#22 Words, Words, Words – How Inclusive Language Delivers Business Goals

Text transcript

Welcome everybody to the Wellbeing Hour. I am Amy McDonald. 

I’m Angus Robinson 

and our colleague Nick Lander is working in the background to support all things technical.

And of course we have our wonderful guest, Lutfur Ali who I will introduce fully shortly. For those of you who aren’t aware of Headtorch let me tell you a little bit about what we do. So we work with organizations to help them develop our mentally healthy culture. So we work with senior leaders, we work with people managers, we work with frontline people, and we meet people, meet organizations, really where they are on that journey to develop that culture. We’re also currently offering a Headtorch health check. So if you are up for that free health check, then we’d be delighted to come along to your organization and have a chat and explore with you where you are on that journey. So if you are interested in, that, then do either direct message myself or Angus and we will contact you afterwards.

 So let me tell you also what this session involves. So first of all, I’m gonna introduce Lutfur. He will then introduce himself with a mystery object, and then he and I will go into conversation before we open the floor to you.

Lutfur is gonna pose you and me a question, and so we’d love to hear your responses to that question and it will also be opportunity for you to ask him any other questions that may have sprung to mind during our conversation. Lutfur and I will then go back into conversation and he’ll share a few of his top tips before I ask him some rapid fire questions towards the end when Angus will pick up the mantle and do the formal thanks and tell you what’s coming up on the Headtorch calendar that you might be interested in the future. So let me introduce our guest then. Today we are delighted to have with us Lutfur Ali he is Senior Policy Advisor, Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and Transformation at C I P D, and he’s been there since October 21.

And he’s a non-exec director for the Business Continuity Institute. For over three decades, he’s been working in public, private, and third sector organizations where he’s championed the delivery of social justice, equality, diversity, inclusion, and sustainability. Before joining CIPD, he has been the director of EDI for the tribal group, PLC, head of EDI, for the Department of Health and for the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority .He was advisor to the Foreign and Commonwealth office, advisor to the National College of School Leadership, Associate to the National College of Policing

and before that, Assistant Chief Executive for Tower Hamlet’s Council. Lutfur has also served on several judicial inquiries and government task forces, including for this Said Mubarak Enquiry ,the Prime Minister’s Prevent Task force and the International Ministerial Working Group on illegal working. So Lutfur has not let the grass grow under his feet.

Lutfur, let me hand over to you please and do share with us a little bit more about you and your mystery object as well. 

Amy, thank you very much Amy for welcoming me and what a fantastic sort of introduction. Highly, undeserving .

Not at all. 

I’ve just merely worked to survive and had had, you know, equalities, inclusion, social justice as a sort of guiding light throughout my life. And that’s what it’s been, it’s something that I’ve acquired from my parents. My mystery object was the sun, but unfortunately it was too large and too hot to handle. So I do have, something that symbolizes the sun, which is a three quarters burnt purple candle

which for me at least, is representative of my life and possibly many others’ lives. So the candle symbolizes for me life of warmth support and love. But I hope that the three quarter element is also, there’s a, it’s a little bit more to give from before I, you know, rejoined from whence I came.

So I think the reason I’ve sort of picked sort of the sun or, the candle as it were it’s sort of, kind of for me inspires spiritual awareness, wisdom, tranquillity, and certainly that’s been the case throughout history, that candles have symbolized and had a, significant place in worship, in, in terms of healing, renewal, and most important for me, strength and hope.

So I see words, and I think that’s the topic today that we’re going to be hopefully talking about and inclusive language, very much analogous with the sun and the candle, which can transform how we feel and how others feel around us. And it’s this issue of feeling that I’d like to explore a little bit more with Amy later on.

And how with our words, we can create feelings of either doom or gloom or optimism and hope. I’ll leave it there and, hopefully we can explore some of this a little bit later on. 

Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you Lutfur, how, beautiful lit candle. Just so tranquil and wonderful. So yeah, our title is Words, Your title is Words. Words, words words how Inclusive Language Delivers Business Goals. So just touching on a little bit about what you mentioned there. I mean, words, they don’t really deliver anything, do they Lutfur?

I mean, that’s a really, important question. Do words in and by themselves deliver anything?

And it depends on your perspective. I mean, you know, it you know, if we go back to I mean a famous Bible verse, and forgive me, sort of, you know, quoted from the Bible. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And that’s from John chapter one, verse one. And in many other faiths as well, including Islam.

 In Islam, it says, the very first revealed word was Read. Read in the name of thy Lord. Now whether you follow a particular religion or belief, we know that words, can be very powerful. They give expression to our thoughts. And when spoken. You know, those words can have a psychological impact on us.

So when we hear them, how we hear them and what perceives. So in some ways it does have an impact. It does sort of have a bearing and, delivers something. And it all depends on our perception of how we hear words and how we use them in the way that it seeks to create the reality around us for us and others.

So I, would say that it does deliver. And if we explore then further how words impact on organizational cultures. You know, so most organization have a set of values, for example. Those are comprised of words, and depending on what those values are, in and by themselves, the words, when people read them can have an influence on people.

But then how they wish to use those words to behave in their workplace is then the next bit of that journey of how words impact the way we think and we behave.

Yeah, absolutely. Let’s get back to the organizational, you know, words that are used for, organization organizational vision shortly, but just tapping into things like terms like.

Work hard. We should work hard. What? Why? Why do you think we, what? what do you think of that? 

Well, I mean, again, it comes back to the type of words we use to describe circumstances. If we were to sort of change that and say work with love it immediately changes how we approach doing something.

It doesn’t mean that we apply ourselves any less. But to do it with love means that our psychological outlook towards the way in which we approach work completely changes. Because working hard means we have to work hard and the term hard is actually hard, difficult. It’s gonna be difficult. So that means is work is going to be difficult, it’s gonna be challenging. It’s going to be you know, where obstacles and issues arise. Of course, those things are going to be there. But if we approach addressing those issues with love, with mind set up that seeks to apply our. 

And, with, a sense of self-care, with a sense of caring for others, then that work becomes not hard, but easier and much more fulfilling in the way we seek to sort of approach delivering that work.

But in that I, get Lutfur, I’m just wondering, you know, some people might react to… they might not react po positively to being asked to work with love, you know . How could that be rephrased? 

I mean we, when we are encouraging our children or colleagues at work, you’ve got to work hard to achieve something.

It’s sort of psychologically embedded in them that it’s hard. It’s that term hard that’s going to sort of permeate everything that’s a approached and, involved in doing something. If we say work with love, and work with care, work with with compassion work with empathy. You know work with a sense of strong self-belief and confidence.

You know, it depends on how you want to phrase it, how you want to positively psychologically approach doing something. And that’s this it’s about that positive framing. And I know, I mean, all the latest research is coming out and sort of talking about, you know, how we create our own realities in the way that we seek to sort of define how we approach doing something.

In the same way that, you know, we know that when we’re with some people that sometimes can be called energy vampires, you know, cause they’re constant negative. They’re constantly talking about, you know, complaining about things then there are other people who will uplift you because the words that they use are always positively framed.

Whatever challenging circumstances one might be in. 

Yeah, absolutely. I suppose it’s about finding the language that’s gonna match that individual that we’re talking to, isn’t it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we hear, for example, the word resilience is banded around a lot, isn’t it?

And yet resilience in and of itself says things are gonna be tough. You know, things are gonna be difficult. So you’d better, you know, you’d better do something to you know, build yourself up against that.. 

 I mean the idea of resilience automatically, sort of in terms of the meaning that we’ve attached to what that term is.

I mean if, the historical meaning of the term resilience was about, you know ensuring that we are prepared, we are planned. We have got remedial measures in place, we’ve got approaches to how we overcome obstacles in place. so the resilience terms is acquired a certain negative meaning and, over time, something that’s quite positive, a term that’s quite positive can acquire a negative meaning and vice versa.

And, I always sort of, sort of come to.in the schoolyard, you know, remember we used to say, sticks and stones will break my bones and words will never harm me. But how untrue is that? You know, how many of us have been psychologically scarred over the years by things that have happened in this playground?

What people have said to us and how they are and, that’s the whole sort of underpinning of what words and how we choose which words to use in terms of how we communicate with each other and not just sort of you. It used to do with what words there are, how those words are used in the relevant context matter as well.

You know, just having nice words, but if the context is not right, it can have a sort of significantly different, let me give you an example. Yeah. It’s a relatively harmless sentence to say girls are as good as boys at maths. Relatively harmless, but think about this subtle sexism that these words perpetuate because the statement’s grammatical structure implies that being good at math is a more common trait with boys than girls.

And it’s just a simple sentence. Or for example, Or a black and ethnic minority person like me, someone would often say to me or for someone like you, you speak English really well. Okay? You don’t sound black enough to me. And this is something that’s been said. I mean, one of the MPs I think got into trouble.

An Asian MP got into trouble remember, for calling the former chancellor not black enough in the way that he speaks. They got into trouble for that. And where does your family come from? You know the, very famous, instance with The Queen’s aide having to leave her job because she was incessantly asking a, black guest where she was from.

Yeah. So this is all called linguistic sexism, or linguistic racism and regarded as a microaggression. 

Absolutely. So when that, because you know we’ve all been in that playground and when that, kind of behaviour transposes into the workplace what, kind of things have, you seen happen as a result?

Well, I mean, I think what we’ve got to go, and look at some of the historical context of this, which is that, you know Inappropriate language can marginalize, demean, disadvantage and discriminate against people. And in extreme circumstances, you know I mean we had an earlier conversation before starting the this, session is, it can dehumanize people.

That’s, you know, I mean, and that’s the important thing that it starts off from fairly subtle, what’s perceived to be sort of harmless words and sentences can then lead to sort of extreme circumstances where, you know you know, people are made to feel separate, a sense of shame, a sense of depression, self-doubt, and it sort of seeks to perfect your sense of false belief about individuals, about their culture, about their gender, about their sex, about their sexual orientation, their age, disability and a myriad of other personal identity and characteristics, you know, in terms of how they are. And I just want to sort of, without labouring the point, I want to sort of make this idea about dehumanization as a psychological process, you know, so that people could sort of understand the extent to which language plays this part in making people feel less than human.

And you’ll see throughout history that you know, the Holocaust, the Nazis were described, you know, as untermensch which is subhuman. You know, they were described as subhuman. You know Jewish people were called rats and depicted as disease carrying rodents. And in everything from military pamphlets to children’s books, that’s how they were depicted. The Hutus in Rwanda, the genocide occurred because the, Tutsis were called cockroaches. The Tutsis were called cockroaches. Indigenous people in many a different sort of cultures were referred to as savages. The Serbs called the Bosnians Aliens, and this slave owners throughout history considered their slaves as sub subhuman animals.

Now, more recently we’ll see that Boris Johnson referred to Muslim women wearing Niqab as letterboxes. And even more recently, an Asian ethnic minority home secretary Suella Braverman referring to immigrant invasion taking place in the UK. Now you’ve, we’ve seen some of the classic sort of issues that have happened, attacks on immigration centres

you know, in Dover, in High Wycombe the migration centre and far right extremist terrorists now have targeted Knowsley and riots taking place there. So those very poignant examples of how language Yeah. And, we’re only looking at the UK here, not the United States, and there’s far more you, know, interesting examples from there.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s a horrific catalogue of how people can just be abhorrent, isn’t it? A horrific catalogue. And I think the thing is, within organizations, very often people hear, you know they hear, somebody says something, and it’s just that one person saying something. But then there’s, if that’s not, if that’s not stamped out, you know, if that language is not stamped out what, do you, do?

You, what have you seen as the sort of ongoing result of, that kind of language? You being told that it is not acceptable. 

I mean, the result is that you know, your colleague will, you know, on a practical level, be less productive. They may have, you know, more sickness stays off work, they’ll feel depressed, so, I mean, you know, some of this, I mean the, research and statistics will show that people from marginalized and disadvantaged and discriminated against backgrounds are, you know, black and ethnic minority people are four times more likely to experience mental health problems in the workplace.

LGBTQIA people are two, two to three times more likely to have reported mental health problems in the workplace. You know in terms of workplace conflict. All these groups, marginalized groups, experience a higher level of conflict in the workplace. It all leads to lack of productivity, people leaving their jobs, the organization coming under disrepute, especially if it goes to tribunal.

Yeah. 

So the organization and brand image, et cetera, gets affected. 

. So from, sorry, I’m just gonna intervene. Yeah. So from, bottom to top, right across. It’s right across. It’s impacting individually, it’s impacting teams, it’s impacting even business, the organization,

even businesses like Starbucks, international business ,Tesla International business.

Yeah, Google. You name them, all of them have experienced some issues. I mean I think Starbucks spent 4 million about two years, 20, 20 12 in fact, where they trained all their staff where, you know in one of their stores they’d profiled black people and not allowed them to come in because they were wearing, you know, bling.

They were wearing you know clothing and attire that didn’t suit their clientele, that clientele, they didn’t let them in. So they spent 4 million or something in that region closing all their stores to train staff for one day. And Tesla’s got, I think, around 1400 black and ethnic minority people that are taking class action lawsuit and around 800 women taking sexism, discrimination.

Wow. Whoa, And the list goes on and on. So what, Lutfur for what? Just going back to. Making the, you know, as going back to the, vision of many organizations that they have plastered all over the walls and so on of respect and integrity and honesty and all, you know, word words, like really powerful words, positive words like that.

How, does an organization make those real on a day-to-day within, you know, on the floor as it were? 

And I think it starts off at the very individual level. I think, you know, often, people discuss and talk about leadership .And leadership, we’re not just sort of talking about C-suite representatives.

We’re talking about leadership at any level within the organization, you know, and it can be that, you are a coworker and you can express a degree of power and privilege. So I think we’ve got to sort of talk about power and privilege within this, that whatever your power and privilege is within an organizational setting, you have a certain element of it and you’ve got to try and sort of, if you’ve got those values within your organization, and even if you haven’t got those values, but you at least comply with the law because it’s unlawful, you know, first and foremost to use discriminatory language in the workplace.

And if we leave the legal bit aside, it’s morally and socially unjustifiable to behave in that manner. It’s just poor manners. You know, we talk about manners, we talk about a good etiquette in the workplace. It’s just really bad manners to, to discriminate and treat people any less than yourself. You know, treat others as you would like to be treated.

And, that’s the whole point. Let’s bring it back to sort of common sensical approaches, because the world of equality, diversity, language is very complex and people get fearful about, oh, what am I saying the right thing? Am I saying the wrong thing? And all I try and do and what, we should try and remember is it’s all about good manners and common sense.

 We, often talk about, sometimes if we think too much about the actual words that we use, we’d never get a word out of our mouth because we’d be constantly monitoring it. But if we come with that approach of kindness and empathy and engaging, connecting, then it’s gonna impact the kind of language that comes out of our, out, out of our mouths. What, do you think to that? 

I think so. So, so you’ve got this personal inte, you know, so the whole range of your own sort of personal approach to how you constantly having checks and balances on yourself to make sure that you’ve got good manners, you’re applying the right language in the right circumstances.

Who you are. Is important. Knowing who you are, what power you have, what privilege you have. Knowing who you are talking to, and what impact that, what you are going to say is gonna have on them. So if you’re talking to someone with less power than you, and in that word subordinate, I hate.

Your co colleague who may be reporting to you or is accountable to you in a way, which actually whatever you say is gonna impact them. So using the appropriate words that might lift them up rather than pull them down. Rather than undermine them, but up, you know. Upskill them is, what you need to be doing.

And similarly, you know I mean if, you look at a situation of a child-parent relationship, which is the classic example, .If a child jumps up and down all day and calling their dad, you’re terrible, you’re awful, or their mother, you know, you’re the worst mother in the whole world. It’s not gonna make them the worst mother in the whole world is it?

However, if the mother says he’s the worst child in the whole world, that child then grows up psychologically scarred thinking that they have very selfless worth. It’s that power plus prejudice that makes that oppressive behaviour, regardless of where it’s from, very impactful. So what a person in a powerful position does, has that impact on the organization.

We can always talk about, I mean, I’m just talking initially from an a personal responsibility point of view, but of course, organisations have policies, strategies, training programs, et cetera, and there’s a whole raft of issues to do with governance and accountability where you begin to change the culture of organizations using a whole systems approach.

But fundamentally, at the root of it all is personal responsibility. 

Yeah. Yeah. And I suppose it’s, is it through all those policies, strategies, learning and development, is it through all that, that people are reminded, if not they learn about the fact that personal responsibility within all this is is fundamental?

I think. I think so. I mean, reminding people as to the personal costs, individual costs on, humans. Both in terms of, you know, you know if a person is off work, the impact that it’s gonna have on them, their, livelihoods, their families. It’s a whole broader sort of societal impact that comes from that.

But then, you know, going back to our early conversation about, you know if, we’re a able to make people feel respected, valued, safe, and a sense of belonging, where actually the organization will reap better loyalty, better motivation. All the research shows that there’s greater innovation and creativity, higher performance and productivity, better bottom line profits for, you know, private sector organizations better performance and service solutions for public sector organizations. So I think it’s really important to sort of look at things in a holistic way. Yeah. The person and the organizational benefits, or disbenefits as it were. Yeah. Those are the things that need to be constantly, people need to be reminded of as to the power with which language has on organizations.

Definitely. 

And we’ve seen the power of language and branding, for instance. You know, branding is all about effective communication with words. You know and, it reminds me of the sort of 1970s Coke advert. Do you remember that? We want, you know, to teach the world to Sing?, remember that , those No, You may be too young for that one.

I remember it was one of the first adverts that we saw that was truly inclusive. They had a real inclusive range of people depicted on the screen and a song that was very much about loving and sharing and caring and what a brand they created. Coke took over the world. Yeah. A lot of people since then have emulated that and, are doing very well out of, you know, diversity branding their products and their organizations.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So what about when you know, what about from the individual’s perspective, who perhaps feels discriminated against, perhaps feels that they’re, you know, being, well, for one of a better word, being bullied. What’s your message to that person? 

I mean, most organizations I’d like to think have, you know, some level of human resources procedures. And so I mean, some organizations may even have a harassment bullying procedure there. So the first instance before resorting to that. If so, if you feel that you’ve been discriminated against, either through language or on someone’s behaviour, is to approach that person. If you can, to say it might be unwitting, it might be unknowing, it might be unconscious on that person’s part. So if you have the self-confidence or and, you are able to, first instance, you should approach that person so they can correct themselves, or at least say, sorry that, they didn’t intend to do that and they’re not gonna do it again.

And that’s the important thing. So one of the problems with, the cancel culture and the political correctness culture. And, I’ll talk about woke at some point and define how woke has been hijacked by many people .The term woke, which was a positive good, word has now been sort of made into something that’s almost used to beat people up with, you know, so it’s, it goes against a sort of equality, diversity inclusion philosophy.

But if we take the issue of not being overly politically correct, but someone who makes a genuine mistake, they need to be allowed to correct their mistake. And that’s what’s gone wrong with the inclusion strategists and advisors and people that are out there .That it’s been taken to such a level that, you know, no one can make a mistake and can rectify it.

And, even if you’ve said something 20 years ago, it then comes back to haunt you and you’re cancelled. And famously I think it was If Kevin Hart who was cancelled from hosting Oscars, and there are many, other stories as well. So I think it’s important to give people a chance in the first instance to say sorry, and that they’re not gonna repeat.

If they repeat it, then it’s wrong. Of course, in an organizational setting, if that doesn’t happen and you’re not feeling safe enough to do that, then you can approach your line manager or someone else to say, did that person do that deliberately?? Will they carry on sort of treating me in that way? If they do, then you can lodge your formal complaint and take it through the necessary procedures and processes of your organization.

It’s about finding somebody you feel able to that you trust, isn’t it? It’s about uh, the main thing is that you speak up either to that individual and or to somebody else that you think, you know is gonna help you to, change the situation. And that’s where that organizational culture piece comes in.

If your organization has created a culture of safe safety where you can speak up and you have got, you know, staff networks or what they call employee resource groups and they can be very, useful tools as well. 

Absolutely. Yeah. There’s a whole range of people that. That generally people can go to, to have that conversation.

Thank you so much Lutfur let’s now share your question that we invite or inviting everybody here to, respond to so Lutfur, would you like to take us through your, question here. 

So the, question really is about ourselves, each and every single one of us, either we’ve experienced some kind of discriminatory language, discriminatory behaviour, or we’ve witnessed it in the workplace.

If we have. What, was that experience? What was it like? What impact did it have on us? What impact did it have on the person that it was directed towards? And most importantly, what did we do about it? You know, what action positive or otherwise? And sometimes will we just passive observers and we just sort of.

You know, we felt bad about it, but that’s fine. You know, it doesn’t affect me that much. I just, you know, I don’t, may have sort of conjured up sort of relatively, negative memories, but that’s fine. We left it, we didn’t do anything about it. And, you know, personally, I’ve done that many a time because I didn’t feel the opportunity was right to challenge because I didn’t feel empowered enough.

So really want to sort of explore and understand from our delegates as to what their experiences have been and through the experience sharing with perhaps is something that we can learn from each other. 

Lovely. Thank you, Lutfur 

so yeah, we’re inviting you now who, who would like to respond to this question and or if you’ve got any other questions. As I said for Lutfur now is the time to maybe if you use the reaction, the hands up reaction or something so that we know that you. You have you’d like to say something, that’d be lovely.

So, hi Jacqueline. Do you just want to let everybody know where it is you work, and then share your thoughts with, Lutfur? 

Yeah, so I work in Volvo Construction equipment in Motherwell so we are very proud to have reached 9% female employees recently. So I don’t know.

I mean, I guess as a female I’ve faced these issues over and over and over. You know, being a female, being blonde, you know, being spoken down to You know, inappropriate sexual language being used towards you, especially when you’re younger. And then now in a very male orientated environment where I’m part of the senior members management team.

And even in that in the early days, it was very tough as a women to be taken seriously. There were some members of that team who looked down at you who would just make you feel like you didn’t really have a voice, maybe even there in the first place. So, Personally I suppose I have very thick skin . And that just made me tougher.

I think it did make me tougher. It made me, I was probably of an age where I was confident enough in my own ability to not let that put me down, but it was very frustrating. And I did have the backing of some of the teams. So I think it’s about, remaining confident in yourself trying to build resilience and trying to outthink some people

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks, Jacqueline. Thank you. Look for what’s your response to that? Do we just all need to get a bit tougher? 

My, first response is this, that it’s, fantastic that Jacqueline’s been able to cope with that and that she’s been able to build her inner strength to be able to achieve what she’s been able to achieve in her organization because of, and in spite of all of those things that have happened to her .What I would say is that if those things, that discriminatory practice, that prejudicial behaviour wasn’t there. I wonder where Jackie would be today. That’s, my question is that if you hadn’t had to put up with all that psychological stress, that physical stress, the impact that it might have had, your extra effort that you’ve had to put into having to deal with all of that, perhaps that energy could have gone into other things, whether in progress in the workplace or you know, achievement in other areas. So that’s the thing. So all of us that have to go through. , those discriminatory practices as oppressive behaviours. It takes a psychological strain. We tell ourselves, we’ve coped. It’s made us stronger. That it’s sometimes because of those things we’ve achieved what we’ve achieved. But then all the research shows that if those stresses and pressures weren’t there, we could have potentially done even better. I mean I’ve, often said that I have to be at least five to 10 times better than my white counterpart. In order to be able to get into an interview in order to be able to achieve you know, get through the interview and get into an organizational progression setting and so on, and that’s borne out by all the research as well.

That, you know you, have to apply extra effort, additional energies in order to be able to achieve the same levels of progress as your equivalent. In those settings. Yeah. So I think, so that that’s, what I would say. It’s very, important to sort of learn from Jacqueline’s experience as to what your own coping me, mechanisms are.

There’s a friend of mine. Professor Barbara Bender who’s written about what she calls you know, a step approach. She’s just given it an acronym in terms of when an incident occurs as to how to react with that incident you sort of, you go through you know, a five stage process of how you analyse that situation, when someone said something or behaved in a way that’s marginalizing or discriminatory. Do you immediately react?. And if so, how do you react? Is it worth reacting? At what point do you sort of challenge or you don’t challenge? How much do you tolerate? Do you not tolerate, et cetera, et cetera. There’s a whole psychological process that in every single instance you go through. But what then she goes on to sort of talk about is the toll that it takes on you because you’re having to do that day in day out, every single day of your work life. And it does take a toll eventually. And if you look at, all the mental health statistics, it disproportionately affects women, ethnic minorities in the workplace. There’s far higher levels of workplace conflict associated with those groups.

Yeah. Thank, you, Jacqueline. Can I just ask is there anything in retrospect you might have done differently? 

100%. I mean, a lot of that does resonate with me. I think the, people that have suffered the most out of this has been my family because I have had to work harder. I have to work longer hours.

I did travel a lot. You know, because you’re continually feeling that you have to prove yourself. So you’re, you know, probably more so than my male counterparts I was, yes I’ll go. So there’s definitely been an impact on my family life and I can directly relate that to, to that so yeah, standing up for myself sooner and, not beating myself up inside and throwing me confident on the outside. Then I suppose, What Allie’s saying that it’s probably not true and inside, and you are constantly delivering more than, what others are to, overcome what you perceive are those discretionary.

So yeah, I definitely agree with what was said and I, do think it’s the family that suffer a lot of the time or other things I do, you know, you know me, so, you know, I like my exercise, my training, that’s my mental stress relief. And I do practice self care. I do know how to read myself and, you know, and get the mood and get the thinking time.

So I, I have learned a lot of lessons over the years, but great. 

Thanks, Jacqueline. Thanks. That’s really powerful. Thank you for sharing. I think the, whole, even just the sharing stories can be a super support for, others, can’t it? Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s, through those stories that, you know we, connect we uplift ourselves and we find out different ways of how you know, we cope and how we not just cope, but actually how we progress and achieve because it’s, that’s what that, that’s the motivational element that comes out of those stories that that we share with each other. What’s important is that, that we don’t feel victims. We don’t take the victim mentality approach to this.

Yeah. But very much that we take control of how to deal with these issues because inequality as discrimination, prejudice, has been around from time beginning. It’s not right, but it’s always been around. And it’s to sort of see that as another challenge to address because it’s not gonna go away overnight.

And that’s our journey. It’s that journey of constant struggle of having to overcome it and each and every one of us taking that responsibility that if we can make our world of work right now, a little bit better for ourselves than others, so we perhaps it’ll be a little bit easier for the next person that’s working with us and certainly for the future based on that. And certainly think that’s how things are. If we look at how we’ve moved on from the seventies, the sixties, the seventies, things have changed. Things are a lot, better. They, have still a long way to go. There’s still a long way to go.

let’s share your, top tips then. Lutfur number one, take personal responsibility. How can you harness and use the power of words to empower and uplift yourself and others? Do you want to talk us through that? 

Oh, gosh. I think, you know, first and foremost you know, please forgive me. Sort of you know the, these seem very obvious tips. But I mean I, just use them as a sort of self reminder to myself. And being a, relatively simple person, I like sort of simple ideas and thoughts that seek to inspire me and ground me. And the personal responsibility component, as Jacqueline has sort of indicated earlier, no one’s gonna actually look after you if you don’t look after yourself, and no one’s going to sort of be able to change the environment, the world around you if you don’t do it yourself. And this issue about internalizing what equality, diversity, and inclusion means, especially as it sort of relates to communications and language, means that, you know, for ourselves we can create a positive world in terms of our outlook and how we deal with issues and challenges, but also how we can use the, power of inclusive language to empower, uplift others around us. Absolutely. And that’s the important thing about personal responsibility. Definitely. Be grateful for what you have. Share thankfulness. 

Yeah, and I think that’s just, you know, that’s just been from time beginning in terms of being thankful for, you know, the good things that we have, our family, our friends, and so on and that can be really infectious. When we are grateful when we are saying thank you to someone you know, and, make it a sort of regular practice in our life. It just reduces the anxiety and stress in in, in, how we engage with others. And, you know that often I found that insensitive and inappropriate words come out of anxiety and it creates a sort of culture of complaining. You know, how many of us have said sort of each other that, you know we don’t really want to be around that person, they’re constantly winging and they’re complaining. Yet when we’re around people who express gratitude and say thank you often, it can help to sort of conquer issues to do with fear, arrogance, and insecurity.

And it’s this insecurity that leads to people’s arrogance and fear. 

 Look, I think Sometimes people can get stuck in that complaining cycle, can’t they? ? And actually it needs somebody from the outside to gently , raise awareness of the fact that actually every time you hear them they’re, complaining about something.

What’s up? Because sometimes we, get into that pattern, don’t we? Of even, yeah. They get into that pattern and it does need somebody from the outside, to lift it up. 

Yeah. Someone who’s a complainer doesn’t want to remind you that they’re a complainer the only way you can try and influence them is you being positive and you sort of being thankful and grateful and, sharing that with that individual to say, you know, I hear what you say, this is how I see things.

Yeah. Nice. Yeah. So reframing it almost. Yeah. So have humility and be honest with yourself and others. Have the courage to say, sorry. Forgive.

Okay. so we are living in a world, so arrogance comes from, you know, a sense of feeling insecure, a sense of you know, the root of arrogance and, hubris is about trying to sort of show people that we are something more than we are not. And this, humility and being honest with ourselves come from the idea that we all make mistakes and that none of us know it all. Okay. Yeah. And when we do, those do make those mistakes, whether it’s words or actions, that we take responsibility for those and we say we’re sorry.

Saying Sorry. It’s not gonna make you any weaker. It’s not gonna demean you in any way. It just shows that you’re mature, integrated human being who knows how to, you know, behave in a way, which when you’re making mistakes, you’re, you can own up to. And it also shows that you’re aware that you need to continuously learn and grow, and it’s only gonna make you stronger and better in your individual social relationships as well as work relationships 

yeah, definitely. Be compassionate have empathy and practice being non-judgmental. Challenge some judge someone’s behaviour, not their humanity. That’s great. 

Yeah. So I mean, you know, we, how many times have we, you know, with the best of intentions at heart we’ve, we’ve sought to judge people because of what they’ve done or something that they’ve said and so on. I think it’s really important that we, constantly have those checks and balances in ourselves that we approach the way that we see people, and hear people with a degree of compassion and empathy.

And it can affect you know how people behave towards us. It doesn’t mean that we don’t challenge. inappropriate language and behaviour, but we are not, we’re challenging with compassion and empathy and understanding and we’re not sort of judging their humanity. So that’s the sort of important thing, that’s the distinction, the important distinction that we need to bring. And within that compassion is this idea of forgiveness. You know, so that if someone has made a genuine mistake that we seek to forgive them and we move on. We don’t forget what they’ve said, but we make sure we remind them that, you know, this is not something that’s acceptable.

Absolutely, and give of yourself, your time. Support a colleague or someone in need from a marginalized or disadvantaged background. Be a really caring person. 

So this is about, I mean, when you give something, an item or money to someone, we’ve heard that you give very little, but when you give of yourself and your time you give everything, because in that moment, you’re giving everything that you’ve got of yourself to that individual. And I think it’s so very vital for people from marginalized disadvantage backgrounds, that if someone in a position of power and privilege can be an ally, can be a sponsor, can be a mentor, can actually transform not just that individual’s life, but that individual’s family’s life and the community and society that person is from.

So being a really caring person and asking someone, you know how they really are on a day-to-day basis, how you really are, and listening, because we often ask ourselves, how are you? And the other person says, I’m fine thank you, and that’s it. That’s the end of that conversation. But actually if we say, look, no, really, I want to understand how you really are, how things are, and if we’re observant about that person’s expressions, body language, and behaviour, there’ll be little, small cues where they’re actually asking for help, but they’re not using the words to ask for help.

Sometimes the people in the greatest need. will never say I need help, but we need to be aware of those things and be available to provide that support to sponsorship, allyship, and mentorship to that person. For at the end of the day, what we give is what we get in return. 

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, as you said, it’s actually, it’s not rocket science, but we do by human nature, almost need to be reminded of these core skills right?

Absolutely. And, you know, a lot of this, I mean, again, I said it’s not revelatory rocket science in terms of these reminders. These are all reminders that, and it’s like sort of values that we have for ourselves and values that are in an organization. We may not, ever completely achieve them.

I mean, you know, for me, I’m constantly reminding myself of these things to try and as, as a set of standards that I can hold to. And, you know, sometimes I’m not good enough to be able to sort of meet 50% of what I’ve just sort of said and you know, shared with people, but at least it’s there.

At least I’m striving and we should all strive towards you know, these kind of, sort of approaches and, values that that that are good. You know? Good, good. Absolutely. Good for ourselves. Good, for our Society.. 

Absolutely. Great. Look, thank you so much. Let me just ask you a few quick fire questions.

So quick question and quick answer. Hopefully , we’ll see how we go. So Lutfur what does vulnerability mean to you? It means honesty. It means being honest with myself it means that strength.

 So those are two words that immediate immediately come to me because being, vulnerable is an acknowledgement that I have limitations, that I I’m not gonna be fantastic at everything.

I’m maybe reasonably good at some things. And it also means that, this honest expression that people can understand who I am, what I am

beautiful 

and, behave accordingly towards, yeah. Yeah. 

Wonderful. .What’s going to revolutionize workplace mental health?

I think, you know we, touched on this word love earlier. I think you will find increasingly even the great sort of management gurus and great leadership experts and writers talk about that. And, you know, you can term it as compassion and empathy but for me it’s still the most powerful word, that, there is. It’s the term that we need to sort of apply and bring into common workplace usage. You know there is a lot to be said about that term, and it’s not just sort of, you know, love in terms of, you know, individual personal relationships. Love the polemical love and the love around, you know, workplace relationships. You know how we look after each other, care for each other.

So you can apply whatever term that suits your organizational circumstances, but it’s that compassion, empathy, caring, will transform workplaces. Young people do not want to work for an organization that isn’t compassionate, that isn’t caring, that isn’t empathetic, that doesn’t work with love . 

Fantastic.

And what message would you give your younger self Lutfur? I’d remind myself of those five tips because I didn’t have them when I was growing up. So I’d, sort of go back to those and certainly to be a bit more disciplined would be sort of the key message to I that I’d say to myself, be a bit more disciplined, apply myself a little bit more.

Well, I don’t know, but by, by the sounds of your cv, you’ve being extremely disciplined and I believe you’re paper on inclusive language is coming out. Would you like to share with everybody when that’s due? Yes. I, so a, labour of love for me. and the C I P D. I’ve spent around eight, nine months of my work life writing this.

We’re hoping to sort of launch it sort of mid to late April. It’s the inclusive language guide which provides sort of a step-by-step approach for organizations, employers, people managers, as to how to use inclusive language for very much the sort of kind of things that we’ve talked about today, but also provides an A to Z of all the terms that are used around the equality diversity inclusion landscape at the moment.

Wonderful. Thank you so much Lutfur. I’m gonna hand over now to Angus to give his formal thanks to you. 

Thank you. Lutfur that was fascinating and eye-opening as well. think there’s we were talking a little bit before we started here today, we were talking a little bit about history and I think there is a historical context here.

In recent times we’ve heard a lot about Donald Trump talking about fake news. . If you go back to, we also mentioned, you mentioned the Nazis. Hitler talked a lot about fake news. It was some of the words that he used. I think the first person to use fake news was actually Julius Caesar. So this goes all the way back a long, time.

And as you say, it is always been with us. And you know, I really like the fact that it’s always been there, but don’t be a victim. Take control, take responsibility. We can start to change things for people. I’m reading a book on sports Psychology at the moment and it’s fascinating. The use of language in sports psychology for elite athletes is fascinating and the difference that can make.

And if somebody were to say to an elite athlete you know, you’re useless, you’re not gonna, you’re hopeless, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. That’s a whole different mindset from you’re gonna win gold. You are world class. It’s a completely different part of your brain that you’re accessing.

There’s a biochemical reaction there. So the importance of words in getting it right. I love your message. Work with love, care, passion, empathy, and a strong self-belief versus work hard. Which would you rather have? Yeah. Which would you rather have? Work hard or work with love, care, passion, empathy.

A strong self-belief it’s obvious to me. So. Thank you Lutfur thank you for your time today, thank you for all the effort that you’ve put in before this. I know you know that you’ve thought a lot about it and we really, appreciate it. One of the great privileges that we have at Headtorch and running the Wellbeing Hour is that we get to meet amazing people so thank you for coming on and you know, absolutely fascinating. Thank you. 

Thank you, Angus. Thank you Amy. Thank you for having me. It’s been an absolute pleasure and an honour to have participated. 

Thank you. 

Also an honour. Thank you. So we have coming up on the next Wellbeing Hour we have Tim Duggan. 

Tim is an award-winning author, advisor, and optimist. He is an Australian guy. He has two books there, cult Status and Killer Thinking. He’s won awards for both of them, national Awards in Australia. I bumped into him by pure chance at one of those pop-up restaurant events where y’all sit around the same table.

And so he’s coming to speak to us next month, which I think is going to be fascinating as well. So join us then. It’s 23rd March again at 12 noon. Dates for your diary. We have on the 7th of March we’re with Scottish Engineering. We are running a people manager tester event. So if you’d like to join us there, please let us know and we’ll send you the details.

As I mentioned, we’ve got Tim Duggan on the Wellbeing Hour. We then on 27th April, we have Rob Williams and Rob comes from a vet practice called Vet Partners. Vet partners have 8,000 employees in the UK and three and a half thousand employees in mainland Europe, so not your average vet practice, and he is head of talent. Again we’ve known Rob very well for a long time and talking about words, Rob and I bonded over swearing one day. Yep. He’s Irish. He was swearing in Irish. I was swearing in Glaswegian and we got on really well. So follow us on LinkedIn. We do run events like this on a regular basis, so follow us there and you’ll see them.

There is a reminder that if you want a free Headtorch Health check this is a one hour consultation. Drop as a note and we will happily do that with you. And equally, if you want to find out more about our tailored solutions for our senior leaders, people managers, and frontline staff, give us a shout and we’d be delighted to hear what you’re doing in terms of workplace mental health.

So I think if there is nothing left or anymore questions that is it from us today. Thank you very much everybody for coming along. We really appreciate you doing that. Thank you. Thank you everyone. Thank you. Thank you.