Carla Miller 00:00
Welcome to the influence and impact podcast for female leaders. My name is Carla Miller, and I'm a leadership coach who helps female leaders to tackle self doubt, become brilliant influencing and make more impact at work. I've created this podcast to help you to become a more inspiring and impactful leader. And I want to become the leadership BFF that you didn't know you were missing until now.

If like me, you're committed to embracing and embedding diversity and inclusion and belonging within your team and within your organisation. But sometimes you don't know exactly how to do that, then this episode is going to be a super helpful one for you. So today, I'm interviewing Catherine Garrod. She's the founder of compelling culture and the author of conscious inclusion, how to do EDI one decision at a time, which was published this April, and she lives by the quote, unless you're consciously including people, you're almost certainly unconsciously excluding people.

Catherine works with organisations to determine whether people from underrepresented groups are having the same good experience as people from over represented groups. And then she defines specific actions to boost the experience for colleagues, customers, and communities. And rather than top down change initiatives involving huge teams,

Catherine advocates for combining skill and will to guide people in their everyday thinking. So she's got some really, really useful steps that people at any level can put into practice. Previously, Catherine led Sky to become the most inclusive employer in the UK, with 80% of teams increasing their diversity. Now, as a consultant, she combines the power of listening, employee engagement, diversity and inclusion, to make the complex, simple. She's straight, talking full of energy, and believes that when every voice is heard, every person is empowered, and everybody takes action. The outcomes are extraordinary from what a fantastic mission to be on.

I really enjoyed my conversation with Catherine. And we started by just going into some of the definitions because I think it can be a bit confusing sometimes what's diversity? What's inclusion, what's belonging? What am I meant to actually be doing? We also talk about why organisations sometimes find this area of EDI difficult. And the way that she structured her book is that there are 99 decisions for conscious inclusion within the book. So we dive into three of those that I think will be of most interest to you, my listeners. So the first one is about how you encourage respectful disagreement. And she shared some really, really helpful models for doing that. Then we look at inclusion reminders, what are they? And how do we build them into our everyday working lives? And then finally, we explore what do you do when you have a role that is five days a week, you want to negotiate it to be hot part time, but you don't want the five day a week workload? So how can individuals and organisations approach that in a much healthier way. And I think the whole conversation is useful. But even that bit alone, if you're someone that works part time, or wants to negotiate to go part time, or you've got anyone in your team who does or wants to work part time, then really, really powerful model that Catherine shares in that section of the podcast is going to be a game changer for you. I hope you find the episode really helpful. The book is a fantastic resource, I really recommend having it on your bookshelf. And we will dive into the episode in just a moment.

Aside from that, what's going on over here for me and my business. We have just run the Influence for Success workshop and it was fantastic to engage with people on that and see people really boost their understanding of influencing and see how they could put that into action is the first small workshop that we've done and we'll see if we run others later in the year.

We are gearing up for the next cohort of Influence and Impact. So my three month Women's leadership development programme, you'd be joining a group of up to 20 women all at middle and senior management level. Exploring things like building your confidence Increasing your impact your personal brand, influencing senior stakeholders, all the things that you need to do to feel really great about yourself and empowered in your role and to get your voice heard in your workplace. So if you are thinking that you might want to work with me either on one to one coaching or potentially a programme, and you're not sure about the timing, or you've got some questions, then you can always go to my website and pop a call in my diary to have a chat about what would be the best route for you. Absolutely no hard sell, I promise, if I think someone else would be better to work with you, I will even send you in their direction. And I do that whenever that's needed. So it'd be great to get to know some of you more closely if you're a podcast listener, and you want to work with me, most of the people who joined this cohort that's just ending now, listen to the podcast. So it's great to know that it's giving you a chance to get to know me.

We've also got a cohort of Be Bolder, which is the four week confidence and assertiveness course, coming up in October as well. And we're taking bookings for that. But other than that, I am going to have a restful summer, which doesn't mean taking the whole summer off because I have a five year old and that would be the opposite of restful, but I won't be working my usual four days a week, I'll be working somewhere between one and three days a week depending on what's going on. But I'm looking forward to the slowing down. That will happen once school holidays start and spending more of my headspace on life outside work. But I'll still be here behind the scenes doing podcasts. And making sure we are all geared up and ready to get going with our courses in September October.

Okay, so let's roll the podcast and find out more about the simple steps you can take to be more inclusive with my guest, Catherine Garrod. So I'm delighted to welcome Catherine to the podcast. Welcome. How's your day going?

Catherine Garrod 07:20
Thanks for having me. Oh, good. I'm a bit confused about what day is. But that's okay. That usually happens to me. It's not even summer holidays.

Carla Miller 07:27
Yeah, it's not even school holidays when we really lose track of what day it is. Well, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. The way I like to start is to ask you to share a little bit about your background. So how you got into this area of EDI? And what you do now and why you wrote a book about it.

Catherine Garrod 07:48
Good question. So I think just right from being a child, I just had this internal sense of the world didn't work well for everybody. And that things were perhaps a bit unfair. I think I wrote all kinds of poems in school. And then I spent a bunch of years leading big teams before I moved into HR. And I was in HR for probably like 1015 years, something like that. And always worked really in roles that influence people's experience. So recruitment, initially, leadership, development, recognition comes in engagement, diversity, and inclusion, all of those kinds of things. So just kind of found it quite fascinating learning kind of big data and what was happening in an organisation. I think, because of my previous leadership roles, I was able to really understand how to turn that into something that was useful for leaders if it was about guiding them and equipping them to think about the impact on their own teams. And then I set up compelling culture, which is my business at the end of 2020. And I worked with organisations to determine if people from over represented groups and underrepresented groups are having the same good experience and if not, what are the actions that need to be taken. And then the reason for writing the book is now I've worked in and with a variety of organisations of all different shapes and sizes and different industries and sectors. I realised most organisations share really similar challenges. And the reality is I can't work with all of them. So I wanted to put all my sort of practical guidance and the lessons I've learned about what's worked and what doesn't work into a book so that people could use that if they wanted to.

Carla Miller 09:27
I love that this started so young, and I'm feeling like the second edition of your book needs to feature some of those poems. Surely.

Catherine Garrod 09:35
The second edition still makes me nervous when people talk about my book as my first book. I'm not saying

Carla Miller
no, I'm just like, head down. I am not writing another book. The ideas come say we're podcast the ideas come alone, like no.

Catherine Garrod
I think of titles all the time, but I haven't got the motivation to fill the book yet.

Carla Miller 09:53
Excellent. Give us an overview of what you're trying to achieve with the book before we dive into some of the concepts within it. So

Catherine Garrod 10:00
I wanted the book to be a really sort of practical reference guide that you could read front to back, dip into again, later really easily find that bit that you found that was really relevant. Take off all the things you're already doing and feel good about it. But also quickly identify the things that you could probably do relatively easily in the next six to 12 months. And then what's left is the things that are going to take a bigger investment that might require more collaboration or business case or sign off, or those kinds of things. So just really deconstruct all of the work that's involved in making an organisation inclusive and position it that it isn't one person's job or one team's job. But actually, everything that people are doing in every team has an element of inclusion, whether that's employee related or customer service user, or wider community impact, actually, the choices and decisions, organisations are making an every team can have a big difference on people's lives. So the book was just aimed to be a really practical guide. So one, break it all down and kind of give people a simple understanding about why we are where we are, avoid some of those traps to fall into that I see organisations making and then the really practical stuff to get into of how you can do this well and do it right.

Carla Miller 11:19
I think you've done that amazingly well, it feels like a very comprehensive guide that also kind of demystifies doesn't it and, and simplifies, because I think we all think with any area we don't know that much about we think it's incredibly complicated. And at one level, it's very complicated to implement. But actually, your book breaks it down so that people can understand and know where to at least get started. So I imagine it took a very long time to edit that down to be that concise. So congratulations. Now, within your budget, you start off with sharing some definitions. And I thought that would be helpful to do here as well. So I think we hear people talk about diversity, inclusion and belonging. But not everybody knows the difference between those. So would you be able to kind of give us simple definitions for these please

Catherine Garrod 12:11
Yeah, and I've taken this definition from marvellous people before me and evolved it slightly. So I can't take full credit for this. But if you think about a party or a meeting, so anything where you're bringing a group of people together and deciding who you're going to invite diversity is the guest list. It is names, its backs, you know, there's no emotion in that. It's just the the names of the people on the list, right? Inclusion, then as well, as people get to the party or the meeting. Who is it that you spend your time and energy with? Who do you go and catch up with about what happened on the weekend? Who do you bring into the conversation? Who do you invite onto the dance floor? Who do you take over to the buffing table? Or who do you etc, etc, etc. Like, who are you actively engaging with and choosing to spend time with and hear more about them and involve them in what's happening, versus kind of turning up to a meeting or a party and being left around the edge feeling a little bit awkward, and maybe you're not really sure why you're there. And then belonging is the outcome, right? So if people walk out of that meeting rooms at their next meeting, or close down the Zoom meeting, and get ready for their next meeting, or go home from the party, they know that you wanted them there. They know that you valued their time and their energy, and they felt good about spending their time with you.

Carla Miller 13:36
Okay, that makes sense. So it's great to have the different definitions. And another couple of phrases that you use that I've heard out and about, but I know you're really consciously choosing them is over and underrepresented. Tell us more about that.

Catherine Garrod 13:50
Yeah, so I'm really passionate about language, I think it's really powerful. And it influences how we think and feel about things. And I think for a long time, we would talk about increasing diversity or changing the experience for people from minority groups. And that positioning for me feels like we're labelling those groups of people as the problem. Whereas if you can flip increasing diversity to addressing over representation, I think that's a more accurate reflection of the challenge that needs to be solved. So if you've got people in groups making decisions about things that affect lots of people, and they share similar demographic profiles, they're not likely to make as good and fair and inclusive decisions that are effective once I think about policies or product development or customer experience or medical research, whatever it might be that your organisation does, that actually it's addressing over representation. That's the Gulf.

Carla Miller 14:51
Interesting, and how does that land with, let's say, a group that's very over represented at senior level like white men? Do they? Does that resonate with them as well?

Catherine Garrod 15:04
It does. But I think probably it's worth saying I probably exist in a bit of a bubble. So the organisations and the leadership teams that come to me and want to work with my organisation are ready. And they're open for reflecting and learning and being challenged, and you know, looking back on their own experiences and sharing their fears, which is all really valuable stuff. So certainly the people I'm working with, it helps it helps people really understand the problem.

Carla Miller 15:33
Fantastic. And you said right at the beginning, that you look at organisations and see if you're treating the underrepresented groups as well, as you're treating the overrepresented groups, have you come across any organisations that have made significant progress on this, any of them were actually you can't tell the difference? I imagine there isn't. But I would love to hear if there is,

Catherine Garrod 15:53
actually if I go back to when I was working at Sky for sure. So we got really good at using data that sky so that leaders because understand what was happening in their own team. So the two big drivers there were when you look at all the roles you've recruited for over the last year. This is the diverse mix of applications, people that were shortlisted for interview, and then people that were ultimately hired. If you also add on to the other end of the employee lifecycle, if you look at all the levers you've had over the last year, this is the diverse mix. So this is what's happening in your team with the choices and the decisions that are happening in your team. And being able to display the data in that way. And then that helped leaders to reflect on for example, if they were trying to get more women to work in their part of the business or increase the ethnic mix in their part of the business, you could almost model how long it would take to achieve their goal based on what they've been doing for the last 12 months. And we saw 80% of teams increase their diversity because of having the data presented in that way. And then the other thing was the engagement surveys, some of the questions that we picked out spoke to being valued heard and involved a bit like that party meeting analogy I shared earlier. And again, for leaders that could see there was distinctly different schools for people, whether it was by gender, or ethnicity, or something else. It was a real catalyst for change. And I saw dramatic, you know, closing of those gaps and experience. And one of the things we had lots of employee networks at Sky, one of the things the LGBT plus network we're particularly proud of is the schools for people who were lesbian, gay, bisexual were slightly higher, in fact, one or two points higher than people who were heterosexual because they'd been around for about seven years and been doing loads to create an environment where people felt safe and connected.

Carla Miller 17:43
Oh fantastic, and how useful it is to have the data not only to give you the information, but to get that message very strongly that the organisation thinks this is important, it's committed to it, it's putting the resources into measuring and providing you with that data.

Catherine Garrod 17:59
The art with that is getting all your data organisations have tonnes of data I think organisations are obsessed with. It's picking a few bits and presenting it on one page that creates that really compelling catalysts for change. And actually, when you do that, it feels really personal for leaders and they want to you know, they don't want to be creating a different experience.

Carla Miller 18:20
That seems fantastic. And one of the things that you talk about in your book is why organisations find EDI hard, or what do you think is at the root of that?

Catherine Garrod 18:34
I think it's still a relatively new skill set. And I think what what I find all the time is there's loads of really passionate people in the organisation who want to get involved and want to create change. And if you've got those in your organisation, you're really, really lucky. And you really need to look after those people and those people and celebrate those people and find out what they need and give it to them and get away and let them do wonderful things. But the trap one of the traps organisations fall into is thinking great, those people are going to do all of the work. But the reality is those people usually have day jobs, and they're not skilled and experienced in taking an organisation through change. So you end up with lots of people doing lots of things, but those things don't necessarily add up to that sustainable change, which is about embedding conscious inclusion into your policy and your process and your systems and your product development, etc, etc, etc. So I think that's the one thing and then on a more individual level as a leader, I think it's really easy. And I think people, you know, people believe this and they do it with authenticity. It's really easy to sign up to an organisation ambition to be more inclusive and say we're going to do these things much harder as an individual to know what I need to do, and whether or not I'm doing it well.

Carla Miller 19:56
Absolutely. And I think to that first point you were making often those people While they are putting a lot of effort into EDI, they're not that's not being recognised as much as it could be, either. So it becomes one of those office housework tasks, doesn't it where the change is coming from those people, but because the change isn't valued enough those people and their input into that aren't being valued enough, either.

Catherine Garrod 20:20
Yeah, so one of the things I talk about is define what a network is and what a network is, and if they're kind of formed in a group, but also be really clear about the given they get, because if people are giving, what is the gap? Absolutely.

Carla Miller 20:32
I'm lucky enough to work with lots of women's networks. And it's always fascinating to see the variety in terms of how it's approached that the resources and how many people are doing all the legwork. I spoke to one the other day, and each quarter, they have a different mini committee organising it. And I thought, well, that's fantastic, because you are genuinely sharing the load between various people as well, which is great. Now, one of the ways that you've approached the book is you've got these 99 decisions for conscious inclusion within the book, we're not going to go through all 99 pleased. But there were a few that I wanted to pull out and talk about a little bit more. Let's see, assess your memory on your books. If someone did this to me, I would not know at all sometimes people I'm on a podcast, people ask me a question. I'm like, You are teeing me up to share something in my book, and my head has gone blank as to what it is we're talking about. Any better than I do? I'll give you a clue. Okay, so decision aid is about encouraging respectful disagreement. Why does that matter? Why do we need disagreement?

Catherine Garrod 21:40
I think this comes down to safety. Again, if you go back to that party in that meeting analogy, who's involved whose opinions and values you know, whose voices are heard, you know, there's a stat out there that says 30% of people can dominate 80% of a discussion unless you manage it. So if you've pulled these people together, because you value their input, are you hearing from everybody now one of the things and this will vary in different cultures and different locations and different hierarchies in different organisations in different countries even. But one of the things that can quite often happen is the person that's been there the longest, or the person that's the most confident or the person that's the most senior solves a lot of the airtime. And the perception or reality, you know, it can be different is, well, I won't speak up because I'm not sure if my voice will be listened to or I haven't fully thought that through yet. And I don't want to look like an idiot. Or last time I spoke up, you know, I got this message really quickly. And you know, the rest of the group moved on. And I felt like my voice wasn't really heard. So there's a bit around the personal experience, and that just being a good experience, but actually the more valuable contribution is nobody has all the answers. So if you've got five people, 10 people, 20 people in a remote zoom, why wouldn't you want to hear from people? So you can set in some fun of just routine and familiar questions. Each time you're facilitating a discussion that says, what else do people think? Does anyone disagree? What haven't we thought of? What if this all went wrong? So that you're actually making it safe? To say, Oh, I'm not sure or what about this, or I've got this idea? Before you make your final, final decisions about things?

Carla Miller 23:31
Those questions are so helpful, aren't they? Because they do they set that foundation to make it not only safe, but actively encouraged to bring different and diverse views into the room? It's like that Simon Sinek concept of leaders eat last and speak last as well, isn't it that also encourages people to to voice their opinions rather than editing it, like you say, based on what the most senior person in the room has had?

Catherine Garrod 23:56
Yes. And I think as well, we haven't quite got that environment yet. Because let's you know, let's keep one foot in reality, you know, if you've got people in your meetings that you know, their thinking is brilliant. Go and ask them afterwards. You know, I know we had an amazing conversation last week I noticed you didn't bring it up like can I ask you more about that but also what would need to change in the environment so make it okay for you to speak up? Because it might be as simple as just tell me before the meeting that you want me to give an update on that project or you want me to share what we've learned from the customer research are you want like my brain just shuts down if you ask me on the spot, whereas if you tell me before, I've got a little bit of reflection time to prepare I'm a big reflectors as personal one for me. I've got a little bit of time before to give you you know, what I think is a valuable contribution and then I'll just feel much better about that. Yes,

Carla Miller 24:50
we were talking about that a couple of episodes ago I interviewed him a target about introverts and we talked about reflective thinkers and how to set out meetings in particular like Say give people the questions are going to ask or let them know what's going to be needed off them so that they have that chance to think things through. And ideally, the decisions that are going to be made as well, it's really helpful to have. Now, one of the things I've written down, but you're going to have to elaborate for me, because I can't remember the detail I've put, you've got a really good model called the I like model.

Catherine Garrod 25:23
So this is I like I like, I wonder the little bit of a story, but this one, so I can't remember what was going on in my life at that moment in time. But I remember being at work that day and being really tired. And we had a big team meeting in a conference room. So it was kind of, you know, big space, lots of energy wasn't matching my mood at all. But we're all separated into smaller groups to do some quick sort of creative thinking. And then at the end, each group would share their ideas with the other groups for feedback. Now me on a tired day, much more easily slipped into not sure about that can be a bit sceptical, and just haven't quite got the same amount of kind of energy and curiosity that I might have, when I'm tired. So we were given, thankfully, this module to use for sharing feedback on each group discussion. And it was I liked I like I wonder. So you had to come up with three sentences. So the first two were what you liked about what you just heard. So that automatically gets your brain into looking for the positives and being supportive and enthusiastic and a bit more curious. And then the last one was, I wonder which we could be something like, or I wonder what would happen if or I wonder what the impact would be here or I wonder if we need to develop that a bit further. Or I wonder if you talked about this in your discussions, etc, etc. As a much kinder encouraging and supportive way of saying helped me understand that a bit more. And I still remember that day, I can kind of picture where I was in the room and the environment and like, say, just being really grateful for it. Because it just, you know, absolutely boosted kind of people being open in their things getting rather than closing things down, which again, just goes to create that environment where it's safe to share things that aren't yet fully formed. You know, this was rapid. It was kind of a creative ideas session, so things weren't. So yeah, really useful.

Carla Miller 27:24
The facilitator in me really likes that. I don't know, I couldn't remember it. I did these questions two weeks ago, and that is a long time.

Catherine Garrod 27:33
Like life is busy in two weeks, it really is.

Carla Miller 27:37
Now, decision 11 was about building in inclusion reminders. So what are they and how do we build them in.

Catherine Garrod 27:44
So you may or may not be aware, but our brains 90% of the decisions we make are automatic. And we do it without even thinking. So which is wonderful for navigating kind of busy lives and you know, needing to make decisions quickly. And it can be as simple as yes or no, have putting down you know, watch another episode down safe or dangerous. Buy it, don't buy it, whatever our brains are doing this all the time for us really, really useful. But when it comes to making decisions about people, it's not helpful because it is biassed, and it is based on our own experiences, right. And it's one thing to shortcut and make the decision quickly and move on to the next task, particularly when pressure. So decision 11 is about those inclusion reminders. And that is around if you've got process notes, or templates or guidance documents might just be bullet points on a PowerPoint slide of things that people are doing routine. And regularly. It might be once a year, once a month, once a week, it might be a project planning document, it might be a paper to go to the board. It might be processed notes on doing performance reviews, it might be guidance on recognition, if you can just drop in a few prompts into those things so that at the point when people engage with them, it shifts their brain into that five or 10% Thinking that is much more inclusive, right, that's the conscious part of our brain. So it might look like if you've done some research. What was the diversity of the people involved in gathering this research? It might look like if you're making nominations for a recognition programme. What's the diversity of the people you've put forward to get recognition and how does that compare with the diversity of your wider team or department or the whole organisation? And what it does is it doesn't necessarily change people's decisions but they might go a bit broader and they might include more people because otherwise we just tend to do what we've always done. Okay, that makes sense. It's helpful for people right it recognises our brains are just go go go go go go go to go make decisions quickly. And it's designed to help people at the point of need.

Carla Miller 30:04
Okay, and so you can apply that in anything HR related, but you could also apply it when you're looking at marketing and things like that. Absolutely.

Catherine Garrod 30:13
So I've got two clients, I've got one that's putting it in. So they're doing customer transformation. So they're putting into their project documentation. And then I've got another client that has put it in their board, paper template, so that one that they kind of offer writing the board paper to go and have a discussion that the board goes, Oh, yes. You know, what data have I got? Or what can I include here? Or what was the feedback or who benefits the most in the left, but it also prompts the board to go Oh, section, you know, 4.1, or whatever, in the paper talks about inclusion? Can you tell us a bit more about that as part of their discussion, so it just helps people remember that that's an important part of the king, I think what we've fallen into as a society, kind of broad decisions that a one size fits all, which actually don't really fit anybody particularly well, usually.

Carla Miller 31:01
Okay, brilliant, thank you. And then there was one decision that really stood out to me as something that comes up a lot with my coaching clients. So I have a lot of coaching clients that come back from their first or second parental leave, they've decided they want to work part time, and they absolutely end up doing a full time job, and yet getting paid four days a week for it. So you've got, you've got to remember what the phrase was. But there was a way of approaching that wasn't there to make sure that doesn't happen.

Catherine Garrod 31:35
Yeah, so decision 42 is resize workloads. And as you've just said, many people will go from working five days a week to four days a week. So that reflects a 20%. pay cut. But the work doesn't get reduced. So decision volunteer is all about if you're going to reduce somebody's pay by 20%, you need to reduce their workload by 20%. And how you do performance ratings and all of that accordingly. And there's a, there's kind of three things that can be a combination to help do that. So if you're the individual, and you wanna have a good conversation with your manager about this, it's helpful if you're the manager, and you want to have a good conversation with your team, it's helpful. So it's shrink, stop or share. So shrink is about looking at the existing work, redefining what's essential, and looking at are there any opportunities to automate it or do any of that work less often. So if you're doing something every week, maybe it reduces to fortnightly or maybe it reduces the monthly for that shrink, the second one is stop. So actually, you know, if that role, or that works been around for a long time that something has become less valuable. Now, it's not referred to that often we kind of been doing it because that's what we've always done. And it feels comfortable and reassuring that actually, it just doesn't hold as much value today. So doing it. And then the third one is share. So that could be about reviewing capacity across the team, there might be somebody else that's got more capacities, looking for a bit of stretch, or you know, want some career development to you know, broaden their set of experiences, or it could be creating a job share. So it could be that you overlap two people, and you might even broaden the work. But if you've got two people doing it, you overlap two people. So yeah, it's something I think all organisations need to get much better. Yes,

Carla Miller 33:31
I think we need to make sure that everyone in the people functions, understand that model, and that line managers do as well. Because I think, certainly, hopefully, things are now starting to change. But I think traditionally, women have gone into that negotiation thinking, Well, I just really want to get my four days. So they're not going to say yes, to me working less, because there's not going to be any less work to do. So I'm just going to basically accept that. But if lie managers and people in HR teams can actually go in and go, actually, we don't want you to break yourself, trying to work five days.

Catherine Garrod 34:11
I agree. But and also, if you're the person wanting to reduce your hours and your work, like go with a plan, you know, it doesn't have to be a finished plan. But just look, if I'm gonna take a 20% pay cut, I've had a look at all of the things that I do. And I've made some suggestions for how that 20% could be stopped or redistributed? Can we have a good conversation about that? So you know, I think all parties can play a really good active role in that discussion. And you know, you might change it and edit it and shift it and the other thing you know, I would recommend here is is trying, you know, if people are a little bit hesitant, or I'm not sure, Dave, you can agree to a three month trial and then review it after that because usually what happens is it works really well and everyone goes Oh, that was fine. And then you carry on but it just doesn't feel like such a big shift initially. So I can help him.

Carla Miller 35:00
I think it's a really practical way forward. And actually, it's just an efficient way of doing things anyway. So the other thing we hear a lot is how overwhelmed people are. Well, let's look particularly look at the shrink and the stop. Anyway, like, if you're, if you're sat there listening to this thinking, well, actually, I feel completely overwhelmed in my job, there's just too much to do. That's a really nice model to use, isn't it to work out? Are you focusing your time on the best things?

Catherine Garrod 35:26
I saw a post on LinkedIn, I've seen it before, but it talks about kind of well being and the focus, but it was a bit tongue in cheek, but the focus being on fruit bowls, and tech, and all of that kind of stuff isn't actually what people need is realistic workloads. You know, it was one of the things it was a whole list of things, but it's so true. You know, just generally, if you've got too much workload on it's, nobody feels like they're doing a good job. And that's the experience.

Carla Miller 35:50
Absolutely and obviously, you had all of these different decisions within that within your book, is there anything that's your area, that's kind of, that's a favourite for you, or something that you really wish that more people in organisations paid attention to anything where you're like, I'm writing this, I really hope people particularly listen to this bit.

Catherine Garrod 36:10
Um, it's not, it's not like a decision. But I think for me, it's like, if this is really important to your organisation, have a plan and track how you're going against that plan. What I quite often find when I turn up to organisations is they're doing loads of stuff. And it's great stuff, and they've got good people involved, but they've got no idea if it's working. So combine all that will, you've got from all of the people that are involved with some skill to create a plan and then decide, you know, what you're going to focus on for the next 12 months and in the next 12 months in the next 12 months. But importantly, track how that's going every quarter. So if you think about all of the things that an organisation will look at, in terms of the success of the organisation, quite often they're reviewing stuff quarterly, apply the same approach to making your organisation more inclusive. And then I guess it's sort of part of that even further is inclusion isn't one person's job. It isn't a team's job. It isn't a departments job. It is a way of approaching all the things that you do. So not everybody has to know everything. Not everybody has to do everything. Everybody can do something. So, you know, my kind of simple advice again, is, you know, pick one thing, do it brilliantly. When it sticks, go and pick the next thing and do that brilliantly.

Carla Miller 37:29
Fantastic. Well, there's so much in the book that we will leave people to go and read that themselves. If people want to know how to get in touch with you to work with you or their organisation or find out more about what you offer, where should they go.

Catherine Garrod 37:41
So my website is compellingculture.co.uk Or you can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Catherine Garrod.

Carla Miller 37:49
Brilliant. Well, thank you so much, Catherine, I loved reading the book. I think it's a fantastic resource. And I hope it gets many many reprints, because if this can become embedded in organisations, it's going to make such a positive difference for everyone. So thanks for sharing your time and your knowledge with us today.

Catherine Garrod 38:07
Thank you for having me.

Carla Miller 38:17
Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you're not already subscribing, please do so so that you don't miss any future episodes. And if you want to go deeper on the topics that we talked about here on the podcast on confidence, self doubt, impostor feelings, increasing your influence being better at leading, then there are a few avenues that you can take.

The simplest is to get yourself a copy of my book, closing the influence gap. If you love this podcast, it is crazy if you don't already own that book, because it's got so much of the content from the podcast in a really accessible way. And so many practical tools and strategies is basically a practical guide for women leaders who want to be heard in the workplace, you can grab a copy in any bookstore.

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We also offer gender neutral versions of that which are becoming increasingly popular because women aren't the only people experiencing confidence challenges.

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