Joanne Lockwood: Foreign.
Joanne Lockwood: Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary
Joanne Lockwood: for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood,
Joanne Lockwood: your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion, belonging and societal transformation.
Joanne Lockwood: Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world? Remember, everyone
Joanne Lockwood: not only belongs, but thrives. You're not alone.
Joanne Lockwood: Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge
Joanne Lockwood: the status quo and share storeys that resonate
Joanne Lockwood: deep within. Ready to dive in. Whether you're
Joanne Lockwood: sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's
Joanne Lockwood: connect, reflect and inspire action together.
Joanne Lockwood: Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out
Joanne Lockwood: to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk
Joanne Lockwood: to share your insights or to join me on the show.
Joanne Lockwood: So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to
Joanne Lockwood: ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites.
Joanne Lockwood: And today is episode 192 with the
Joanne Lockwood: title Beyond Performative Inclusion. And I
Joanne Lockwood: have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Sile Walsh.
Joanne Lockwood: Sile is an award winning coach, author and
Joanne Lockwood: leadership specialist dedicated to embedding equity and
Joanne Lockwood: psychological safety into leadership and organisational culture
Joanne Lockwood: worldwide. When I asked Sile to describe their superpower, they said
Joanne Lockwood: it is bridging lived experience with leadership
Joanne Lockwood: insight to drive systemic inclusion. Hello, Sile.
Sile Walsh: Welcome to the show, Joanne. Thank you for having me.
Joanne Lockwood: Absolute pleasures. And when I was just
Joanne Lockwood: logging on this morning to set this episode up, I was looking at your name,
Joanne Lockwood: thinking, I wonder how I pronounce that? And I had to nip onto
Joanne Lockwood: LinkedIn. So whilst you're speaking English, you're not from
Joanne Lockwood: England, you're from Ireland. Yeah? Yes, yes. And my
Sile Walsh: name is spelled, it's actually, I've butchered it a little bit. It's actually
Sile Walsh: with a father, so S I fader L E. But a lot of people call
Sile Walsh: me Sile, which I am fine with. But when I used to live in England,
Sile Walsh: actually, and I'd be called like in the hospital or something, they used to come
Sile Walsh: out and say, silly, do we have sill?
Sile Walsh: Because they didn't want to say silly and that's what they thought my name was.
Sile Walsh: But yes. So I'm based in Ireland, in Dublin. I have lived and worked in
Sile Walsh: the UK and I still do go back and forth for work, but my
Sile Walsh: name, and actually my name here is Walsh, but my Irish name is Sile
Sile Walsh: Branock, but it's, it's a mouthful to spell for people, so Sile
Sile Walsh: Walsh is much quicker and it's. It's kind of a shame really that you have
Joanne Lockwood: to adapt who you are to make it easier for other People, as you say.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, your. Your authentic surname is hard for people
Joanne Lockwood: to spell or hard for people to. To read and pronounce, I guess,
Joanne Lockwood: and find ourselves having to fit into other people's cultures, don't
Joanne Lockwood: we? Yeah, it's an interesting one because in Ireland, being
Sile Walsh: Irish is very like. Is very important and I know every country has it, but
Sile Walsh: because of our history with the uk, it is very important. And having an Irish
Sile Walsh: name for lots of people is more than their name, it's about their. Their
Sile Walsh: history and. And what side of the history that they. They
Sile Walsh: are Irish from, let's say. I actually don't
Sile Walsh: mind because for me, who I am
Sile Walsh: and my identity is about my relationship with myself
Sile Walsh: first and foremost. And then my. For me in the
Sile Walsh: world, my job is to find the places where I
Sile Walsh: can meet other people and they can meet me. And sometimes I have to adjust,
Sile Walsh: sometimes they have to adjust. It doesn't. Even though it's my name, it doesn't feel
Sile Walsh: like an adjustment of who I am. It feels like a translation,
Sile Walsh: which is different to this idea of fitting. I'm just translating it to
Sile Walsh: something that's understandable. But, yeah, it's a bit like when I deal with my nephew
Sile Walsh: who's now 11 and I adore, or my niece, who's 17. I adjust my
Sile Walsh: conversations to meet them in a way that we can meet each other.
Sile Walsh: So I don't. I don't feel that same pressure. Whereas there's other people who do
Sile Walsh: very strongly feel that it's important that you know
Sile Walsh: their authentic name and can pronounce it in their language.
Sile Walsh: I know most people don't speak Irish and so saying my Irish name,
Sile Walsh: they butcher it anyway, you know what I mean? Even with the best attempt, if
Sile Walsh: you don't speak a tongue. Like, I'm not great at Irish myself, but I know
Sile Walsh: enough to be able to pronounce the word. So it's an. It's an interesting one.
Sile Walsh: You know, how we're seen in the world and how we interact based on our
Sile Walsh: names. I think, yeah, that's important.
Joanne Lockwood: You know this. What you do is psychological safety,
Joanne Lockwood: organisational culture. Sometimes what we find when we talk about
Joanne Lockwood: inclusion is demands of people to meet us where we are,
Joanne Lockwood: rather than trying to find that middle ground and meeting each other somewhere in the
Joanne Lockwood: middle there to help each other come a
Joanne Lockwood: barrier or a conflict or a challenge. What you're doing
Joanne Lockwood: here is you're putting yourself into the middle rather than expecting everyone to come to
Joanne Lockwood: you. But the reason that I do that is
Sile Walsh: because I'm not letting myself behind when I do that. So there'll be
Sile Walsh: parts of my identity that I might feel if I don't bring with me very
Sile Walsh: strongly I've left something important behind. And I'm sure for people, we
Sile Walsh: all have different versions of what part that would be. But my name,
Sile Walsh: like my name, for me, I'm named after my grandmother. I'm the eldest
Sile Walsh: of that. That line. I was the first grandchild, but I'm also the first
Sile Walsh: female. The name means so much more than what anyone would ever
Sile Walsh: conceive anyway. And so I bring it with me where I am, as
Sile Walsh: opposed to needing other people to see it the way I see it.
Sile Walsh: Yeah. So it's interesting. But for other people, it has very different meanings and weights,
Sile Walsh: but I do. It depends whether we have to, when we meet someone, wherever
Sile Walsh: we meet them, whether leaving it behind is protective in some way and we
Sile Walsh: don't really have the choice. Whereas for me, it's in
Sile Walsh: me, so it doesn't matter if other people understand it. I can hold it for
Sile Walsh: myself and it doesn't have a negative impact on me,
Sile Walsh: you know, Whereas maybe if people presume I'm English,
Sile Walsh: that has a different impact. So I don't just leave that in the background.
Sile Walsh: So there's these kind of subtle things that I guess we all have
Sile Walsh: that have more and less need for external witnessing.
Sile Walsh: And just my name isn't. Because it comes from. Well, it's Irish, so it has
Sile Walsh: a deep heritage meaning. It's my grandmother's name. It's an honour to be named after
Sile Walsh: someone who raised my aunts and uncles with such courage and
Sile Walsh: velocity and, you know, so. So to me, I don't need somebody to know all
Sile Walsh: that for me to. To be comfortable with it. But there would be other things,
Sile Walsh: as I'm sure we all have, that it would. Like when people assume
Sile Walsh: I'm English abroad, that's quite frustrating as an Irish person. Right. So. And
Sile Walsh: sometimes even in Ireland, because I grew up in, in the uk, I spent a
Sile Walsh: couple of years in uk and in the uk I was Irish because that was
Sile Walsh: how we understood ourselves growing up in London. Come back to Ireland and I assume
Sile Walsh: I'm Irish, but I'm actually English to the Irish kids. Right. So
Sile Walsh: in both places, I was never quite enough, I guess, or, or.
Sile Walsh: Or didn't belong enough. And so when someone mistakes my heritage,
Sile Walsh: that hurts, but not when they mistake my. My name or, you know, I hold
Sile Walsh: that differently. Although I'm getting better now when they mistake where I'm from, I'm Thinking,
Sile Walsh: yeah, well, it's your best guess. It's not bad guess.
Joanne Lockwood: I've chatted to other people in the past who have mixed heritage and
Joanne Lockwood: this lady I spoke to always said that she's too white to be black
Joanne Lockwood: and too black to be white. So you're, you're too English to be
Joanne Lockwood: Irish and too Irish to be English, and it's obviously. But you're not, you don't
Joanne Lockwood: want to be English, but you, your native, if
Joanne Lockwood: you like, you've inherited a worldly Persona.
Sile Walsh: And it's an interesting one because I spoke to a psychologist at a conference a
Sile Walsh: couple of years ago. She's a child psychologist and she talked about people from
Sile Walsh: mixed cultural backgrounds. Now, both my parents are Irish, but living in a country that
Sile Walsh: isn't of your culture for formative years
Sile Walsh: changes your cultural identity. And she talks about
Sile Walsh: how those of us who are, who are, have had cultural
Sile Walsh: experiences during development years having mixed culture, even if our
Sile Walsh: parents aren't from a mixed culture, because we've grown up in different
Sile Walsh: cultures and how this sense of home is so, so
Sile Walsh: different. And I really resonate with that because I have brothers who
Sile Walsh: have. So also my accent, it might not be obvious to you, Joanne, but my
Sile Walsh: accent in Ireland is considered English and in England my accent is consider considered
Sile Walsh: Irish, but my brothers have Irish accents. My dad and my mom
Sile Walsh: generally have Irish accents. And so it's also very unusual
Sile Walsh: in my family because I remember talking to, I don't know, when I was out
Sile Walsh: dating, whatever, talking to some guy at the bar and he was saying, he was
Sile Walsh: talking about my dad and my brothers because my dad trained him at one point
Sile Walsh: and he said, no, no, there's no girl there, there's only two lads. I was
Sile Walsh: like, no, no, they, you've just. They're my brothers and my dad and he's like,
Sile Walsh: no, no, no, they, no, they were never in England. So he was cracking my
Sile Walsh: accent and couldn't place me with my family because of it.
Sile Walsh: And so, so it's interesting these kind of how that kind of cultural
Sile Walsh: mixed background, even though technically both my parents are Irish and my
Sile Walsh: heritage is Irish, still comes into effect because of my lived
Sile Walsh: experiences and being cultured in different, different norms. And like a very subtle
Sile Walsh: one, this one used to come up a lot, was when I started going to
Sile Walsh: school in Ireland, I used to bring pate on toast, which is very. But
Sile Walsh: it's because when our neighbour used to give us pate on toast constantly and it
Sile Walsh: was the only thing I would eat at. And so at home, Everyone thought I
Sile Walsh: was absolutely insane because first of all it's smelly. And second of all, nobody was
Sile Walsh: getting pate on toast in East Cork, small country school and
Sile Walsh: Sheila's like rocking up with her, her burnt toast in her pate. So there was
Sile Walsh: all these like subtle things, you know. Or we grew up with a Thai person
Sile Walsh: next to us cooking gorgeous Thai food and there was no spices
Sile Walsh: in Ireland when I was growing up, you know what I mean? So we come
Sile Walsh: back with spicy food and they're like, you know. But for us, for me, I
Sile Walsh: just thought everyone grew up with different foods. But that wasn't the case in the
Sile Walsh: countryside in Ireland. Potato. Potato, wasn't it? It was, yeah,
Sile Walsh: like it was potato, it was white sandwiches. There was other things,
Sile Walsh: but nothing like what I had exposure from coming from London. And so
Sile Walsh: even that was this kind of cultural odd. Like your 8 year old eats pate
Sile Walsh: on toast, your, you know, they like curries. Like these were very strange
Sile Walsh: things at that time. Now they're not, thankfully, but they were then. We were then
Joanne Lockwood: into that because I mentioned in the green room. In the 90s I
Joanne Lockwood: worked for a bank and travelled extensively over the world for
Joanne Lockwood: that bank. And also I was a member of a club and the club
Joanne Lockwood: used to have meets in different countries,
Joanne Lockwood: different traditional. You stayed in people's houses. So you go to
Joanne Lockwood: Finland, stay for a week in a Finnish family with their
Joanne Lockwood: children and you'd sit in the hot tub outside, they'd put
Joanne Lockwood: logs in the burner and they'd heat the hot tub and vodka. And
Joanne Lockwood: Estonia running around in naked and jumping into plunge pools at three in
Joanne Lockwood: the morning, having a lot of work done. But you're living within the culture and
Joanne Lockwood: you really get to understand them. I suppose that
Joanne Lockwood: was part of my formative years in my mid to late 20s to my
Joanne Lockwood: mid to late 30s. That was part of my
Joanne Lockwood: adult formulation, if you like. And I got a greater appreciation
Joanne Lockwood: of the world and culture and
Joanne Lockwood: ways of people interacting with each other, which I'd never had had.
Joanne Lockwood: I just stayed as a UK focused
Joanne Lockwood: person going on holiday once a year. I see myself as more
Joanne Lockwood: multicultural, which I guess is why the
Joanne Lockwood: UK's decision to leave the EU did so much at the time. Because
Joanne Lockwood: that's futures being global, not not
Joanne Lockwood: local. And I see what you're saying there, it's of
Joanne Lockwood: culture and the value add that people bring through their history.
Joanne Lockwood: It was once nothing you said in the green one, because I was just checking
Joanne Lockwood: how you're identifying your gender so I could make sure I use the Right, pronouns.
Joanne Lockwood: In the introduction you said agnostic, you know, of the
Joanne Lockwood: gender. It's not that you're non binary or not female, you're just not bothered
Joanne Lockwood: by it. So, yeah.
Sile Walsh: It'S taken me a while to move through it because
Sile Walsh: from a human rights perspective, I wouldn't want to undermine anyone
Sile Walsh: else else's relationship with their own gender. And I say that because
Sile Walsh: often at the moment, within the kind of LGBTQ plus
Sile Walsh: population, there's all sorts of breaks and arguments and this idea that if
Sile Walsh: you have that identity, it challenges mine and, you know,
Sile Walsh: lots of prob, to me, lots of problematic, oppressive practises
Sile Walsh: occurring when. When. So one of the things with kind
Sile Walsh: of coming from a background and not being Irish enough and then not being English
Sile Walsh: enough and all of these things and then going on to be, you know, to
Sile Walsh: find out I was dyslexic and not really quite being smart on
Sile Walsh: paper, but being quite smart verbally and cognitively, but
Sile Walsh: just not being able to capture on paper and then kind of moving through the
Sile Walsh: queer community. And that's how I identify it more because it's just quicker for me
Sile Walsh: to say I'm queer and not being lesbian enough, gay
Sile Walsh: enough, not being feminine in one way, but then
Sile Walsh: not being this assumption that I'm a certain
Sile Walsh: gender, a certain kind of identity. I started to realise that the only time my
Sile Walsh: gender is relevant is when other people are assessing how they
Sile Walsh: want to interact with me. So the pronouns is a respectful way to do it.
Sile Walsh: That's like a question of how do I respect you in this conversation. That's great.
Sile Walsh: But often when somebody's trying to put me into any identity group, whether
Sile Walsh: it's through my sexuality or through gender, they're kind of trying to
Sile Walsh: pick a box to put me in to decide how I
Sile Walsh: should be interacted with. And when someone says to me, you know
Sile Walsh: about my gender, like, the only times I know about my gender is based
Sile Walsh: on how other people interact with me. I don't wake up and feel like
Sile Walsh: a strong woman, let's say, unless in that moment something
Sile Walsh: connected to my womanhood is relevant. And if I'm really honest, the only time that
Sile Walsh: anything is connected to something like that, it's more connected to
Sile Walsh: being assigned female at birth, which is mostly around healthcare.
Sile Walsh: That's the most time that anything is relevant to me about these
Sile Walsh: things. And I understand that they're relevant to other people for other reasons, but
Sile Walsh: I just. And I understand, I even understand why, like
Sile Walsh: critical gender feminists hold their position. I understand why pro
Sile Walsh: trans and non binary People hold their position. I just don't care what you
Sile Walsh: think I am. It doesn't give me anything.
Sile Walsh: The only thing I have an issue with is if you decide I'm something
Sile Walsh: and then you decide how I should be because of it. But my real issue
Sile Walsh: is that your decision about how I should be is my. It's my problem.
Sile Walsh: And if I'm honest, I think it came from first the sexuality stuff,
Sile Walsh: which is, you know, my wife looks they soft, butch,
Sile Walsh: I guess, typically. And people assume I'm femme. But, like, when we have to
Sile Walsh: deal with situations, I deal with the things that are traditionally considered butch. I grew
Sile Walsh: up in the country, you know, I can do that stuff. She doesn't, let's
Sile Walsh: say. And so when people are putting us in these boxes, I find it really
Sile Walsh: interesting because they're just deciding, first of all that we're
Sile Walsh: female, and then they're deciding what type of female, and then they're
Sile Walsh: deciding what kind of, like, lesbian, you know, and then they go on and on
Sile Walsh: and none of that fits. I'm like, you know, the only time you need to
Sile Walsh: worry about my gender is when it's relevant to you. And that's very
Sile Walsh: rare. And the only time you need to worry about my sexuality is if I'm
Sile Walsh: interested in you. Because you being interested in me doesn't change my sexuality. So the
Sile Walsh: only time you need to cheque what my sexuality is is if I'm pursuing you.
Sile Walsh: And that's important to you in some way to know a lot of the time.
Sile Walsh: And I just listened to a beautiful piece about one of the activists
Sile Walsh: in the States about who. Who was activating for trans
Sile Walsh: people's rights. And she identified as a. Sorry, he identified as a lesbian and then
Sile Walsh: went on and identified as a trans man, but continued to identify as a
Sile Walsh: lesbian. And one of the quotes that I thought was really powerful was the
Sile Walsh: labels are only meant to be used to help us understand each other, not
Sile Walsh: to stereotype us and put another box. And I
Sile Walsh: suppose that's why I kind of don't interact very actively around
Sile Walsh: gender, because I don't mind interacting about other people's gender if it's important to
Sile Walsh: them. But my gender to me is only
Sile Walsh: going to be used to make decisions about me that I'd rather you just ask,
Sile Walsh: you know, like, if you want to treat me a certain way, maybe just treat
Sile Walsh: me like a decent human being and don't assume things based on my gender. And
Sile Walsh: if you do assume things, I can say yes or no to them, but
Sile Walsh: it just doesn't it just doesn't make sense to me to tell people
Sile Walsh: what my gender is when it. It's not relevant to
Sile Walsh: them usually. And if I'm. As long as I'm not offended and I'm not offended
Sile Walsh: by any pronoun use. If I was offended, that might be different. But I'm not
Sile Walsh: hurt or offended or I give no weight to the pronouns that are used about
Sile Walsh: me because that's not my experience of me. That's just how someone's making
Sile Walsh: sense of me. That's fine for me. It's much more important that I know me.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, people can make sense of me. I. I like that as a kind of.
Joanne Lockwood: A kind of meeting people where they are. You're recognising
Joanne Lockwood: that the society needs to have some sort of hand or to
Joanne Lockwood: hook you on. It's. It's you. You're having to use
Joanne Lockwood: this terminology, these words, these pronouns for other people's reference,
Joanne Lockwood: not for your own. It relates to that I
Joanne Lockwood: looking the green rice. I just thought about this which I was going to raise,
Joanne Lockwood: which I'll do now. Is my marooned on a desert island
Joanne Lockwood: self reflection. So if I'm washed up on a desert island, I'm the
Joanne Lockwood: only human being on that island. Am I a
Joanne Lockwood: sexuality? Do I have a gender identity or am I just a survivor?
Joanne Lockwood: I don't think on my own I'm a survivor. I'm beef
Joanne Lockwood: human being because that's relative to other creatures on that island that I may be
Joanne Lockwood: trying to eat. So I guess I'm a human if I'm on my own.
Joanne Lockwood: Gender's relative. Sexuality is relative to who I'm around.
Joanne Lockwood: And when someone comes to rescue me, someone else
Joanne Lockwood: gets stranded with me that I become relative to them. Am I more
Joanne Lockwood: feminine or more masculine than the person I'm with? That it has
Joanne Lockwood: a relativity. But other than that I'm just, I'm just
Joanne Lockwood: even have a name maybe. Maybe my deep thoughts. I may talk to myself
Joanne Lockwood: maybe. But my name's not important, my gender's not important, my sexuality is not
Joanne Lockwood: important. Just whether I can eat, drink and sleep and survive.
Joanne Lockwood: I often wonder whether we all concept of gender sexuality.
Joanne Lockwood: I think as you said it's only relevant if I fancy you then decide if
Joanne Lockwood: you fancy me then. So yeah, yeah. Isn't that a
Joanne Lockwood: wonderful place to be where actually matter until I'm interested?
Sile Walsh: Well, I think there's. There's kind of. Because I get caught on this quite a
Sile Walsh: lot because I think that that speaks to our relationship with ourselves
Sile Walsh: which is kind of. I think One point, and then there's
Sile Walsh: how we're responded to in society is based on how society perceives us,
Sile Walsh: not actually based on how we are, and so often
Sile Walsh: not based on how we are, but actually how they perceive us or how the
Sile Walsh: group. Because I kind of come from a group dynamics perspective. And at that point
Sile Walsh: then we do need to have some sense of
Sile Walsh: clarity, not necessarily about an individual's identity, but about
Sile Walsh: collective protections. You know, so legislation, code of conduct
Sile Walsh: with each other. And I think that sometimes in
Sile Walsh: my. For me, what I've realised is if I have something unprocessed
Sile Walsh: individually, I bring it into the collective and look for
Sile Walsh: approval. But if, and this is just for me, if I have
Sile Walsh: something that I have a good relationship with within myself, I don't need the
Sile Walsh: collective approval, but I do need to make sure that the collective doesn't
Sile Walsh: harm me because of it, which is a different thing to approval. But a lot
Sile Walsh: of the stuff that I would have wanted kind of some kind of
Sile Walsh: external approval on is usually the stuff I haven't
Sile Walsh: got where I need to get to in myself, where I'm comfortable with me.
Sile Walsh: But the part that we do need to work on collectively is the protections. And
Sile Walsh: I think that's. Sometimes those two things get collapsed. Nobody can
Sile Walsh: protect me from somebody not understanding me. And
Sile Walsh: that's appropriate because I don't understand everyone, but I shouldn't.
Sile Walsh: And you know, and it's my belief from a human rights perspective, my identity
Sile Walsh: shouldn't mean I am more exposed to, like, whether, you know, whether
Sile Walsh: it's because I'm a trans person, whether it's because I'm a woman,
Sile Walsh: whether it's because I'm a man, whether it's because I'm black,
Sile Walsh: whether it's because. And for anyone watching the video, I'm a white person, I'm not,
Sile Walsh: but I'm just giving an example. Regardless of the part of the identity that is
Sile Walsh: presented from a human rights perspective, I don't believe that should
Sile Walsh: equate to further harm or more harm or higher risk. And
Sile Walsh: that's maybe where I think we sometimes collapse two separate things, which is
Sile Walsh: my relationship with myself, the desire for us to have external approval,
Sile Walsh: which I get, and then the harm part. And I do think we should be
Sile Walsh: resolving the harm part, but I do find that sometimes we
Sile Walsh: go other places with it, which can be unhelpful long term. You
Joanne Lockwood: work with organisations, the leadership space,
Joanne Lockwood: a bit of psychology. It's inclusive
Joanne Lockwood: culture, if you like, what got you into what you were doing,
Joanne Lockwood: if you did all your Life or is it something you bumped into?
Sile Walsh: Yeah, so I haven't, I've been doing it for about 14 years I guess is
Sile Walsh: the starting point. But before I was working in this field I left
Sile Walsh: school at 15 because I was, I am, I was highly dyslexic. I
Sile Walsh: am very dyslexic and school was just torture. And I went on and did an
Sile Walsh: apprenticeship to be a chef and I was an awful manager. And I
Sile Walsh: don't say that lightly. I roared and shouted, I demeaned people I didn't know any
Sile Walsh: better. I was 15, 16, running my first team. Everyone's older than me, you
Sile Walsh: know, but I, I kind of started
Sile Walsh: to. And I grew up during that whole time volunteering. I've been volunteering since I
Sile Walsh: was very young and being involved in community groups and inequity
Sile Walsh: was always visible to me because of the communities that I was working with
Sile Walsh: and I came from, even where I worked was a really well off place with
Sile Walsh: lots of well off people. But I was also working with people
Sile Walsh: from, you know, underprivileged areas or I myself come
Sile Walsh: from like a working class background. So I was constantly seeing that the same
Sile Walsh: thing didn't result in the same outcome for everyone. And I was always quite
Sile Walsh: fascinated. Went back and forth to India for a few years, kind of
Sile Walsh: exploring spirituality and kind of got into psychology and started doing some courses,
Sile Walsh: side courses to learn about myself. And as I was doing that, I
Sile Walsh: was still in my volunteering work and I was saying, you know, I'm working with
Sile Walsh: leaders who are, who have lots of power and
Sile Walsh: privilege. And then I turn around and I go into a community room where
Sile Walsh: people have very little access to what they need.
Sile Walsh: And it just felt really contradictory, constantly this tension between
Sile Walsh: this room we could nearly do anything we wanted and this room we've to
Sile Walsh: beg for resourcing or something or just understanding or
Sile Walsh: approval. And so I was kind of always had this tension and I grew up
Sile Walsh: in a home where they wouldn't use this language. But you
Sile Walsh: weren't just obligated to yourself, you're obligated to your collective in some
Sile Walsh: way. So we would have always supported others. Our family would have had people stay,
Sile Walsh: you know, we would have invited people to Christmas dinner. We would have been involved
Sile Walsh: in charity work. Not like sit all singing, all dancing, just it was like
Sile Walsh: a normal part of my family experience that you take care of those near you
Sile Walsh: who need it and they will do the same for you and did do the
Sile Walsh: same for us. And so it was always kind of there and Then I was
Sile Walsh: working with leaders. And before I ever called it inclusive leadership, I come from a
Sile Walsh: relational and collective leadership perspective because of my background, community work,
Sile Walsh: you know, and I was always using inclusion without that
Sile Walsh: word, because I was helping people understand that the
Sile Walsh: environment you put people in has as much impact on their performance
Sile Walsh: as their capability, and that if that environment is set up correctly. And I
Sile Walsh: knew this because I'd been going to school and suffering and failing, but also I
Sile Walsh: was working part time and thriving and I was running a team at 16
Sile Walsh: in a really important pastry kitchen in Ireland and I wasn't able
Sile Walsh: to like, barely get through a test. So I knew that the environment mattered
Sile Walsh: and so that was always in my work. And then about five years ago, I
Sile Walsh: made a few calls and I said, if I was going to do a PhD
Sile Walsh: on something and I have access to leaders because that's who I work with,
Sile Walsh: what would I do? And one person said, look into what inclusive leadership could be
Sile Walsh: practically in real organisations. And the other person said, please
Sile Walsh: don't effing look at D. And I generally look at something
Sile Walsh: specific so that I can tell leaders, this is how you engage with
Sile Walsh: it. So they were very clear that whatever I did had to be
Sile Walsh: practical for leaders to connect with. And so I kind of
Sile Walsh: started to sow in my previous experience and the knowledge I had from
Sile Walsh: all the different small courses I had done and my coaching training. And I started
Sile Walsh: to realise that if I was to understand inclusion scientifically,
Sile Walsh: I could help leaders more effectively. Because leaders often think to be
Sile Walsh: inclusive they have to know everything about everyone. And what I figured out was you
Sile Walsh: don't need to know everything about everyone, you need to know how to work with
Sile Walsh: everyone. That's a different, different beast altogether. And so it kind of
Sile Walsh: evolved in that way. But one thing I will tell you is the minute I
Sile Walsh: use the term inclusive leadership, the people who sought me out
Sile Walsh: changed. And that was interesting because I've always been working with inclusive leadership. As
Sile Walsh: long as I've been doing coaching with leaders, it's been an inclusive model. But I
Sile Walsh: didn't use the language. And so all types of leaders came to me. Now there's
Sile Walsh: a different set of people who look for me. Recommendations can
Sile Walsh: still be varied, they're very different set. And that's quite interesting. I think
Sile Walsh: that that word inclusion meant that the people who thought I could help them
Sile Walsh: changed and yet I was doing the same work I just used just was more
Sile Walsh: clear on the label. So people don't contact you as much then.
Sile Walsh: So what I will say is that the majority of people who contact
Sile Walsh: me contact me because of the word inclusion in the leadership. Inclusive
Sile Walsh: leadership. Previously they contacted me because of leadership. Now anyone who
Sile Walsh: previously worked with me refers people and that's still of the same genre. All
Sile Walsh: identities. A lot of men, a lot of white people, because that's
Sile Walsh: who's in senior leadership in Ireland and the UK and Europe, predominantly numbers
Sile Walsh: wise. But the minute I put the word inclusive leadership, I had
Sile Walsh: more employee resource groups call me, more HR people to do diversity
Sile Walsh: work. It became really clear that inclusive leadership was seen
Sile Walsh: as something for the marginalised to do and not
Sile Walsh: what it actually is, which is for leaders to do. And it was. It was
Sile Walsh: just really, really interesting. So my referrals still. Still look the same,
Sile Walsh: but if somebody comes and looks for me online, it's. It's a different demographic.
Sile Walsh: It's HR people instead of the CEOs, which is usually who I'd get the direct.
Sile Walsh: The directors on the board or the CEOs. Now HR contact me more.
Sile Walsh: People from employee resource groups contact me more. And we'll say people with DNI
Sile Walsh: roles contact me more. Previously it was. It was senior leaders
Sile Walsh: contact me directly. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood: On the world right now. This is middle of 2025 and first of
Joanne Lockwood: July. Well, how did that happen? Kind of got a bad
Joanne Lockwood: name or it broke a broken
Joanne Lockwood: reputation. I suppose finding that inclusion is
Joanne Lockwood: misunderstood yourself. Because what you're talking about there is
Joanne Lockwood: the environment. And that's what inclusively trying to do, create a better
Joanne Lockwood: environment, which is Hertzberg's two factor theory, really, isn't it?
Joanne Lockwood: And time is the detractor, not the motivator. And
Joanne Lockwood: what leaders often have to focus on is they spend
Joanne Lockwood: so much time trying to make people feel wonderful, they
Joanne Lockwood: forget about the basics, logical safety. And I noticed you had that
Joanne Lockwood: as part of your bio as well, those important elements so
Joanne Lockwood: that people feel safe and feel secure and feel valued.
Sile Walsh: That's all. Inclusive leadership, is it? Creating environments where people feel safe and
Joanne Lockwood: valued and could succeed. Yeah. So I have to
Sile Walsh: say this, and it doesn't go down well, but there's a good reason. DI has
Sile Walsh: got bad reputation and some of those reasons are being leveraged
Sile Walsh: by bad actors. But some of those reasons are reasonable.
Sile Walsh: Sometimes people with lived experiences will
Sile Walsh: come on and speak as experts without any additional work on that area and only
Sile Walsh: share from their point of view. We wouldn't let that happen in any other
Sile Walsh: area. So it's problematic that. That's that before you get
Sile Walsh: hired for a job. Like, I'm nearly asked what my Sexuality, identity.
Sile Walsh: They nearly say, like, what kind of oppression have you had before? They hire me
Sile Walsh: sometimes and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Your question should be, am I qualified and
Sile Walsh: capable of speaking about this topic in a nuanced and complex way? Because
Sile Walsh: it is complex, but. So there's been a lot of people with lived
Sile Walsh: experiences using that without furthering
Sile Walsh: their understanding of the topic, which means leads to really bad advice,
Sile Walsh: you know, sometimes illegally non compliant, you know, but it also leads
Sile Walsh: to social activism coming into the workplace, but not
Sile Walsh: necessarily understanding organisational change and the psychology of
Sile Walsh: organisations and how they function as systems. So one of
Sile Walsh: the reasons for the bad reputation is DEI has been done really badly by some
Sile Walsh: groups and some people because there's lots of money in it. And if people are
Sile Walsh: asking your identity before understanding your ability to create an
Sile Walsh: impact and whether it's compliant and appropriate, you know, then
Sile Walsh: that's problematic. The other reason that there's been an issue is a lot of people
Sile Walsh: have brought in their political views. I have political views, but
Sile Walsh: when I step into an organisation, my duty is to what's been agreed with the
Sile Walsh: organisation. But what often happens in DI work is that a lot of us are
Sile Walsh: activists outside of it and we bring it into the corporate setting
Sile Walsh: without appreciating the potential harm that might happen in that room when we
Sile Walsh: do that. So I think there's that. The other thing is people think
Sile Walsh: inclusion is for the other. So when you speak to someone this weekend that says
Sile Walsh: there's an over focus on the minority, and I was
Sile Walsh: saying, actually, if you are dealing with an effective inclusive
Sile Walsh: practitioner, they're not focused on the minority, they're focused on what
Sile Walsh: is required for the whole group, which includes the minority.
Sile Walsh: But I used to push back on this and say, no, no, it's because the
Sile Walsh: minority are being ignored. That's not always the case. Sometimes the
Sile Walsh: minority's actually got the loudest voice in the room now and they might only be
Sile Walsh: representing a small proportion of what's needed. And it's not that it shouldn't be
Sile Walsh: represented, but it's that for people who have no clue about what's going
Sile Walsh: on because they're not relevant in this area, they're so confused,
Sile Walsh: not harmful, not against it, just lost in the conversation.
Sile Walsh: So to me, I think people think and people think I will take a very
Sile Walsh: particular position because of my work, my research, my identity.
Sile Walsh: But the reality is, for me, inclusion should.
Sile Walsh: Inclusive leadership should help you lead effectively in your organisation
Sile Walsh: and inclusion should be appropriate for the setting. And I use the example
Sile Walsh: all the time of I can't go to the Law Society in the UK and
Sile Walsh: say, I want to be president because I'm not a lawyer. I don't have a
Sile Walsh: right to access that space and then become a lawyer. But I could say they're
Sile Walsh: excluding me, because they are, but they're excluding me with a
Sile Walsh: purpose to the purpose of the organisation. And I think that a lot of
Sile Walsh: inclusion work has forgotten or doesn't
Sile Walsh: overtly explain that inclusion in organisations has to serve the
Sile Walsh: organisation's purpose and serving it is making sure that all people,
Sile Walsh: including marginalised people, are able to come to work and thrive
Sile Walsh: without having to do additional masking or hiding or
Sile Walsh: dealing with jabs or fear during the day. And when we don't have to
Sile Walsh: deal with those, you get equal or better performance. That's the purpose of
Sile Walsh: inclusion in workplaces, in my mind. And inclusive
Sile Walsh: leadership is getting kind of lumped into being nice. And
Sile Walsh: inclusion isn't always nice. Sometimes you have to make really hard decisions. But I do
Sile Walsh: think that there's not just a misconception in mainstream. I think that in my opinion,
Sile Walsh: there's a misconception in those of us who are activists in society and
Sile Walsh: impacted by the topic, this kind of idea that
Sile Walsh: our desire is the only desire. But I've yet to get a group of people
Sile Walsh: in a room, even from marginalised communities, who all agree on the same outcome. And
Sile Walsh: so that makes workplaces a complex reality to kind of
Sile Walsh: navigate. And so I do think there's confusion, but I don't think it's from the
Sile Walsh: side we usually blame. I think it's actually maybe a
Sile Walsh: weaponizing of the work or a misunderstanding or like I described
Sile Walsh: earlier, a lack of process in one's own stuff. You
Sile Walsh: know, like I say, I work with a lot of people who are homophobic, and
Sile Walsh: a lot of people in my kind of sphere would say, how can you do
Sile Walsh: that? And I would say, because, first of all, if I don't work with them,
Sile Walsh: who will? And second of all, just because they have
Sile Walsh: belief that I am less human doesn't make me less human. And when I'm working
Sile Walsh: with them, if I make them less human in my interaction,
Sile Walsh: I'm just replicating the very thing I don't want to occur. And so to me,
Sile Walsh: I'm not doing because I'm a good person, I'm doing it because if I'm not
Sile Walsh: capable of working with people who are homophobic, I shouldn't be doing this
Sile Walsh: work in organisations because I'm not able to process my stuff in
Sile Walsh: it. And so I think we collapsing that.
Joanne Lockwood: Label, moving someone as homophobic, transphobic or
Joanne Lockwood: racist or whatever, those are very inflammatory type words.
Joanne Lockwood: What we're doing is we're basically sort of either shutting down a conversation or
Joanne Lockwood: dehumanising another view. I'm not saying that having
Joanne Lockwood: gay actives is right, fair or otherwise.
Joanne Lockwood: Saying is that person has a perspective based on a lived experience and they have
Joanne Lockwood: a why, they believe that. Yes. Trying to uncover the why.
Joanne Lockwood: Why do you think that? Do I actually matter? Does it matter to
Joanne Lockwood: you who I am, what my sexuality is? And as you said earlier, unless I
Joanne Lockwood: fancy you, it really doesn't make any difference to you, does it? Unless you fancy
Joanne Lockwood: me and you're confused by me. We get so. I think
Joanne Lockwood: picking up another thing actually said was get so hung up on this outcome
Joanne Lockwood: finality, this having to be right, that we forget about
Joanne Lockwood: how we think something in the first place. And that's part of that humanization
Joanne Lockwood: of the conversation, isn't it? Yeah, and I talk about that in my
Sile Walsh: book specifically because I'm. What frustrated me was this
Sile Walsh: idea that to be inclusive we must all agree, but that is
Sile Walsh: anti diversity. Like, like. And this is a bit of a controversial
Sile Walsh: view. I believe people have the right to believe homophobic,
Sile Walsh: racist, you know, sexist, transphobic things. I
Sile Walsh: don't believe they have the right to discriminate. And legally they don't. Right.
Sile Walsh: And we know that it's not easy to prove these things anyway. But
Sile Walsh: because I believe in human rights, I believe people have the right to believe things.
Sile Walsh: And that means that they have the right to believe things I highly disagree with.
Sile Walsh: Just like I have the right to believe something they highly disagree with. What we
Sile Walsh: don't have a right to do, in my opinion, is to harm each other. And
Sile Walsh: I'm not talking about. A lot of people say that. I find that harmful because
Sile Walsh: I disagree with you or I feel offended. I'm talking about. Harm is not disliking
Sile Walsh: what people say. You know, harm is actually that it's something
Sile Walsh: negative happens to a person, you know, usually
Sile Walsh: externally. But I also think that one of the issues we have around this
Sile Walsh: idea of inclusion right now is that we. What we really mean is
Sile Walsh: I want to include the people I like and agree with. Because when I say.
Sile Walsh: When people say bring your authentic self to work, I say, first of all, legally
Sile Walsh: that's problematic. People can win cases against anything if you say that. But
Sile Walsh: secondly, we're not generally in the inclusion space, meaning the
Sile Walsh: homophobic, racist, sexist transphobes. We don't want them to bring their
Sile Walsh: whole authentic self to work. Right. So we want to deplatform them.
Sile Walsh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I do believe, and it's a bit of a kind
Sile Walsh: of spiritual belief, but I really do believe that if anyone holds hate
Sile Walsh: towards someone else about a part of their identity, it's
Sile Walsh: because they couldn't possibly process that about themselves. So they
Sile Walsh: hold hate within themselves, for themselves. I don't need to get into that with them
Sile Walsh: because I don't hold that hate. So like, I don't want to get into it,
Sile Walsh: but I do think that we get caught up in trying to control what
Sile Walsh: people think. And that I have a problem with because that's from a human rights
Sile Walsh: perspective, that's not okay. But we do in the
Sile Walsh: workplace have discrimination legislation and treating people less favourably
Sile Walsh: based on one of the protected characteristics is discrimination.
Sile Walsh: Thinking something differently isn't, unfortunately, and potentially saying something
Sile Walsh: differently isn't. It's a grey area depending on what they say and how they say
Sile Walsh: it and the general consensus on it. But we do have a bit of
Sile Walsh: this righteous moral ground stuff that I. That is
Sile Walsh: a form of oppressive power that I have an issue with personally using. I'm
Sile Walsh: like being right and being better than is just a way of oppressing and
Sile Walsh: dehumanising another person. And I don't think that's very inclusive.
Joanne Lockwood: Because being right is a perspective, it's not an absolute. And
Joanne Lockwood: we all have. We all believe we're right and we all believe we have the
Joanne Lockwood: outcome. It's a human bias. Ego is
Joanne Lockwood: extreme and that's how we believe. And which is why affinity
Joanne Lockwood: groups are powerful because we believe people who look like us and feel like us,
Joanne Lockwood: think like us, are more right than people who don't. And yeah,
Joanne Lockwood: our war start and yeah, I'd say that you got no idea what's going on
Joanne Lockwood: in the Middle East. I know that people are dying, children are dying. I know
Joanne Lockwood: that people are starving. I know that there's poverty and famine and things going on
Joanne Lockwood: and people are being bombed at their homes. I don't know who's right
Joanne Lockwood: at this point. I don't really care who's right. I just want people to stop
Joanne Lockwood: dying and people to find a way through it. So yeah, people
Joanne Lockwood: are so invested in their own truth. I'll put that down. I mean,
Joanne Lockwood: we see the example of the England, Ireland
Joanne Lockwood: conflicts in the past never solved the
Joanne Lockwood: problems of what was going on between England and Ireland, of the United Kingdom and
Joanne Lockwood: Ireland by continuing to fight and blow each other up, we can only Solve it
Joanne Lockwood: by saying I'm. That we want to be here now
Joanne Lockwood: how can we get to here? I find
Joanne Lockwood: in my own personal relationships. What about being sorry?
Joanne Lockwood: Because you can be sorry once, but ask me to keep being sorry
Joanne Lockwood: because I'm sorry makes you feel
Joanne Lockwood: better for me to keep apologising, it doesn't help, it just makes you feel.
Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, it becomes an uncompromising situation. So I think what we need to try and
Joanne Lockwood: do is where do we want to be tomorrow? That's where we want to go.
Joanne Lockwood: Acknowledge the past is it. Hold
Joanne Lockwood: prisoners of that? And how do we find the way forward? And I think inclusion
Joanne Lockwood: space is very similar. We end up excluding
Joanne Lockwood: rather than leaving people behind through the fear of getting it
Joanne Lockwood: wrong, through the fear of language, through policing them.
Joanne Lockwood: Creating buzzwords or buzz phrases or
Joanne Lockwood: scenarios that go against social constructs that we're all kind of familiar with.
Joanne Lockwood: Evolution's good forcing people say at the
Joanne Lockwood: beginning about pronouns, forcing people to take their pronouns
Joanne Lockwood: every time they interact with each other. Not societal's way of
Joanne Lockwood: communicating. And the thing is, it is
Sile Walsh: oppressive to do that. So I'm always thinking about how the power
Sile Walsh: is being used. And so if, like your example is sorry,
Sile Walsh: if I require someone to be sorry forever, I'm requiring to have
Sile Walsh: power over them forever. Right. Which is just like a
Sile Walsh: deflection of the power. It's a reversal. If I'm telling people what they
Sile Walsh: can and can't say, I'm just trying to dominate them with my
Sile Walsh: righteousness. And to me, it's really important that we know what we're
Sile Walsh: doing with power in these kind of conversations because that changes the
Sile Walsh: landscape of what we're doing. Discussing for me, I think, and it's very hard to
Sile Walsh: do because sometimes I hear someone say something and I think, you're some idiot. Right?
Sile Walsh: And then I've got to catch myself and I've got to say, their worldview brought
Sile Walsh: them there. Your worldview brought you here. Why is it easier for you to think
Sile Walsh: they're in Egypt than it is to actually be curious about it? And then
Sile Walsh: I have to walk myself into it and be like, where is that coming from?
Sile Walsh: Tell me more about that. And a lot of people would say you're just giving
Sile Walsh: people space to air their frustrations. And I'm saying, no, I'm trying to understand
Sile Walsh: why someone can have such a different worldview to me. And I think it goes
Sile Walsh: on to the same situation in Gaza. I do
Sile Walsh: not. And maybe this is from being an Irish person and understanding the complexities of
Sile Walsh: the North I do not understand the complexities
Sile Walsh: of that situation in the way that people
Sile Walsh: living it do. I couldn't. Couldn't even potentially. But what I do
Sile Walsh: understand is that one group is resourced with more
Sile Walsh: power than another group, that I have an issue with
Sile Walsh: the history. I don't know enough. But what I do know is that when one
Sile Walsh: group has power over another group through resourcing
Sile Walsh: or whatever they have, that's problematic. And then when that
Sile Walsh: results in life being ended, killing.
Sile Walsh: I don't care who's right or wrong. You can argue about right and wrong, but
Sile Walsh: what our role as human beings, in my opinion, is to stop harm
Sile Walsh: as soon as we are aware of it. And unfortunately,
Sile Walsh: I don't think we're doing that in that situation. And there is an imbalance in
Sile Walsh: power and resourcing and that. That will be a problem for me, whether I'm in
Sile Walsh: a boardroom and there's an imbalance of power and resourcing or we're talking about a
Sile Walsh: global stage. Because it's in those moments where, you know,
Sile Walsh: that human rights perspective kick in. But it's also in those moments where
Sile Walsh: we say, actually, you know, the end justifies the
Sile Walsh: means. No, no, it doesn't. In my opinion, it doesn't. You know, the loss of
Sile Walsh: life, of any life for any reason
Sile Walsh: should be a problem, in my opinion. And so I think, like, that,
Sile Walsh: you know, at the hands of other human beings at least, should be a problem.
Sile Walsh: So I think we get so caught up in a political stance that we actually
Sile Walsh: forget the humans and maybe thinking about what stance is required
Sile Walsh: for human harm to be reduced or to be intervened
Sile Walsh: with or to be stopped. And then there's lots of. Lots of media being
Sile Walsh: released. Like, if you see the difference in what's being released on the UK media
Sile Walsh: and the Irish media, we'll say around Gaza. It's really interesting that
Sile Walsh: we're so close and so far the media's wildly different that
Sile Walsh: we're seeing. We're so close and so far it's. Also very
Joanne Lockwood: vastly different. If you're over the Atlantic and in the US looking at the media
Joanne Lockwood: as well. Yeah, And I was in the US for a month. It was really
Sile Walsh: strange because in Ireland there's a big pro Palestinian position.
Sile Walsh: Just naturally, we've been protesting before it became media news. Like,
Sile Walsh: we've been having weekly protest years. Like, it's not a new thing here. And there's
Sile Walsh: this kind of sentiment. When I went there, it was clearly Israeli and I was
Sile Walsh: like, oh, that's a really big culture. Shock. I've walked from one room where there's
Sile Walsh: a clear position in one direction into another room
Sile Walsh: where. Where what's appropriate to openly talk about is an Israeli view,
Sile Walsh: whereas in Ireland, generally speaking, the Palestinian view is what's been
Sile Walsh: appropriate to talk about. And I was like, all I've done is be in a
Sile Walsh: different country and the rules are wildly different about what's acceptable, but so
Sile Walsh: is the information that they're getting. That was what I was really shocked by the
Sile Walsh: difference in the information. It's really difficult to try and work out what the
Joanne Lockwood: truth is or these perspectives are, and trying to marry them up
Joanne Lockwood: other than the dying and that's gotta stop. That's
Joanne Lockwood: kind of the fundamental what we're trying to get to as well. Yeah, and I
Sile Walsh: think that's the. And maybe it's, you know, somebody reported recently that
Sile Walsh: the peace process, the peace process in
Sile Walsh: Northern Ireland is one of the most successful in the world today. And like, we're
Sile Walsh: holding it tightly. It's really important. It continues for lots of reasons, but we
Sile Walsh: also know that there's still activity. We still have young people being groomed on both
Sile Walsh: sides. And like, we know that there's still. There's still
Sile Walsh: a ready to go if we don't hold it tightly and carry. Yeah, it's
Sile Walsh: fragile, but it's still. It's still quite powerful. And I suppose when you see a
Sile Walsh: process like that and you realise the safety that it offers the human
Sile Walsh: beings on both sides, you know that actually continuing
Sile Walsh: to fight is not the solution. It doesn't stop. The only two ways it
Sile Walsh: stops is one obliterates the other and
Sile Walsh: that's terrible for everybody. We should all be worried about any group of people being
Sile Walsh: killed simply because of where they live. Or the other option is they agree peace
Sile Walsh: in some kind of process. They're usually the only two outcomes that
Sile Walsh: kind of occur in either some kind of agreement or we keep going till
Sile Walsh: everyone's killed. And like the. Everyone killed is never a good outcome, in my opinion.
Sile Walsh: No matter what side of the fence you're on, on anything. Everyone killed is.
Sile Walsh: It's, you know, families losing loved ones is not a good outcome for
Sile Walsh: anyone, you know. Yeah, we've gone into the worldplitted.
Joanne Lockwood: Bringing us back to the boardroom. We get our leaders.
Joanne Lockwood: I mean, the conversation we've just had here, it's
Joanne Lockwood: difficult to have in a workplace because, you know, we're taught don't talk about
Joanne Lockwood: politics, don't talk about religion, don't talk about money. Yet we want people to
Joanne Lockwood: bring Their whole self to work. How can we have cultures
Joanne Lockwood: and environments where people can eat within
Joanne Lockwood: boundaries, yet not feel that? You know, as I think you said right at the
Joanne Lockwood: beginning, I can put bit of me into the middle here. And that's the bit
Joanne Lockwood: of me that I'm happy to share, happy to talk about. How can we get
Joanne Lockwood: people to bring that part of themselves into the middle and be able to have
Joanne Lockwood: conversations and explore? I don't know. I don't know. Because
Joanne Lockwood: people want to be right, don't they?
Joanne Lockwood: They want to have this authoritarian view of the world. Yeah. It's
Sile Walsh: interesting because what I'm finding is leaders are less inclined to be right
Sile Walsh: now and more scared of being wrong, which is a slightly different motivation.
Sile Walsh: The first thing I want to say is I don't believe we should bring our
Sile Walsh: whole selves to work. The reason that that's become normed
Sile Walsh: is because people who are marginalised were hiding parts of themselves
Sile Walsh: and we wanted them not to worry about that, that they could bring that part
Sile Walsh: of themselves to work. And I think that's appropriate. But when we say bring your
Sile Walsh: whole self to work, we're giving mixed messages because again, we're not talking about the
Sile Walsh: racist homophobe. We don't want them to bring that to work. Actually keep that at
Sile Walsh: home for your bodies. That's not the space we want at work. And legally, it's
Sile Walsh: not a clever thing to bring into work. But what we do want is that
Sile Walsh: people don't have to hide who they are. I think that's, you know, and the
Sile Walsh: original reason for this was because people were having to pretend they were something they
Sile Walsh: weren't, to be safe at work. But that's not everyone, not every part,
Sile Walsh: not everyone needs to bring their whole selves to work. We need to bring our
Sile Walsh: appropriate self to work. So the parts of my identity that are important to me,
Sile Walsh: that's what I bring to work. And I do my job and I use that
Sile Walsh: myself as an instrument of my role. And I do my best to thrive at
Sile Walsh: work, but I don't bring my whole self. I don't karaoke sing at work because
Sile Walsh: people would leave, there'd be complaints to hr. You know, I don't wear my fluffy
Sile Walsh: pyjamas to a keynote because it's not agreed as appropriate. You
Sile Walsh: know, so there's a piece around that. But what I would say about leaders
Sile Walsh: is what I tend to do with clients is when I work with a
Sile Walsh: leadership team who are going through something around this area, I ask to meet them
Sile Walsh: individually. That's the first thing I do and I say in this meeting, you can
Sile Walsh: say anything and ask anything and it will not be recorded or
Sile Walsh: noted as long as you're bringing good intent,
Sile Walsh: like you're not doing it as a bad actor. You're coming in, you're saying, I
Sile Walsh: don't know why we use this word. You know, is it okay to say this?
Sile Walsh: I'm so confused about that. You know, you know, do I have to change my
Sile Walsh: beliefs in order to lead here? And I don't believe people should have to change
Sile Walsh: their beliefs. It's interesting because we think leaders should believe what's right
Sile Walsh: to lead. Well actually leaders jobs in workplaces is to
Sile Walsh: equip you with the ability to do your job well and bring you in a
Sile Walsh: direction that's their, their role. And so I often say if we can get leaders
Sile Walsh: into private one on ones and let them bring up their fears and
Sile Walsh: concerns, I get through way more. I do say to HR, teams
Sile Walsh: don't do it in a group because you have policies, procedures and codes of conduct.
Sile Walsh: And the minute you do it in a group, I have to enact them. You've
Sile Walsh: to enact them. If I do it in a confidential coaching setting, nothing
Sile Walsh: gets enacted. They are absolutely protected in this conversation. Then
Sile Walsh: I will help them before we go into a group setting with find the
Sile Walsh: boundaries of the difference between what they need to say to help
Sile Walsh: others do well at work. Which is the point of anything a leader
Sile Walsh: says should be about helping their teams right their, their organisation
Sile Walsh: move forward. It's not about their political beliefs. So it shouldn't matter what they believe
Sile Walsh: as long as they are equipping their people with the
Sile Walsh: knowledge, information and support required to do their jobs.
Sile Walsh: And then I also think we need to be careful about
Sile Walsh: cancel culture because I talk to a lot of leaders who aren't actually committed to
Sile Walsh: being right. They're actually more fearful of being wrong, which is a different motivation. They're
Sile Walsh: afraid of saying the wrong thing and being cancelled. So now they're not saying anything
Sile Walsh: or they're saying Pittsburgh again, isn't it? The environment is down. Yeah,
Sile Walsh: yeah. So I talk to leaders about whatever you say in the
Sile Walsh: workplace should be focused on helping people do their task and feeling
Sile Walsh: safe to do their task. If everything you say connects to those two
Sile Walsh: things, your personal beliefs are not that important.
Sile Walsh: And if somebody says to you that's racist, that's homophobic, that's something
Sile Walsh: you don't say. No, it's not. You say how so let them
Sile Walsh: explain it to you. And you say Let me reflect on that and come back
Sile Walsh: to you. I need some time to process it, because you're a human being who
Sile Walsh: needs to make sense of things. And not everything that is labelled as homophobic
Sile Walsh: or racist or transphobic is those things. It's just
Sile Walsh: somebody's understanding of what you've said. So I had someone tell me that
Sile Walsh: I didn't, because I don't start any talk with my identity because it's
Sile Walsh: not relevant, right? And then it does become relevant throughout the talk, and that's fine.
Sile Walsh: But I said something about the fact that
Sile Walsh: some people in the LGBTQ community hate the word queer, and other people,
Sile Walsh: like, you know, feel the word queer is very important. That's all I said. And
Sile Walsh: I had someone say, excuse me, that's highly offensive. You shouldn't be using that language,
Sile Walsh: blah, blah. I said, well, I am queer, and I have no issue
Sile Walsh: not using that language for someone else, but I am queer.
Sile Walsh: I don't see the world in a heteronormative way. I don't engage with it in
Sile Walsh: a linear way or a kind of binary way. And so that they're
Sile Walsh: like, oh, okay, you're allowed to say it. I was like, no, you were
Sile Walsh: asserting a decision because you made a judgement of me as a straight
Sile Walsh: white woman without taking into account my
Sile Walsh: identity, because I didn't lead with it. You made judgments about me and then
Sile Walsh: decided that my position must be wrong. But the
Sile Walsh: minute I explained that my position is based on my identity, that was right. And
Sile Walsh: that's an example of where we kind of make assumptions. Originally, they were
Sile Walsh: suggesting I was being homophobic by saying that. And then when I explained that's how
Sile Walsh: I identify. I wasn't homophobic anyway anymore. But the truth was, it was never
Sile Walsh: homophobic in the first place. I was simply stating a fact. Some people
Sile Walsh: in that population like that word for lots of reasons, and some people
Sile Walsh: don't. That is fact. That's not political position I
Sile Walsh: hold, it's fact. You ask some people, they say, I like it. Other people say
Sile Walsh: they don't like it. But that person decided to turn that factual
Sile Walsh: statement into a meaning about me. That wasn't
Sile Walsh: accurate. But that happens all the time, because we get stuck in our own
Sile Walsh: worldview. And when we listen to people speak, we don't always listen to them.
Sile Walsh: We listen to them mostly through our idea of what's right and wrong and then
Sile Walsh: project it onto them. And so leaders do need the chance to process things
Sile Walsh: because they will find out that sometimes what they've said is homophobic, transphobic
Sile Walsh: racist, sexist. And sometimes they'll find that the person
Sile Walsh: misunderstood what they actually said, not what they meant, what they actually
Sile Walsh: said. They're two different things. Because sometimes people say, that's not what I meant. I'm
Sile Walsh: like, there's a difference between what you meant, what you actually said. Sometimes what you
Sile Walsh: actually said is misunderstood. That's different. Like my factual
Sile Walsh: example to you meant something else, but you said something. And
Sile Walsh: that's a sign that you've been brought up in a society that has
Sile Walsh: homophobia, transphobia, racism weaved into it. And
Sile Walsh: so we're all going to hold parts of that and we will make mistakes.
Joanne Lockwood: Back to my desert island thing, where who am I on a desert island with
Joanne Lockwood: nobody else there? And within my affinity group, within my echo chamber,
Joanne Lockwood: I homophobic within that group. And that the group might. It might be
Joanne Lockwood: this Tanner conversation people are having, the banter, the conversations, the
Joanne Lockwood: disagreement they have. It's a relative
Joanne Lockwood: contextual position. You introduce somebody into
Joanne Lockwood: that group that is not part of the. In group, they. They have a different
Joanne Lockwood: perspective. Therefore, relatively speaking, you are homophobic compared with this person.
Joanne Lockwood: Your views aren't homophobic by general societal standards.
Joanne Lockwood: But within your echo chamber there continues quite normal, rational
Joanne Lockwood: conversations of disagreement or contention. Again, we've got to try
Joanne Lockwood: and recognise within our leaders and context as well, calling
Joanne Lockwood: somebody love or honey or duck or something
Joanne Lockwood: or mate is relative because in Yorkshire or some parts
Joanne Lockwood: of the uk, some people call everybody have a love mate.
Joanne Lockwood: But it's. It's not meant to be offensive, it's not meant to be this. It's
Joanne Lockwood: just a perspective. And I think what we're talking about here, with inclusive leadership,
Joanne Lockwood: trying to get leaders to have their view, but recognise their
Joanne Lockwood: view is not the only view. And they're not. They don't have a right to
Joanne Lockwood: be absolute and right about it. So they can. They can have these views which
Joanne Lockwood: are maybe not in line with mine. I can
Joanne Lockwood: have a conversation, say I have a different view, you have a different view. Can
Joanne Lockwood: we still talk about it without getting upset, without defensive, and
Joanne Lockwood: we both leave sharing a bit of each other's perspectives
Joanne Lockwood: without necessarily having to change our view to still be. I think
Joanne Lockwood: that's the challenge, is to be able to, as I say, hold multiple perspectives and
Joanne Lockwood: paradoxes in your head at the same time,
Joanne Lockwood: be able to rationalise those out and come up with a context you're
Joanne Lockwood: happy to exist within. That sounded quite complicated. You know what I mean by that?
Sile Walsh: Yeah. No, I think that's again, the power piece. Right. If
Sile Walsh: I'm sharing my views and they have to be
Sile Walsh: better than yours. That's oppressive. Right now, there's nothing wrong with me holding
Sile Walsh: my views and you holding yours. But if I'm unsettled by the fact you are
Sile Walsh: not moved by mine and wildly agreeing, then we're in a power struggle.
Sile Walsh: We're not actually in an inclusive. And your point about the in group
Sile Walsh: and the out group is most important. The most exclusion, and I say this
Sile Walsh: wholeheartedly, that I've ever experienced, is within the
Sile Walsh: LGBTQ population.
Sile Walsh: That is the place that I have felt the most excluded.
Sile Walsh: Never lesbian enough. Never. I'm not a lesbian. Never this enough, never
Sile Walsh: that enough. You know, who CIS presenting
Sile Walsh: to be, you know, non bi. Like just everything is never enough. And
Sile Walsh: the minute I hear that, I know we're in an oppressive binary or set of
Sile Walsh: rules. I am not interested in that. I'm interested in
Sile Walsh: whoever you are and I am being valid in that moment.
Sile Walsh: We don't have to agree or understand each other. But I don't treat you as
Sile Walsh: less than simply because I don't understand and you don't get to treat me as
Sile Walsh: less than. And I think in the workplace there are some conversations we shouldn't
Sile Walsh: have. You know, I don't think I should go to work and process all my
Sile Walsh: feelings about something. I go to my therapist, I go to community groups,
Sile Walsh: I do my thing. I think at work the conversations should always be
Sile Walsh: connected to what helps this environment be co created
Sile Walsh: as a space that I can feel safe in so I can do my job
Sile Walsh: well. And everything we talk about should be connected to those two things.
Sile Walsh: Otherwise we stray into like mission creep and that
Sile Walsh: become. That's where I think we have, like, the UK has a lot of issues
Sile Walsh: because of mission creep right now in workplaces and I work in workplace in the
Sile Walsh: uk. We're not finding that same mission creep in other countries
Sile Walsh: because we're not finding that same tension in other countries,
Sile Walsh: especially around gender right now as we are in the uk. The UK
Sile Walsh: is holding attention around that. That is not being held quite the
Sile Walsh: same way unless you go to very specific views in the us. The rest
Sile Walsh: of the world is holding a little bit in different ways, different nuances about
Sile Walsh: it. But the uk, because of mission creep in workplaces, that's my belief.
Sile Walsh: It has got into some really unhelpful tensions,
Sile Walsh: in my opinion, that is causing like, locks in this work.
Joanne Lockwood: There's a very polarised and absolutist on both sides
Joanne Lockwood: and there's
Joanne Lockwood: work to be done to try and bring people around the table, and that's the
Joanne Lockwood: challenge at the moment, is to release these prisons of beliefs and look
Joanne Lockwood: to try and create workplaces where people can thrive. And that's all people,
Joanne Lockwood: not just people that you like. And that's the hard thing.
Sile Walsh: If it was just people that we like, we don't need inclusion because they'll go
Sile Walsh: into our in group. Inclusion is about engaging with the out group, and that's really
Sile Walsh: challenging. If it's just people you like, that's not inclusion. Work your grand belt away,
Sile Walsh: you're fine. Inclusion work involves the out group. I would frame that is without
Joanne Lockwood: using tolerance, because tolerance is not actually
Joanne Lockwood: so tolerance is the, the worst case. It's putting up with
Joanne Lockwood: people. So we're trying to find that way of accepting and embracing. Skipping
Joanne Lockwood: over tolerance. Yeah. And I think we might have to
Sile Walsh: start with tolerance sometimes because how stuck we are with our own beliefs. Like,
Sile Walsh: I know I have to tolerate others when I hold something very strongly, but then
Sile Walsh: if I can tolerate them, I use this thing called compassionate accountability.
Sile Walsh: So I think accountability to myself is really important with some compassion, but
Sile Walsh: I think the same for others. If I am able to, in the workplace,
Sile Walsh: hold accountability as something that we offer each other because we're obligated to,
Sile Walsh: but with compassion, then I can say you got to
Sile Walsh: your beliefs the same way I got to mine, even if they're oppositional. Now, what
Sile Walsh: do we need to do to share space in a way that
Sile Walsh: is not just not harmful, that's the starting point, but actually might be
Sile Walsh: enhancing. And I, I, I've seen it, so I know it's possible.
Sile Walsh: But when we have big, strong political polarizations, I think
Sile Walsh: it's in people's interest not to find shared spaces,
Sile Walsh: because then they don't write.
Joanne Lockwood: There'S profit in that. There's massive profit.
Joanne Lockwood: Oh, and face saving and status and become
Joanne Lockwood: invested in it. And there's a momentum bias. You know, people are, is
Joanne Lockwood: what we're doing. And I'm not going to listen because I'm invested in this future
Joanne Lockwood: and I'm invested in being right.
Joanne Lockwood: That's going on on both sides and all sides. There's more than two sides.
Sile Walsh: Yeah, no, there's. Yeah, yeah. And
Sile Walsh: I think it's an interesting one when we look at the LGBTQ kind
Sile Walsh: of population, because in a funny way, they've moved from
Sile Walsh: one set of rights to arguing for another set of rights.
Sile Walsh: But what's really fascinating to me, that other set of rights was always
Sile Walsh: in the picture. We just didn't fight for them. So there's been this really interesting
Sile Walsh: thing where even within the LGBTQ population, there's been a
Sile Walsh: hierarchy of whose rights are important. And if we look at the
Sile Walsh: history of it, we can see that everybody who's in that community, in that population
Sile Walsh: group that we've lumped together, have always been in that population and have always
Sile Walsh: been active. And we can see it historically, but we pretended it was one thing
Sile Walsh: and another thing, and we decided what was prioritised that
Sile Walsh: shows the oppression within our own population. And now it's like,
Sile Walsh: oh, now, now, these other things. These other things were always
Sile Walsh: there. We just didn't prioritise them because we, again,
Sile Walsh: used a hierarchy set of decisions about what was priority
Sile Walsh: and in a. Lot assumed this word community. That's why I
Sile Walsh: reject the word community. Yeah. Because it. Communities. We have
Joanne Lockwood: communities within communities within communities. The intersectional approach, because
Joanne Lockwood: we have in common is largely, we're not straight or
Joanne Lockwood: we're not cisgender. Isn't a binding concept
Joanne Lockwood: by being not something. Because we're so queer, we're so different,
Joanne Lockwood: so intersectional in our backgrounds, our thinking, our gender, whatever it
Joanne Lockwood: may be, that we're not coming together with a common
Joanne Lockwood: causal mission. We're. We're trying to bunch people together who have different
Joanne Lockwood: motivations and. Yeah, and that's why I use the word population, because
Sile Walsh: we do fall under a population, which is that the norm
Sile Walsh: in at least Western community? And I have to say this because we talk about
Sile Walsh: it like it's global. It's Western. It's not global. India just
Sile Walsh: confirmed that trans women are women legally under their definition. We're talking about
Sile Walsh: Western cultures here. Western cultures have normed
Sile Walsh: a particular view of validity. The
Sile Walsh: working male and female married children, usually,
Sile Walsh: you know, a house and a dot. Like, there's a norm way. And so when
Sile Walsh: I say population, all of the. Those letters represent parts of
Sile Walsh: general society that be neglected by that norm. And so, for me, it
Sile Walsh: just makes sense to say population, because we're talking about the oppression that has occurred
Sile Walsh: to that population by just not being seen as norm.
Joanne Lockwood: People, population, or communities with an IES on the Internet. I like that idea. Yeah.
Sile Walsh: Yeah. I might. I might look into that a bit more. It's a good one,
Sile Walsh: Joanne. I. I didn't invent it. Someone else told me that, and I thought, right,
Joanne Lockwood: because we're not a homogenous group where people who are queer who
Joanne Lockwood: happen to press in a similar way. That's all it is. Well, by
Sile Walsh: the same set of rules, of normative. Like, it's the oppression, we Share as opposed
Sile Walsh: to the desired outcome. And which makes it really problematic
Sile Walsh: other. Protected characteristics are also oppressed by societal norms. And actually
Joanne Lockwood: that's where we come together as minorities or voiceless or whatever
Joanne Lockwood: marginalised people is because we share a common oppression by the majority
Joanne Lockwood: norm. With Mfine, we're being divided and conquered by
Joanne Lockwood: competing with ourselves for wanting to escape our
Joanne Lockwood: oppression in the way we want to escape it. And then we find these
Joanne Lockwood: beliefs and our entities conflict with each other,
Joanne Lockwood: not in the majority. Still. Yeah, yeah, it's,
Sile Walsh: it's. It's from a sociological point of view, it's fascinating. From
Sile Walsh: a lived experience, it's a frustrating. That's the best way.
Joanne Lockwood: Completely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, come
Joanne Lockwood: to Ireland and. And a day with you and drink lots of coffee or something.
Joanne Lockwood: We could talk all day. We could talk all day. And we have been talking
Joanne Lockwood: for. Best part of. For an hour and a half plus. Yeah, wonderful. How could
Joanne Lockwood: people get hold of you? So my silewalsh.com
Sile Walsh: or my company is LS Advantage, so there's a website for that and
Sile Walsh: my book, Inclusive Leadership Navigating Organisational Complexity. I'm on
Sile Walsh: Instagram and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is more like professional thought and
Sile Walsh: Instagram is more in between frustrations and random ideas. Put
Joanne Lockwood: links to all of that in the show notes. So presumably people reach
Joanne Lockwood: out to you, drop you a message and say, hi. That would be brilliant. And
Joanne Lockwood: they can find out about you. So. And also give me their point of view.
Sile Walsh: Like, it would be lovely to hear from people that are going, sheila, I don't
Sile Walsh: think that's great because of X, Y and Z, because then it helps me expand
Sile Walsh: my understanding and so I welcome different perspectives from
Sile Walsh: what I've said as well, because I love that kind of emergent
Sile Walsh: learning that we do together. I wholeheartedly agree.
Joanne Lockwood: If you're listening to this right now and you don't agree, tell us, tell me,
Joanne Lockwood: tell Sheila. If you do agree, share it with someone who
Joanne Lockwood: won't agree and then let them tell you their opinion or our opinion. But
Joanne Lockwood: we grow by listening and communicating and understanding and
Joanne Lockwood: lots of why questions. And it sounds like we both
Joanne Lockwood: share the same thing, that we want to understand why someone thinks something,
Joanne Lockwood: have conversations. We could be friends,
Joanne Lockwood: even if we have different perspectives. Yeah, Yeah, I think that's lovely,
Sile Walsh: Joanne. Thank you.
Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express
Joanne Lockwood: my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending
Joanne Lockwood: your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion.
Joanne Lockwood: Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to
Joanne Lockwood: Inclusion Bites and become part of our ever growing community,
Joanne Lockwood: driving real change. Share this journey with friends, family and
Joanne Lockwood: colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter.
Joanne Lockwood: Got thoughts, storeys or a vision to share? I'm all
Joanne Lockwood: ears. Reach out to
Joanne Lockwood: jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk
Joanne Lockwood: and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this
Joanne Lockwood: is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with
Joanne Lockwood: more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire and
Joanne Lockwood: unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world one
Joanne Lockwood: episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.