Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and Ibe your host for the
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites podcast. In this series, I
Joanne Lockwood: have interviewed a number of amazing people and simply had a
Joanne Lockwood: conversation around the subject of inclusion,
Joanne Lockwood: belonging and generally making the world a better
Joanne Lockwood: place for everyone to thrive. If you'd like to join me in the future,
Joanne Lockwood: then please do drop me a line to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehapen.couk.
Joanne Lockwood: That's S-E-E Change Happen dot co dot uk. You
Joanne Lockwood: can catch up with all of the previous shows on itunes, Spotify and
Joanne Lockwood: the usual places. So plug in your headphones,
Joanne Lockwood: grab a decaf and let's get going. Today
Joanne Lockwood: is Episode 87 with
Joanne Lockwood: the title Rebel Hearts and Healing Paths.
Joanne Lockwood: And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Debbie
Joanne Lockwood: Dannon. Debbie describes herself as a leadership
Joanne Lockwood: coach, facilitator and
Joanne Lockwood: rebel. When I asked Debbie to describe her superpower, she
Joanne Lockwood: said, taking pain and transforming it
Joanne Lockwood: through healing and liberation into love
Joanne Lockwood: both her own and others. Hello,
Joanne Lockwood: Debbie. Welcome to the show. Hello, Joanne. It's so good to
Debbie Danon: be here with you. It's brilliant. I mean, we've known each other
Joanne Lockwood: now four or five years, ever since we did a
Joanne Lockwood: design for inclusion with Fearless Futures. Oh, that was a long
Joanne Lockwood: time ago. Way before COVID Way before COVID You. Are definitely one of the
Debbie Danon: trainees that I remember. I remember we connected quite deeply there and I
Debbie Danon: was so delighted to reconnect with you through LinkedIn in more recent times, as we're
Debbie Danon: both striving for similar things in the world. So I'm really, really
Debbie Danon: glad that we not only met but also reconnected.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. And I've been kind of secretly a bit of a fangirl of yours ever
Joanne Lockwood: since. So, yeah, I was really inspired by that session. Mutual fangirling
Debbie Danon: is about to occur. I can handle it. I can handle it.
Joanne Lockwood: Can the audience? I don't know. So, Debbie
Joanne Lockwood: debbie, tell me. Rebel hearts and
Joanne Lockwood: healing paths. Tell me about yourself.
Debbie Danon: Wow, I love this introduction. It's really speaking to
Debbie Danon: who I think I'm becoming in the world and who I'm inviting my clients and
Debbie Danon: my co conspirators to become as well. So, my name is
Debbie Danon: Debbie. My pronouns are she, her. I was born
Debbie Danon: in South London, but I live in North London. I do believe you can be
Debbie Danon: both. People are very binary about these things. But I'm first generation in
Debbie Danon: this country. My parents came from Istanbul in Turkey
Debbie Danon: as Turkish Jews. So kind of minority within a minority
Debbie Danon: living in a kind of predominantly white Christian or white atheist community
Debbie Danon: in South London. So ever since I was really little, I found myself having to
Debbie Danon: explain things about why we didn't have a Christmas tree. And people asking, do
Debbie Danon: you speak Jewish at home or Turkish with your family? And you're like, I'm like,
Debbie Danon: Well, Jewish is our religion and Turkish is the
Debbie Danon: language, these sorts of things, where even from a very young age, I found myself
Debbie Danon: in a kind of explanatory role. So maybe it's not surprising, the kind of career
Debbie Danon: path that I've taken from there. I have always been
Debbie Danon: fascinated in religion and identity
Debbie Danon: and I guess what has people act as they do? I guess
Debbie Danon: what has people act in ways that are compassionate and loving
Debbie Danon: and affirming and kind of almost selfless,
Debbie Danon: or, I guess, generous in those ways and then
Debbie Danon: also ways in which human hearts can kind of close and we can become,
Debbie Danon: by the same token, closed off. We can become judgmental, we can
Debbie Danon: become disconnected, we can do harm to each other.
Debbie Danon: And I've always been interested in that, but through different lenses. So I studied
Debbie Danon: theology and religious studies at university and philosophy.
Debbie Danon: I was at the same time super active in a Jewish
Debbie Danon: youth group where I learned a lot of the leadership skills. And
Debbie Danon: the facilitation that I do has its roots really in a lot of that theory
Debbie Danon: and that practise of youth work. Very trying to be very
Debbie Danon: democratic, trying to kind of remove a lot of the power dynamics that exist
Debbie Danon: in formal education settings, making it possible for different people to
Debbie Danon: participate, removing barriers. And then my career has kind of
Debbie Danon: had different chapters to it. So I worked initially in the
Debbie Danon: interfaith space. So I was one of the co founders of an interfaith
Debbie Danon: organisation. It was at the time called Three Faith Forum. It's now. The Faith and
Debbie Danon: Belief Forum. And we were developing a youth programme, a Muslim and
Debbie Danon: a Christian colleague, and me as a Jewish colleague. We were
Debbie Danon: highlighting and basically kind of imagining what it would be like to go into schools,
Debbie Danon: particularly single faith schools, where they won't really meet people from different faiths and
Debbie Danon: backgrounds. And we were experimenting with what kind of programming could we do
Debbie Danon: with these young people and actually their teachers, too, in order to break down
Debbie Danon: stereotypes. To help young people become more fluent and more
Debbie Danon: confident. Having conversations about faith, without needing to abandon their own faith
Debbie Danon: or without needing to change who they are in any way but making space for
Debbie Danon: others in their world. And that led to developing a whole range of programming
Debbie Danon: for businesses, too, around faith awareness, around how do we
Debbie Danon: accommodate our Muslim friends at Ramadan? How do we not plan those
Debbie Danon: meetings on the Jewish High Holy Days in September when everyone's back from holidays,
Debbie Danon: but then Jews are taking off time? How do we ensure that there
Debbie Danon: is vegetarian food if our Hindu colleagues who are
Debbie Danon: vegetarian? How do we make sure that we're really making
Debbie Danon: it possible for people to participate? And also addressing, at the really thin end of
Debbie Danon: the wedge, anti Semitism Islamophobia, the kind of racism
Debbie Danon: that kind of gets and prejudice that gets wrapped up with
Debbie Danon: religion and the particular ways that plays out. So I did that for about eight
Debbie Danon: years and then I moved to the city and I was working, as you and
Debbie Danon: I now do, joanne with organisations. So I was designing
Debbie Danon: leadership pathways for the kind of, I would say
Debbie Danon: early talent, so it would be apprentices graduates and maybe
Debbie Danon: kind of the first step up into kind of a bit more seniority in those
Debbie Danon: first two years of working for corporates. So I was doing
Debbie Danon: stuff with Deloitte and Clifford Chance and the bank of England and Vodafone
Debbie Danon: and these kinds of folks really looking at how do we not only
Debbie Danon: equip those young people to become part of the organisation, but how do we
Debbie Danon: foster a sense of belonging? So they want to know. Retention is a really, really
Debbie Danon: big question. You spent all this time and money and effort onboarding these
Debbie Danon: young people and really giving them the best possible start in their careers,
Debbie Danon: but why would they stay? They might stay for the pay.
Debbie Danon: But more likely, and particularly we see that with Gen Y and
Debbie Danon: Gen Z is they're going to stay because the values align, because they feel they
Debbie Danon: belong, because
Debbie Danon: they are being appreciated and they aren't sort of experiencing
Debbie Danon: sort of being undermined or being patronised or being done
Debbie Danon: down, which in all workplaces there are pockets of that. Right,
Debbie Danon: so how do we address that? So that was fascinating work. I did that for
Debbie Danon: a couple of years and I've been working for myself since 2017 and it's
Debbie Danon: looked a number of different ways. I had an amazing partnership business for a couple
Debbie Danon: of years, for about four years, with with my old business partner, Yasmin Akhtar.
Debbie Danon: It was called Trust Lab. And we were experimenting with, how do we do
Debbie Danon: really long term inclusion solutions with organisations who aren't
Debbie Danon: just, wham, bam, let's do this on a Tuesday, and that can be that, but
Debbie Danon: really looking at the long term path, of diagnosis
Debbie Danon: of what's going on in an organisation, really listening to people
Debbie Danon: and then designing bespoke interventions, whatever those look
Debbie Danon: like, whether they look like training conversations, processes
Debbie Danon: of defining leadership competencies and then ways of
Debbie Danon: embedding them and then being able to communicate that internally.
Debbie Danon: Lots of organisations want to rush to the bit where you shout about it to
Debbie Danon: the outside world, but we were very clear that the first step is to
Debbie Danon: start to do that internally, so that we're not kind of
Debbie Danon: shouting about something before we've really achieved it inside. Including the learnings, right.
Debbie Danon: Including the ways we mess up along the way. I think some of the best
Debbie Danon: learning comes from that, if we can have the humility and accountability to get
Debbie Danon: there. So it's worth saying that at this point in my journey, when
Debbie Danon: Yassin and I were still working together, I went through a really
Debbie Danon: difficult period in my own life. I experienced a miscarriage and then subsequent
Debbie Danon: termination for medical reasons. So I was having fertility troubles for
Debbie Danon: about two, three years and I was really down and out. Joanne I
Debbie Danon: was not able to get out of bed. I was really suffering I didn't want
Debbie Danon: to see friends who were pregnant. I was really having a tough time.
Debbie Danon: And I guess what I learned
Debbie Danon: during that time through seeking support, first of all, that seeking support is super
Debbie Danon: important and shouldn't be something that we
Debbie Danon: put off, shouldn't be something that we think, well, I'm okay. I'm just about
Debbie Danon: surviving. I think sometimes, all of us, particularly British people,
Debbie Danon: I think maybe, Joanne, you can concur we can be very stiff upper lip about
Debbie Danon: these things. We can be like, oh, no, it's all fine. It's all all right.
Debbie Danon: But actually, it's not really all right. So I got amazing support
Debbie Danon: from a baby loss charity. But what I've really understood is there are
Debbie Danon: parts of us that need to be heard. In each of us, there's sort of
Debbie Danon: self inclusion that needs to happen. There were parts of me that I really didn't
Debbie Danon: particularly want to acknowledge, that I was angry, that I was frustrated, that I was
Debbie Danon: jealous, that I was grieving, that I felt
Debbie Danon: alone. That's really difficult stuff to turn towards. It's much easier to turn
Debbie Danon: away from it. But what I found was, and this speaks to the superpower that
Debbie Danon: you mentioned when I turn towards those things, first of
Debbie Danon: all, no emotion ever lost forever. I know it
Debbie Danon: feels like it will, the pain, but to this day, there's never been
Debbie Danon: a difficult emotion that I've turned towards that has lasted forever. And the other
Debbie Danon: thing is that by turning towards that pain, I've been able to move towards being
Debbie Danon: an activist in that field as well. Around baby loss, not just
Debbie Danon: around securing good provision for mental health support and
Debbie Danon: perinatal mental health support, but also particularly around
Debbie Danon: queer couples getting the support that they need when they go through baby
Debbie Danon: loss. Because even the Miscarriage association in certain areas were
Debbie Danon: very kind of, I think, insensitive in the way that
Debbie Danon: there were certain chapters where there was some insensitivity around two
Debbie Danon: lesbian mums, for example. Only one of them the one who had
Debbie Danon: miscarried getting support, but then the other
Debbie Danon: mum couldn't go to the men's group because it would be weird. It was just
Debbie Danon: strange. So trying to sort of support in that way as well.
Debbie Danon: So I now I'm a trained integral coach, which is
Debbie Danon: a very holistic school of coaching, which takes into account a lot of business coaching.
Debbie Danon: If anyone listening to this has had business coaching before, a lot of coaching is
Debbie Danon: kind of head and heart. It's what I'm thinking about and what I'm feeling. And
Debbie Danon: there's a goal, and we remove the obstacles and we go get the goal, and
Debbie Danon: then we kind of, like, have a few fall downs. Like, we trip over the
Debbie Danon: hurdles, and then we get back up again and we keep going towards the goal.
Debbie Danon: My school of coaching, integral Coaching, which I now teach
Debbie Danon: as well. So I'm now one of the faculty of the Integral Coaching School. Third
Debbie Danon: space in the UK. This is a school of coaching, which takes
Debbie Danon: into account much more of the human experience that kind of holistic. Joanne so
Debbie Danon: we're talking about the spiritual I. E. What we believe our
Debbie Danon: purpose to be, not necessarily religious, but our sense of purpose and community
Debbie Danon: and connection with values, with the web of life.
Debbie Danon: However you want to see that it's also about somatics it's about the body. It's
Debbie Danon: about the fact that our brain is a physical thing living inside a physical
Debbie Danon: body. And our legs are not just kind of like wheels that move things
Debbie Danon: from place to place. Our whole bodies are experiencing
Debbie Danon: everything we're experiencing. When we experience emotions and all of that, that's really big as
Debbie Danon: well. Yeah. Go on, Joanne. You're going to jump in. I'm dying to ask you
Joanne Lockwood: some things. First of all, you shared
Joanne Lockwood: your experience through your pregnancy or
Joanne Lockwood: miscarriages or termination, and one thing that jumped out at me there is that
Joanne Lockwood: it's really hard for people to know what to say to you, isn't it? You
Joanne Lockwood: must have found you're brave. You're this all these words, things
Joanne Lockwood: coming out which are in danger of being patronising or not
Joanne Lockwood: helpful or here we go again, almost verging on
Joanne Lockwood: microaggression, experiencing the same things all over again.
Joanne Lockwood: Reliving that trauma and having to explain to someone how you're feeling and how
Joanne Lockwood: that sort of plays into I think a lot of things we talk about in
Joanne Lockwood: the inclusion, the diversity space, is this fear of getting it wrong.
Joanne Lockwood: I won't see Debbie this week because I don't know how to support her. I
Joanne Lockwood: don't how to ask her that question. And
Joanne Lockwood: fear of getting it wrong is a real paralyzer in the dei space.
Joanne Lockwood: So how can people overcome that? I've just asked you that question now on the
Joanne Lockwood: back of what you've said, and my brain's been running around overtime
Joanne Lockwood: trying to figure out the right language to use. So how can people
Joanne Lockwood: overcome this? Oh, that's such a great question, Joanne.
Debbie Danon: And I think it shows such sensitivity to go, I know there's something to be
Debbie Danon: said and I don't know quite what that is. And
Debbie Danon: I think there's something to be said for affirming just
Debbie Danon: going, that sounds really hard, right? Not trying to be trying to
Debbie Danon: kind of make a hero of someone go, well, you're so brave. I could never
Debbie Danon: do what you're doing. Or you hear when people die and people say, oh,
Debbie Danon: I can't imagine what you're going through. Well, it is imaginable because it's happened. You're
Debbie Danon: imagining it right now by empathising with me. So actually
Debbie Danon: go to that space, imagine what it must be like, and just reflect back what
Debbie Danon: you're hearing or what you imagine. Just saying, that sounds really hard. That
Debbie Danon: sounds really difficult. There can be a tendency, can't there, to try to
Debbie Danon: minimise or rationalise so saying, well, it's good that you can get pregnant, isn't it?
Debbie Danon: Or, oh, but don't worry because I have a sister who had
Debbie Danon: five miscarriages and now she's got three healthy kids and it's like, that's got really
Debbie Danon: nothing to do with me. But that sounds a lot like you trying to
Debbie Danon: make me feel better, but also make yourself feel better, because wouldn't it be nice
Debbie Danon: if there was something simple that we could say that could make it better? So
Debbie Danon: I think rather than try to make it better. Because quite often with
Debbie Danon: grief, with loss, even with some of the stuff that's going on right now, I
Debbie Danon: mean, my family in the Middle East and my friends
Debbie Danon: who I used to facilitate with in the west bank and in know people are
Debbie Danon: really grieving and they're in a really tough spot right now. I think trying
Debbie Danon: to go into well, let me make it better by trying to rationalise it is
Debbie Danon: a really it's such a well meaning move, but it's not the one that's going
Debbie Danon: to bring relief. I think the more we can almost hold the mirror up and
Debbie Danon: say, I see you, I really do see that you're trying and
Debbie Danon: I really admire you, for these are the
Debbie Danon: characteristics I see that you're showing, but I just want to acknowledge that that must
Debbie Danon: be really hard. See, I cheated by
Joanne Lockwood: asking you a meta question, didn't I, about how to answer the question, how to
Joanne Lockwood: ask the question. So I was able to talk about it with you
Joanne Lockwood: without actually diving into your pain,
Joanne Lockwood: because I didn't know where you were on that journey or whether
Joanne Lockwood: that has healed within you or it's still there with you. So
Joanne Lockwood: it can be tricky. I think what I would say to anybody is have a
Joanne Lockwood: similar question. Just don't lean away from it. Lean into
Joanne Lockwood: it with an open heart without being invasive
Joanne Lockwood: and just be there for people. It's quite simple sometimes, but people do
Joanne Lockwood: get scared. The other thing you mentioned right at the beginning, and
Joanne Lockwood: there's so much in your opening to dive into, was
Joanne Lockwood: the fact you're a minority and a minority. And when we think about
Joanne Lockwood: what's going on in the world right now, certainly in the Middle East area,
Joanne Lockwood: you've grown up in a world as a person of Jewish
Joanne Lockwood: faith, in a Jewish family, in a very Muslim
Joanne Lockwood: country with probably different core languages, Hebrew
Joanne Lockwood: versus Turkish, different
Joanne Lockwood: character sets. And now you're in England or the
Joanne Lockwood: UK, speaking English in a very kind of I
Joanne Lockwood: suppose, again, our society is quite polarised. It's not all integrated,
Joanne Lockwood: having to listen to what's going on in the world and people's
Joanne Lockwood: opinions. And we obviously see marches in London at the
Joanne Lockwood: moment, one against
Joanne Lockwood: pro Palestinian, some anti Semitism, anti
Joanne Lockwood: Semitic marches going on. We got far right
Joanne Lockwood: people trying to dive in there and cause trouble for their own ends,
Joanne Lockwood: and the government not able to make a cohesive statement of support.
Joanne Lockwood: You must be really conflicted, not in your own community, because
Joanne Lockwood: knowing as much as I know about you. You
Joanne Lockwood: have compassion for all sides as. Well, don't yeah, no, thank
Debbie Danon: you for asking that, Jo. It's been really difficult, and
Debbie Danon: I should say maybe this is the prelude to this, is that my rebel leadership
Debbie Danon: practise now I run a practical rebel leadership is really about trying
Debbie Danon: to show up in a world that is not set
Debbie Danon: up for us to flourish, right? And I mean, violence is the absolute kind
Debbie Danon: of sharp end of that. But for all of us,
Debbie Danon: flourishing is something that we really have to work hard at. And
Debbie Danon: I think you talked about thriving right at the beginning. And my whole
Debbie Danon: philosophy is, what's the rebel move? What's the rebel move we can be
Debbie Danon: making in a world that's not set up for flourishing, to create space for
Debbie Danon: flourishing. And I do that through rebel authenticity, rebel balance and
Debbie Danon: rebel courage. And I think I've been challenged in all of those areas
Debbie Danon: with what's happened, what's been unfolding in Israel and the Middle
Debbie Danon: East the last few weeks, because my instinct with that
Debbie Danon: is like, rebel authenticity, I should speak out on what I believe in and my
Debbie Danon: compassion for all sides and be a leader. Rebel balance, I
Debbie Danon: should really ground myself and not get swept this way
Debbie Danon: and that way. Rebel courage, I should really have a
Debbie Danon: clear sense of what it is that I want to say. And the fact is,
Debbie Danon: Joanne, when the trauma is fresh and
Debbie Danon: I was traumatised on the 7 October, I was
Debbie Danon: on Facebook looking through, literally because the news was not fast enough
Debbie Danon: to catch up with what was happening. I was just going through, looking at all
Debbie Danon: my friends in Israel saying, where's this person? Where's this person?
Debbie Danon: I can't get hold of this person. And essentially some of the
Debbie Danon: attacks were broadcast live by the people committing them,
Debbie Danon: by the terrorists. And I saw some of what was happening
Debbie Danon: live and I didn't realise until about two days later that it had
Debbie Danon: completely taken up resonance in my body and completely dysregulated
Debbie Danon: me. And I mean, if you think about the prolificness of these videos and
Debbie Danon: what we're seeing, the footage from Gaza, from
Debbie Danon: Know, I think a lot of us are in a state of dysregulation. Our
Debbie Danon: bodies are not able to hold this much pain.
Debbie Danon: And I guess to answer your question, yes, it's been deeply
Debbie Danon: conflicting. It's been also deeply worrying to
Debbie Danon: me that there's elements of the inclusion space where
Debbie Danon: by taking sides in this, by saying, hey,
Debbie Danon: if you support the Palestinians, then you support terrorism, or if you support
Debbie Danon: the Israelis, then you're racist and you're
Debbie Danon: supporting state terrorism, whatever. By taking those
Debbie Danon: sides, there's a way in which also Islamophobia and anti
Debbie Danon: Semitism are allowed to play in those spaces that has made it really unsafe for
Debbie Danon: me and actually unsafe for my Muslim friends and colleagues as well. And
Debbie Danon: we've actually shared a lot of experiences of being like because I have relationships with
Debbie Danon: Muslim colleagues and friends and actually Arab
Debbie Danon: friends who are Christian or who are not religious. It's
Debbie Danon: like, yeah, this is really, really unsafe for us right now. My husband is
Debbie Danon: Iraqi Indian, Jewish, so he's a brown man. I'm kind of white
Debbie Danon: passing, brown passing, depending, whichever way you want to look at it. I'm kind of
Debbie Danon: neither nor, but he's very much brown. And as well
Debbie Danon: as seeing anti Semitic graffiti and having
Debbie Danon: our Jewish bakery got
Debbie Danon: smashed, the glass got smashed in. As well as that, he got profiled on public
Debbie Danon: transport by the London Transport Police for being brown and bearded
Debbie Danon: and carrying a so, like, that's the kind of complexity that we're living
Debbie Danon: in right now. So what I am realising, the
Debbie Danon: rebel move, Joanne, is for me, has been a
Debbie Danon: rebel. Authenticity is like surrounding myself with people who see me
Debbie Danon: as a human and who understand me and who don't paint me well. Because
Debbie Danon: you're Jewish or because you have family in Israel, because you spent time in Israel,
Debbie Danon: you can't possibly be part of our inclusion party. Like, I've
Debbie Danon: literally had to leave spaces because I've called out some anti Semitism
Debbie Danon: that's played itself out and wanted to have a conversation about it. And you know
Debbie Danon: what? I didn't have the energy. And I was like, I'm not going to sit
Debbie Danon: here and educate you when I myself am traumatised and going through ongoing trauma.
Debbie Danon: On the other side of it, I have friends and I have people who listen
Debbie Danon: to me and who recognise who I am. And I've had some of the most
Debbie Danon: fruitful conversations about what's going on with my co conspirators, with
Debbie Danon: whom I've facilitated dialogue in the region, because they know the complexity of it,
Debbie Danon: because they're really committed to a different
Debbie Danon: reality than the one we're seeing. In terms of rebel balance,
Debbie Danon: I've just had to come off all social media, Joanne, like I have come off
Debbie Danon: LinkedIn. I've decided I'm not going to retraumatize myself. I went on it for
Debbie Danon: five minutes this morning and then cried for half an hour because I was like,
Debbie Danon: this is just not it for me. And that's really hard for me because that's
Debbie Danon: a big platform for me. I'm very, very connected to all my clients and co
Debbie Danon: conspirators out there. But in terms of the way that the dialogue is
Debbie Danon: unfolding, I'm not okay with it and it's discard. Bobby led
Debbie Danon: into my system and I'm getting also somatic trauma support. So I'm having weekly
Debbie Danon: trauma support again, reaching out for help. Do it early. I did it
Debbie Danon: within two weeks. This time, I didn't wait months and months. And then in terms
Debbie Danon: of rebel courage, I think the rebel move here is actually trying to
Debbie Danon: imagine, I think, violence numbs imagination, Joanne, like,
Debbie Danon: when things explode to the extent that they have, and
Debbie Danon: when people are making statements about other human
Debbie Danon: beings that are so dehumanising and who are actually when I think
Debbie Danon: about. I've really experienced talk about turning towards
Debbie Danon: difficult feelings. Like, I've experienced deep, deep sorrow and
Debbie Danon: compassion for the Palestinian people and also deep, deep, I'm going to
Debbie Danon: say it like anger and fury at the people who committed
Debbie Danon: this against it could have been me and my like, had we been in
Debbie Danon: the south of Israel visiting friends and family, that could have been us. So it's
Debbie Danon: complex. I feel all these things very, very deeply. But in terms of
Debbie Danon: the rebel courage element, it's like,
Debbie Danon: where can I create space or where can I find space? And
Debbie Danon: it's not going to be online, I don't think, in the kind of social media
Debbie Danon: age of dumpster fire, just say something and then
Debbie Danon: leave and get into the comments kind of broadcast only comments
Debbie Danon: situation. I think it's going to be some kind of maybe online, but
Debbie Danon: private spaces with people who are really committed to listening and
Debbie Danon: being with each other and not turning away just because someone says something they
Debbie Danon: disagree with. I'm really ruminating on what might be
Debbie Danon: the right place to place my rebel courage and
Debbie Danon: actually serving my clients right now, like being there for my clients, many of whom
Debbie Danon: have connections to the region, because I work with a lot of NGOs and
Debbie Danon: think tanks and folks who are in the space. I think that's the best use
Debbie Danon: of my rebel courage right now. So I guess it's a big learning. And I
Debbie Danon: think for those of us in organisations as well, that sometimes when we're going through
Debbie Danon: something big, our capacity just gets a bit smaller and we have to work
Debbie Danon: within that capacity. Trying to overstretch myself and trying to be on LinkedIn and trying
Debbie Danon: to be here and trying to be there doesn't serve right now. I've got very
Debbie Danon: limited capacity. Sometimes I get triggered by something in the news and I cry for
Debbie Danon: an hour and that's okay, I have to be
Debbie Danon: mindful about my capacity. And it's actually
Debbie Danon: kind of a weird capitalist extractive narrative that says that I have to be everywhere
Debbie Danon: all at once and I have to be showing up in that way all the
Debbie Danon: time. So, yeah, I don't know if that answers your question, but certainly
Debbie Danon: very complex time. One thing
Joanne Lockwood: I go back to, the Design for Inclusion sessions that you facilitated all
Joanne Lockwood: those years ago. One thing that I've learned
Joanne Lockwood: is that where do I get my information from? I get
Joanne Lockwood: my information from the media. Do I trust the
Joanne Lockwood: media? I'm not sure I can trust all of the media.
Joanne Lockwood: I can't always unpack it. There's so many tropes, so many stereotypes, so
Joanne Lockwood: many historical political angles on
Joanne Lockwood: things that I've learned that what I need to do is find my own
Joanne Lockwood: source of truth that I can trust. And even that is tricky to
Joanne Lockwood: wade through. But one thing I have realised,
Joanne Lockwood: listening to comments that you've made, other people I've made, that I know
Joanne Lockwood: online and in person is that I don't
Joanne Lockwood: know. I've learned that I don't know. I've learned that
Joanne Lockwood: I have no ability to make a judgement, therefore
Joanne Lockwood: I'm stepping out of judgement and listening. I
Joanne Lockwood: do know that I want peace. I do know that I don't want
Joanne Lockwood: people to die, whoever they may be. I don't want families
Joanne Lockwood: destroyed. I don't want infrastructure and the future hopes and
Joanne Lockwood: dreams of people, whoever they may be, destroyed and torn apart. I do
Joanne Lockwood: know that. So I do know that. I want
Joanne Lockwood: Deescalation. I do know I want Simplification. I do know that I want people
Joanne Lockwood: to live. That's where I start from. And how we
Joanne Lockwood: got to here is something I'm learning about, and I'm taking it as learning
Joanne Lockwood: opportunity without putting you into any trauma. I saw something on
Joanne Lockwood: the probably on LinkedIn or Twitter or
Joanne Lockwood: something around a recently broadcast episode of
Joanne Lockwood: University Challenge, and there's a ferraro
Joanne Lockwood: around this blue octopus that uses a
Joanne Lockwood: mascot. And there was information
Joanne Lockwood: about the person whose mascot it was was
Joanne Lockwood: wearing Palestinian colours on her dress,
Joanne Lockwood: her T shirt, wherever, and superficially, I had no
Joanne Lockwood: idea what the blue octopus signified and I.
Debbie Danon: Don'T have any I don't think I. Even
Joanne Lockwood: well, I say there was a lot for all around it. I did the research
Joanne Lockwood: and it transpires that the blue
Joanne Lockwood: octopus was a symbol used by the Third Reich, by
Joanne Lockwood: the Nazis, and there was lots of cartoons
Joanne Lockwood: around this blue octopus engulfing the world with its claws into
Joanne Lockwood: everything. So it became a trope of
Joanne Lockwood: antisemitism back in the 1930s.
Joanne Lockwood: So I don't know whether this was
Joanne Lockwood: the signal that someone's trying to put out or wasn't, but I then step back
Joanne Lockwood: and say it's a problematic symbol for some.
Joanne Lockwood: I don't have to debate whether it is or isn't problematic to me.
Joanne Lockwood: If it's problematic to somebody else, I just go, thank you. I
Joanne Lockwood: understand. Now, I recognise what you're saying. I have the choice
Joanne Lockwood: not to propagate that pain or that
Joanne Lockwood: emblem, but I've learned about it. So
Joanne Lockwood: I think we could all take a bit of that education to sort of
Joanne Lockwood: take everything that we react to as an opportunity to
Joanne Lockwood: learn and to dig deep rather than fall
Joanne Lockwood: straight into judgement and taking aside, based on
Joanne Lockwood: often, a lack of historic detailed.
Debbie Danon: Totally. Totally. And what Sus is really bringing up for me,
Debbie Danon: Joanne, when you say, you know, I can take that on board and I
Debbie Danon: can learn something new, rather than needing to dispute it because we're taking a
Debbie Danon: side and we're like, well, but that side always lies, or those people aren't
Debbie Danon: trustworthy. And I think there's a number of ways in
Debbie Danon: which the way the current discourse is going kind of displays a number of the
Debbie Danon: things that rebel leadership is really set up to stand against or
Debbie Danon: stand to imagine something new. So, for example, performativity the
Debbie Danon: idea that we have to perform or do something a certain way to
Debbie Danon: get likes. Or strokes or to be appreciated
Debbie Danon: versus who we are as human beings, how we show up, what we're about in
Debbie Danon: the world being of intrinsic value. And that comes from industrial
Debbie Danon: revolution kind of humans as machines kind of ideology
Debbie Danon: of humans being productive and performing right.
Debbie Danon: Your value comes from the output that you create or your performance. And I think
Debbie Danon: that activism has we talk about performative activism. I think that's something to
Debbie Danon: really, really question and think about how do we do this in a way
Debbie Danon: that's relational, in a way that's grounded. Another thing that I think rebel leadership
Debbie Danon: stands to kind of innovate, let's say, is this
Debbie Danon: idea of scarcity. So you talked about kind of like, oh, you can just step
Debbie Danon: back and say thank you. There's lots of things
Debbie Danon: I don't know and that's okay, and I can say I don't know. And that's
Debbie Danon: not a sign of weakness, that's just a sign of the world being really complex.
Debbie Danon: And there's been lots of things I didn't know. I didn't actually make the link
Debbie Danon: with the Blue Optimus until you mentioned it. And I'm like, oh, thanks, Joanne.
Debbie Danon: Okay, that makes sense. But what I see
Debbie Danon: even in the spaces that I facilitate in organisations is sometimes there's a sort
Debbie Danon: of scarcity, is scarcity of budget,
Debbie Danon: scarcity of space. There's only so much space that we can give
Debbie Danon: people. There's only so much support. There's this way in which
Debbie Danon: capitalism, again, and I guess kind of the mindset that we have
Debbie Danon: of there's only so much to go around and we see this in the
Debbie Danon: refugee narratives, stuff that gets turned out about, oh, well, refugees are coming, they're going
Debbie Danon: to take our jobs or they're going to take this from us. And it's like,
Debbie Danon: actually, what if we could look at this from a place of abundance? What if
Debbie Danon: there is an abundance of compassion? What if there is an abundance of
Debbie Danon: understanding to be had? What if there is an abundance of
Debbie Danon: nuance? What if there is an abundance of resource? How can we
Debbie Danon: come from that place? And that doesn't suddenly add three zeros to a budget.
Debbie Danon: I'm not saying that this is kind of magical thinking, but it does change our
Debbie Danon: orientation towards what's possible. And
Debbie Danon: it actually takes a lot of self work and it's what I work with
Debbie Danon: my clients in kind of leadership spaces, is how to ground yourself
Debbie Danon: in that space of abundance rather than scarcity. I don't know if
Debbie Danon: that's something you come across in your work too, Joanne.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, I hear what you're saying there and it
Joanne Lockwood: is. It's trying to focus on those things that are
Joanne Lockwood: more than just self promotion or
Joanne Lockwood: self declaration of allyship and self declaration of yay,
Joanne Lockwood: I'm going on a march, yay. Because I'm a good person. And yes, do
Joanne Lockwood: take part, do be visible, do stand up, but do, do
Joanne Lockwood: more than just be there. It's about tomorrow
Joanne Lockwood: and the day after and the week after and the year after about how you
Joanne Lockwood: can really do the lifelong learning. And
Joanne Lockwood: I'm sure you do talk about allyship. I always talk about as holding the rope.
Joanne Lockwood: If you're in a tug of war competition, if you just let the rope drop,
Joanne Lockwood: then it's going to get pulled over. So you just got to help that tension
Joanne Lockwood: with everybody else and recognise that your hand on that rope is a
Joanne Lockwood: valuable resource and a valuable support, no matter how much
Joanne Lockwood: you're pulling, as long as you're not letting it go. I think that's
Joanne Lockwood: really important. And I think the thing I'm
Joanne Lockwood: concerned I don't know if concern is the right word, but where we are now,
Joanne Lockwood: this is what, November 2023, we saw a couple of
Joanne Lockwood: years ago, just before, around the COVID time, we had Black
Joanne Lockwood: Lives Matter with George Floyd, we had that murder. We had some
Joanne Lockwood: too. We had violence against women and girls, we had the Met
Joanne Lockwood: police, we had all these things going on, we had vigils
Joanne Lockwood: organisations were very focused on well being, mental health,
Joanne Lockwood: lunch and learns and making sure that everybody was kept in touch
Joanne Lockwood: and nobody knew what was going on. We're all in the same storm, but different
Joanne Lockwood: boats, all these kind of analogies coming out. We're now,
Joanne Lockwood: what, a couple of years later, is the world forgetting? Is the world
Joanne Lockwood: forgetting? I don't know about you, but I'm seeing
Joanne Lockwood: DNI people budgets being
Joanne Lockwood: more limited, budgets being cut,
Joanne Lockwood: reprioritized. I'm seeing
Joanne Lockwood: we see it in the UK, this kind of war on Wokism, this anti
Joanne Lockwood: wokeness of right wing tropes. We see
Joanne Lockwood: rise of right wing power across the world pushing
Joanne Lockwood: back on. What I quite rightly think is progress that
Joanne Lockwood: we've made over the last few years being etched away,
Joanne Lockwood: and suddenly we've got people who hold power and privilege feeling
Joanne Lockwood: threatened. What's your take on that? That's what I want
Joanne Lockwood: to know. Oh, goodness, yes, of course. And I
Debbie Danon: guess that's sort of how the
Debbie Danon: rope moves, isn't it? It's like, oh, gosh, they're pulling on it, we'd better pull
Debbie Danon: harder in the other direction. Right? And I think it
Debbie Danon: can be a real struggle sometimes, working
Debbie Danon: in the inclusion space or campaigning. A lot of my clients are campaigners or
Debbie Danon: activists, for example, whether they're in dei roles in
Debbie Danon: organisations or whether they work for NGOs or think tanks or
Debbie Danon: startups with a social mission. And really, I hear them
Debbie Danon: talking about this same thing of, like, does
Debbie Danon: it really make a difference? I feel like the people who
Debbie Danon: aren't listening are still not listening and so forth. And the way I think about
Debbie Danon: it, Joanne, is I'm not a campaigner. So when I
Debbie Danon: see how things play out someone I've worked with an LGBTQ
Debbie Danon: charity that has had a lot of struggles with the media
Debbie Danon: and with all the sort of antitrans rhetoric and stuff and their
Debbie Danon: staff being traumatised and all sorts of things. And when I see that,
Debbie Danon: I get so angry and upset about that that actually in a way
Debbie Danon: that by saying things that are
Debbie Danon: hurtful and that are known to be hurtful by the people of power and
Debbie Danon: privilege against people who are
Debbie Danon: marginalised and who've been historically marginalised and still marginalised. They are knocking
Debbie Danon: them off balance so they can't do their work properly. And it's kind of this
Debbie Danon: weird, I don't know, jujitsu move or something where
Debbie Danon: it's like, oh, and now you're so traumatised or you're so
Debbie Danon: incapacitated or so angry that you can't really do your work
Debbie Danon: well. So a lot of my work is around, first of all, kind of keeping
Debbie Danon: the faith, like keeping the home fires burning, that this work is worth
Debbie Danon: doing, and bringing people together in community as well, to say like,
Debbie Danon: look, we can all see the value in it and look at the impact and
Debbie Danon: the wins that we've had. So not losing sight of that, but also giving people
Debbie Danon: the tools to co regulate and self regulate when we get knocked down. Because
Debbie Danon: I think what you're talking about when we hear about, oh, well, maybe it's all
Debbie Danon: been for naught and there is this quite pervasive narrative of Dei is dead, which
Debbie Danon: I actually think we need to wholesale reject because we know that that's
Debbie Danon: not the case. It's out of the bottle now. No one's putting it back inside.
Debbie Danon: And what I see is the need for us to regulate
Debbie Danon: ourselves. I absolutely love this book called The Politics of Trauma. Maybe we can put
Debbie Danon: it in the show. Notes by Stacey Haynes. And it's all about the
Debbie Danon: somatics the body stuff of doing this work,
Debbie Danon: where actually our bodies take a know when we're
Debbie Danon: putting ourselves in spaces where we're speaking about our lived experience or where we're standing
Debbie Danon: up and being allies for people and we may be attacked or made an example
Debbie Danon: of. Right, so how can we
Debbie Danon: get really wise about that? And then when I look at my campaigner friends
Debbie Danon: or colleagues or clients, it's really about recognising
Debbie Danon: that this just hasn't happened by accident. The right is extremely
Debbie Danon: well organised, they know what they're doing, it's very deliberate and
Debbie Danon: it's very political. And I think there's ways in which and I'm not
Debbie Danon: that person and I think this is something that I really believe in, Joanne, is
Debbie Danon: the vision is big. There's a massive, massive vision that we've got to bring about
Debbie Danon: and we can't all be everywhere. I can't be in reproductive health and trans
Debbie Danon: rights and this and that. I can stand for all those things and I can
Debbie Danon: support my colleagues in all of those things. But as one human, you just can't
Debbie Danon: be everywhere. So you've got to pick where your contribution is. And
Debbie Danon: I know that my contribution is being the unblocker for those
Debbie Danon: people who are making that change, like you, like people
Debbie Danon: like the dei leads and the CEOs who really want to make a difference. And
Debbie Danon: the project folks who are really leading this work. It's
Debbie Danon: how can I unblock them, give them the rebel authenticity, the rebel balance,
Debbie Danon: the rebel courage they need that they already have, that just needs awakening
Debbie Danon: and unblocking, so that they can show up and do
Debbie Danon: the difficult but absolutely necessary and absolutely
Debbie Danon: alive and kicking work of inclusion and building
Debbie Danon: flourishing for all. I see myself in a
Joanne Lockwood: very similar light. People accuse me, and
Joanne Lockwood: I use that word, accuse me of being an activist, because I don't
Joanne Lockwood: see myself as an activist. I don't see myself as a placard,
Joanne Lockwood: waving, shouting, angry person
Joanne Lockwood: who is speaking from a wound. I don't feel
Joanne Lockwood: wounded or
Joanne Lockwood: challenged personally in that way. I mean, some of that is my old privilege. Some
Joanne Lockwood: of the fact is, as a trans woman, I've experienced very little
Joanne Lockwood: personal discrimination in my life, so
Joanne Lockwood: I am very privileged in that respect. So I've never felt that I've needed
Joanne Lockwood: to get angry about anything. And I think that's actually a privilege in its
Joanne Lockwood: own right, not feeling the need to get angry about something. So I recognise and
Joanne Lockwood: hold that. But I always see myself
Joanne Lockwood: as an educator, if you like, an advocate, a supporter, a
Joanne Lockwood: champion, a voice of
Joanne Lockwood: the centre rather than a voice of the edge. I
Joanne Lockwood: really want to bring people to the middle of the table, not on the edges
Joanne Lockwood: all the time, which isn't easy. And we talk about this frustration
Joanne Lockwood: and I always take it. There's a phrase in
Joanne Lockwood: one of these videos, the essential one. Inclusion starts with
Joanne Lockwood: I and towards the end they say
Joanne Lockwood: it does start with I, it starts with me. And I can be
Joanne Lockwood: the one as the message out of it. I can't change the world, I can't
Joanne Lockwood: change everybody, but I can change me, I can change how I show
Joanne Lockwood: up. And then I can be in a position of social influence, leadership
Joanne Lockwood: around me. And if I can influence one other person for the
Joanne Lockwood: better, who then spreads that on, then that's the
Joanne Lockwood: infection level of inclusion, if you like. And I'm also great.
Joanne Lockwood: Another 01:00 a.m. I saying is a snowflake on its own will fall to the
Joanne Lockwood: ground and melt on the pavement. A billion
Joanne Lockwood: snowflakes are an avalanche. An avalanche changes
Joanne Lockwood: landscapes. So it is about coming together for
Joanne Lockwood: social change and not being frustrated that we can't do
Joanne Lockwood: it all on our own because we won't. But we can find other snowflakes. And
Joanne Lockwood: I'm proud to be a snowflake. Call me a snowflake all you like.
Debbie Danon: I'll take it unique and resilient
Debbie Danon: in community. And I totally agree with you that solidarity is the way. And that's
Debbie Danon: how I see the vision. When I think about Rebel Courage and what the vision
Debbie Danon: is and I do this with organisations, it's like the vision is so huge.
Debbie Danon: But just because I'm not over there and over there and over there and over
Debbie Danon: there and I found my little patch doesn't mean I can't support
Debbie Danon: know her mission over here and I can't support Fahana over here and I
Debbie Danon: can't support Mariam over there and Gary over there. I
Debbie Danon: can absolutely be in community and in solidarity. And I would say,
Debbie Danon: actually, I don't see activists as I think maybe there was
Debbie Danon: a time when I thought activist was a dirty word or activist was just like
Debbie Danon: so far outside my world. In a way, I am an activist and I
Debbie Danon: embrace it. And I also think that
Debbie Danon: certain powers that be have kind of framed activists in that kind of slightly negative
Debbie Danon: light or demanding light. I would say
Debbie Danon: going on marches and being kind of public in that way, it doesn't feel like
Debbie Danon: the best use of my energy. What I do kind of like you, is bring
Debbie Danon: people around. So I'm a facilitator. I'm a conversation starter. I'm just
Debbie Danon: brewing an idea right now about what it could look like to create a space
Debbie Danon: for Jews, Muslims, Arabs, folks who are affected by what's going
Debbie Danon: on right now, who are willing to be in spaces with people they disagree
Debbie Danon: with. Not to come and discuss the conflict itself, but to share and
Debbie Danon: listen and be present with what's happening for each other
Debbie Danon: from a perspective of building the muscle of empathy and building the muscle of
Debbie Danon: compassion and building a sense of imagination, of actually,
Debbie Danon: the world is telling us we shouldn't be able to stand each other. And yet
Debbie Danon: here we are, listening to each other and validating each other and affirming each other
Debbie Danon: and seeing similarities in our experience. That's the kind of activism that I want to
Debbie Danon: be up to and that I know is going to make a lot more impact
Debbie Danon: in my mind. And this is entirely me, and people can disagree with me and
Debbie Danon: they can have their own ways of making impact that's going to make more impact
Debbie Danon: for me. When I think about the kind of effort for effort exchange,
Debbie Danon: effort for impact exchange, than going on marches for
Debbie Danon: me, which could be traumatising for me anyway. So, yeah, I'm really hearing that.
Debbie Danon: Yeah, I think we need to reclaim the term activism. I think yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: I think it's because it's been weaponized as a trope and a
Joanne Lockwood: term. It's used to denigrate or put you down or
Joanne Lockwood: you hear about trans activists and that conjures
Joanne Lockwood: up this rebel, degenerate, sort
Joanne Lockwood: of non constructive group of people,
Joanne Lockwood: whereas the people on the other side of the fence are the decent,
Joanne Lockwood: upstanding, middle class people who are perfectly reasonable.
Joanne Lockwood: So, yeah, it's how you frame it. And I think sometimes the word activist is
Joanne Lockwood: thrown in there as a slur and a pejorative
Joanne Lockwood: and I think not celebrated. I think that's probably where
Joanne Lockwood: I don't identify with it because I don't want to identify with it as a
Joanne Lockwood: slur. It's not my identity. It may be something that people
Joanne Lockwood: perceive me as, but are they perceiving me? As
Joanne Lockwood: I say, in a negative way or using it against me negatively. So, yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: maybe that's why I reject it. But I guess I activate
Joanne Lockwood: and activize myself in ways every
Joanne Lockwood: day. You
Debbie Danon: activate each other about other people, too. Don't diminish that, too. And
Debbie Danon: actually, funny enough, until about three years ago, I didn't really
Debbie Danon: identify with the idea of a rebel. And now I'm, like, wholeheartedly
Debbie Danon: 110%, down to my toes, up to my head rebel. Because
Debbie Danon: when I was younger, I was like the girl who was voted in the yearbook,
Debbie Danon: most likely to keep in touch with her teachers. And lo and behold, I did,
Debbie Danon: because they were really cool people. That's not very rebel,
Debbie Danon: right? And I was never, like, the one pushing boundaries. And I still sometimes have
Debbie Danon: a bit too healthy respect for authority, and I have to catch myself, and it's
Debbie Danon: something I'm learning to unlearn my respect for authority. But what I will
Debbie Danon: say is, when I was certifying from the Integral Coaching Programme, my dear
Debbie Danon: friend, now friend, and my coach Justin said to, you
Debbie Danon: know, reading your cases. My cases were I submitted cases
Debbie Danon: from folks with really diverse identities and I spoke about the
Debbie Danon: systemic factors that were affecting their ability to flourish as
Debbie Danon: well as, obviously, their own choices and trying to expand the range of choices
Debbie Danon: available to them. And he said to me, Debbie, I just see you as this
Debbie Danon: giant rebel, like, tall as a mountain that is like, I'm not standing for this
Debbie Danon: anymore. This is not how things should be. And that was the seed of
Debbie Danon: rebel leadership, which has been revealing itself to me ever since, which know
Debbie Danon: how in a world that doesn't allow for flourishing, how can we bend
Debbie Danon: the rules? How can we create spaces that say, up yours to some of the
Debbie Danon: things that the world is saying we should be doing or is
Debbie Danon: professional or is right, is moral. It's like,
Debbie Danon: actually, who said that was moral? That might not be actually moral.
Debbie Danon: That might just be power, holding on to power. So I'm learning,
Debbie Danon: too, and I say this for folks listening who might be like, oh, I'm not
Debbie Danon: a rebel. I'm just cracking on. I don't identify with this idea of rebel
Debbie Danon: activists. I guess the thing that I ask people in my workshops or
Debbie Danon: in my coaching too, is, what are you a rebel for the sake of?
Debbie Danon: What do you stand for? What is a norm in the world that you
Debbie Danon: think I'm not about that. That's not okay. So I always say that
Debbie Danon: I'm a rebel for the sake of breakfast, because I think breakfast is very culturally
Debbie Danon: conditioned and people get very like, you're eating what for breakfast? And it's like, well,
Debbie Danon: hello, colonialism. Like, cereal has been around, what, like 200 years or something?
Debbie Danon: Not even. And people have been eating rice and soup and noodles and
Debbie Danon: fish and all kinds of things for breakfast for years. So I'm very much
Debbie Danon: a rebel for the sake of the breakfast revolution, of eat what you want for
Debbie Danon: breakfast and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. But I'm also a rebel for the
Debbie Danon: sake of healing, liberation and love. And that's something that really has come clear to
Debbie Danon: me this year, and you mentioned it in my superpower, is I'm
Debbie Danon: here for healing, which is taking our pain, turning towards it,
Debbie Danon: witnessing it, validating it and moving through it and helping others to do the
Debbie Danon: same. Liberation, which is about getting
Debbie Danon: through all of these systemic factors, these past life experiences, factors
Debbie Danon: that the ways in which we're participating in a broken world that have kept us
Debbie Danon: trapped and stepping into liberation. And then
Debbie Danon: love, which is really about realising that we're not disconnected.
Debbie Danon: Human beings are not disconnected. Our nervous systems, it's been proven, are not disconnected
Debbie Danon: from each other. And this idea that
Debbie Danon: we are no longer divided and that we can find, we
Debbie Danon: don't sort of squirrel away or kind of fall into the scarcity narrative
Debbie Danon: around love. How can I really train myself to
Debbie Danon: love others? And I think where you might think, oh, that's a weird thing to
Debbie Danon: talk about in a corporate context. I talk about love with my clients a lot.
Debbie Danon: And actually, when we break it down into what it actually looks like, it's really
Debbie Danon: showing care, showing empathy, like you said, with the miscarriage question of, like, how can
Debbie Danon: I support you? What's the best way that I can be supportive to you? That's
Debbie Danon: love in the workplace, reaching out to a colleague
Debbie Danon: six months after they've had a bereavement, just checking in, because
Debbie Danon: we know that grief has no timeline. And it's not just like the three days
Debbie Danon: after their compassionate leave that affects them, it's
Debbie Danon: recognising and listening and believing to people when they say that
Debbie Danon: they've had a hard time, rather than trying to minimise or rationalise. Yeah, so those
Debbie Danon: are things I'm a rebel for. So I really encourage folks at home to think,
Debbie Danon: what are you a rebel for the sake of? And what does it take to
Debbie Danon: stand up for that? I'm with you on breakfast, although
Joanne Lockwood: I'm not a constant rebel. I was in Thailand
Joanne Lockwood: many years ago at a hotel, and the selection of
Joanne Lockwood: breakfast food, or early morning food there was
Joanne Lockwood: curries. It was basically what I would consider an
Joanne Lockwood: evening meal, but for breakfast, and it was like, wow. It
Joanne Lockwood: allowed me to just try different things at a different time of
Joanne Lockwood: day. I'm with you on that. If I go to a
Joanne Lockwood: hotel and they have something different, let's give it a go. I
Joanne Lockwood: don't have this at home every day. Let's go and try a bit of black
Joanne Lockwood: pudding, which, when's black pudding been breakfast, it's kind
Joanne Lockwood: of only in England, maybe, I don't know. But, yeah, it's all
Debbie Danon: arbitrary, isn't it? Someone made the rules and we now have to break
Debbie Danon: them. See if you can help me out on
Joanne Lockwood: this. You've probably experienced it as well.
Joanne Lockwood: But I experience it often where people
Joanne Lockwood: feel like I owe them an argument or I owe them a debate.
Joanne Lockwood: What's your view on this? What's your view on that? Or I think this
Joanne Lockwood: tell me. I'm and then they want to argue it, whether it's trans
Joanne Lockwood: people in sport or trans this or trans that.
Joanne Lockwood: Lately I've just reacted to people said, I'm sorry, I don't owe you
Joanne Lockwood: an argument on this. This is not something that I really want to engage
Joanne Lockwood: with. So how do you rationalise that? Because that could
Joanne Lockwood: be seen as deplatforming or shutting someone down, whereas what
Joanne Lockwood: you're trying to do is bring people to that centrist area of the table to
Joanne Lockwood: have these conversations. My
Joanne Lockwood: reaction, as I say, is walk away and stop. I'm not having that conversation. How
Joanne Lockwood: would you handle that? What techniques have you? Yeah. Oh,
Debbie Danon: such a good question, Jared. And yeah, I am sorry to hear that and not
Debbie Danon: surprised that people act that way. I love your response. I think that's really an
Debbie Danon: act of rebel balance, respecting your boundaries, respecting your limited
Debbie Danon: resource by saying, I don't owe you an argument. And I think that is a
Debbie Danon: completely legitimate thing, particularly when they're talking about it in a hypothetical way
Debbie Danon: or an academic way, and you're talking about it as in, like, your right to
Debbie Danon: live a normal life way. So I think that's completely
Debbie Danon: legit and as a completely understandable way
Debbie Danon: forward. So I'm not big into
Debbie Danon: my take on social media is that it is broadcast only. So even when you're
Debbie Danon: in comments with people and you're having a conversation back and forth,
Debbie Danon: it's still broadcast only because you broadcast a response and then someone else broadcasts a
Debbie Danon: response. You're not in a state of listening. There's not a lot of listening on
Debbie Danon: social media. I reserve myself for spaces where there is
Debbie Danon: listening, where I can facilitate that listening, or where that listening is present
Debbie Danon: already. And I think that's what you're tapping into when you say, nah, not
Debbie Danon: doing this. And I guess some people would say that's
Debbie Danon: chickening out and running off, or some people would say that's
Debbie Danon: maybe leaving an educational opportunity untapped. But
Debbie Danon: if someone has already said to you that they want to fight you on this
Debbie Danon: or they want to get into it with you, we've got
Debbie Danon: to assess how safe that is for us and whether there's listening present. I always
Debbie Danon: say there's a beautiful model in integral coaching, and I use this with my clients
Debbie Danon: all the time. And it's this idea of like, there's
Debbie Danon: children's toys that there's like a stick and then there's three rings of decreasing
Debbie Danon: size that sit on top of each other. So there's like a big bottom ring.
Debbie Danon: And that's relationship if you're going to create change in the world, first you need
Debbie Danon: relationship with people, which is why I'm big time investing in my
Debbie Danon: relationships with my Jewish, my Muslim, my Arab Christian,
Debbie Danon: friends right now because that is what's dependent. Having that in
Debbie Danon: place means that we can move to the next ring, which is possibility. It's like,
Debbie Danon: okay, let's go somewhere, let's learn something, let's figure out if there's
Debbie Danon: something we could do together and then only then can we move to action and
Debbie Danon: collective action or wanting to do something together. But actually people
Debbie Danon: skip out the relationship bit and I think it's such a shame. I think
Debbie Danon: sometimes people do it because they don't want to be vulnerable. Sometimes people do it
Debbie Danon: because they don't think there's time. But we know this intrinsically, right? You've got to
Debbie Danon: have relationship with people.
Debbie Danon: I'm really grateful to folks who have the patience for it, who will actually have
Debbie Danon: those conversations. But personally, for me, it's
Debbie Danon: about is there listening? There? Is their relationship there? Does this person matter
Debbie Danon: to me? I've had some conversations with people who matter to me in the last
Debbie Danon: few weeks. I would not have given the time of day to someone who just
Debbie Danon: wanted to have it off the bat. But because I care about them, I did
Debbie Danon: enter the conversation. So yeah, that's where I stand. I don't know
Debbie Danon: what that brings up for you, Joe. Yeah, no,
Joanne Lockwood: I resonate with that. To me,
Joanne Lockwood: a lot of it is context, motivation, trajectory.
Joanne Lockwood: What's the outcome for this? If the outcome is just
Joanne Lockwood: being told that I'm wrong and as you say, there's no listening,
Joanne Lockwood: there's no education to be had. They're not really interested in my perspective. They just
Joanne Lockwood: want to tie me in knots with their views. I think those
Joanne Lockwood: become unproductive arguments that's edge
Joanne Lockwood: conversations, not censors conversations where the trajectory
Joanne Lockwood: is one of curiosity, one of
Joanne Lockwood: looking for education misunderstanding? Not sure.
Joanne Lockwood: Worried, nervous, or just want to find out more
Joanne Lockwood: then you can tell. The trajectory of that conversation is positive.
Joanne Lockwood: But if it's going off a tangent or like to bounce off the Earth,
Joanne Lockwood: it's not worth having. So I tend to walk away
Joanne Lockwood: because you know, they're not never going to be productive.
Joanne Lockwood: That's kind of my take on it, you know, when it's going to be productive
Joanne Lockwood: and for mutual benefit rather than just somebody else
Joanne Lockwood: wanting to tell you. I think I often describe it's a bit like road
Joanne Lockwood: rage. Someone wants to get out their
Joanne Lockwood: car and tell you you've been driving badly.
Joanne Lockwood: They want to police you back into their box of their rule
Joanne Lockwood: set. And I think that's what people do. They want to put you back into
Joanne Lockwood: their rule set. You don't conform with my ideals of society or my sense
Joanne Lockwood: of right and wrong, my whatever it is. If I'm going to tell you like
Joanne Lockwood: road rage, you've done wrong and I'm going to get angry with you until you
Joanne Lockwood: give in and say, I'm sorry, that's kind of how I see it. Often
Joanne Lockwood: these people just it's just road rage or graffiti. Someone's spraying
Joanne Lockwood: something on the wall. Not at me. They're just angry. I
Joanne Lockwood: go, that's fine. So I can step away from
Joanne Lockwood: those using that context. I can just wind my window up
Joanne Lockwood: and wave, smile, drive
Joanne Lockwood: off, see you never. Well,
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, I'm just going to continue being me, you're going to continue being you, and
Joanne Lockwood: that's fine. I can live with that. I didn't need to fix you. And
Debbie Danon: yet those people who we are in relationship with, that's such a beautiful
Debbie Danon: contrast, isn't it? What if you're in the same car and you actually have a
Debbie Danon: relationship with someone who's in the same car who's like, oh, you nearly run over
Debbie Danon: that cyclist or whatever, you're actually in conversation with them because you're in the same
Debbie Danon: car and you have some kind of shared destiny, so it's worth
Debbie Danon: having a conversation about it. But the person in the other car, forget
Debbie Danon: it. Yeah. It takes
Joanne Lockwood: an educated and grown up mind in my mind that
Joanne Lockwood: you don't have to be right. Nobody has to be right. We
Joanne Lockwood: have perspectives, we have opinions, we have our protective beliefs, whatever they are,
Joanne Lockwood: but they are based out of our head and our sense of self
Joanne Lockwood: and our lived experience. So once you accept that
Joanne Lockwood: I'm right in my own head, not necessarily writing anybody else's head,
Joanne Lockwood: and everybody else has a view, a perspective, an opinion and lived
Joanne Lockwood: experience, and it's about trying to find that shared understanding about why someone
Joanne Lockwood: thinks something rather than just arguing about this outcome, that we
Joanne Lockwood: get so hung up on this. You've got to agree with me. I
Joanne Lockwood: want to understand why we disagree, actually, first. If I can understand
Joanne Lockwood: why we disagree first, the fundamentals, then we can get
Joanne Lockwood: closer by going, okay, I get it. So that's how you were brought
Joanne Lockwood: up. That's the community you lived in. That's what happened to you in a younger
Joanne Lockwood: age. That's the lived experience your parents or your community told you that I didn't
Joanne Lockwood: experience. Now I can get close to you and
Joanne Lockwood: understand the passion or the motivation behind
Joanne Lockwood: where you stand on that. Got you. Yeah. Now I can have a
Joanne Lockwood: conversation. And that's what we don't do, as you say. It's about those
Joanne Lockwood: layers, that relationship layer of understanding
Joanne Lockwood: and willingness to engage, not just wanting to be right.
Debbie Danon: So true. So true. I think there's oh, gosh, I'm going to forget who said
Debbie Danon: it. It's a poet who wrote, there's a field
Debbie Danon: beyond right and wrong. There's a field and I'll meet you there.
Debbie Danon: Right. Which is like it's sort of surrendering the need to be right or make
Debbie Danon: someone else wrong. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: It does take some enlightenment to get to that point.
Joanne Lockwood: And I'm sure you do. I certainly do. I get to the point sometimes where
Joanne Lockwood: I go, hang on a minute, I'm entrenched in
Joanne Lockwood: this. I'm kind of nailing myself to this stake here. I need to get
Joanne Lockwood: off this quickly and step out and go, I don't know,
Joanne Lockwood: I need to think more. I. Need to understand you more, because I
Joanne Lockwood: think it's a human thing. Protectionism, judgement and all
Joanne Lockwood: these kind of things that we threat analysis,
Joanne Lockwood: we want to be right. And I think if we could fix everybody
Joanne Lockwood: not wanting to be right, then we'd be mean scientists.
Joanne Lockwood: They're only right until another scientist proves them wrong. It's like
Joanne Lockwood: Pluto. Poor Pluto. It went for not existing to be a planet,
Joanne Lockwood: and then for a few years it was a planet, and now suddenly it's not
Joanne Lockwood: a planet anymore, for sure. And this was
Joanne Lockwood: right. You're so right,
Joanne Lockwood: Debbie. It's been absolutely fascinating having a chat with you and it's been
Joanne Lockwood: great to connect with you after many years. And I know we keep bumping
Joanne Lockwood: into each other on social media and other platforms. We did. But we have to
Joanne Lockwood: keep in touch a different way now. So you mentioned earlier
Joanne Lockwood: you had a programme and a website, so
Joanne Lockwood: tell our plethora of listeners
Joanne Lockwood: how to get hold of you. Yeah. So if you would like to get in
Debbie Danon: touch with me, well, you can absolutely connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm still there,
Debbie Danon: I'm just quiet and I am in my DMs. So if you want to be
Debbie Danon: in touch with me, DM me on LinkedIn, say hello, say you've listened to the
Debbie Danon: podcast. We'd love to hear what you thought and answer your questions.
Debbie Danon: So Debbie Dan on debiedanon.
Debbie Danon: And you can also find me on my website of the
Debbie Danon: same. So WW dot. Debbiedanon.com and
Debbie Danon: I offer leadership coaching with an intersectional
Debbie Danon: liberatory lens and also a programme called Rebel Leadership
Debbie Danon: Mastermind for leaders within one organisation to go through a
Debbie Danon: process of developing rebel leadership together. So if you'd be interested in
Debbie Danon: that, feel free to get in touch. And I have a little invitation for you,
Debbie Danon: a little free something something. So, I've just developed a
Debbie Danon: 30 minutes video coaching session called Well Being Reclaimed.
Debbie Danon: And it's not your average well being session. It's really looking at the systemic
Debbie Danon: ways that our well being gets compromised and also looking at a really
Debbie Danon: holistic set of ways that we can start to develop the practises and the
Debbie Danon: relationships and the supportive mechanisms to make sure that we're taking care of our well
Debbie Danon: being in the world that we live in that is broken, that doesn't support our
Debbie Danon: flourishing. So if that's of interest to you, we'll make sure that the link to
Debbie Danon: Well Being Reclaimed is in the show notes. You can download it. It's yours to
Debbie Danon: keep with a workbook as well, and I would love to hear what you think
Debbie Danon: of it. And it's just an absolute pleasure to be here with Joanne today. I
Debbie Danon: so admire your work. We are definitely co conspirators in the same field with lots
Debbie Danon: of solidarity and, yeah, it's been a great pleasure.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, it's been an absolute honour to spend this time with you. Just
Joanne Lockwood: recharging my belief in society, recharging
Joanne Lockwood: my belief in humanity, and I often describe this
Joanne Lockwood: as like a scale electrics track. If you go too fast, sometimes you get flying
Joanne Lockwood: off at the corner and I think you just help put you back on the
Joanne Lockwood: track again for another lap. And it's been really powerful. And so
Joanne Lockwood: hope also that you, the listeners who've tuned in, you've
Joanne Lockwood: got to the end have been inspired as well, because there's been a
Joanne Lockwood: lot here today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Please do subscribe
Joanne Lockwood: to keep updated on future episodes of the Inclusion Bites
Joanne Lockwood: podcast. That's B-I-T-E-S. Tell your friends and tell
Joanne Lockwood: your colleagues. Please subscribe. Love to hear from you. And of course, if you'd
Joanne Lockwood: like to be a guest on the show yourself, then please do drop me a
Joanne Lockwood: line together with any comments, feedback or suggestions on how we can improve
Joanne Lockwood: to jo.lockwood@seachangehappenco.uk.
Joanne Lockwood: And finally, my name is Joanne Lockwood. It has
Joanne Lockwood: been an absolute pleasure to this podcast for you today.
Joanne Lockwood: Catch you next time. Bye.