Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood, and I'm your host for the Inclusion
Joanne Lockwood: Bites podcast. In this series, I have been interviewing a number of
Joanne Lockwood: amazing people and simply having a conversation about the subject of inclusion,
Joanne Lockwood: belonging, and generally making the world a better place for everyone to thrive.
Joanne Lockwood: If you'd like to join me in the future, then please do drop me a
Joanne Lockwood: line to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: That's S-E-E, Change Happen dot co dot uk. You can catch up
Joanne Lockwood: with all of the previous shows on Itunes, Spotify, of course, the usual
Joanne Lockwood: places. So plug in your headphones, grab a decaf, and
Joanne Lockwood: let's get going. Today is episode 31
Joanne Lockwood: with the title, will all diversity and inclusion just happen?
Joanne Lockwood: I have the absolute honor and privilege to be joined by William Buist.
Joanne Lockwood: William describes himself as someone who works with clients to ensure they
Joanne Lockwood: have the clear business strategies and goals to make them stronger. When I
Joanne Lockwood: asked William to describe his superpower, he said that it is
Joanne Lockwood: curiosity.
Joanne Lockwood: Hello, William. Welcome to the show.
William Buist: Hello, Jo. I'm very good to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me
William Buist: on. Absolute pleasure. I'm pleased we've been talking about this for a couple
Joanne Lockwood: of months, and I'm pleased we finally made it. So, William,
Joanne Lockwood: do you think that diversity and inclusion will just happen?
William Buist: It's such an interesting question. And I think there have been,
William Buist: certainly, you know, there's been a lot of legislation over the years
William Buist: to try to help, move this along and make sure that we
William Buist: are treating everybody as we should as equals.
William Buist: And I think the danger is that we kind of think that there are
William Buist: certainly some people out there who now think that diversity
William Buist: and inclusion either has already happened, or
William Buist: that they don't need to do anything more. And I I just think
William Buist: whilst that's possible, if we were
William Buist: to take that view of just letting things run as they are,
William Buist: change would still happen, but it would happen too slowly. I think
William Buist: too slowly for you, too slowly for me, too slowly for the world at large.
William Buist: We need to take action. You know, I'm a I'm a white bloke,
William Buist: So I've had privilege all my life. I've had an unfair
William Buist: advantage, and too often that unfair advantage
William Buist: actually is is invisible. I I haven't noticed that I've had an
William Buist: advantage because I'm the one with it. I think
William Buist: it's always very easy to see the disadvantage
William Buist: if you are the one that is disadvantaged.
William Buist: And I as a result, I kind of, for a long time,
William Buist: not really realized the impact that that privilege has
William Buist: had on on other people. You know, I I see
William Buist: today if we kind of become aware of it as the years have gone by
William Buist: and seen people that I know and love struggling to overcome
William Buist: the disadvantage that the world has thrown at them
William Buist: and and realizing that I wouldn't have had those difficulties. You
William Buist: know, if I want to, open a door
William Buist: into a company, if I if I pick up the phone and and dial the
William Buist: number and ask to speak to somebody, I'm more likely to get
William Buist: through than some other people because I've got a male
William Buist: voice, because I'm a white bloke. You know, and that just
William Buist: feels intrinsically wrong. But if equally well,
William Buist: if you are a white bloke, you may not have
William Buist: really noticed that happening because you pick the phone up, you get put through. So,
William Buist: you know, what what is there to notice? You you've gone to do something and
William Buist: it's happened. It's very difficult to be in the shoes of the
William Buist: people for whom that doesn't happen. And I mean, I know I'm using a
William Buist: very simple example, but but it's true in so many areas.
William Buist: So do I think it would just happen? No. I don't. I think
William Buist: people like me who've got privilege need
William Buist: to consciously do something
William Buist: to step away from that privilege and level the playing field.
William Buist: And I want to level the playing field by bringing the parts of it
William Buist: that are struggling and finding it harder
William Buist: up rather than, you know, damaging and and doing
William Buist: down the good things that are on that playing field. And I think that's,
William Buist: you know, that's a a harder thing to do than just
William Buist: to kind of some of the, you know, muted
William Buist: legislation over the years has sought to do, you know,
William Buist: actively discriminating against a group that's had advantage doesn't
William Buist: necessarily do anything to remove discrimination. What we need to do
William Buist: is think about how do we how do we get into a situation where it
William Buist: doesn't happen at all, where it's not part of the consideration.
William Buist: That's a very that's a different world, not an amendment of the current one.
William Buist: And and I think that's hard. I think it's, you know, we all need to
William Buist: be thinking about how do we do that. Jo sorry. That's a
William Buist: long answer to a very simple question. Yeah. That's a very good answer.
William Buist: We are. Very good answer, I mean I've
Joanne Lockwood: heard a saying that, a fish doesn't see the water it
Joanne Lockwood: swims in until it's taken out of the water And that's often
Joanne Lockwood: how privilege works, you don't see your privilege until you're taken
Joanne Lockwood: out of your privilege or you're you suddenly have something that changes your life
Joanne Lockwood: and makes you appreciate your privilege. And yeah, that's very true. And the other thing
Joanne Lockwood: that resonates with what you're saying is that
Joanne Lockwood: we need to involve everybody in these discussions and
Joanne Lockwood: to demonize white men, to demonize people who
Joanne Lockwood: have privilege, and not involved in conversations
Joanne Lockwood: doesn't drive change, so it's about collaborative corporate conversations
Joanne Lockwood: which is what I believe in. I think the other thing that what you said
Joanne Lockwood: struck me was that and I paraphrase what you said what we need is
Joanne Lockwood: rapid evolution rather than revolution. So it's not about
Joanne Lockwood: throwing away everything we've currently got. It's about evolving at a pace of
Joanne Lockwood: change that is acceptable to everybody
Joanne Lockwood: whilst maintaining what is working. And I think that would
Joanne Lockwood: be more making people more feel more comfortable because I think there's a danger
Joanne Lockwood: that by being inclusive and being
Joanne Lockwood: forward thinking, we leave people behind and often people leaving behind are the
Joanne Lockwood: incumbents and then they feel more marginalized in the same way that I think when
Joanne Lockwood: we looked at post apartheid, South Africa, then
Joanne Lockwood: the white community were then marginalized in a different way. So and I'm not
Joanne Lockwood: saying I I don't understand South African politics Jo I'm not making any judgment call
Joanne Lockwood: there. But what we wanna try and do is make sure that there's equity in
Joanne Lockwood: society for everybody and suddenly we don't end up
Joanne Lockwood: displacing people and say, well, you've had your turn now,
Joanne Lockwood: it's now our turn and that all that does is create reluctance for change
Joanne Lockwood: and people will tend to barricade their castle and say well I'm not going to
Joanne Lockwood: let you in and I think my start is always
Joanne Lockwood: dialogue, corporate collaboration, talking, cooperation, lower
Joanne Lockwood: the drawbridge, sit round and in pirate terms,
Joanne Lockwood: parley, talk about the problems, but not let
Joanne Lockwood: talking be a preventative of progress. We don't want lots
Joanne Lockwood: of committees, we don't want lots of tracked out. If we want gender equality, we
Joanne Lockwood: need to have some really tight timescales, we need to be looking at 2030 and
Joanne Lockwood: that's not far away. Some might argue that 2030 is a long way away or
Joanne Lockwood: too far, but we've gotta start making change because it starts in something
Joanne Lockwood: realistic. But yeah. No. I completely agree with what you're saying.
William Buist: Yeah. Yeah. It's
William Buist: it's you you're right. 2030 isn't very far away.
William Buist: It it will be here before we know it, in
William Buist: many ways. And I think if we were to get to 2030
William Buist: and not have a different world
William Buist: where, you know, people were seen for who they are, how they
William Buist: feel, what they think, the the thoughts that they
William Buist: have, and the value that they bring to the world by what they do and
William Buist: how they behave. And in and in all of that, I haven't mentioned anything
William Buist: on which we discriminate or create
William Buist: this kind of sense of othering that still exists in society. See
William Buist: it every day. See people talking about, you know, immigration
William Buist: in ways that is discriminating against
William Buist: primarily color of skin, but other things as well. You know, religion can come into
William Buist: that as well. And there's this whole
William Buist: piece around, you know, people like me, and I don't mean
William Buist: people like me William Beers. I mean, that sense of people like
William Buist: me as a stronger draw than people who are not
William Buist: like me. And that's always gonna be true. It's part of the human
William Buist: condition. But that's about difference. It's not about better or
William Buist: worse. And too often, it's it's
William Buist: interpreted as better and worse rather
William Buist: than just different. They're not looking for and celebrating those differences and
William Buist: saying, what can this teach us? You know, what what is there
William Buist: about somebody who's blind in terms of the way
William Buist: they perceive the world? Because clearly they're not seeing it. They're
William Buist: feeling it, hearing it, tasting it, and touching it.
William Buist: Now what is it that they get from doing that that I don't get because
William Buist: I look at it? And what learning is doing
William Buist: that? And then and and when you have those conversations, boy, do you learn some
William Buist: stuff that's interesting?
William Buist: And, you know, that takes me into takes
William Buist: me into a little story, actually, about one of the things that I think as
William Buist: a business person that we that we all do is,
William Buist: you know, we're we're we're talking to the people we know, to our clients,
William Buist: to people who have run across us. And and from time to time, they ask
William Buist: things like, you know, a question that starts with, who do you know
William Buist: who? Who do you know who does a
William Buist: diversity and inclusion podcast? Or who do you know who speaks
William Buist: on, speaks on communication
William Buist: skills? And those questions, you know, they're trying to get
William Buist: to somebody in my mind who I know, who I understand,
William Buist: who I think is good at that thing that they're asking about, and who
William Buist: I would refer. And I I remember
William Buist: when I first Joanne, an organization called the PSA,
William Buist: of which we are both members, the Professional Speaking Association,
William Buist: which some of your listeners, I'm sure will be too, but others others
William Buist: perhaps haven't heard of it. And one of the things that
William Buist: struck me very quickly was how collaborative
William Buist: that community of people is and how much referral
William Buist: goes on between speakers of other speakers. You
William Buist: know, for people who are all in the industry of speaking,
William Buist: there is almost no competition because we all speak on our
William Buist: on our topic, whatever our topic is. So we're we're not
William Buist: worried about referring others because we're referring them for their topic, not
William Buist: for ours. But one of the things I noticed was that,
William Buist: there was a tendency for people, and I think rightly, way, only to
William Buist: refer to those people who they had seen speak and who they knew
William Buist: well. And you look at the history of the speaking
William Buist: industry, and the history of the speaking industry was white blokes.
William Buist: And so what you've got is people who've seen white blokes who are really
William Buist: good at what they do, and so the white blokes refer to white blokes.
William Buist: And it's not that they're trying
William Buist: to exclude anybody, and it's not that they're trying not to be diverse. They're
William Buist: just the people that they've seen and that they know.
William Buist: And so I I looked to that and I thought, let me have a look
William Buist: at my black book and see who would I refer. And I
William Buist: started realizing that my black book too was filled with people who were
William Buist: white male predominantly. And I thought this
William Buist: that something should Joanne, and the only person who can change that is me.
William Buist: So I've been spending the last 5 or 6 years deliberately
William Buist: seeking out people from from other backgrounds,
William Buist: other, you know, other diversities, other and
William Buist: seeking to be inclusive in who do I know? Who's in my black book?
William Buist: And I remember somebody we both know that sadly is no longer with us, Joy
William Buist: Marston. Joy,
William Buist: wonderful black lady who who spoke really
William Buist: about motivation and keeping going when times were tough,
William Buist: and and a whole, you know, whole beautiful style that she had. And
William Buist: she was speaking down the road from where I live in Cardiff.
William Buist: And I thought, I haven't seen her speak. I'm going to go and see her
William Buist: speak because then I can put I can put Jo in my black book as
William Buist: one of the people who I would refer, you know, if if if
William Buist: that's worthwhile doing. And,
William Buist: there's 2 things that happened. 1 is that Joy was, you know,
William Buist: quite taken aback to find me there in the audience. It wasn't
William Buist: an audience you would expect to see me in, and I explained why I come
William Buist: to to see you speak. And and we struck up a
William Buist: really strong and enduring friendship,
William Buist: from from having done that. And she taught me an awful lot
William Buist: that helped me with my speaking, which wasn't why I went to Seav at all.
William Buist: And and part of my point here is that when we are inclusive,
William Buist: we're gonna get benefits we didn't even consider when we set
William Buist: out to do those things. And I just would invite
William Buist: listeners to think about where have you got an
William Buist: inadvertent, unintentional bias in the
William Buist: things that you do and say and think that lead you to
William Buist: an a less inclusive group of people than you
William Buist: could otherwise have. And what can you do to change that? Because
William Buist: that's how we change this. That's how we make the world more inclusive.
William Buist: Little a a 100000000 little changes
William Buist: is much better than one piece of legislation that most people don't understand.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. I I think nudges is a good word as well. We can make a
Joanne Lockwood: small nudge, inclusive nudge. We can be an
Joanne Lockwood: ally or whatever. Ally. Ally should just have to be huge massive
Joanne Lockwood: gestures as you say. It can be a small nudge, it can be a small
Joanne Lockwood: invitation, it could be amplifying, it could be creating space for someone
Joanne Lockwood: to have access to something they wouldn't have had without your without your input.
Joanne Lockwood: And it's interesting what you're talking about networking it's I know many people who come
Joanne Lockwood: from marginalized or underrepresented communities or are
Joanne Lockwood: underrepresented in certain positions, networking is often a
Joanne Lockwood: big barrier because it's generally the domain and I'm
Joanne Lockwood: not saying historically it was the domain of the white man or
Joanne Lockwood: the man in power, you had in order to go to a
Joanne Lockwood: breakfast networking event, you had to have availability to go
Joanne Lockwood: to breakfast somewhere else where many working women,
Joanne Lockwood: there are many working parents who aren't women as well, but there are many many
Joanne Lockwood: working women who had responsibilities for child care, found it very
Joanne Lockwood: difficult to, to do both jobs, you know, go
Joanne Lockwood: networking at breakfast and make the children okay and sort out the home etcetera
Joanne Lockwood: etcetera. And then another networking zone is lunch hour and
Joanne Lockwood: then and then there's after work networking and again there's often discriminations
Joanne Lockwood: again against women who have had home and family responsibilities.
Joanne Lockwood: And as we both know, it's quite difficult sometimes to break into the networking
Joanne Lockwood: clique, You gotta have a level of confidence, maybe you need to be referred
Joanne Lockwood: in by somebody. So if you haven't got access to that power and
Joanne Lockwood: privilege circle, how do you make your first break? How do you get
Joanne Lockwood: someone to give you that leg in? And as you were saying, the important thing
Joanne Lockwood: here is just creating that little bit of movement, identifying someone's on the
Joanne Lockwood: outside and just opening the door and say come in meet my friends
Joanne Lockwood: this is so and so they're fantastic they they do this and I've used them
Joanne Lockwood: before and they're amazing. And that's what networking is about,
Joanne Lockwood: which is to make sure we're doing it to people who are not the traditional
Joanne Lockwood: people. I've seen people who go network and get
Joanne Lockwood: all you end up evaluated with someone suitable for the club.
Joanne Lockwood: They all sit around and discuss about this person, say, well, actually they're not really
Joanne Lockwood: very business y. They're a bit they're a bit kind of,
Joanne Lockwood: bit working class for us really. We're here we're a bit more business professional and
Joanne Lockwood: I've seen people actually creating judgments on whether someone's good
Joanne Lockwood: enough to join the networking club because of their their social standing.
Joanne Lockwood: And that was less than 5 that's about 5 or 6 years ago and I
Joanne Lockwood: think are we we must be still doing that, it must
Joanne Lockwood: be still happening I can't believe the society's changed that much. But we we are.
Joanne Lockwood: We're furthering these these as you call it othering, which is a great term.
Joanne Lockwood: We're seeing people who are different to us as other, the outsider. And
Joanne Lockwood: and they're still doing so. How how I mean, I don't know how much networking
Joanne Lockwood: you do outside the PSA, but it's it still happens on on LinkedIn maybe,
Joanne Lockwood: we're amplifying different people, maybe people like us.
William Buist: Yeah. And I think there's I mean, there's a there's a real
William Buist: challenge around understanding who the
William Buist: people in the group are from the outside as well. You know,
William Buist: that as well as as you've rightly
William Buist: described, that whole ethos in a networking group of,
William Buist: you know, are they good enough? And I mean, who who defines what good is
William Buist: for goodness sake? I mean, it's just it's a nonsense, isn't it?
William Buist: And it it's one of the things I think that, you know, we're recording
William Buist: this at the, at the beginning of March,
William Buist: 2021. So, you know, we're we're in a lockdown situation
William Buist: country. We're a year almost a year into, the pandemic and
William Buist: having to work much more frequently remotely. You and I
William Buist: were just chatting before we started recording about how that's affected
William Buist: our business and our ability to reach out to to people
William Buist: and to get our businesses in a wider you know,
William Buist: with wider acceptance. I know
William Buist: I don't know about you, but I've been certainly been chatting to people all over
William Buist: the world in a way that I simply would not have done had I been
William Buist: traveling because, you know, chat to somebody in Australia for half an
William Buist: hour and fly out there to do that. You know? I mean, it was it
William Buist: was it's just not not feasible. It's become it was
William Buist: always feasible before, but it tended not to happen. And now we've got this
William Buist: opportunity to network in a very different way. And I
William Buist: think I I'm delighted because I've seen people
William Buist: on those networking calls and and events and things
William Buist: who you wouldn't necessarily normally see because they're in a
William Buist: wheelchair, or they're blind, or they've got
William Buist: some other disability that that means it's difficult for them to travel or
William Buist: to get out or to to go, as you say, at
William Buist: breakfast time or in the evening when when other pressures come to
William Buist: bear. And that opportunity
William Buist: to have time spent with
William Buist: people for whom you wouldn't normally spend time has
William Buist: just reinforced again to most of the people I know and to
William Buist: especially to me that people are just people. You
William Buist: know, they're just it doesn't matter whether the body's working
William Buist: properly or not. You know, if you've got some physical disability or
William Buist: or what the color of your skin is or what religion you are, we're
William Buist: all human. We all feel. We all think. And we all have we
William Buist: all have the opportunity to listen and process in our own way from our
William Buist: own experience and play back, you know, as you did
William Buist: earlier in this podcast. You know, you listened to what I said and you paraphrased
William Buist: it and you played it back. And then I I'm hearing that
William Buist: paraphrase. What I'm hearing is what you heard
William Buist: tempered with your experience, all the years of experience that
William Buist: you've had and how valuable is it to get that feedback.
William Buist: You know, have I been clear in my communication? I can only tell
William Buist: when I hear it played back to me. And
William Buist: what I'm what I'm delighted to see is that people are
William Buist: kinda having their eyes opened a bit to the fact that everybody can bring
William Buist: value, regardless of their history, regardless of their social
William Buist: standing, regardless of anything. If they're in a conversation
William Buist: and they're bringing to bear their viewpoint, It has as
William Buist: much value as anybody else. And the more we can show that and demonstrate
William Buist: it, the less the more we break down that fear that
William Buist: of the other that we've been talking about. And it's a
William Buist: it's a fear. It's not based on anything systematic
William Buist: other than an emotion. And and the way we break down
William Buist: fear is to build familiarity and and comfort and trust.
William Buist: And I think that's something that this medium, you know, the
William Buist: the the in Lockwood medium of communicating
William Buist: across technology has really helped to do. And I just hope
William Buist: that hangs around when we move back into a more
William Buist: open society where we can meet in person as well. And and I kind
William Buist: of a challenge for those who are listening is how are you
William Buist: going to be as inclusive as you have been on on Zoom
William Buist: and all those other tools when you're
William Buist: back into traveling and meeting people. What what are you gonna do
William Buist: differently because of what you've learned in the last year to
William Buist: be more inclusive? And I think if we all think
William Buist: about that question a little bit, well, that might make quite a difference.
William Buist: Yeah. I I love what you're saying about the listening element here. And,
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, we're speakers. We like to share stories. We like to share our own
Joanne Lockwood: story, and we like to listen to other stories. But One of the things I
Joanne Lockwood: always focus on is as a human species we tend to be most of our
Joanne Lockwood: conversations about around trying to sell our own ideas we always want
Joanne Lockwood: to say we're right, we want to give our perspective and
Joanne Lockwood: educate somebody. And we do that all the time, you know, not just in
Joanne Lockwood: professional but when we're trying to to decide which cinema film
Joanne Lockwood: we're going to go and watch, we want to persuade the other person we're going
Joanne Lockwood: with, we want to watch our film or their film, we try to come into
Joanne Lockwood: consensus. What I encourage people to do in a DNI
Joanne Lockwood: space when even in a humanity space is to start trying to prove
Joanne Lockwood: yourself wrong all the time, which may sound like an oxymoron, may sound a bit
Joanne Lockwood: crazy, but if we try and prove ourselves wrong, we'll get to
Joanne Lockwood: the truth quicker. Because otherwise what we end up doing is trenching in our
Joanne Lockwood: positions trying to both trying to prove ourselves right. Whereas if I
Joanne Lockwood: start asking you questions about your reality about your perception,
Joanne Lockwood: I'm going to learn about you and why you think something.
Joanne Lockwood: So we're not actually having a debate about the minutiae of the point we're
Joanne Lockwood: trying to make, we're trying to understand the logic or be or the person behind
Joanne Lockwood: the point they're trying to make. Because I may not we may not agree on
Joanne Lockwood: the point, But I may be able to understand that your lived experience where
Joanne Lockwood: you've where you've been in life, the things that affected you have led you
Joanne Lockwood: to think this is a good idea. I Jo, well, I don't see it's a
Joanne Lockwood: good idea because I've had this. And when we start to understand who we are,
Joanne Lockwood: we start to forget about the point of right or wrong. We just go,
Joanne Lockwood: actually, I understand about William now and I kind of realize where he's where you're
Joanne Lockwood: coming from or where you've said that. And we're still we're
Joanne Lockwood: not agreeing to disagree, we're just agreeing to understand each
Joanne Lockwood: other's perspectives of why something is different between us. I
Joanne Lockwood: think that's that's the challenge of trying to prove yourself wrong
Joanne Lockwood: rather than always trying to prove yourself right because otherwise we we just end up
Joanne Lockwood: in these entrenched, unwinnable arguments when nobody comes
Joanne Lockwood: out enlightened or with any more
Joanne Lockwood: knowledge than they started with. And that's that's because by opening our
Joanne Lockwood: mind, I can come up with another opinion without having
Joanne Lockwood: to agree with you. Yeah, show me your workings out. We may have a
Joanne Lockwood: different answer, but I get your workings out, I can see where we differ.
Joanne Lockwood: That's I think the power of listening,
Joanne Lockwood: and reflecting and understanding somebody to just to learn about someone that's
Joanne Lockwood: perspective. I think that's the power of, you know, when we talk about diversity, we
Joanne Lockwood: talk about inclusion, it's about the power of other people. It's about those those
Joanne Lockwood: powers of other perspectives. There's powers of difference of opinions,
Joanne Lockwood: though, someone from a different ethnicity, a different faith, a different background,
Joanne Lockwood: a different gender, whatever that whatever the gender identity is.
Joanne Lockwood: That person has a different perspective on life to me. And I
Joanne Lockwood: wanna learn about that perspective, so I can incorporate that into my model
Joanne Lockwood: and go, okay, I know what it's like to be me, but I don't know
Joanne Lockwood: what it's like to be you. So let me hear your story. And
Joanne Lockwood: next time I meet someone who's different from me, I'll go, okay, I've heard lots
Joanne Lockwood: of stories, I kind of get different perspectives now. And is it and I
Joanne Lockwood: can then be involved in their conversation because I've got that sort of
Joanne Lockwood: way of thinking in my head and I think that that's the kind of the
Joanne Lockwood: key thing. But picking up on the other thing you were talking about is the
Joanne Lockwood: the othering, the the disability. I I watched,
Joanne Lockwood: on iplay the night a documentary called silenced and it was
Joanne Lockwood: about disability, people of disability and it was
Joanne Lockwood: looking at the history of that about the eugenics and about how we were trying
Joanne Lockwood: to fix people, how people who had deformed
Joanne Lockwood: limbs had to be put in casts and and how there's this fear
Joanne Lockwood: of people who are missing limbs and they had to wear prosthetics. It wasn't for
Joanne Lockwood: their benefit, yet so they didn't scare the other people. So we've
Joanne Lockwood: kind of built up this disfigurement is scary,
Joanne Lockwood: difference is scary, difference is other. We want we want to
Joanne Lockwood: be pure, we want to be a pure tribe for the survival of the species,
Joanne Lockwood: this Darwinistic type evolution that we're hanging on about.
Joanne Lockwood: When that turns into eugenics, that turns into sort of trying to fix people,
Joanne Lockwood: or if we get the technology to understand how someone's going to be
Joanne Lockwood: born, and they're not born healthy enough, good enough
Joanne Lockwood: with the right eye color, with the right hair color, with the right number of
Joanne Lockwood: limbs. Do we do we have made that human
Joanne Lockwood: decision to decide that life isn't worth living
Joanne Lockwood: with blue hair, green hair, with pink hair, with red hair?
Joanne Lockwood: And we say no unless they've got brown hair, they're not good enough or no
Joanne Lockwood: hair, they're not good enough for the species. And I think that's where it becomes
Joanne Lockwood: to say someone who is different, has a different quality of life because you can't
Joanne Lockwood: speak English because you have no wealth, you have no no status means you have
Joanne Lockwood: got a lesser life. And I think the other point you made was people all
Joanne Lockwood: think the same, you know, we've all got our brains, we all perceive the world,
Joanne Lockwood: we all see color and smell and sight or whatever, whatever our
Joanne Lockwood: abilities are. And we sometimes judge people as
Joanne Lockwood: being different to us, well they can't perceive the world I do because I'm right,
Joanne Lockwood: they're wrong. I think this is a danger and silence if you haven't
Joanne Lockwood: watched it dig it out on Iplayer. It's an hour of documentary
Joanne Lockwood: and I was completely drawn into the stories, drawn into
Joanne Lockwood: the the horror, if you like, of the work houses,
Joanne Lockwood: how people spend 80 years of their life because they were seen as mentally
Joanne Lockwood: infirm, whatever that meant. They were difficult to deal
Joanne Lockwood: with, you know, today that would be ADHD, today that might be someone who's
Joanne Lockwood: neurodiverse, whatever that may be. These people spent 80 years in the in the
Joanne Lockwood: workhouse cause they had no exit, no one advocated, no one said, hang on a
Joanne Lockwood: minute, once you were in, you were kind of in and it's frightening and
Joanne Lockwood: that was less than a 100 years ago, less than a 100 years ago.
William Buist: Well, I mean, you know, I'm I'm 62 and, you know,
William Buist: in that in those 62 years, I've seen an enormous amount of of
William Buist: Joanne. And yet, some things
William Buist: haven't really changed at all. They've changed kind of there's a veneer
William Buist: of change that's being put over the top.
William Buist: You know, we we have, you
William Buist: know, equal pay legislation and have had it for a long time
William Buist: between men and women. And yet still, if you
William Buist: by by almost every standard, if you look at the
William Buist: the statistics, whichever way you want to look at them,
William Buist: there is still a gender difference in pay. And,
William Buist: you know, something something isn't quite right. There's always reasons.
William Buist: So, you know, when you start talking to people about why that is, you will
William Buist: always get the defenders who will say, well, you know, maybe
William Buist: the the people who are in different types of jobs are
William Buist: are skewed by gender. And it's not the pay that's the issue, it's
William Buist: the fact that, you know, some some women are doing these sorts of
William Buist: jobs and some men are doing those sorts of jobs, and yet still there
William Buist: is, you know, there is clearly something not right in the
William Buist: state of Denmark as as Shakespeare might have said.
William Buist: And, you know, I think we need to look start looking at these
William Buist: problems, and they are problems, from a different
William Buist: viewpoint. It's not what do we need to do to fix the
William Buist: world as it is. It's what world do we want to build.
William Buist: You know, let's not let if I have legislation to deal with
William Buist: with abuses of a system that already exists because you
William Buist: need to do that, but what world do we want to build for tomorrow?
William Buist: And and I remember I was I was talking to somebody who's who's
William Buist: quite a senior I mean, white bloke, of course, quite a senior guy in
William Buist: a a big infrastructure national project.
William Buist: But one of the things that he was very, very keen to do is to
William Buist: make sure that he had a really diverse workforce. And he was
William Buist: employing, you know, tens of thousands of people,
William Buist: and and he was struggling to get, you know,
William Buist: certain areas of the business filled with what he
William Buist: viewed as, you know, the the right level of
William Buist: diversity and inclusion within it. And I, you know, I absolutely
William Buist: know that his motives were entirely right. And we
William Buist: spent some time talking about the whole recruitment
William Buist: process and and what were the processes he was going through. And in the course
William Buist: of that conversation, we kind of identified a whole host of
William Buist: things that were unconsciously
William Buist: biased towards a certain type of employee,
William Buist: and that certain type of employee would
William Buist: was not diverse, wasn't inclusive. And that's why they were struggling
William Buist: to make it diverse and inclusive workforce. And, you know, by way of
William Buist: one example, and it is one of of many things that we uncovered in the
William Buist: course of some time looking at the whole process end to
William Buist: end, One of the things that they used as a
William Buist: as a measure of should you apply was experience.
William Buist: And, you know, how many job roles do you see that require
William Buist: 2 years, 5 years, 10 years experience? And if you're looking for very senior
William Buist: people, it might be 20 years of experience. So, you know, if you're
William Buist: applying to go on to the board of a company and they want 20
William Buist: years of experience at board level, you've
William Buist: got to have been able to get onto a board 20 years ago. Well, guess
William Buist: what? All the boards 20 years ago were white men. So
William Buist: who's gonna get those roles that need 20 years of experience today?
William Buist: White men. And and so you you not only do
William Buist: you have the issue that you're not resolving, but you're perpetuating
William Buist: it by just not quite thinking through what does
William Buist: this requirement for hiring actually
William Buist: mean we get in terms of people in the pool that's available to be
William Buist: hired? And when we talked about this, well, what's what's the
William Buist: experience of proxy for? What are you trying to uncover by asking
William Buist: for experience? You know, then you you dig under the skin of that,
William Buist: and it's about good decision making. It's about
William Buist: inquisitiveness. It's about leadership. It's about, you know, a whole host
William Buist: of skills that if you have had
William Buist: all that experience, you will have honed. But when you start
William Buist: looking at the skills, some of them need, you know,
William Buist: a kind of innate skills. You either have them or you don't. Others
William Buist: of them are things that can be taught and taught very quickly, in which
William Buist: case, if if you haven't got them, it doesn't actually matter because you can teach
William Buist: them very quickly and you can overcome that issue. And others of them are not
William Buist: about length of service, but about examples
William Buist: of doing it. So, you know, good decision making. Tell me a couple
William Buist: of really good decisions you've made in the last few years. Right? I don't have
William Buist: to know that you've had lots of experience in decision making. I need to know
William Buist: you'd know what a good decision is and how you're
William Buist: defining, how you measure a good decision, those kinds of things.
William Buist: So, you know, they this you know, in this
William Buist: example, you know, they went away and they took apart the
William Buist: whole recruitment process and started looking at k. Let's not
William Buist: ask for things that are going to favor inadvertently
William Buist: the the the typical person that would be in those roles. Let's instead,
William Buist: you know, change them and look at what are we what are we actually seeking
William Buist: to achieve. They didn't solve the problem entirely. I don't think you can
William Buist: solve it in a single change. But but you certainly
William Buist: started to get more people who were, you know, in a more
William Buist: diverse and inclusive way. And, of course, once that
William Buist: momentum had started, it built on itself.
William Buist: The fear started going away. The othering started going away because
William Buist: now there were disabled people, and it was it
William Buist: wasn't a problem. You know, all the things that people say, well, we haven't got
William Buist: enough disabled loo's if we have all these disabled people. Where are they gonna get
William Buist: the loo? You know, I mean, it's all a nonsense because you just deal with
William Buist: it. And what you get is the
William Buist: talent. You know? And and to me, that's evolving.
William Buist: You anything that isn't about talent that is
William Buist: a problem is solvable. And who
William Buist: solves it? The people with the talent. So get the
William Buist: people with the talent and the problems go away anyway.
William Buist: So I I yeah. That's another one. That's a point of mindset.
Joanne Lockwood: Com quite a mindset leap for a lot of companies, though, isn't it? Oh, massive.
William Buist: But companies gotta have a mindset leap there where they they
Joanne Lockwood: still have this mentality that, as you say they're looking for 20 years
Joanne Lockwood: experience, they're looking for this they've got this round hole and they want a
Joanne Lockwood: round peg and anyone who's not quite, you know, they may be round
Joanne Lockwood: but they're too small that they're not prepared to work them to to
Joanne Lockwood: train them to nurture them into that position or that they're too big for the
Joanne Lockwood: hole, you're too old, you've got too much experience. I often hear that. You're over
Joanne Lockwood: 50. You've got you know, we want someone younger than you who can fit,
Joanne Lockwood: ageism, sexism, racism, whatever it may be. We
Joanne Lockwood: we we're masking this this desire for hitting the ground running. We
Joanne Lockwood: want someone to hit the ground running, which is which is code for we want
Joanne Lockwood: someone like us, someone like the person who was there before, someone like the rest
Joanne Lockwood: of the team. And it takes a leap of faith because it shouldn't
Joanne Lockwood: do because people often see a diversity
Joanne Lockwood: hiring strategy as meaning hiring for 2nd best. Because if we
Joanne Lockwood: were hiring for best, we'd be hiring people like we've got already. And
Joanne Lockwood: I wanna get people to start to reframe diversity hiring
Joanne Lockwood: into hiring people who are marginalized, hiring people who are underrepresented, who
Joanne Lockwood: isn't represented in our organization. We want more representation of
Joanne Lockwood: people of of color, people who have different face, different different
Joanne Lockwood: genders, different abilities, because we want to have
Joanne Lockwood: those voices because that's who our customers are. We've got to be representative
Joanne Lockwood: of the people we serve, we serve customers, we serve our
Joanne Lockwood: stakeholders, whoever that may be. And it's no different to
Joanne Lockwood: the disconnect people feel when the government, the parliament
Joanne Lockwood: is made up of people who are different to them. We we see the north
Joanne Lockwood: south divide where the people from the north believe that the government
Joanne Lockwood: in Westminster is representative of people with northern voices seeing their
Joanne Lockwood: challenges. We see it where there's underrepresentation of women in government where women
Joanne Lockwood: backgrounds saying parliament is made up of too many white people, they
Joanne Lockwood: don't hear our voice. So that's no different to us as an organization. We have
Joanne Lockwood: to be representative, so our customers believe that we're meeting their
Joanne Lockwood: needs. Our our stakeholders, our investors believe
Joanne Lockwood: that we're meeting our needs. And now we're gonna factor in not only
Joanne Lockwood: diversity inclusion, but environmental sustainability goals.
Joanne Lockwood: Our Earth's footprint, if you like, we're going to try and make sure that we
Joanne Lockwood: have these, these ethics that cross
Joanne Lockwood: from people to planet and that's how organizations are being judged in the
Joanne Lockwood: future. I know you work with businesses and you you
Joanne Lockwood: coach, you mentor businesses, you know, you Jo from yeah. How about going from
Joanne Lockwood: strength to strength? Do you see this as something that businesses are starting to
Joanne Lockwood: adopt? Is this a is this an open door or is this still something you're
Joanne Lockwood: having to persuade them?
William Buist: Is that open door? I said, there's a question.
William Buist: I think it's an unlocked door, not necessarily
William Buist: open. So I
William Buist: think I think businesses, if they choose to walk through it, are not gonna be
William Buist: impeded. They've just gotta, you know, press the door handle and and carry on through.
William Buist: But if they're looking at it from afar, it kind of
William Buist: looks like it's a locked door, you know, and it's too difficult.
William Buist: I'm probably stretching that analogy too far now myself,
William Buist: But but but but you you take my point. And I think it's
William Buist: I keep coming back to the the the way that I I see
William Buist: change happen is when people are exposed to the advantages
William Buist: of having done it without having necessarily to take
William Buist: that step themselves first. So because then they then they
William Buist: want to take the step because it's in their interest to
William Buist: do so. You know, I I remember talking to
William Buist: somebody. It's not that long ago, but it's it's probably pre COVID.
William Buist: So when we were all meeting in a room and and, you know, the
William Buist: debate had started about, you know, as long as as long as
William Buist: it's on merit. So, you know, if if if
William Buist: you're choosing a a person for a job or for a
William Buist: speaker to speak on the stage, as long as it's on merit, it's okay.
William Buist: I I I don't think that that's enough as we've discussed. You
William Buist: know? I think that the trouble with merit is it's measured by things
William Buist: that are intrinsically biased. It's
William Buist: not until you see
William Buist: people, you know, I'm I'm gonna use a speaking example again, but, you
William Buist: know, people in in wheelchairs on stage talking
William Buist: about the reason they were in a wheelchair or who've lost a limb or whatever
William Buist: it is. And you hear these fabulous stories
William Buist: that help you to to look at your own life as a, you know, physically
William Buist: able-bodied, fit, healthy, white male. I'm
William Buist: I'm and hopefully never do, touching wood now over to the
William Buist: side. You know, never had an injury that
William Buist: has has caused that for me. But what I what I do know is that
William Buist: if I did have an injury like that, that I would be on a great
William Buist: adventure. I would learn enormous amount in a relatively
William Buist: short space of time, and there's nothing to fear
William Buist: from that. There is opportunity in it. And I know that because I've
William Buist: seen enough speed people who have had the misfortune to have
William Buist: those sorts of injuries talk about it. To know that, you know,
William Buist: I don't wish it on anybody, but if something happens to me that
William Buist: affects my life in a in what others outside would see as a
William Buist: negative way, what I would see is the opportunity to learn.
William Buist: And that's a mindset thing. We come back to mindset. It is you
William Buist: know, all of this is about seeing culture,
William Buist: you know, our culture, whatever that means. Our
William Buist: culture is, you know, the way we do things around here.
William Buist: You know, so if the way that a business does things is
William Buist: not inclusive and not diverse, then that's the way they
William Buist: do it. And and you've got to change the culture, and that means changing
William Buist: the hearts and minds of the people within the organization in
William Buist: order for that change to take effect and to stick.
William Buist: And and there's another key point, isn't it? It's not just about making the change.
William Buist: It's about making the change stick. And
William Buist: it's too easy to go backwards, and people do
William Buist: that. Now what's the what's the word the Americans use?
William Buist: Recidivists. I love that word because it just rolls off the tone nicely. You know,
William Buist: the the criminals who repeat, offend, of recidivists.
William Buist: And and it's it's it's that same
William Buist: kind of thing that people will make an effort to be more inclusive,
William Buist: you know, almost when they feel they're being watched. And then as soon as they're
William Buist: not being watched anymore, they they they slide back into
William Buist: the old biases. Well, we need to change that for you too. And the way
William Buist: we do that, I think, is is by really letting people see
William Buist: how how much more they can achieve with a
William Buist: more diverse, more inclusive audience, if you're
William Buist: a speaker, with a more diverse, more inclusive workforce, if you're an employer,
William Buist: with a more diverse, more inclusive customer base, if you're if
William Buist: you're a business? You know, how do we appeal,
William Buist: across the whole spectrum of humanity?
William Buist: Solve that problem, but the rest is easier now.
Joanne Lockwood: Is it the fear of getting it wrong, Not knowing where to start or the
Joanne Lockwood: enormity of the task. What do you think is the biggest barrier?
William Buist: I think I think there's a bit of there's a bit of
William Buist: both of those. They're not knowing where to start and it being a big a
William Buist: big challenge. You know, and I've certainly you know, I
William Buist: organize events from time to time in my business. And one of the things that,
William Buist: you know, if you're being diverse and inclusive in organizing events, you have to think
William Buist: about is how do I make sure this event is inclusive? So, you know,
William Buist: is there wheelchair access to the venue? Because we haven't had that issue for
William Buist: a year. That's why I think we've seen a more
William Buist: diverse audience on Zoom calls and the ability of
William Buist: people who would quite often struggle to get to a 3rd
William Buist: floor meeting room in a building that only has stairs.
William Buist: Yeah. And and so we have to start thinking about all
William Buist: those things that we need to think about in order to be more
William Buist: inclusive. And that's
William Buist: hard because suddenly you find some of the things that you're
William Buist: doing actually do have an unconscious
William Buist: bias against them. And it's nobody's fault that an office block
William Buist: built in the 19 fifties didn't put lifts in
William Buist: because those weren't the building regulations at the time. And
William Buist: and, you know, we've we've changed the regulations and now, you know, a modern office
William Buist: block will be built with sufficient, you know,
William Buist: facilities to cater for most things. Still don't cater for everything. Don't
William Buist: think because you're in a modern building that is inclusive in its
William Buist: design that it caters for every possibility. It doesn't. So you still gotta think about
William Buist: it. But, you know, then then you
William Buist: say, okay. So if we were going to be more inclusive in our employment,
William Buist: now we have the first time or the first few times we do that,
William Buist: you have a real situation of a very much of them and us.
William Buist: There's the 2 or 3 people we've just employed to tick that box,
William Buist: and God help you if that's what you're doing. It's the wrong reason to do
William Buist: it, but some people still do. And you've got that little
William Buist: group and you've got the big group of all the people who still got a
William Buist: culture of this is the way we do it around here, and that doesn't include
William Buist: those people. And I've seen that happen. I've seen people being, you
William Buist: know, isolated in an organization
William Buist: because they're different. And they've been
William Buist: employed to address the difference, but they're still isolated by their work colleagues.
William Buist: So you've gotta have a real mindset that is about
William Buist: how not just how do we do this in recruitment,
William Buist: how do we make the whole office change its attitude, everybody?
William Buist: And that's a big task. It's difficult. It's it's something you
William Buist: have to put heart and mind and soul and money to because you
William Buist: gotta invest in the training and the development of people and and and
William Buist: possibly address the infrastructure reviews and so on.
William Buist: And that's that's only gonna happen if you really, really
William Buist: believe in the outcome. So it's, yeah, it's too
William Buist: big. It's too hard. It's gonna take too
William Buist: long. All things I've heard.
William Buist: None of which I accept as a valid reason. Yeah. I think
Joanne Lockwood: I think it's important to to point out to people who are listening to this
Joanne Lockwood: that just because we've gone online or you know or our events
Joanne Lockwood: online it solves every person every person with disabilities
Joanne Lockwood: problems and we just introduced new problems and accessibility
Joanne Lockwood: around online events is also a major problem. People
Joanne Lockwood: I know I know many people who are wheelchair users, but they also have very
Joanne Lockwood: limited dexterity in their their hands and fingers. So they can't contribute in
Joanne Lockwood: chat, they can't take part in live polls in a speed quick
Joanne Lockwood: enough to interact in time. I know people who lip read
Joanne Lockwood: and sometimes they find online events very, very difficult to
Joanne Lockwood: lipread. The images are too small, as in there's
Joanne Lockwood: too much blur, and not everybody's subtitles,
Joanne Lockwood: not everybody transcribes. Again, it's very difficult and I
Joanne Lockwood: know with this podcast, this podcast is is it's not really
Joanne Lockwood: accessible for people who, who can't hear because
Joanne Lockwood: it's a podcast, it's an audio medium, I don't transcribe it, I don't I don't
Joanne Lockwood: maintain it's a video experience, it's only an audio experience. But,
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, I I I'm quite conscious, I'm excluding 6 to
Joanne Lockwood: 10% of the of the organization of the population who are born deaf, whatever
Joanne Lockwood: that is, plus the 60% of us who will be deaf at some point or
Joanne Lockwood: lose our hearing over the course of our lifetimes. Jo,
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, we've got we gotta think about being inclusive by design
Joanne Lockwood: virtually as well as physically and making assumptions that people with a
Joanne Lockwood: disability have more access and it's easier for them now if
Joanne Lockwood: it's online. It's again, it's not thinking about the individual
Joanne Lockwood: as being very stereotypical or very, very generalistic about
Joanne Lockwood: our inclusion and saying what those should be better off now and then excluding a
Joanne Lockwood: whole different set of people. Jo, yeah, it's a challenge, you know, in
Joanne Lockwood: large auditoriums, theaters, there are hearing loops, there were
Joanne Lockwood: other methods to help people who had hearing difficulties access
Joanne Lockwood: the topic and the conversation, there were screen readers, people who had a sight
Joanne Lockwood: impairment, got copies of slides in Joanne and they had
Joanne Lockwood: transcribed or they had them read out to them using a transcription
Joanne Lockwood: service. So again, a lot of these online events aren't doing
Joanne Lockwood: that. That's another barrier to inclusion that we all we all
Joanne Lockwood: start thinking about and as the hybrid world evolves, because think
Joanne Lockwood: about how who are we excluding still, how can we make it feel more included
Joanne Lockwood: and it's and that's the continual process. I mean we said at the beginning
Joanne Lockwood: that we Joanne solve inclusion and diversity
Joanne Lockwood: overnight, we're not gonna it's getting better, but it's not there yet. We are
Joanne Lockwood: on Joanne infinite journey, we've still got an
Joanne Lockwood: infinite way to Jo, it's always gonna evolve, always gonna change, we've
Joanne Lockwood: always got new things happening. Jo, yeah, I
Joanne Lockwood: think I think what you're saying there, it rings rings true and resonates a
Joanne Lockwood: lot. And I love the way you talk about
Joanne Lockwood: from your own narrative, your own thinking about how
Joanne Lockwood: about the challenge of inclusion. And they resonate so greatly with the way I think
Joanne Lockwood: and the way I talk as well. So I'm trying to prove myself wrong as
Joanne Lockwood: I said earlier. I'm trying to prove myself wrong. I keep hearing what I'm thinking
Joanne Lockwood: which is which is in a way it's validating for both of us I guess
Joanne Lockwood: but yeah it's it's nice to nice to get into some into into the
Joanne Lockwood: weed sometimes. Do you feel as
Joanne Lockwood: a as a as a white bloke that you're under attack in
Joanne Lockwood: by the DNI community? Do you feel that you're you're seen as
Joanne Lockwood: not woke enough anymore?
William Buist: Such a good question because, I mean, certainly, I I hear that kind
William Buist: of sentiment, you know, from time to time. No.
William Buist: I don't. Not at all. You know, if anything,
William Buist: quite the reverse. I think I
William Buist: I think, you know, under
William Buist: attack is such an it's it's an interesting thought.
William Buist: Not not in the slightest. And I I think,
William Buist: you know, I think I have a responsibility,
William Buist: but I think we all have the same responsibility. It's just that not
William Buist: everybody accepts it, I suspect. And this comes back
William Buist: to something I was saying earlier about this, you know, this discussion about,
William Buist: you know, as long as as long as everything is done on merit, we'll all
William Buist: be fine. And I just think it's
William Buist: you know, that actually, that comment comes from
William Buist: a mindset that I think does feel under attack.
William Buist: It's a kind of siege mentality that make that takes people to
William Buist: that that kind of view of, you know, as long
William Buist: as I'm okay because everything's on merit and I'm good, I don't
William Buist: mind what you do for others. And that's you know, it's an inward
William Buist: facing sensation. My view
William Buist: is unless there's somebody
William Buist: unless there is literally nobody in the world who's better, you
William Buist: know, that's the time you should hire me. It's when you when you decided there's
William Buist: nobody in the world who's better. Jo, you know, it's almost the exact
William Buist: opposite. I don't want to be picked
William Buist: because I I certainly don't wanna be picked because I'm white and male. Right?
William Buist: So that that that's a given. But I don't wanna be picked because I'm good
William Buist: enough either. I wanna be picked
William Buist: because I'm the right person for the job. And that's
William Buist: I'm I'm carefully choosing my words here. The right
William Buist: person doesn't mean the best person necessarily.
William Buist: There are times to take people on because of what they will learn,
William Buist: not because of what they bring you. There are times to take people
William Buist: on to you know, and I'm not talking about employment necessarily, but, you know, onto
William Buist: a project, onto a stage, onto, you know, take people
William Buist: on to the next level of their lives. One of the one of the
William Buist: things I talk about is, when I do
William Buist: speak from a stage, is about mastery and about the journey we're all taking
William Buist: in our lives to get better and better. And, you know, we kind of
William Buist: start out with no knowledge as a child. We we learn through rote
William Buist: learning. We learn to talk. We learn to name things. We learn to
William Buist: write. We learn to we learn to understand some basics
William Buist: of of chemistry and physics and English and
William Buist: maths and all of those things that we learn at school. We're
William Buist: explorers. We're gathering knowledge. And then we kind of whenever we go
William Buist: to university or we or we go on a training course or we get a
William Buist: job, we're we're novices at it. And the novices
William Buist: are desperate for experience. They're out trying things to
William Buist: learn to get experience. They become practitioners. They're
William Buist: getting good at what they do, and the world lives on practitioners. You
William Buist: know, all almost every job is is about having the right
William Buist: person who is able to do that job well, be a practitioner.
William Buist: You do it for a while. You learn stuff. You become experts in it. You
William Buist: learn nuance and subtlety and that's again it's a different sort of
William Buist: learning. So we've had, you know, learning like a child, rote learning.
William Buist: We've got experiential learning. Now we're learning subtlety and nuance. It's
William Buist: kinda honing skills. It's both a mental
William Buist: and a physical learning. But there's a there's a
William Buist: step further, which is that step to mastery. And and mastery
William Buist: is much less about doing and much more about being.
William Buist: It's it's when you stop worrying about taking a good photograph
William Buist: and start thinking about being a photographer.
William Buist: And that that difference is about learning to let
William Buist: go, learning to understand that what you do
William Buist: isn't as important as how you do it as to who you are,
William Buist: how you think. It's all about mindset, and it's
William Buist: all about being inclusive, and it's all about lifting people
William Buist: so they can learn from all the things that you've learned from.
William Buist: And and, you know, we know those. You know those people when you run into
William Buist: them. They're few and far between, but, boy, do they stand out.
William Buist: And they stand out because they're no longer the one that
William Buist: matters. They're there to support
William Buist: everybody else. Back when we
William Buist: were hunter gatherers, you know, they would have been the elder sitting in the tent
William Buist: who would say, you know, it's time to move the camp because the buffalo will
William Buist: walk next week. And they just knew.
William Buist: I didn't go catch the buffalo. That was for the younger ones who were still
William Buist: getting the experience of how do you hunt. But they knew where to
William Buist: be. And I think
William Buist: that's the journey that humanity is on with diversity and inclusion.
William Buist: And we maybe got to being practitioners right now.
William Buist: And we need we need to we need to develop the expertise. But,
William Buist: ultimately, as society as a whole,
William Buist: we almost need to completely let go of the idea of needing to be
William Buist: diverse and inclusive because we will have become
William Buist: diverse and included.
William Buist: And I you know, we started this call with a question, you know, is it
William Buist: possible that diversity inclusion would just happen?
William Buist: Well, not until we are more mature as a
William Buist: as a race, as a species, and not until we've taken the time,
William Buist: effort, and energy to learn the subtleties and nuances and
William Buist: the value of doing that, then we get there. But it's
William Buist: a long road. You described it as an infinite road. No. I I I don't
William Buist: think it's infinite, but it is long. And we
William Buist: can enjoy the journey while we journey on it too. And
William Buist: I think, you know, that's that's why I don't feel under siege or
William Buist: under threat, to come back to your question. I
William Buist: don't feel threatened by any of this because I'm enjoying the journey.
William Buist: And I'm, you know, watching and listening and learning and
William Buist: improving what I do and what I think so that I can
William Buist: be a better person as a result of that learning.
William Buist: And that that journey is worth taking.
Joanne Lockwood: Some might say to enjoy the journey is a privilege.
Joanne Lockwood: Some might say that to achieve mastery is a privilege Joanne there are many
Joanne Lockwood: people who would welcome that
Joanne Lockwood: that privilege and that opportunity so I think let's not
Joanne Lockwood: deny what you've achieved and what you're achieving or whatever everyone else is achieving
Joanne Lockwood: But the privilege we hold is the fact that we Joanne
Joanne Lockwood: do that and that's aspirational for us. I think what you're
Joanne Lockwood: saying really is making sure that we create opportunity for people,
Joanne Lockwood: we look at we unpick the meritocracy, we unpick
Joanne Lockwood: what that's truly saying and seeking to amplify and
Joanne Lockwood: give opportunity for people who wouldn't have had that opportunity. And
Joanne Lockwood: that's our pathway, if you like, to giving people the the
Joanne Lockwood: ability to to develop and grow and enhance so that we're not
Joanne Lockwood: looking for 20 years experience, but we're giving people a a pathway to to
Joanne Lockwood: mastery from whatever your background is and that's that's the mission if
Joanne Lockwood: you like for privilege. It's not only about fair pay,
Joanne Lockwood: as you say, employing people with a disability, it's allowing those people
Joanne Lockwood: to thrive in a way that they can achieve their potential, which
Joanne Lockwood: we all hope is is the mastery, it's the being
Joanne Lockwood: fantastic practitioners, being artisans in their craft,
Joanne Lockwood: whatever that may be. And, that's what we that's what I
Joanne Lockwood: believe we can do as as a privileged people in society is make
Joanne Lockwood: sure that we use that privilege to amplify and give opportunity to
Joanne Lockwood: others. I think that's a a fantastic sentiment you're saying there. I think
Joanne Lockwood: that's that's, it's not idealistic, it's
Joanne Lockwood: not utopian, it's a state it's a statement of
Joanne Lockwood: direction, it's a direction of travel, this is where we're heading And we we can
Joanne Lockwood: debate whether it's a long journey or an infinite journey as society evolves on a
Joanne Lockwood: daily basis. But you're right. We've got to keep focused on it. We've
Joanne Lockwood: got to keep putting petrol in the tank, putting air in the tires and
Joanne Lockwood: keeping on that path because if we stop and pull over
Joanne Lockwood: our progress will be lost as well. So no very very impactful. I really
Joanne Lockwood: enjoyed listening to you and hearing your thoughts,
Joanne Lockwood: it's been very powerful. How can people get hold of you? I mean, you
Joanne Lockwood: you you you speak, you mentor, you train, have you got a website, have you
Joanne Lockwood: got a book? How do people get hold of you?
William Buist: So yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah. The website unfortunately, I
William Buist: have this unusual name, which is which is one of the, one of the real
William Buist: advantages of of, my parentage. I I thank them
William Buist: immensely for that. If if if that was the only thing they gave me, it
William Buist: would be great. They, of course, gave me other things too. But,
William Buist: yeah, William Buist, B-U-I-S-T.
William Buist: Williambuist.com is the website, and william@williambuist.com
William Buist: will get you on email, to me. I'm very
William Buist: happy to speak to anybody about any of the the
William Buist: topics that we've talked about today. But if you're particularly, if
William Buist: you're running a business and and thinking about
William Buist: how do we address the sorts of issues that we talked about today?
William Buist: How do we do that from a strategic viewpoint and and make it
William Buist: embed it in the business and make it long lasting, then I'd love to have
William Buist: a chat with you and talk about how to approach that, and
William Buist: make it make it work for you, from the beginning
William Buist: and ever ever better as as time goes by.
Joanne Lockwood: Fantastic. I've just clicked on the link on your website, gone there, and
Joanne Lockwood: it's it's a great website, very easy to navigate. Jo, yeah, I I would
Joanne Lockwood: encourage anyone who's, just keen to get a hold of you, yeah, check you out.
Joanne Lockwood: It's, Jo very powerful. Well, it's been
Joanne Lockwood: an amazing journey this last hour. I've really enjoyed our conversation
Joanne Lockwood: and obviously a huge thank you to you, the listener, for tuning in and listening
Joanne Lockwood: in, keeping up to the end. Please do
Joanne Lockwood: subscribe, to keep updates on future episodes of the Inclusion Bites
Joanne Lockwood: podcast at B-I-T-E-S. Tell your friends, I'm sure you have some,
Joanne Lockwood: and obviously your colleagues. I have a number of exciting guests lined
Joanne Lockwood: up that I'm sure you'd be inspired by over the next few weeks months. We've
Joanne Lockwood: had an excellent, guest today with William. And if you'd like to
Joanne Lockwood: be a guest yourself, please let me know. I welcome any suggestions and feedback you
Joanne Lockwood: may have to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: Tell me about what you'd like to hear on future show shows. Tell me how
Joanne Lockwood: I can improve. In fact, tell me you're listening. Tell me you're out there. Please
Joanne Lockwood: do drop it on LinkedIn. Say hi. So my name is Joanne Lockwood.
Joanne Lockwood: It's been an absolute pleasure to host this podcast for you today. Catch you next
Joanne Lockwood: time. Bye.