31· Leading with Empathy with Claire Urquhart
Podcast show notes
Join me for this week’s episode where I have the pleasure of conversing with Claire Urquhart, a former corporate lawyer turned co-founder and director of the charity Open Books.
Claire has spent over a decade promoting literacy and community through her work and is also a trustee at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
We delve into her inspirational journey from high-pressure legal work to meaningful community engagement, her views on leadership, and the foundational steps of building an organisation from scratch.
Claire's story is a beacon for anyone looking to pivot their professional path towards something deeply fulfilling. Tune in to hear how she's making a significant impact through her passion for books and inclusive community work.
Here are the highlights
(3:35) Career transition from law to stay-at-home mum.
(9:20) Starting a book club to connect people through reading.
(19:09) Leadership style, accessibility, and decision-making in a non-profit organisation.
(24:07) Work-life balance and prioritising accessibility in an organisation.
(32:22) Building a sustainable business legacy.
(38:02) Empathy, diversity, and inclusion in leadership.
Connect with Claire:
Find out more about the work of Open Book here
Listen to the Open Book podcast here
Connect with Claire Urquhart here
Find out more about the Edinburgh International Book Festival here
Connect with Ruth
-
Ruth Wood:
Welcome to Frustrated and Exhausted, the podcast for women in leadership, where I help you fulfil your ambitions without sacrificing your sanity, or your resilience.
00:29
Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of Frustrated and Exhausted. I'm really glad you can be here with me today for this conversation with Claire Urquhart. Claire is a former corporate lawyer, she's travelled the world done the high pressure thing. But she's also for the last 11 years being the co- founder and director of a wonderful charity called Open Books (Open Book Reading). She is also a trustee of the Edinburgh International Book Festival. And the work that she's doing now I think is genuinely inspirational. I know you're going to really enjoy her take on leadership and building an organisation from the ground up.
Ruth: Claire, Welcome to Frustrated and Exhausted. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Claire: Thank you for having me, Ruth
Ruth: absolute pleasure. So, we'll kick off as we usually do, just by asking you to kind of give us a little bit of background about you kind of where you're from, and what you're all about.
Claire: So I grew up in a small town in the northeast of Scotland, and if you're a golfer, you'll know it and if you're not, you probably won't and went to school there and did a series of hires as one does, and managed to come away with some good results. And in those days, I think there was a real push to do something at university that led to career so had a very clear pathway. So, you know, law or medicine or accountancy or dentistry, and given the I had pretty severe fear of blood, meaning medicine and vet were out and I ended up studying law in Edinburgh. See, it was a major passion. It was definitely interesting. I met an amazing group of people, but followed the pathway, did my diploma and ended up doing my traineeship with a large corporate firm in Edinburgh, with offices in Glasgow and London, spent a little bit of time there and qualified into their litigation department and I ended up specialising in intellectual property.
So I was doing a lot of drug industry, pharmaceutical work, I've done a lot of trademark work, it was a really exciting time. And my boss was a woman that and one of the few specialists accredited specialists in intellectual property in Scotland. And as a result, she got really interesting work and her team are predominantly women. So although I was in a corporate law firm, where it was a very male dominated environment, and, you know, there were still certainly traces of that in the work I was doing on a day to day basis, I was working with a bunch of women at the cutting edge of their fields, doing what very few others were in Scotland. So I did that for about 12 years. And it was really intellectually stimulating, there was a lot of thinking and reading and learning about things I knew nothing about. And I really enjoyed it, there was a bit of travel involved as well.
And then family came along. And I decided I would go back part time. And it was quite surprising that that was facilitated. And I put that down to being in a very female environment. And it was okay. It was okay, to be honest, everybody did their best to make it work. But the reality was, I wanted to leave the office at six o'clock to go and pick up from nursery and quite often in litigation, the really exciting stuff when you're rushing to court to get a judge and get an interim interdict or in order to stop something happening. That happened sort of after 6pm Yeah. So I did that for a few years. And gradually got more and more frustrated with it and felt really I wasn't in the mum thing properly. And I wasn't in the law thing properly. And then my own mum, who had been ill for quite a long time, died when I was pregnant with my second and at that point, it really made me refocus on what I wanted to do and decided to take a bit of time out. And I was lucky enough to be able to do that and just spent some time at home as a stay at home mom, which looking back on I can see very much that that became my career.
Yeah, you know, it I sort of tackled having the children and being at home very much the way I would have tackled a new court case. So, you know, I was squashing blueberries to make, you know, the fruit icing for cakes and, you know, boiling up spinach when I needed green icing and you know very much, you know, making it a career as it were. And I really, I really enjoyed that time at home. But there did come a point about five years in when I was starting to think, okay, I need to think about what I can do. Yeah, that's a little bit different. And that brings that finds a little bit more of me, I kind of felt what had happened is it very much been subsumed into the Children's Mum. Yeah, you know, the, the, you know, people that I met at nursery or at school would have me in the phone as X's mum. Yeah. Which was, you know, it was okay. But I think felt there was a whole other part of me, that that nobody knew about and the I was losing sight of a little bit myself.
So I started to think about what I wanted to do, and how I could, you know, find that bit of myself do something that was rewarding and interesting part, at the same time, still make sports day. And, you know, there are pros and cons. And, you know, assemblies in the middle of the day. And corporate law just wouldn't have facilitated that. And particularly at that time, which was, you know, around about the time of the financial crash, when really the opportunities to go back in as a sort of 12 year qualified specialist looking for a part time role were very limited.
Ruth : It's really interesting, kind of what you said there about, and I recognise a lot, actually, of what you said, around you that transition out of really kind of focused, career focused work and taking that same energy into kind of motherhood, basically, and kind of treating it in a similar way. And looking back, probably wasn't that different, actually, probably quite similar. What is it that gives you that drive to… It's almost like that drive to do the best you possibly can
Claire: I think part of it comes from being the firstborn daughter. And I had a conversation once with a senior partner in a law firm and was working and who said his ideal candidate, was a firstborn woman. Because without exception, they were people pleaser, sirs. They cared what other people thought they were absolutely determined they were going to do their best. And they were entirely reliable. That's quite interesting, and a little bit close to the bone.
Ruth: Yeah ouch, I know, I felt that to be honest, I’m a firstborn daughter too.
Claire: So I think partly that, and I do think losing my mum, my mum died when she was 62. And I think that really gave me a sense of not taking for granted your 3 score years, and 10, which was first grade 10. But you know, and really feeling a responsibility to live a good life and live a full life. You know, and that sort of making the most of opportunities. And I think, you know, there's a, there's a shadow of that playing into, you know, the determination to drive on and make the most of it and do things well, and fill every moment, you know, I think comes from that. And the combination of the two is lethal.
Ruth: Lethal and extremely effective, I imagine. What, you know, you're, you founded with Marjory, Open Book, what was it that led up to that you sort of described that few years of kind of being home going for a stay at home, mum, you know, giving that you know, and then finding this point where it's like, Okay, where am I in all of this? So how did that lead to Open Book?
Claire: So Margie and I were great friends, long before the existence of Open Book, and we had seven children between us. And we, Margie was also a corporate lawyer, she worked in New York and then London. So we shared a lot of similar interests and similar thoughts and, and we were both real keen book lovers. Margie is now a sort of, well, very well recognised author, poet and her because of going through the American system, she had studied creative writing as part of her first degree before she then went and did law, and I, my mum was an English teacher. And I'd always had a great love of books. But as I explained, the system of education in Scotland was very much focused on on a job. So we were great attendees at the Edinburgh Book Festival, you know, both for ourselves, but also to take the children. And one of the partners I worked for, in fact, the partner who gave me my job, was a trustee on the boards there. And we bumped into him at Edinburgh just about the time our youngest were off to nursery and we were starting to think what we were going to do with ourselves now that jo jingles and Jiminy is it not as frequent in our calendars as it once was? And he said to us, what would you do to make this place better? What would you do to improve and we looked around and we kind of thought, you know, there's a lot of people that look like us, with young children, and there's a lot of elderly people, but there's a lot of pieces we're not seeing. And wouldn't it be great to make a place because we love it so much, that feels accessible to everyone.
And just about the same time one of Marjorie's friends, who was a GP had come to us and said, over lunch, I think it was, you know, I wish I could prescribe a reading group. I have so many people that make appointments to come and see me as a GP, but actually, they just need a place to be a conversation to have. And there's an organisation down in England called Reader and they're doing these amazing community shared reading groups. And if I could just prescribe one. And we kind of sort of thought, maybe there's something in this, maybe what we can do is think about bringing reader groups to the book festival. So organising logistics, maybe doing a bit fundraising, maybe bringing our love of books into that, and sort of taking those two goals. And we caught the reader up and they said, that would be brilliant. We'd love that. Except we don't really operate in Scotland. And we thought about it a little bit longer. And then we thought, Well, what we don't want to be doing is going into places and taking people on a lovely day out. And that's it. We want some sort of year round engagement with books. And that's where Open Book came along. Because what we decided to do was to go into community groups and go into places where people were interested in reading together and setting up groups that we would then facilitate taking to the book festivals that would be this year round engagement with reading and meeting together and it's more a community project really than a literacy project, but using books as a way to connect people. And we started off with two groups in Edinburgh, one in Little Sisters of the Poor, which was a care home just around the corner from us both. And one in the Grassmarket community project and the Grassmarket group still meets every week. And the other one that the care home closed down, but we've now expanded and we run around 1200 sessions a year with 80 different groups and that's from Shetland and Orkney all the way down through Ullapool and broader and out and Skye and down through the central belt, Dundee, Aberdeen, Perth, down as far south as Straenrar. So there's really been a need and demand from what we do. And this coming together and sharing of stories has really touched a lot of people and, you know, we're, we're almost overwhelmed with the number of requests for new groups just about keeping on top of that.
Ruth: So clearly, there's been real success and you've kind of identified a need, that you're being able now to meet a need in our society, that's kind of brought you obviously to a point where you started off us small with a couple of groups and now you're kind of in this position with 80 groups. That obviously requires a kind of, a bit of an organisation sort of to develop around it. And the chance to kind of create your own way of doing things of leading things and, and your own kind of culture with within your organisation. How did you and Marjorie go about thinking about that, and creating that?
Claire: Well, I think originally it was quite an organic process. And you know, in the very beginning, Margie and I were doing all the reading for all the groups, and we were doing all the paperwork, and we were ordering the book and popping them in the library and making sure that the books that went in came back out, and, you know, all that sort of thing. But quite quickly, it became clear that it wasn't sustainable for us to continue to do all the reading and to do all the delivery. And I would say that was and remains a challenge for us. Because ultimately, we set up Open Book, to share stories and to do that reading, but the bigger we get, and the more people who come on board with us, the more difficult it is for us to continue to do that delivery. And the more time we are spending on the management side. So making sure that all you know that we have policies that guides the organisation and guide us around things like environment and equality, because Open Book really is founded on the core of equality, diversity, inclusion and access.
So, you know, the wider the populations that we reach grows, the more work we have to do in trying to get that inclusion aspect right. You know, the more you know, just this week, we've been experimenting with transcription service. Because we ask each of our lead readers to what we call lead readers, that is the name we give to facilitators who work with our groups, but we asked each of them to prepare a feedback sheet after each session. So that's partly for, for us, just to keep an eye that everything's going along, it's an opportunity for lead readers to let us know if something's not being quite right. And that can be you know, the heating wasn't on or someone came along, who I'm worried about, or you know, a range of things. It also allows them to keep track of what they've read, because I can tell you when you get to the end of the year of reading stories and poems, and you think, have I read this with a group or just read this myself, and also, it's increasingly becoming important for funding for us to be able to show numbers and, and locations and things. So the feedback is a vital part of the organisation, but for some of our lead readers, is quite difficult thing for them to do. You know, and it is, for example, we have groups that are support specific populations. So we have a group that specifically people, for people who are living with a chronic illness. And we have a group specifically for people who describe themselves as neurodiverse, because their needs are slightly different from others. And that's not to say the reading of the material and the stories are around chronic illness, or neurodiversity, but it just means that we can hold a space for people and meet their needs in a different way to the speech, we were told for people who have sight loss. But it's important to us that the facilitators of those groups have the lived experience of the populations that they're reading with. So you can imagine that if you are living with chronic illness, and you have run a two hour session, or an hour and a half session, and then at the end of that to have to write out or type up a feedback. It's, you know, it's potentially problematic. So, you know, we're looking to, we're looking at ways that we can support our lead readers, and we're looking at ways to make things more accessible, not just for the people attending our groups, but, you know, throughout the organisation. So a lot of our time is spent on that sort of work now support working at the best ways to support our lead readers. Also funding you know, in the cultural landscape at the moment, funding is particularly difficult. So, you know, thinking about that thinking about strategy, trying to make herself a robust and resilient organisation that is going to last. So, increasingly, that's the work that we're doing and as I say, it started off as quite an organic process, we kind of looked at what we needed, as we needed it. But we now both are much more focused on trying to look ahead and prepare and we you know, strategic games and business plans and and both of us have sat on various other boards and organisations and learn a lot from that process in terms of how other organisations are run and you know, sought to bring the good bits and improve the not so good bits.
Ruth: How would you characterise your leadership style in the way that you manage the lead the organisation?
Claire: I think that we would both like to see and we and we have this sort of odd really should not odd but lovely relationship where we're both very much, very often on the same page. So, there's not often a difference between us and how we want to do things. And that, you know, that brings its own challenges because we do question, are we missing perspectives? Are we not seeing things because we are so similar in the way we think? So I would say we would characterise ourselves both as empathetic. You know, you don't find an organisation with a core aim of diversity, equity inclusion without having a desire to be empathetic and reach out to other people. And I would say, we try very hard to be democratic in our approach in that to seek input from other colleagues in the office, but also wider than that, or community of leaders or community of participants. And we spend quite a lot of time you know, doing an annual evaluation, asking people what they think asking them for their suggestions, and implement reading and implementing those, it's not a tick box exercise for us, we commit a lot of time and energy to in gathering that information, but then implementing when and when and where we can. But you know, evaluation brings its own challenges, you know, we really want to be a place where everyone can access our groups and, and everyone feels welcome. But if you turn up a group and your pen is put in your hand, and a piece of paper is put in front of you, and you're asked to tick the boxes, about what you think and what you do, and how you feel that of itself can be a barrier to access. So when we're doing our evaluation, we're thinking about, you know, offering it by phone, so people can phone us up and tell us what they think offering pieces of paper in the group that people can tick the boxes, offering it online, if you prefer to go away and do it. And not in the context of the group, you know, just thinking about how we can make that process as democratic and as accessible. And so I would say that is our aim. But inevitably, in an organisation, as it grows, there comes a point where sometimes as in a leadership role, you just have to make those decisions yourself, you have to recognise that your approach is not going to please everyone, and, you know, also because we are a charity. So we act as trustees, as well as directors, and we're very aware, probably the lawyers in us, you can take the girl out of law, and all that, our responsibility is to act in the best interests of the charity. And so that is really the governing principle against which we are decision making.
Ruth: It's really interesting, listening to you talk about the extent - and obviously that's linked to the purpose of the organization - but the extent to which you go to reduce those barriers for people in order to enable them to engage. What do you think other public sector and corporate organisations could learn from your approach, because you go to some lengths, and, you know, we often hear stories about people not being able to get back to work or, you know, after illness or whatever it might be in their circumstances, not being able to gain the access that they need in order to join and be part of society effectively or be part of a workplace because of barriers that are put up. And, you know, I understand that legally, obviously, in theory, you know, organisations are required to make reasonable adjustment. What can they learn from your approach, to actually embrace that rather than seeing it as a hurdle or something that has to be done?
Claire: I would say that we work really hard, and we don't always get it, right. You know, what, there are times when we've looked back and thought we could have done that better, this would have been a better way to do it, or just learning, you know, simple things. Like, for example, I didn't realise that certain documents, like some PDFs can't be read by a screen reader. So when we were supporting a group, or people with sight loss, and we had, you know, checked out that everyone had screen readers, and then it was an online group, so we were sharing the materials, the stories and the poems that were reading together online. And, you know, very early on, we had shared a PDF that was entirely inappropriate. And that that was that was just, you know, as missing as dropping the ball on that and missing it. But it's about learning. So I think you have to be open to learning and open to listen, I think it's really important to engage with the people you're trying to support. And ask them, what would help them. But again, you know, without putting the responsibility on them to tell you what they need. Yeah, you know, but to have these open conversations is to recognise, you won't always get it right. But to be willing to change, I think it's really important to allocate budget for that. I mean, you have to set aside money to, to not to walk the walk as well as top the top. And that that is the reality that we live in. So I think that's really important. And I think, I would say that I know of organisations who are really well intentioned, but haven't set aside that access budget, I think, I think organisation is getting better at that. I think it's really important to meet people where you find them. So what someone needs a one day isn't necessarily what they'll need on another day. And something that's worked in one week might not work the next week. And I think being open to that, and constantly willing to adapt, and doing that from top down. So I think that that has to come from the leadership team, that willingness to change, even though it might cost a bit more money, even though it might take a bit more time, even though it might involve doing something a bit differently from the way we've always done it. I think if the team feels that that is truly the ethos of the company, and really are the organisation, it really helps make those changes. And I think it helps your the people who are using your services feel safe and healthy and able to ask for what they need. And I think, you know, there's a lot of paperwork in that. And you know, we were sitting in the office yesterday, having our weekly team meeting, and one of our lead readers had flagged a possibility of an issue around wheelchair access. And we thought we had covered that we had to go back to our access questionnaire, because we we don't be starting new groups in places where the access is not good. Some of our older groups, we have to be slightly more flexible on that, because historically, they've met in a particular place, but we certainly now would not start a new group with access was not very good. And so we had gone back and write enough that question had been slightly fudged by the organisation. And so when we had looked at it, it had on the face of it would have worked, but actually drilling down a little bit a little bit deeper. So that then is a case of going back to that organisation and sort of saying, Well, are there meeting rooms downstairs and do you have rooms? And what can we do and, you know, so it, there's a lot of paperwork, it takes a lot of time. But you have to, you have to prioritise it, you have to really make everyone within the organisation believe that it is key to your aims and objectives.
Ruth: What has been, you know, when in establishing your own organisation? What's been the biggest challenge for you as a leader?
Claire: I think it is the work life balance. I think when you have established that organisation, yourself, it is your baby. And particularly in the days when we were both working from our kitchen tables, it was very hard for that not to be 24/7. And we now have a small office and I think that that helps delineate a lot better. And I think it takes a degree of discipline, personal discipline. Because I think what's important to remember is that if you are working outside working hours and sending emails and looking at things and texting and inevitably you're pulling somebody else into that conversation and you're eating into their time, you know, even if you see and you know, we've been known Margie and I've been known to text each other on a Sunday afternoon and say, you know, I fell so far behind last week. I'm just going to spend a couple of hours catching up. Ignore me. But inevitably, you don't you know, you jump on to Oh, she know what she'd been doing and what she thinking of and you know, or he nor I'll stop myself. If something comes to me, you know, maybe on a Saturday morning when I'm standing at the side of a hockey pitch, you know, in the early years, I would have texted margin said, Oh, it's just occurred to me, we didn't do X, Y, and Z. And now I will put it on our Monday team meet, to do list, with notifications turned off that I'm doing that, to say that, but I think part of the success of the organisation has been that drive and that commitment and that desire to do it well and work hard for it. And both coming from a corporate law background. You know, we there is a legacy of working really hard and really long hours that we kind of have to fight against and pull each other up on, we will send each other texts saying, why are you online? My slack notifications are pinging.
Ruth: I love that you kind of got a work life balance accountability partner?
Claire: Well, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But it does drift, you know, one of us is better one week than the other. And, you know, it varies. So I would say it for me, that's, that's the hardest thing. But it's a joy, I mean, doing something that you love, building something that people, you know, the feedback that we get, and the evaluation that we get, we recently did our spring evaluation and 97% of the people that responded and that was I think around 250, 260 people that took the time to respond to us was quite different. How many surveys you if you're anything like me, emails are ready to get in, 97% said they felt better about themselves after spending time in an Open Book group. That's amazing, you know, so although there are days when we come in and think, Oh, my goodness, we've got a massive fundraising application to write, and we need to report on x, y, z, and the accounts are due and we've got the draft from the accountants, and they've been sitting in our inboxes for two weeks, and the Board papers need to pull together for the next board meeting. And neither of us are going to pick up a book or read a poem all day today, which was kind of the reason, you know, you kind of have to remember that, that the fact that we are doing something we love, and we are doing something that that we're proud of, you know.
Ruth: And rightly so, rightly. So, when you think of all those, those lives that have been impacted positively as a result of what you're doing. And we get a real sense of the drive and the commitment and the purpose that that likes you that impact that you're aiming for in terms of you're benefiting others and giving to others really in terms of that connection, and that nourishment that people get from being in those groups, when they meet together. But it's interesting as well, what you see there about there's this drive and purpose and joy that comes from that. But there's also a need to be vigilant that that doesn't tip into kind of a depleting, exhausting sort of sense. And trying to maintain that, that balance. Because when you have that drive is it's hard to switch off, I have always found the same challenge, no matter kind of what role I've been doing. But I would say actually, in some ways, since I started my own business, it's been harder as you say, because it's, it's yours, it is your thing. And, you know, you kind of want to nurture it, and kind of grew it and do what you love to do. So I really recognise what you're saying about fighting that legacy of long hours. Um, kind of the that hard to focus to kind of work. Has it ever been lonely?
Claire: Um, well, I think because Margie and I have such a great relationship as friends, and the friendship came first. And I would see corporate law in a way it was more lonely at times, you know, that sort of response responsibility for decision making, particularly in a litigation setting where you could only ever be right or wrong. You only ever won your case, or you lost your case. No one in the litigation setting would ever say to you, Well, bad luck, but I know how hard you worked preparing for that. And didn't you do a really good job of keeping your notes neat? You know, so it was very black and white. Whereas I think that so much of what we're doing now with Open Book is about sharing, and is about building connections. And it's about using literature as a way to create communities that might not otherwise have existed. that, I wouldn't say loneliness was something particularly that I was aware of. But I think probably a large part of that is due to the fact that Margie and I are in this together, and we do it, we do it together. And we are so much on the same page in terms of how we think strategically the organisation should go. And I mean, that's not to say we agree on absolutely everything. Or, or the, you know, the route, but that the end goal that we have, is very much aligned. And you know, we're really good at accommodating each other, particularly if there's something that one or other US feels very strongly about.
Ruth: That sense of a shared end goal, really brings me on to something that I kind of wanted to ask, last time we spoke as well, actually, what is the lasting legacy that you want to create with Open Book?
Claire: Things are awesome, you know, we’re both in our 50s. And, you know, we are thinking about succession planning, and we're thinking not immediately, but we are thinking about sort of long term exit strategies. And I think, for us, it's a robust, resilient organisation, that isn't entirely dependent on the two of us. And that is, so well set up and so well organised, that it is possible for us to step away, and for Open Book to continue successfully without us. And I think that, you know, as we bring through our team, that work with us, we're seeing more and more of our ability to do that, in our processes are much better than they were when we started our ability to express the open book model, and the way we work and what how we operate is much better, you know, we spent quite a lot of time training people that come to work with us and to deliver for us as as consultants. And you know, we have those resources. And we, we've run conferences, and we we've recorded those sessions, and they are available. And so I think for me, success looks like being able to step off to the side quietly and to have Open Book continue successfully. I'm not ready to do that quite yet. But I think for both of us would be really upsetting is if there came a point, when we felt we wanted to do something else, we've both got loads of other things we're interested in doing and, and want to do, at some point, and Open Book stopped or finished or, you know, no longer survived. So, you know, building that legacy, and that succession and planning around that, and what that looks like. And I think for us, it's going to be quite a big part of our work over the next sort of five to 10 years.
Ruth: And Claire, thank you so much for sharing all of that, I find what you do really, really inspirational, I take my hat off to you and to Marjorie, for building this, because to be able to impact so many people in such challenging circumstances, some of them, many of them, and bring people together and just create that connection, which I'm sure for many people is probably the high point of their, their week, their month, you know, and to do that through books, and the nourishment that that can bring through being with people. And through literature itself, I think is absolutely inspiring. So thank you very, very much.
Claire: Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. And you probably have gathered that I can talk about Open Book all day and find joy in doing so. So it has truly been a pleasure.
Ruth: Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility have really been getting a pummeling in the press recently and in politics. And I think what we've just heard from Claire is, you know, we're talking about leading with empathy. We're talking about empathetic leadership. And if we're talking about that, and we're actually going to do that. Well, yeah, we're actually talking about is DEIA. And there were some really key messages that she put forward there around that that I think are worth reiterating and kind of amplifying as much as possible.
If you're going to commit to being an organisation or a leader who really means what they say around diversity and inclusion, you have to be open to really listening to people and being prepared to have got it wrong. But listening to what people actually need, and really engaging with them to understand that you also need to, you know, be prepared to allocate the budget and the money in order to enable that accessibility sometimes to pay for the additional support that might be required, you know, whatever that might look like for an individual. And I loved what Claire said about meeting people where you find them, because those needs can change even for one individual from one week to the next, from one day to the next.
And I think that's a really key point for any kind of management or leadership, people don't stay the same. And just because someone shows up sort of, in one way, one day, they're not going to be the same next, none of us are. So it's really been kind of eyes and ears open, and sort of being prepared to really listen. And I think what she said about actually, that willingness to adapt, in order to enable inclusion, in order to enable accessibility really has to come from the top, that tone has to be set at the top in leadership terms, or people are not going to see it as important, they're not going to see it as something valuable, they're not going to see it as something that you know, there's a real commitment to so there is something here about really walking the walk, not just talking the talk around diversity, equity and inclusion.
And, you know, Claire and Marjorie’s organisation Open Book, I’ve put details of their website and things in the shownotes. So that you can get in touch if you want to, but they're really living and breathing DEIA, it's the absolute foundation of what they do, is trying to bring people together. And people who might struggle actually to be part of a group or be in a group or be included in society. And they're really trying hard to reach those people and to create these connections, through a love of reading, and a love of literature. I really think that's it's an important point. And that this should kind of be baked into anybody's idea of you know, if you think you have empathy, then living that empathy means making the budget allocations, it means really listening, and it means being prepared to adapt.
Thank you so much for joining me today. I look forward to being with you next week, where I'll be talking a little bit more about loneliness at work. So join me for that.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Frustrated and Exhausted! Hit the Follow button for future episodes. You can also follow me on Instagram at resonate leadership and LinkedIn at Ruth Alexandra Wood – I would absolutely love to hear from you. Frustrated and Exhausted is brought to you by Resonate Leadership and the wonderful team at the Podcast Boutique. I'm your host, Ruth Wood. Take care and speak to you soon.
