnicity and race in the way that we’ve been talking about just now, I used to say it was competing with bad breath for what could be a conversation killer, in the sense that, you know, the moment you started talking about it, you know, you just felt the energy kind of sucked out of the room, whereas that’s not happening now. 

[00:35:21] You’ve got more leaders within the industry, pretty much most leaders that you come across these days have an awareness of the importance of this. And some of this is actually just marketplace consciousness, right? It’s understanding that people know that they have agency and they will gravitate towards not just the places that pay well, but the places that treat their staff well, and so there has been that increase in understanding and and because of that, I think more and more people are having better experiences in the workplace. 

[00:35:54] The role that ERGs play, employee resource groups play, within the workplace and, you know, in providing sort of safe spaces where people can share some of the kinds of experiences that we’ve been talking about today is also a very important thing that’s happening. The only challenge or the only thing that I’m always very cautious of is what I call the, arrow of time, fallacy, which is this idea that people think that there is this invisible arrow of time that points inexorably to a fairer future when the reality is that we find ourselves almost like a carousel around some of the same issues, over and over again. 

[00:36:36] I’m always very careful not to quote, politicians in these particular types of programs, but the one that has been most relevant to me is the Tony Benn quote, where he says that there’s no final victory, no final defeat, just the same battles fought over and over again. And so there is a sense of that, 

[00:36:54] but at the same time, there is progress. So it comes back to this idea of nuance again, that, you almost have the two things happening side by side. A better conversation, better increase, but sometimes when I’m sat in front of mentees, even, you know, even as recently as this year, and they’re sharing some of their experiences, 

[00:37:13] we sadly are still hearing some of the same issues, that I was talking about before. So it all seems to be happening side by side. There is progress, but there is still sometimes a sense where you end up asking yourself, are we still dealing with these issues? Are we still having this conversation?

[00:37:29] So, so those two things are happening side by side. 

[00:37:33] Angus: Interesting. And I think also the, the journey that we’ve been on with Headtorch, so that’s 10 years now and, we’ve been doing mental health in the workplace for 10 years. Amy, it’s even longer than that. And, it might be, what, 15? Yeah, 15 years, something like that. But, you know, it’s been a journey. ‘ When we started Headtorch, we would ask people in the room, you know, has somebody here got some kind of mental health?

[00:38:00] Nobody would put their hands up. You might get the occasional person, well, I might have. Now everybody puts a hand up. We all have mental health. And it’s been a, it’s been a journey, that’s the way we describe it, we look at it. And, I guess with yourself you must feel some of that as well. 

[00:38:16] Ollie: Absolutely. So, so that openness of conversation is incredible, and it’s been a very important part of the program that creating of spaces and you know, there are more workplaces now who understand that when we think about safety, that mental health and mental safety, is just as important. 

[00:38:36] There’s a quote from somebody where he says, bullying and harassment in the workplace should be seen as unsafe as working at heights without a harness. And I think that understanding is certainly taking root in in a lot of engineering companies. So much so that if any company thinks differently, operates differently, they soon find that they’re losing people, not in quite the same way as you were thinking earlier, but more, people will go where, people are being treated, with respect. 

[00:39:07] Amy: Absolutely. It’s a, if our mental health and wellbeing isn’t being looked after, isn’t being cared for, is being abused essentially in the workplace, it’s a psychosocial risk. you know, it goes against the law as a basic, not, you know, ethics, obviously, ethically, obviously, it’s, the worst thing to do. 

[00:39:28] Bep, you’re saying that your husband is an engineer and he found he had to move from Scotland to England to find better job opportunities. She says she’s glad that he is now in a leadership position, but experienced bullying on numerous occasions and felt he couldn’t talk about the mental health impact of this. 

[00:39:47] Thanks for sharing that, Bep. Your thoughts on that, 

[00:39:51] Ollie: Yes. Yes. And, you know, really, well, sad to hear that, Bep, and I hope, I hope he is in a better place, and the great thing is that he’s got people like you around who he can share these experiences with. There is still a little bit of that uh, sort of denialism that goes on and gaslightingwhere people tend to think, oh, this person is just a sensitive person, or it’s all in your head, and the question that I usually ask is every time someone describes their experience, maybe of racism, maybe of bullying, maybe of sort of, or someone says they, they feel that they have been discriminated against. If my first instinct is to question the veracity of the account, rather than to err on the side of caution and listen, we should ask ourselves why that is. Because if somebody walked in and says, I’ve just been hit by somebody, physically. Whether we can see a sign of that or not, most people would be horrified and our first instinct would be, are you okay?

[00:40:59] Let’s do something about it. Well, that ought to be exactly the same that we experienced because there’s a bit of shame actually in admitting, or should I say not shame, vulnerability in admitting that you have been through something or that it’s had an impact on you. And so we should be respecting the courage that it actually takes for a person to come out and say that. 

[00:41:25] Bep: Can I just add, literally a couple of weeks ago, he, one of, one of the, somebody that works for him had said to him, how have you made it to a leader because you’re just too nice? So the industry I think is really, like I, I get taken aback sometimes when I overhear his calls when he’s working at home. 

[00:41:45] It’s a tough industry to excel in and for somebody like him who is sensitive, but very passionate about mentoring and caring and growing people, like I’ve often said, this is a mismatch with who you are and I don’t know how long he’ll stay in this industry because it has really taken its toll on his mental health over the time. 

[00:42:05] Ollie: I hope he stays a long time because we need more and

[00:42:07] Bep: I need to connect him to you. Thank

[00:42:09] Ollie: Yeah, well, I, we need more and more people who can be leaders, who are like that because I remember for a long time actually feeling that I couldn’t be a leader because I thought I am not that person who is, I’m not Alan Sugar. 

[00:42:24] but yeah, I remember thinking that, and, I remember working with a business coach, for some time, who actually helped me find myself as a leader. 

[00:42:33] Because what they did was they came along to some of the meetings I was chairing, and they watched the way that I approached things. And then we had a session where she just had this sheet of paper in front of me, a flipchart, and she started to describe what her observations were. 

[00:42:49] And it was a whole flipchart full of various things that I had done. And she said have a look at that, she said, that looks like leadership to me. So I hope the industry evolves into a place where it rewards people being empathetic and rewards those kinds of behaviours. I’ve had to learn certain aspects that don’t come naturally to me. 

[00:43:15] I’m not naturally a confrontational person, but I’ve grown to be a bit more direct in the way that I address certain issues that come up. And I’ve done it in my own way, and so I hope that, you know, for me what real inclusivity means is that people find the ways to bring their whole selves to work, and that for me means that they don’t have to become another person

[00:43:42] in order to lead. So I hope your husband stays and has a long and successful career. 

[00:43:47] Amy: Absolutely. Thank you, Bep, for sharing. 

[00:43:50] Angus: Amy, just one question here I would like to ask Ollie. Can you give us an example when you were radically honest with your boss Ollie?

[00:43:59] Ollie: Oh, that is tough, that one. 

[00:44:05] The good thing is, it’s like one of those things, you start doing it and then you become really good at it. Really good at saying exactly what you think and I’ll give you this particular example. And it turned out that I was the one in the wrong, so that’s quite a good one. 

[00:44:20] We were discussing a technical issue. And we were discussing a technical problem. And I was certain that the approach that he was using was entirely wrong. And I’d actually spoken out and says, no, I think you’re wrong, this is the approach that I’m using. At that point, I think I’d actually persuaded him that he was wrong. 

[00:44:42] And then he said to me, he says, do me a favour. Just have another look at this, and if you are still convinced that you are, you’re right, we will make the change. And then I looked at the page, and it took me a few seconds to see, ah, that was what you were missing, and your boss is right. And so I went back to him and because the disagreement was quite, it was in the open and everyone could hear, I made sure everyone also heard me saying that I was wrong with this because this is what I missed. 

[00:45:17] And he was really appreciative of that, and even when I left the job, actually wanted me to do some more work for him, because, if anything, that sort of honestly impressed him. We are in this industry where everyone’s got to pretend that they know everything, and I don’t think that’s what leadership is, and I don’t think that’s, what strength is. 

[00:45:38] Angus: Thank you. 

[00:45:39] Amy: It’s about having that learning attitude, isn’t it? 

[00:45:42] Thank you. And also that sense of vulnerability, of just putting your hand up, going, yeah, I got it wrong. 

[00:45:48] Ollie: and

[00:45:48] I’ve continued to lead like that, actually. I’ve tried to create an environment when the team, anyone feels they can say, I don’t agree with this, or that’s not quite correct. And, you know, if we get to a habit of normalizing, I mean, you’d hope that the leader doesn’t get everything wrong, but, that might be a problem. 

[00:46:08] But, but if we get to a point where we normalize anyone being able to effectively check the other, and where it’s not a story, it’s not a big deal, it’s just, you know, we make that quite a normal thing. We then allow others to be able to say, to talk about what they’re feeling in the workplace and to feel that they can be themselves as well. 

[00:46:32] Amy: Definitely, and that’s psychological safety right there, isn’t it? 

[00:46:35] Ollie: That’s right. 

[00:46:35] Amy: And from that you get much more innovation, much more creativity. Ollie, let’s move on and hear your top tips. We’ll just move through these swiftly. So your first one there is just tying in nicely to what we’ve just been talking about then is candour 

[00:46:50] Ollie: Yes, that’s right, that’s right. So, so the context of this is that I was thinking about having worked with organizations. We partner about 80 different companies on diversity and inclusion. And having worked with companies for a long time, I was asking myself, what are the things that actually result inclusion? change? In real cultural change within the organization. And the first one is candour. Having those spaces and those environments in which everyone can, can talk about what they got right and what they’ve got wrong. And you know, most of you will know about that story. 

[00:47:31] Amy: Fantastic. Cohesion. 

[00:47:33] Ollie: So cohesion is also this, the other killer of diversity and inclusion is when you have plenty of activity, but no one connecting the dots. So it’s about taking all of those EDI initiatives that you do and linking them with the bottom line and also with the sort of entry into organizations. 

[00:47:55] Amy: Lovely. Yeah. You know, and tying in with mental health, it’s not about seeing it as something over here. It’s actually seeing it as an integral, right, to the way we show up. 

[00:48:03] Consistency. 

[00:48:05] Ollie: Consistency is saying that it’s not the big things that we organize that make the real difference. It’s the things that we do on a regular basis. Uh, it’s thinking about EDI in the same way we think about safety, running all of the reviews that we do, running all of our decisions through an inclusion gate, if you like, so that we’re doing these things consistently in small ways, rather than the big gestures that happen once a year. 

[00:48:31] Amy: Lovely. I love the inclusion gate. Continuity. 

[00:48:35] Ollie: Continuity is a very important one because especially when it comes to diversity and inclusion, we’re often thinking about very short term, whereas what we need to price in is succession planning into the process of change. I found that every time I was working with a new Head of Diversity, all of the good work that we had done over the previous year with a different person sometimes got undone and we were starting all over again. 

[00:49:04] So when we’re thinking about our diversity initiatives in the way that we do safety cases for offshore plants, can we start to think about diversity in the same way and start to, embed succession into those plans. 

[00:49:19] Amy: Wonderful. And coalition. 

[00:49:21] Ollie: Coalition is maybe one of the most important ones. Which is this idea that most people you come across, will talk about the importance of allyship, and they’ll talk about the fact that no change happens without champions, but champions only go so far without allies. 

[00:49:37] But then we often describe allies in the way that we describe charities. It’s the people with plenty over there who are supporting these helpless people over here. When in reality, what brings about real allyship is when we recognize that actuallyit is in our collective interest. The person who may be part of the majority, you know, maybe, the the stereotypical, male, white, uh, engineer may not have experienced what I’ve experienced, but they will have experienced it to a lesser degree. 

[00:50:11] Can we start to work around the fact that this is good for neither of us? And therefore, it’s the places where our experiences, not just our identities, intersect that real change comes about. So, let’s build coalitions across our ERGs, uh, regardless of our differences, and let’s start to see how we can work together to address these issues, because actually, whilst they might affect us to varying degrees, they affect all of us. 

[00:50:41] Amy: Wonderful. Two quickfire questions, 

[00:50:44] quickfire answers. 

[00:50:46] Ollie: Yes. 

[00:50:48] Amy: Amazing. What does vulnerability mean to you?

[00:50:52] Ollie: It means first of all being really honest with myself and then being able to share the impact of those issues on myself with others. 

[00:51:04] Amy: And what do you say to leaders that use only plasters, give lip service to workplace mental health and wellbeing?

[00:51:13] Ollie: Usually what I start with is a statement that comes from the Spice Girls, uh, Do Tell us what you really want. . Do you really want this? And do you really agree? ’cause if you don’t, don’t waste our time, uh and bother

[00:51:31] Don’t bother doing it. But if you think it’s important, then go for it. 

[00:51:35] Do it properly. 

[00:51:36] Amy: Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much. I’m going to hand over to Angus. 

[00:51:42] Angus: Ollie that was fantastic, thank you very much. You come over as a trailblazer, a truly authentic trailblazer. I love the fact that you look at light as knowledge and talk about ethical engineering, the ability to enhance, to touch, to save lives with engineering. It’s a completely different way to look at it for many of us. 

[00:52:05] Also, I love the fact that you’re saying we all have agency, you can always do something. So, with that authenticity let’s build the coalitions and create real change with us. So thank you Ollie for being in the Wellbeing Hour. It’s been a great honour and a great pleasure to have you, and absolutely fascinating, 

[00:52:24] we all from Headtorch, and everybody who’s going to listen to this, really appreciate it. Thank you. 

[00:52:29] Ollie: Thank you very much. 

[00:52:32] Angus: Coming up on the Wellbeing Hour, the next one is with Adrienne Kelby, CBE. She is a leadership coach, non exec director, and former Head of the Office for Nuclear Regulation and the first patron of Women in Nuclear UK. She’s on 23rd July at a slightly different time at 2. 30 in the afternoon, so please join us 

[00:52:54] for that. She’s going to talk about your comfort zone is not your friend. So join us there. We also have coming upon the 19th of September we have Andrew Rogers. He is a principal leadership advisory practice with Odgers Bernstein, 

[00:53:09] and again that will be another fascinating one. There are more in the pipeline, we will be advertising those, so keep an eye out on LinkedIn. Please follow us there, it does make a difference, we really appreciate it. And we’d love to hear from you. So if you’d like that free consultation, scan the QR code there and we have tailored solutions for senior leaders, people managers, direct and indirect staff, so please get in touch, 

[00:53:32] we’d love to hear from you That’s it from the Wellbeing Hour. As I said, it’s a great pleasure and a great honour to have everybody here. So, thank you very much. I hope you have a great day and join us for the next one. Thank you. 

[00:53:47] Amy: Thanks, everyone.