Joanne Lockwood: Hello, everyone. My name is Joanne Lockwood and I'm your
Joanne Lockwood: host for the Inclusion Bites podcast. In
Joanne Lockwood: this series, I have interviewed a number of amazing people and
Joanne Lockwood: simply had a conversation around the subject of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging and generally making the world
Joanne Lockwood: a better place for everyone to thrive.
Joanne Lockwood: To join me in the future, then please do drop me a line to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.ukl,
Joanne Lockwood: that's S-E-E Change Happen dot Co dot Uk,
Joanne Lockwood: you can catch up with all of the previous shows
Joanne Lockwood: on itunes, Spotify and the usual places. So
Joanne Lockwood: plug in your headphones, grab a decaf and
Joanne Lockwood: let's get going. Today is
Joanne Lockwood: Episode 88 with the title
Joanne Lockwood: Adversity and Authentic Leadership, and
Joanne Lockwood: I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome
Joanne Lockwood: Samreen McGregor. Sam reen describes
Joanne Lockwood: herself as an executive coach and
Joanne Lockwood: a strategic advisor to leaders and organisations.
Joanne Lockwood: And she encourages others to see diversity and
Joanne Lockwood: trauma as a catalyst for empowerment.
Joanne Lockwood: When I asked Samarine to describe a superpower, she said it is her
Joanne Lockwood: unique blend of multicultural insight and
Joanne Lockwood: transformative executive coaching expertise that she
Joanne Lockwood: brings to the world. Hello, Samreen. Welcome to
Joanne Lockwood: the show. Thank you, Jo. It's great to be here today.
Joanne Lockwood: Pleasure. It's really great. I've had a great time chatting to
Joanne Lockwood: you in the green room before we've gone live here. I can't wait to find
Joanne Lockwood: out more. Really excited about this. So Samreen
Joanne Lockwood: adversity and authentic leadership. What does
Samreen McGregor: that great. Great start. Well, look,
Samreen McGregor: there's two different words there I guess I want
Samreen McGregor: to speak about. One is one that's very core to
Samreen McGregor: me and certainly been core to me in my conscious
Samreen McGregor: life over the last six or seven years. And that's
Samreen McGregor: diversity and in the current
Samreen McGregor: backdrop that we all share,
Samreen McGregor: whether it's the last four or five years
Samreen McGregor: before and during and after the pandemic, or whether
Samreen McGregor: it's the very current, what I would call
Samreen McGregor: polycrisis of a sociopolitical economic,
Samreen McGregor: environmental, health,
Samreen McGregor: all of those factors in the current reality
Samreen McGregor: are volatile. They're changing, they're significantly
Samreen McGregor: altered. And although that may have been true 100 years ago, for those
Samreen McGregor: who lived, our access and our experience of those
Samreen McGregor: factors are particularly magnified at the moment.
Samreen McGregor: And so adversity is really something that I would
Samreen McGregor: suggest not many of us escape. And
Samreen McGregor: those adversities can span from being very personal, very
Samreen McGregor: internal, very intrinsic to us all the way
Samreen McGregor: through to quite externally driven
Samreen McGregor: and manifest in
Samreen McGregor: how we live, in our behaviours and how we work.
Samreen McGregor: And I feel that the skills
Samreen McGregor: needed to learn how to
Samreen McGregor: navigate adversities and live with them and work with them
Samreen McGregor: are truly critical at this
Samreen McGregor: time. And then authenticity.
Samreen McGregor: Well, I work with many people
Samreen McGregor: across many industries and many organisations and
Samreen McGregor: businesses, and I have done for well over 2023,
Samreen McGregor: 24 years. And
Samreen McGregor: throughout that time, whatever the context, I
Samreen McGregor: have experienced a
Samreen McGregor: number of factors that get in the way of how
Samreen McGregor: we connect with one another. And to
Samreen McGregor: use some psychological terms like masks and
Samreen McGregor: even metaphors like shields, we
Samreen McGregor: bring them with us to the places that
Samreen McGregor: we socialise. We work even in our own homes, in our
Samreen McGregor: own families. And there are very
Samreen McGregor: legitimate reasons why these masks or
Samreen McGregor: shields or barriers support us
Samreen McGregor: at times and that can get in the way
Samreen McGregor: of us being our true selves. And so I think
Samreen McGregor: if I combine the two words and not necessarily force them
Samreen McGregor: together, I think they both play an important
Samreen McGregor: role in how I learn about how I study
Samreen McGregor: and research and how I work with the people that I work with as
Samreen McGregor: an executive coach, as a
Samreen McGregor: consultant over the years and as an advisor and even as
Samreen McGregor: a friend and as a mother or wife. In
Samreen McGregor: all those contexts, the
Samreen McGregor: adversities that I face are a part
Samreen McGregor: of what make me me. And I would
Samreen McGregor: suggest that the same thing would apply for most of us. That's a beautiful
Joanne Lockwood: start. I love what you're saying there and we don't think
Joanne Lockwood: about some of the things that go on our lives as adversities necessarily.
Joanne Lockwood: We hear a lot of people talk about resilience and if you're old
Joanne Lockwood: enough back I think it was the 80s or 90s, we talked about bounce back
Joanne Lockwood: ability, didn't we? That kind of the ability to be knocked
Joanne Lockwood: down and get back up again. So what you're saying
Joanne Lockwood: is we're all going through something and whether it's on a macro
Joanne Lockwood: or micro level, we're all having
Joanne Lockwood: to exhibit that resilience
Joanne Lockwood: and deal with the diversity we're facing. Because I'm just thinking about what's
Joanne Lockwood: going on in the world at the moment. We look at what's going on in
Joanne Lockwood: the Middle East, what's going on in Ukraine, what's going on in other parts of
Joanne Lockwood: the world. Politically, there's a lot of challenges that many people
Joanne Lockwood: are facing that is
Joanne Lockwood: causing psychological.
Samreen McGregor: It is. If I were to
Samreen McGregor: reflect on what I've learned just through my own life
Samreen McGregor: journey and how I see my
Samreen McGregor: experience with people day to day today in
Samreen McGregor: the current context, I would
Samreen McGregor: say that the word trauma has
Samreen McGregor: two just to simplify it, really. But it's not as binary
Samreen McGregor: as this, but two different reactions. One is to embrace it
Samreen McGregor: and to be curious about it and to work with it and to get help
Samreen McGregor: if it's causing effects that are getting in the
Samreen McGregor: way of our livelihood. But there's also an
Samreen McGregor: avoidance for it, towards it and a fear of
Samreen McGregor: what it is or even
Samreen McGregor: a negative connotation associated
Samreen McGregor: with it. There's a stigma in many cultures. It's
Samreen McGregor: very much associated with weakness, which
Samreen McGregor: isn't easy to be with.
Samreen McGregor: And I do see more and more and
Samreen McGregor: I think that the wake up call for me was right in the midst of
Samreen McGregor: the pandemic. I was working within a big corporate organisation
Samreen McGregor: going through a fairly significant set of
Samreen McGregor: transformations. One was a merger and the other
Samreen McGregor: was a digital transformation. Not just for the business
Samreen McGregor: itself, but it was attempting a transformation for the
Samreen McGregor: industry as a whole and the impact that that
Samreen McGregor: traumatic organisational experience was having
Samreen McGregor: on its people. In addition to the Pandemic and us being in
Samreen McGregor: lockdown. I remember sitting,
Samreen McGregor: as I was, working with quite a few teams at the time, and individuals and
Samreen McGregor: some of the leaders across the organisation, and just
Samreen McGregor: noticing that we were all living
Samreen McGregor: amongst some fairly
Samreen McGregor: unprecedented conditions. And that
Samreen McGregor: was a trauma that we were all experiencing
Samreen McGregor: in that moment. And so I started to
Samreen McGregor: explore and try to understand what is trauma?
Samreen McGregor: And I was very inspired by
Samreen McGregor: and supported by the definition that Dr Gabor Mate
Samreen McGregor: gives, which is that trauma in
Samreen McGregor: the Greek language is defined
Samreen McGregor: as a wound. And
Samreen McGregor: it's not necessarily a catastrophic event or,
Samreen McGregor: know, unexpected. It's what happen within
Samreen McGregor: our bodies, not just our psyche, but within
Samreen McGregor: our bodies. And unlike physical wounds
Samreen McGregor: that form scar tissue and that hardens,
Samreen McGregor: they stay with us. But they're very deep. They're very, very deep
Samreen McGregor: wounds and
Samreen McGregor: they're a form of trauma,
Samreen McGregor: psychological trauma, even physiological trauma,
Samreen McGregor: they interact with how our neurology
Samreen McGregor: works and how our physiology works. So,
Samreen McGregor: yes, in this current context, I would say many of us are
Samreen McGregor: holding and carrying these effects.
Joanne Lockwood: I've heard people liken this
Joanne Lockwood: psychological load we
Joanne Lockwood: carry. As if you think about a sheet of a four
Joanne Lockwood: paper, brand new out of the packet and you scrunch
Joanne Lockwood: it up, even though you can flatten it back out again,
Joanne Lockwood: it's never without the lines, never as perfect
Joanne Lockwood: as it was. So even if we fix
Joanne Lockwood: ourselves as much as we can, we still carry, as you say, those scars,
Joanne Lockwood: those creases, those scrunch marks of that
Joanne Lockwood: trauma that we've been through. I guess it's how we process that,
Joanne Lockwood: because some of those are battle scars of
Joanne Lockwood: resilience and some of them are maybe
Joanne Lockwood: unhealed wounds that we have to process
Joanne Lockwood: and deal with over time. So it's how we can move on from
Joanne Lockwood: that scarring. Yes, I think that's
Samreen McGregor: really palpable metaphor
Samreen McGregor: and it's very helpful because
Samreen McGregor: you just see the
Samreen McGregor: permanence and the impermanence of that, if that makes sense. It's both,
Samreen McGregor: isn't it? And I would say that in my
Samreen McGregor: experience, there are aspects of trauma
Samreen McGregor: that are incredibly supportive and they
Samreen McGregor: challenge us. In fact, they stretch from a
Samreen McGregor: neuroscientific perspective. They help us form
Samreen McGregor: those elastic possibilities
Samreen McGregor: in our synaptic activity and enable
Samreen McGregor: us to do more. So that's sort of the
Samreen McGregor: biochemistry of the resilience that you were mentioning
Samreen McGregor: earlier. But equally, there are
Samreen McGregor: layers of us that are affected
Samreen McGregor: either more shallow or more deeply
Samreen McGregor: by some of these traumas. And the quality of
Samreen McGregor: how we resolve or work with or
Samreen McGregor: understand the effects becomes
Samreen McGregor: increasingly important. The more I work
Samreen McGregor: with people and teams, the more
Samreen McGregor: I see that I often
Samreen McGregor: am coming up against. And they share and we're talking
Samreen McGregor: about symptoms and we're talking about undesirable effects that
Samreen McGregor: they're living with, that the coaching creates a safe container
Samreen McGregor: and a challenging space to work through.
Samreen McGregor: And I think the thing that I've realised is that
Samreen McGregor: the hidden effects, the unseen but felt
Samreen McGregor: effects of those unresolved aspects that live
Samreen McGregor: within us can be quite obscure,
Samreen McGregor: really subtle. But when
Samreen McGregor: we start to notice some of the connections between how they
Samreen McGregor: live within us and then how they influence our
Samreen McGregor: reactions, our responses, our
Samreen McGregor: behaviours, the actions we take, even how we
Samreen McGregor: feel, generally, the more I
Samreen McGregor: realise how important it is for us to truly understand some of these connections
Samreen McGregor: and the possibilities that come from learning
Samreen McGregor: how to not necessarily resolve them. Because sometimes they're not
Samreen McGregor: fully resolvable, but it's actually acknowledge them and notice they're
Samreen McGregor: there so that we can regulate how we are responding and acting and
Samreen McGregor: behaving. Yeah, I can imagine where
Joanne Lockwood: if you're constantly having reinforced
Joanne Lockwood: messaging through trauma, it can affect your sense of
Joanne Lockwood: self. You internalise a
Joanne Lockwood: negative state of who you are, your emotions,
Joanne Lockwood: and they become self fulfilling. This internalisation could become self fulfilling,
Joanne Lockwood: hard to move on plays into impostor syndrome or limiting
Joanne Lockwood: beliefs or triggers anxiety
Joanne Lockwood: when certain scenarios are relived. And that
Joanne Lockwood: must be really I guess everyone's going to be different on this and the way
Joanne Lockwood: people deal with that, but it's going to exhibit itself in stress
Joanne Lockwood: different ways of communicating, less responsive, the emotional intelligence
Joanne Lockwood: takes a hit and they may not be as self aware of their
Joanne Lockwood: behaviours. All these kind of things kick in when
Joanne Lockwood: you're trying to maybe work through those
Joanne Lockwood: traumas of the past even though they're maybe subliminal. You don't know you're going through
Joanne Lockwood: that trauma or reliving that, but there's something. That'S triggering it is I mean,
Samreen McGregor: I recently did a talk and I'll share the story that I shared
Samreen McGregor: during that talk because it was one that came to me
Samreen McGregor: as I was preparing and
Samreen McGregor: classifying different versions of trauma. And I think it's important to notice
Samreen McGregor: that some of us might respond and go
Samreen McGregor: I've never been traumatised because I've never really had anything
Samreen McGregor: really significant happen to me. But I started
Samreen McGregor: to explore that spectrum. You've got
Samreen McGregor: these moment to moment events that happen.
Samreen McGregor: Some of the typical contexts for that are
Samreen McGregor: childhood and during
Samreen McGregor: childhood we experience adversities
Samreen McGregor: traumas challenges. They could be anything
Samreen McGregor: and they form an imprint, they form some sort of imprint and
Samreen McGregor: the extent to which those imprints are negative or a
Samreen McGregor: wound that can sort of follow
Samreen McGregor: on later on in life will determine whether
Samreen McGregor: it's a trauma or not. And then we've got these
Samreen McGregor: incidences throughout our lives when we're perhaps more
Samreen McGregor: mature or have far more conscious ability to
Samreen McGregor: work with them. But even then they leave imprints. And these
Samreen McGregor: imprints again, have characteristics
Samreen McGregor: around how we respond to those imprints. And sometimes they're
Samreen McGregor: connected to our childhood, sometimes they're just connected. And so
Samreen McGregor: I'll share two stories that maybe brings this to life. But the first story,
Samreen McGregor: the one that I mentioned in the talk. My dad
Samreen McGregor: is a very bright man. He's Indian. He's from
Samreen McGregor: India. Because I'm half Venezuelan, half Indian. My mother's
Samreen McGregor: from Venezuela and I was born and raised there. But my father,
Samreen McGregor: he came from a family of
Samreen McGregor: nine siblings. He was the eldest boy
Samreen McGregor: and he was born through the turmoil of the
Samreen McGregor: Second World War. And when his
Samreen McGregor: two youngest brothers were born, his father had already
Samreen McGregor: retired and
Samreen McGregor: he was burdened with this mantle of responsibility
Samreen McGregor: that he would have to and in those
Samreen McGregor: families, it was a Muslim family, it was very
Samreen McGregor: important that the eldest brother,
Samreen McGregor: the eldest boy, looked after. There
Samreen McGregor: was second kin and
Samreen McGregor: his grit bore fruit because he
Samreen McGregor: incredible. Got a full
Samreen McGregor: research fellowship to Stanford University in the US, took a
Samreen McGregor: boat, a big ship, and went to Stanford and
Samreen McGregor: ended up with a PhD, a master's and then a PhD,
Samreen McGregor: rather. And then he did another PhD, by the way, later on. This is what
Samreen McGregor: my dad's like. And by then, his family had been forced
Samreen McGregor: out of India through the partition. And so, thankfully,
Samreen McGregor: he was able to provide quite a lot for his family.
Samreen McGregor: Now, the relevance of that story is
Samreen McGregor: the weight of a word he used towards me throughout my life,
Samreen McGregor: and the word was stupid. I know it sounds a bit embarrassing to even say
Samreen McGregor: it, it's, like, so trivial. It seems really
Samreen McGregor: ridiculous, actually, when I even say it out loud. But throughout my childhood, he
Samreen McGregor: did call me stupid a lot, and he still does, by the way, and I'm
Samreen McGregor: nearly 50, so it's that kind of it's gone on and on
Samreen McGregor: and on. And I remember in my teenage
Samreen McGregor: years, and maybe early 20s, when I'd get really angry and say, why do you
Samreen McGregor: keep calling me that? It doesn't matter what it is. Whether I've stacked the dish
Samreen McGregor: wrong and my dad's quite OCD in the kitchen, or whether I've
Samreen McGregor: answered an algebraic equation wrongly, or whether I've made a
Samreen McGregor: decision with a boyfriend that wasn't one that he'd like.
Samreen McGregor: All of these different examples were
Samreen McGregor: all classified for him as stupid.
Samreen McGregor: And what I realised later on in life,
Samreen McGregor: and again, this has taken quite a lot of personal work, is
Samreen McGregor: that my relationships with bosses,
Samreen McGregor: often male, I would go above and
Samreen McGregor: beyond my call of duty to make sure
Samreen McGregor: that I didn't come across as inadequate or
Samreen McGregor: stupid. So I'd work myself,
Samreen McGregor: solidly my ambition, sometimes gets the
Samreen McGregor: best of me, and I would do anything
Samreen McGregor: to get the acknowledgment, the feedback
Samreen McGregor: that not only was my work complete, but it was outstanding. And the more
Samreen McGregor: I got this positive feedback, the more
Samreen McGregor: I'd see out these challenges and relationships.
Samreen McGregor: And it was extraordinary. And to the
Samreen McGregor: detriment of my relationships, as in
Samreen McGregor: friendships, even my relationships at home, I'm a
Samreen McGregor: mother, I've got two children, and at times my ability to
Samreen McGregor: be a good parent. But at work,
Samreen McGregor: it was my ability to set boundaries and manage
Samreen McGregor: them. So it's a very
Samreen McGregor: trivial word, used
Samreen McGregor: frequently and often. And look at the
Samreen McGregor: impact it had on my behaviours,
Samreen McGregor: professionally. Listened
Joanne Lockwood: to you speak. And I, too,
Joanne Lockwood: am a survivor of the word
Joanne Lockwood: stupid. Throughout my life, my father
Joanne Lockwood: used to use that kind of word, or if not
Joanne Lockwood: that word, but trivialised my
Joanne Lockwood: contribution to something, my effort, my attempt.
Joanne Lockwood: I went through a cycle where he would never let me write anything
Joanne Lockwood: in ink until I'd written it in pencil first.
Joanne Lockwood: He checked it was okay, and then I could ink over the top of it.
Joanne Lockwood: So if I was writing an application form for a job or something when I
Joanne Lockwood: was in my teens, or if I was writing some homework for school, I
Joanne Lockwood: had to write it out in pencil first, make sure that it's done correctly, and
Joanne Lockwood: then I was allowed to ink it over because there was no trust. I wasn't
Joanne Lockwood: allowed to make mistakes. And I think we think talk about things like psychological
Joanne Lockwood: safety. You need to allow people to make
Joanne Lockwood: mistakes because you don't learn by getting things right first time, every
Joanne Lockwood: time you don't know where you're going wrong. So I have a similar
Joanne Lockwood: history in trying to prove everybody else wrong about
Joanne Lockwood: me. It's driven me, but it also manifests itself
Joanne Lockwood: as in procrastination,
Joanne Lockwood: I won't start things unless I can finish them perfectly.
Joanne Lockwood: And I've had to recalibrate perfect to
Joanne Lockwood: being good enough. And I've started to understand that good enough
Joanne Lockwood: is good enough. And, yeah, unless you're a brain
Joanne Lockwood: surgeon, perfect is the only outcome, but good enough for
Joanne Lockwood: most things. It's the 80 20 I've had to learn about 80 20. I've had
Joanne Lockwood: to learn that perfection is the enemy of progress, et cetera, et
Joanne Lockwood: cetera. But it's taken me a lot of my life, and I still have those
Joanne Lockwood: flashbacks of not being able to do things
Joanne Lockwood: unless I can do them better than anybody
Joanne Lockwood: else. And I also seek a bit of validation and personal
Joanne Lockwood: validation. And I don't hunger
Joanne Lockwood: for well done, but I want people to know that I'm the
Joanne Lockwood: best I can be, even if it's just them giving me a nod
Joanne Lockwood: or talking to me or treating me in the way that go, yeah, Joanne's really
Joanne Lockwood: good at this, or Joanne's top of the class. And I end up
Joanne Lockwood: gravitating to senior roles purely because
Joanne Lockwood: I want to keep testing myself and testing myself. Testing
Joanne Lockwood: you've got what you're saying there resonates. I can see that. And all of
Samreen McGregor: those examples are
Samreen McGregor: I really connect with. And it's
Samreen McGregor: interesting
Samreen McGregor: that in an organisation or
Samreen McGregor: in any sort of corporate context or organisational context,
Samreen McGregor: we've got individuals who are coming with these sorts of
Samreen McGregor: versions of these sorts of experiences and
Samreen McGregor: whether they're a deep wound that affected them, some people are less affected,
Samreen McGregor: and there might be other factors. Know who
Samreen McGregor: they know. Carl Jung would say that their
Samreen McGregor: disposition would be different. Yeah,
Samreen McGregor: but actually what's interesting is that in many know there's
Samreen McGregor: an intent to set psychological safety and
Samreen McGregor: create those sorts of messages, narratives,
Samreen McGregor: conditions, expectations but this part of the
Samreen McGregor: puzzle plays a significant role. It doesn't matter
Samreen McGregor: how many times you expect leaders or
Samreen McGregor: cultures to shift in line with some of these factors
Samreen McGregor: and conditions that are needed to invite for example,
Samreen McGregor: inclusivity or a sense of belonging. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit
Samreen McGregor: about belonging, because I've certainly had real challenges
Samreen McGregor: belonging in many contexts throughout my own life
Samreen McGregor: story. And all of these expectations are only
Samreen McGregor: one part of the equation. And
Samreen McGregor: the part of the equation that involves the individuals
Samreen McGregor: themselves truly understanding how to
Samreen McGregor: receive that message, how to engage with it, how
Samreen McGregor: their own personal story, like you and I have just shared, might
Samreen McGregor: interfere with their ability to
Samreen McGregor: adapt in line with some of these expectations. It's quite
Joanne Lockwood: challenging, it's quite hard.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, you mentioned belonging and
Joanne Lockwood: I often talk about belonging and to try
Joanne Lockwood: and give context that belonging isn't the same as
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion and in the same that being alone is not the same
Joanne Lockwood: as being lonely. There's nuances and you can be
Joanne Lockwood: included yet still not feel belonging.
Joanne Lockwood: How does that manifest itself with you? I've got my own anecdote but I'd love
Joanne Lockwood: to hear your manifestation of belongingness if you like.
Joanne Lockwood: How do you know? So, look,
Samreen McGregor: as I explained my sort of national background,
Samreen McGregor: my father, in the end, married a Venezuelan woman, who he
Samreen McGregor: met at Stanford, actually, and
Samreen McGregor: then he followed her to Venezuela. And he
Samreen McGregor: was lucky because he was a petroleum engineer. And Venezuela is a very rich
Samreen McGregor: oil well, has been a rich oil country for many, many well for many
Samreen McGregor: years. And I was
Samreen McGregor: born there, along with my brother. He was seven years older than I was
Samreen McGregor: and we went to an international school because both my
Samreen McGregor: parents had studied in the States. So they wanted us to learn English firsthand
Samreen McGregor: and be bilingual and have that international. So
Samreen McGregor: the teachers that taught at the school were
Samreen McGregor: highly likely to be American because of the geographical location of
Samreen McGregor: Venezuela. And I found
Samreen McGregor: know it was great in many respects because there's lots of different
Samreen McGregor: cultures but those who were Venezuelan and who were in the international
Samreen McGregor: school tended to have some international flair to
Samreen McGregor: them many of which also continued to have a
Samreen McGregor: Venezuelan more of a Venezuelan background. But
Samreen McGregor: then you had Americans who came from the States would come
Samreen McGregor: and live there or any other nationality. Some
Samreen McGregor: would travel and be either diplomatic
Samreen McGregor: children and would travel and live
Samreen McGregor: elsewhere. But the effect of all that was
Samreen McGregor: I ended up having quite a mishmash of an
Samreen McGregor: understanding of what my core identity was nationally.
Samreen McGregor: And to make things even more confusing, and this was very
Samreen McGregor: confusing, my father had been
Samreen McGregor: persuaded by a medic
Samreen McGregor: that it wasn't advisable to teach a child more than
Samreen McGregor: one language at a time. So although I was
Samreen McGregor: learning Spanish and English at school and I was living in
Samreen McGregor: Venezuela, so we all spoke Spanish at home, we were only
Samreen McGregor: to speak in
Samreen McGregor: know see, my mother mother tongue is Spanish and
Samreen McGregor: we weren't allowed to speak Spanish.
Samreen McGregor: And to this day, it's really interesting, Jo, because my brother and
Samreen McGregor: I never speak in Spanish together, even though both of us are
Samreen McGregor: fluent. My mother and I was in the car with a friend the other day,
Samreen McGregor: in fact, on Sunday, and I called my mum and we were
Samreen McGregor: talking in English and she goes, do you know? And she was Dutch and she
Samreen McGregor: said, do you ever speak to your mum in? I'm like, well, actually,
Samreen McGregor: sometimes not really and it's that kind of thing that happens
Samreen McGregor: often so this language thing has really
Samreen McGregor: impacted me and not in a bad way necessarily, but I'm
Samreen McGregor: very conscious of it, so that's one bit. The other thing is that having
Samreen McGregor: grown up in Venezuela and then moved to London when I was 14,
Samreen McGregor: went to a similar kind of school. So, again, quite sort of
Samreen McGregor: disparate, I never genuinely felt
Samreen McGregor: I had, as I said, a core identity of who I
Samreen McGregor: was and from where. So I used to speak to my dad a lot and
Samreen McGregor: say, So what are we? What am I? And
Samreen McGregor: he'd say, oh, you're a citizen of the world. And
Samreen McGregor: although that sounded really and nowadays we see all these
Samreen McGregor: Third Culture kids or certainly it's more talked about,
Samreen McGregor: I'm sure that they existed back then, like me, how clearly I did. But
Samreen McGregor: it was quite destabilising and disorientating. And I never
Samreen McGregor: felt I belonged anywhere because I was always the weird one.
Samreen McGregor: In fact, I remember joining an organisation for the first time in my early
Samreen McGregor: 22nd time in my early twenty s and I
Samreen McGregor: introduced myself as a mutt. And people would look at me and say, why
Samreen McGregor: do you call yourself a mutt? So that
Samreen McGregor: was my experience of it and my sort of
Samreen McGregor: existential crisis growing up. And
Samreen McGregor: it sounds a bit dramatic, but genuinely, it was quite confusing.
Samreen McGregor: And then, I think, as I've gone through life, I'll tell you one other thing,
Samreen McGregor: is I'm married to a British man and we have
Samreen McGregor: two kids, a boy and a girl, and 16 and 13 now. And
Samreen McGregor: they have very British accents, all three of them. And I do get corrected
Samreen McGregor: often. And, yeah, the references are
Samreen McGregor: different. Sometimes it just feels a bit you
Samreen McGregor: know, I can't go back to Venezuela. The situation there has been, unfortunately,
Samreen McGregor: not great. We have travelled to
Samreen McGregor: yeah, I'm never quite like everyone else, I don't know. If
Joanne Lockwood: that makes sense ask a question
Joanne Lockwood: so what's your internal in your head language?
Joanne Lockwood: What do you count to ten in or add up or
Joanne Lockwood: do you dream in? Do you dream in English or Spanish? Yeah, but I have
Samreen McGregor: dreamt in both if I'm in Spain or
Samreen McGregor: in Venezuela or in a Spanish speaking country, I will dream. It's funny, it's
Samreen McGregor: a conversation I've had recently because we were in Spain last summer,
Samreen McGregor: two summers ago, and I was dreaming in Spanish by the third day
Samreen McGregor: because I'm very. Yeah, so
Joanne Lockwood: you can drop into native mode without
Joanne Lockwood: having to translate. People
Samreen McGregor: who only know me as speaking English see me speak Spanish, because my whole
Samreen McGregor: mannerisms change. And I'm totally Latin, so
Samreen McGregor: I do have both. Yeah. I don't use it as much,
Samreen McGregor: though, sadly. I think it's fascinating that
Joanne Lockwood: you communicate with your mum, who is native Spanish
Joanne Lockwood: speaking In English I find that when I find
Joanne Lockwood: with a group of multinational people at a conference or
Joanne Lockwood: around the world, everyone tends to gravitate to English.
Joanne Lockwood: And I've noticed this. I was having a conversation with a couple of Dutch
Joanne Lockwood: people and I stepped out the conversation and the two Dutch people kept talking
Joanne Lockwood: in English and they looked at each other and said, can we just swap to
Joanne Lockwood: Dutch? Is that okay? Everybody? We need to have
Joanne Lockwood: a proper conversation, though, in Dutch. And I think
Joanne Lockwood: as a native English speaker, and that's my only real language, I'm
Joanne Lockwood: very privileged that a lot of the world will default to English
Joanne Lockwood: in the absence of any other common language. And you don't
Joanne Lockwood: realise how lucky I am of
Joanne Lockwood: being in. Even if it's not the most popular language in the world. It's quite
Joanne Lockwood: a dominant language. It is the majority, isn't it? It's
Samreen McGregor: definitely in working life.
Joanne Lockwood: I promised you my story. I suppose, so I didn't realise
Joanne Lockwood: about belonging for a long time in my life.
Joanne Lockwood: I suppose I marched through life
Joanne Lockwood: hunting for something that I could never
Joanne Lockwood: find. It was like this. You're turning every stone, turning of
Joanne Lockwood: each rock, looking for something more, getting yourself into
Joanne Lockwood: things, hoping that the destination or the end of this journey would be
Joanne Lockwood: the thing I was looking for all my life. And I kept hunting
Joanne Lockwood: and hunting and hunting and never found it. I think when I got into my
Joanne Lockwood: mid 40s, that's when my gender identity kind of
Joanne Lockwood: started to become quite dominant in my thinking. And
Joanne Lockwood: also it started me thinking about my I had an It career.
Joanne Lockwood: I ran It companies for 20 odd years. It started me realising
Joanne Lockwood: that that wasn't my destiny either.
Joanne Lockwood: I fallen into this in my early 20s as a hobby
Joanne Lockwood: that turned into a career. It was never something that really, really
Joanne Lockwood: excited me. And I think if you've heard the Japanese
Joanne Lockwood: word icky guy and that sweet spot in the middle
Joanne Lockwood: and I started to realise, even though I'd never heard of that word
Joanne Lockwood: before, that I was always missing the thing
Joanne Lockwood: that you love. I could earn money. The world needed it,
Joanne Lockwood: I was good at it. But I never had the thing that I loved. I
Joanne Lockwood: was dominated by making money and I was good at it. And people said I
Joanne Lockwood: was good at it, I think in my mid forty s. And that's what
Joanne Lockwood: struck me, is that
Joanne Lockwood: you have this midlife crisis, you wake up and go, Hang on a minute,
Joanne Lockwood: I'm now old enough to say no.
Joanne Lockwood: And I think I did. I just stopped and said, hang on a minute. So
Joanne Lockwood: I explored my gender identity at that time and took
Joanne Lockwood: the decision to gender transition at the age
Joanne Lockwood: of 52, much to the dismay of my family,
Joanne Lockwood: I'm still married and I've still got great kids, so it's a happy story
Joanne Lockwood: there. And I sold my It business and I became a
Joanne Lockwood: professional speaker around inclusion, belonging and also trans rights,
Joanne Lockwood: trans awareness as well. And suddenly I discovered that
Joanne Lockwood: I was in alignment. All four of those boxes were now ticked. I was now
Joanne Lockwood: doing something that I love and I was the person
Joanne Lockwood: that I'd always been missing the bit never fitted
Joanne Lockwood: before, I was always in the wrong queue, I was always
Joanne Lockwood: never quite figuring out why it was going
Joanne Lockwood: wrong. And now I always describe this
Joanne Lockwood: as I went from a period of my life where my head had noise in
Joanne Lockwood: it, there was two conversations, there was arguments, there was
Joanne Lockwood: debating with this kind of this masculine feminine energy
Joanne Lockwood: in my head, always trying to have another thought, another conversation, another secret or
Joanne Lockwood: something. And I can only describe it as
Joanne Lockwood: silence. When it's silent, it is truly silent
Joanne Lockwood: and it was never silent in all my life. And I could sit
Joanne Lockwood: in a chair with no music, no noise, no nothing to stare into
Joanne Lockwood: space and my head is empty and I can either wander off, I can
Joanne Lockwood: ideate, or I can just let time go by without thinking
Joanne Lockwood: and I could never do that before. Somehow I found
Joanne Lockwood: that sweet spot in my life where everything kind of fits.
Joanne Lockwood: But what I've also realised is
Joanne Lockwood: that I haven't rediscovered where I
Joanne Lockwood: belong. I realise that whilst
Joanne Lockwood: I'm included in events that my male
Joanne Lockwood: friends put on, they go for a drink, they go from
Joanne Lockwood: real, they go to the horse racing, they do all these sort
Joanne Lockwood: of things and I'm invited, I turn up and I have a great time
Joanne Lockwood: but I leave without a sense of fulfilment. I leave
Joanne Lockwood: feeling that wasn't me.
Joanne Lockwood: I tolerated them, if you like, it's not them, it's definitely
Joanne Lockwood: me, it's not their fault or anything they're doing, it's just
Joanne Lockwood: me. I realised that I don't belong in that male
Joanne Lockwood: culture and that's what I found before I gender transition,
Joanne Lockwood: that I was in that male culture and it was rubbing me, which
Joanne Lockwood: is why I never felt and I didn't realise till I left it
Joanne Lockwood: what was going on. But I also have a struggle is
Joanne Lockwood: I've been out with female friends, we've been
Joanne Lockwood: bricklane in London, we've gone out drinking and stuff
Joanne Lockwood: and I haven't quite found my belonging in a group of female
Joanne Lockwood: friends. I don't have the same shared. Lived experience. I don't
Joanne Lockwood: have the same growing up at school, all the kind
Joanne Lockwood: of things that young girls, young women, teenage women
Joanne Lockwood: go through, I haven't had that experience. I'm trying to
Joanne Lockwood: find my new sense of belonging in that environment and that's really, really
Joanne Lockwood: tricky as well. So I'm kind of caught on this middle ground
Joanne Lockwood: between not feeling I belong here and not feeling I belong
Joanne Lockwood: here, yet I'm included in both. And
Joanne Lockwood: it's not a worry, it's not something I play about, but it's something
Joanne Lockwood: as I'm talking about it now to you. It's something I do conjugate
Joanne Lockwood: and play with in my head occasionally, trying to find
Joanne Lockwood: the secret source of trying to solve this riddle of
Joanne Lockwood: puzzle, of how I rediscover my belonging. So,
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, that's how I would say. What an amazing
Samreen McGregor: story of belonging. Gosh, it's really got me in here.
Samreen McGregor: I'm holding my heart for those who can't see me.
Samreen McGregor: It really has. And I guess some of the questions that are coming
Samreen McGregor: up for me around what does belonging
Samreen McGregor: feel like? What has belonging feel like?
Samreen McGregor: Felt like, rather not feel felt like. And I
Samreen McGregor: guess, what are some of your expectations about
Samreen McGregor: what belonging feels? And I think expectations are
Samreen McGregor: interesting things, aren't they? Because, yeah, they are.
Joanne Lockwood: I can't write down the piece of paper what belonging means. It's
Joanne Lockwood: very ethereal, very kind of undescribed. I can
Joanne Lockwood: give some metaphors. The metaphor I often use to
Joanne Lockwood: people is I know when I walk into a coffee shop, if
Joanne Lockwood: this coffee shop is for me, whether it's the way I'm treated, the way
Joanne Lockwood: I'm served, the blend, the brand, the colour, or just
Joanne Lockwood: that nice sofa. And I sit in this corner with a nice sofa, and I
Joanne Lockwood: just feel kind of cosy and comfy and safe and
Joanne Lockwood: relaxed. But I know if I walk into a different coffee
Joanne Lockwood: shop, I don't feel that. And it's
Joanne Lockwood: not a familiar coffee shop, it's knowing that the coffee shop I'm in, wherever in
Joanne Lockwood: the world that may be, it just feels like my kind of coffee shop.
Joanne Lockwood: So that's all I can describe. I know instantaneously
Joanne Lockwood: when I put this coat on, when I put that pair of shoes on, when
Joanne Lockwood: I sit in this chair, it's for me, that's how
Joanne Lockwood: I describe it. And I often use the if you remember the
Joanne Lockwood: sitcom Cheers, there's a bar where everyone knows your
Joanne Lockwood: name and I always listen to the theme tune and it
Joanne Lockwood: just brings that sense of belonging. You walk in there and it's
Joanne Lockwood: my place. And that's how I describe belonging, that I don't have to think
Joanne Lockwood: about anything other than just being me and
Joanne Lockwood: being who I am. And it kind of works.
Samreen McGregor: But it's the essence of what we feel. I mean, gosh, that
Samreen McGregor: song and the theme tune and that yeah, I can
Samreen McGregor: imagine that's. Well, I can feel it. I can definitely feel
Samreen McGregor: it. I can see. I think many
Joanne Lockwood: of us felt that if you ever watch Friends and Rest in
Joanne Lockwood: Peace, Matthew Perry that Central Perk, the coffee
Joanne Lockwood: shop they were in, that was their happy place,
Joanne Lockwood: their sense of belonging. It was kind of them, wasn't it? And I think
Joanne Lockwood: that's, I think, the root of that, I think that's why so many
Joanne Lockwood: people resonated with that sitcom, because it was
Joanne Lockwood: that created the belonging that's in you. You wanted to
Joanne Lockwood: be in that flat. You wanted to be in that and no matter
Samreen McGregor: what happened, it was containing the mole, wasn't it? It was
Samreen McGregor: just a really safe.
Joanne Lockwood: They drop in if it's one of them or two of them, or someone will
Joanne Lockwood: come in and join them.
Samreen McGregor: Very much. So thank you for sharing that.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah. How do you hunt down
Joanne Lockwood: belongingness, then? Do you have a similar
Joanne Lockwood: feeling? There are a few things that came up as you were talking, actually, because
Samreen McGregor: I'm going through not a midlife crisis, I don't know whether it's
Samreen McGregor: that or I'm actually going through this real sort
Samreen McGregor: of very different
Samreen McGregor: experience, a bit like you,
Samreen McGregor: actually. My job has been my
Samreen McGregor: hobby and mainly because I've loved the
Samreen McGregor: work I do, and I continue to, by the way, I do really enjoy the
Samreen McGregor: work I do and I would count myself in maybe
Samreen McGregor: 15% to 10% of people who really,
Samreen McGregor: truly enjoy what they do.
Samreen McGregor: And I do feel that my family is
Samreen McGregor: just really sacred to me and for lots of reasons,
Samreen McGregor: actually, we had a very big
Samreen McGregor: upheaval six years ago when my son wasn't well,
Samreen McGregor: and this is part of what I'm about to say, but
Samreen McGregor: we had an unexpected paediatric cancer journey to go through with
Samreen McGregor: my son. And so when you said you wouldn't
Samreen McGregor: want the brain surgeon to not be
Samreen McGregor: precise and make mistakes, it was a brain surgeon who saved my
Samreen McGregor: son's life. As a
Samreen McGregor: result of the last six years and us shifting and changing
Samreen McGregor: the constellations of our life, I've
Samreen McGregor: become really aware of my
Samreen McGregor: physiology, coming back to the whole concept of trauma and
Samreen McGregor: adversity of the impact that those psychological imprints
Samreen McGregor: have on our physical life, for
Samreen McGregor: obvious reasons, because my son was nine when he was diagnosed. So
Samreen McGregor: I'm eternally curious about why. What is
Samreen McGregor: it that contributed to that? Because it wasn't genetic.
Samreen McGregor: So I've been on a journey
Samreen McGregor: personally in going down that whole psychological, embodied
Samreen McGregor: consciousness route and also become quite spiritual, not
Samreen McGregor: in a religious sense, but
Samreen McGregor: there's something greater than me that I'm sort of trying to understand
Samreen McGregor: and I'm doing quite a lot of work in mental health. I'm dipping my
Samreen McGregor: fingers in lots of different approaches where we alter
Samreen McGregor: consciousness to truly go deeper into ourselves.
Samreen McGregor: Breath work is one of them more recently. And I'm toying with another
Samreen McGregor: other things. And the
Samreen McGregor: more I experiment with some of these
Samreen McGregor: forms of understanding myself, going a bit deeper. Healing, actually,
Samreen McGregor: from my childhood as well as my recent trauma as a
Samreen McGregor: mother of a nine year old and a seven year old daughter who
Samreen McGregor: felt very abandoned for two years while all of
Samreen McGregor: our attention was on our son. And then coming back and
Samreen McGregor: repeating myself back up again and trying to get back into professional
Samreen McGregor: life. All of that healing that I'm doing now,
Samreen McGregor: every time I go deep into that kind of work,
Samreen McGregor: I feel a form of alienation from the status
Samreen McGregor: quo and I go back into a corporate environment or I
Samreen McGregor: go back into work. My normal work.
Samreen McGregor: Normal? And I don't know how to whether I can even use the word normal,
Samreen McGregor: but what I've been doing familiarly for many, many years.
Samreen McGregor: And then there's this whole area over here that I'm learning about, that I'm
Samreen McGregor: becoming more and more curious about and actually being blown away
Samreen McGregor: by that depth, that spirituality, that deep
Samreen McGregor: mental health kind of work, not just for myself, but with
Samreen McGregor: others. And yeah, belonging
Samreen McGregor: starts to get I really connect with how you describe that
Samreen McGregor: because I'm not sure I fully belong
Samreen McGregor: in this familiar place, but I'm
Samreen McGregor: definitely not fully here because I'm integrating with people who've been
Samreen McGregor: there on this path from it whether it's indigenous tribe members or whether
Samreen McGregor: it's people who are working with
Samreen McGregor: body work and yoga and breath
Samreen McGregor: work and mindfulness, which I haven't. I mean, I've done this, but
Samreen McGregor: I've not practised it or used it as
Samreen McGregor: part of my profession. So, yeah, I don't know whether
Samreen McGregor: that sort of resonates.
Samreen McGregor: And then, of course, I bring it home to my husband and my kids and
Samreen McGregor: they go, what's happening to you, Mummy? What
Samreen McGregor: are you doing? And there is some sort of transformation happening
Samreen McGregor: and it's extremely deep.
Joanne Lockwood: Do you find yourself in an eternal battle,
Joanne Lockwood: trying to find the why and the reason for something? Or are you
Joanne Lockwood: able to have a self affirmation? You can step
Joanne Lockwood: out of the why, not needing to know why. It just is,
Joanne Lockwood: I would say, when. I'm in my little
Samreen McGregor: why is this? Everything was fine. Why
Samreen McGregor: am I having to sort of ruffle my own feathers,
Samreen McGregor: put it that way, or the feathers of my life? And then there are times
Samreen McGregor: when I just feel it's absolutely right. It
Samreen McGregor: feels like this is my calling, I'm seeing
Samreen McGregor: things. My vision for the next 20 years
Samreen McGregor: is clarifying at a fairly rapid
Samreen McGregor: pace and I don't even need to know why. It just feels
Samreen McGregor: like it's. Yeah, I was going through my
Joanne Lockwood: reinvention reboot, however you want to describe it.
Joanne Lockwood: A lot of my trauma and pain and
Joanne Lockwood: confusion, all those kind of words, were driven out of trying
Joanne Lockwood: to rationalise because I was a logical person, I had to solve
Joanne Lockwood: this problem. Why? Was I trans? Or was I trans
Joanne Lockwood: enough? Or was I just kidding myself? Can I
Joanne Lockwood: just shut the lid and get on with life? Just don't be silly. Get on
Joanne Lockwood: with it. I went
Joanne Lockwood: through some dark times over a few months, never depression. But
Joanne Lockwood: yeah, certainly crying, can out of bed understand who I was,
Joanne Lockwood: couldn't sleep. And it was just the affirmation. I am.
Joanne Lockwood: That was the answer to every question, every self
Joanne Lockwood: doubt, every confusion I had. It didn't have to have a
Joanne Lockwood: why, it just was. It just is. And
Joanne Lockwood: even now when someone says to me what's being trans all about? And
Joanne Lockwood: I say, I don't know, I can't explain it, I just
Joanne Lockwood: am. It just is. There's no reason, there's no logic.
Joanne Lockwood: You can debate with me all you like around this
Joanne Lockwood: biological fact or that biological fact or this opinion that I just
Joanne Lockwood: shock my children to go that's fine, I don't need to have that
Joanne Lockwood: answer. I just am. I can't explain it. And for me that's put me
Joanne Lockwood: in a happy place. Not in denial, I haven't brushed it under the carpet. I've
Joanne Lockwood: just realised I don't need to solve that question. I
Joanne Lockwood: am is enough and it's more than enough.
Joanne Lockwood: And maybe that's part of the affirmation that I needed
Joanne Lockwood: to get on with life and tackle things in a different way
Joanne Lockwood: and enables me to feel that
Joanne Lockwood: sense of self empowerment, I think. But not everyone's
Joanne Lockwood: able to find that, are they? I think that's kind of the when we're
Joanne Lockwood: talking earlier about the trauma, the diversity, we get
Joanne Lockwood: locked into that place where we can't find the
Joanne Lockwood: light at the end of the tunnel, can't find the combination to the lot. I'm
Samreen McGregor: just curious. That's what people are struggling with, perspective. I'm just asking,
Samreen McGregor: so how did you find your I am?
Samreen McGregor: Where did it come from? How did you meet it?
Joanne Lockwood: I'm a very visual person.
Joanne Lockwood: When I'm asleep and I'm ideating when I'm thinking, whatever it may be, I
Joanne Lockwood: imagine myself walking down a path.
Joanne Lockwood: If I'm going to do something tomorrow, I will play through what the
Joanne Lockwood: road looks like, what the car looks like, what the journey looks like, what the
Joanne Lockwood: car park looks like, how I open the front door, how I get into there.
Joanne Lockwood: So I visualised the entire journey in my head
Joanne Lockwood: and I think what happened was I was doing all of these
Joanne Lockwood: scenarios and all these permutations trying to
Joanne Lockwood: find the door that would open. I think
Joanne Lockwood: I just got to the point where my brain sort of said,
Joanne Lockwood: you're okay here. You don't need to find a door. You don't need to get
Joanne Lockwood: out of here. You just got to find your happy place. You just got to
Joanne Lockwood: find yourself now. And then I think just that one
Joanne Lockwood: realisation. Then everything just disappeared. There was no doors, there was
Joanne Lockwood: no barriers, there was no fence. There's nothing holding me in
Joanne Lockwood: anymore. I was now free of those mind
Joanne Lockwood: barriers that I had because I didn't have to justify myself to
Joanne Lockwood: anybody. And I use another metaphor example.
Joanne Lockwood: In the first Matrix film, right at the
Joanne Lockwood: end, right at the end, after all of the film, keanu Reeves and
Joanne Lockwood: Neo is flying through the air because he sussed
Joanne Lockwood: out that he isn't governed by social
Joanne Lockwood: constructs and rules. He can just be him. And once he
Joanne Lockwood: freed his mind and freed himself, he was able to take
Joanne Lockwood: that control and manipulate the world around him. I'm not saying I want to manipulate
Joanne Lockwood: the world around me, but what I mean is I'm now no
Joanne Lockwood: longer manipulated by the world. If you like, I can step
Joanne Lockwood: out of that and I think that combination of
Joanne Lockwood: thinking is so
Joanne Lockwood: empowering, it's gorgeous. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah,
Samreen McGregor: that's my life. Similarly,
Samreen McGregor: I do often use those two words and I
Samreen McGregor: often encourage my daughter to yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: And you don't need to find I mean, I know everyone wants five. Whys?
Joanne Lockwood: To find the solution. And yeah, sometimes it's useful to drill down onto things
Joanne Lockwood: in the business world. But actually, sometimes there is
Samreen McGregor: no things to ground. Some of
Samreen McGregor: this transformation that I'm going through and transition I'm going through
Samreen McGregor: from the cognitive to the less
Samreen McGregor: cognitive, and that less cognitive does include things like
Samreen McGregor: emotions and psychological and
Samreen McGregor: spiritual. I do encourage us,
Samreen McGregor: my clients, to notice a lot more how
Samreen McGregor: much we rely, even in the workplace, on our
Samreen McGregor: cognition rather than on
Samreen McGregor: so many other things that we, as humans, have
Samreen McGregor: available to us. But since I would say since the
Samreen McGregor: Industrial Revolution, where far
Samreen McGregor: more of the scientific method evolved and the far
Samreen McGregor: more mechanistic approaches to how
Samreen McGregor: we make things and sell them
Samreen McGregor: and transaction on them, that focus
Samreen McGregor: on our mind has really, really
Samreen McGregor: served us strongly. And there is a space
Samreen McGregor: for us to amplify that and expand it much more now beyond
Samreen McGregor: our cognition. I
Joanne Lockwood: fully recognise the world needs to be made up of a diverse ways
Joanne Lockwood: of thinking and just in the fact that I'm happy with not
Joanne Lockwood: knowing everything about me and why. We do need people
Joanne Lockwood: to challenge, we do need scientists, we need people who want to do the detail,
Joanne Lockwood: we want people to evolve and change things. I think what I
Joanne Lockwood: did was I stepped out of a world where that was me
Joanne Lockwood: wanting, being in It computing. It was very
Joanne Lockwood: binary, very black and white. It worked, it didn't work. If it did work, it
Joanne Lockwood: should work again, type stuff. And I realised that
Joanne Lockwood: I thought I had attention to detail, but actually I don't. I like
Joanne Lockwood: there to be detail and I like there to be a process, but I don't
Joanne Lockwood: necessarily want to be the one who has to find it or follow it. And
Joanne Lockwood: I stepped out of that, forcing myself to do detail that I wasn't
Joanne Lockwood: really cut out for. So we do need we need it
Joanne Lockwood: all different personalities, different ways of thinking. And now I found my way of
Joanne Lockwood: thinking, I'm quite comfortable going, that's not me
Joanne Lockwood: anymore. No, I don't need to play that game.
Joanne Lockwood: So you wrote this book year or so ago, published
Joanne Lockwood: for about a year. Tell me a bit more about the book. So the book
Samreen McGregor: called Leader awakened. Why? Accepting
Samreen McGregor: adversity drives power and freedom.
Samreen McGregor: And I remember at the very beginning when I
Samreen McGregor: considered writing the book, I really thought
Samreen McGregor: about my target reader who was
Samreen McGregor: that person picking up the book and getting something
Samreen McGregor: out of it and what experience I wanted them to have.
Samreen McGregor: Look, I think that it served
Samreen McGregor: three purposes for myself and
Samreen McGregor: my aspiration, is that
Samreen McGregor: it catalyses something for the target
Samreen McGregor: readers. I think that the first purpose it served for me was it
Samreen McGregor: was a really important catharsis.
Samreen McGregor: And the catharsis for me was because I believe
Samreen McGregor: that in order for us to
Samreen McGregor: be alive and well and maintain
Samreen McGregor: a healthy well being, but also do the things that really
Samreen McGregor: motivate us and be aspirational
Samreen McGregor: and sort of have some sort of proportion between
Samreen McGregor: those different forces in our lives.
Samreen McGregor: I felt it was important that people recognise what are
Samreen McGregor: the things that happen in our life? Stories that then
Samreen McGregor: have an imprint that
Samreen McGregor: guide us through life, consciously or
Samreen McGregor: unconsciously. So that was the second purpose and it's
Samreen McGregor: articulating it by telling a story. And there's several
Samreen McGregor: stories about me, there are several stories about the clients
Samreen McGregor: I've worked with and that's individual clients, as well as organisations
Samreen McGregor: within which I've worked, as well as specific teams. So there's some really
Samreen McGregor: lovely cases in there that bring to life a lot of the concepts and
Samreen McGregor: then there are trends and research topics in there
Samreen McGregor: that have formed my professional suite
Samreen McGregor: of interventions. Not all of them, but a lot
Samreen McGregor: of them. And so really, the third thing for me
Samreen McGregor: was the purpose was to showcase how I
Samreen McGregor: work and the impact it has and the difference it
Samreen McGregor: makes with those individuals and those teams and groups that I work with and
Samreen McGregor: organisations with whom I've worked.
Samreen McGregor: What I really want it to bring the reader that picks it
Samreen McGregor: up and immerses himself in the stories
Samreen McGregor: and in some of the topics is to look in the
Samreen McGregor: mirror, but not just to allow that image
Samreen McGregor: or that light to bounce back, to go a bit deeper. I introduce
Samreen McGregor: a concept called refraction, which is a physics concept, a bit
Samreen McGregor: like reflection, but if
Samreen McGregor: the speed at which the light hits the surface
Samreen McGregor: is slower, it can actually shift
Samreen McGregor: the angle of the outcome of that
Samreen McGregor: refraction. So I'm encouraging
Samreen McGregor: leaders. People, and I believe most of us are leaders in
Samreen McGregor: some context, whether it's a parent, whether it's
Samreen McGregor: a professional in a functional context, whether it's,
Samreen McGregor: I don't know, someone in a current
Samreen McGregor: government position in one of the current
Samreen McGregor: well, I don't know, nations that are
Samreen McGregor: certainly going through quite a lot of challenge. We're all leaders in
Samreen McGregor: our own right. And so I'd really encourage leaders to slow
Samreen McGregor: down, to take the space, to really refract
Samreen McGregor: and understand themselves at a deeper level, to also
Samreen McGregor: step back and look at the context around them and
Samreen McGregor: the bigger picture. So I offer things like systemic
Samreen McGregor: thinking to help really understand and amplify how
Samreen McGregor: you might understand the context
Samreen McGregor: around you. And most of all, it's
Samreen McGregor: really a compassionate companion for people
Samreen McGregor: wanting to understand themselves and their relationships
Samreen McGregor: and their own health and well being.
Samreen McGregor: Wow. Wow. I'll have to go and buy the book now.
Joanne Lockwood: I presume it's on Amazon, is it? Well, look, there's
Samreen McGregor: several ways to get it. It's now also on Audible, so if you like
Samreen McGregor: to hear them, you can get it
Samreen McGregor: on Audio version as well. But, yes, it's available on
Samreen McGregor: Amazon and in most retailers. I've got a
Samreen McGregor: website, Leaderawakened Co UK, that
Samreen McGregor: if you visit that website, there's lots of different options that you can buy it,
Samreen McGregor: but also gives you some information about it. And it's got
Samreen McGregor: the first chapter for free, if you'd like to read that before
Samreen McGregor: you buy the book. And, yeah, we do have a
Samreen McGregor: leader awakened on LinkedIn, as well as on
Samreen McGregor: Instagram, if you want to see little snippets of
Samreen McGregor: content that either are found in the book or
Samreen McGregor: things that I'm doing and my team
Samreen McGregor: is doing, and our work with people.
Joanne Lockwood: If anyone wants to get in contact with you, what's the best way to.
Samreen McGregor: Definitely look me up on LinkedIn? It's Samreen McGregor.
Samreen McGregor: And you can also, as I said, visit that same
Samreen McGregor: website and there's links there you could get in contact with me
Samreen McGregor: through that. Fabulous. Well, I know I've
Joanne Lockwood: got six audible credits left. I'm going to invest one of those in a
Joanne Lockwood: minute and cheque out your book. And next car journey.
Joanne Lockwood: I'll put that on. I'm off to Up North next week, I think,
Joanne Lockwood: so I'll have that. I've got a couple of hours in. The I would love
Samreen McGregor: that and I would love to hear, especially given the stories we've exchanged
Samreen McGregor: today. I found them really heartwarming. So thank you.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, likewise. Thank you. Well, brilliant. I mean,
Joanne Lockwood: if you're listening, you could probably tell we could carry on this conversation all day
Joanne Lockwood: and all night. So this has been an amazing conversation. Thank you. And we got
Joanne Lockwood: quite deep at times, which was really, I don't know, quite
Joanne Lockwood: cathartic. I don't know if you felt the same, but yeah, definitely cathartic. So,
Joanne Lockwood: thanks, Amreen, and I'm sure you, the listeners, must be
Joanne Lockwood: taking lots away from today's episode. It's been fantastic.
Joanne Lockwood: Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for getting to the end and staying with
Joanne Lockwood: us. Thank you. If you're not already subscribed, please do subscribe to
Joanne Lockwood: keep updated on future episodes of the Inclusion Bites podcast.
Joanne Lockwood: That's B-I-T-E-S. Share the love. Tell your friends, tell your
Joanne Lockwood: colleagues. Find us on itunes. Apple podcasts, Google
Joanne Lockwood: podcasts, we're everywhere. Leave us a review, please leave us a review. Give us five
Joanne Lockwood: stars. Tell us how much you love us. I've got a number of other
Joanne Lockwood: exciting guests lined up that I'm sure you'll be equally inspired by. Over the next
Joanne Lockwood: few weeks and months. And, of course, if you're listening and you'd love to be
Joanne Lockwood: a guest, I'd love to have you on the show. So please drop me a
Joanne Lockwood: line to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk. And
Joanne Lockwood: if you've got any suggestions on how we can improve, I'd love to hear those
Joanne Lockwood: as well. And finally finally, my name is
Joanne Lockwood: Joanne Lockwood, and it's been an absolute pleasure
Joanne Lockwood: to host this podcast for you today. Catch you next time.
Joanne Lockwood: Bye.