Nicky Lowe [00:00:06]:
Hi. It’s Nicky Lowe, and welcome to the Wisdom for Working Mums podcast show. I’m your host. And for nearly two decades now, I’ve been an executive coach and leadership development consultant. And on this show, I share evidence based insights from my coaching, leadership, and psychological expertise and inspiring interviews that help women like you to combine your work, life, and motherhood in a more successful and sustainable way. Join me and my special guests as we delve into leadership and lifestyle topics for women, empowering you to thrive one conversation at a time. I’m so happy that you’re here, and let’s get on with today’s episode. Welcome to this episode.

Nicky Lowe [00:00:47]:
I’m your host, Nicky Lowe. And today we’re talking about male allyship, about what men must do to dismantle the patriarchy. Because at the current rate of progress, it will take over one hundred and thirty years to close the global gender gap. And that’s a statistic from the World Economic Forum in 2023. Just let that sink in, a hundred and thirty years. That means our daughters and even their daughters could still be fighting the same battles we are today. And yet, when we talk about gender equity, the focus always seems to be on what the women need to do. Lean in, speak up, break the glass ceiling.

Nicky Lowe [00:01:32]:
But what about the men? Well, today’s guest is here to help answer that question. I’m joined by Jeremy Stockdale. Jeremy and I met at a women in leadership conference last year where we were both keynote speakers. And normally, I’m pretty cynical about men telling us what we need to do for gender equity, but Jeremy was different. Not only was he a genuinely lovely person with a passion for inclusive leadership, but he delivered powerful insights into what men should be doing, not women. Jeremy is the CEO of YLead, a leadership consultancy he founded to bring a more data driven and human led approach to leadership development. And with two decades of experience leading large diverse teams across The UK and Africa in the banking industry, He has seen firsthand both the challenges and the opportunities when it comes to gender advocacy and inclusive leadership. He now works with organizations worldwide, helping leaders lead with purpose, curiosity, and passion.

Nicky Lowe [00:02:42]:
And he’s a regular speaker and consultant on gender equity, allyship and leadership that truly makes a difference. And in today’s episode, we’re diving into Smashing the Patriarchy, the role men must play in gender equity, and what real male allyship looks like. If you’ve ever wondered what practical, tangible actions men should be taking to create change, then this conversation is for you. I won’t keep you any longer. Let’s welcome Jeremy. So welcome, Jeremy. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast show.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:03:15]:
Oh, thank you for inviting me, Nicky. I’m thrilled to be on it.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:17]:
No. It’s great because we met a little, a few months ago now, the back end of last year, wasn’t it? I think it was October at a conference where we were both speaking. And I sat in the audience listening and watching your presentation or keynote and was just blown away by it. And I was like, I’ve gotta get you podcast. Gotta get you on the podcast. And not only are you a fantastic speaker, but the subject and your take on it. So I can’t wait to dive into this conversation today.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:03:47]:
Well, thank you. Me too. I remember us us talking before the we both spoke, and we connected massively on the the power of leadership, didn’t we? So I thought, yeah, we’re gonna be mates.

Nicky Lowe [00:03:58]:
Yeah. Absolutely. So let’s get into this then. So for people that don’t know who you are and the work that you do, can you take us on a little bit of a journey of, like, how you’ve come to do this work?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:04:09]:
Yes. So I’m now in my second career. So I run a company called YLead, which I created or formed during the pandemic, which is, you know, ideal timing, I think, for that kind of creative time. And I’ve now been trading since 2021 since my fifth year. And why lead is about it’s it does what it says on the tin. It’s about why lead? Why do why should leaders lead? What’s your purpose to lead, and why should people follow you? And and what got me to that was that I spent my first career working for a big bank, twenty seven years, which I know is not particularly imaginative. But but I had quite a variety of things in that time. And and the last fifty years, I had the privilege of leading a number of large teams across The UK and Africa.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:04:51]:
And after a first the first two and a half years of not being particularly good at it and stumbling along and learning as I went, I suddenly started to find it incredibly rewarding as I had a positive impact. And I thought, this is what I wanna do. So I kinda found my purpose as a leader by accident, and I just saw it as a huge privilege, and I love the responsibility. So what I wanna do now and what I’m doing now is is encouraging other leaders to find their sense of purpose and to lead with compassion and humanity and vulnerability because that has a better impact on the people they lead. So that’s a little bit about me.

Nicky Lowe [00:05:25]:
Loweve that. And I remember when we spoke, you talked very openly about becoming an accidental leader and actually how, as you said then, that for the first couple of years, you were really finding your feet. And I really appreciated that level of honesty because most people have that experience. You know, we find ourselves in these leadership positions going, oh my god. I don’t even know what good leadership is, or if I do, what’s my what’s my flavor of it, and how do I be authentic and do all the things that’s needed. And I really appreciated you kinda going, it took me a couple of years to find my feet with it, and I made mistakes along the way.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:06:04]:
It it was it was really tough. It was it was probably certainly at that point, it was the toughest part of my career. Those first eighteen months were really tough. And and after the three month honeymoon period where I just thought, oh, there’s nothing all of this. I suddenly realized I didn’t know how to do things. But the worst thing was my team knew that. So it’s it was tough for me, but the it was actually tougher for them being led by someone that didn’t really know how to lead. I was lucky.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:06:29]:
There were there were good leaders around me as my peers. I had a boss that was patient enough to give me time, and and I just stumbled across across the things that kinda got me to a point of of moderate competence. And once I found that, I thought I just wanna be better and better. But I I saw a stat recently. In fact, I shared it with someone I was working with that eighty two percent of people are accidental managers. In other words, you get given a bunch of people with no formal training. And and and, actually, because some people thought it’s it’s higher than that. It’s it’s 80% underestimate it.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:07:05]:
But we we we set people up to fail. You would not ask people to do something highly technical without giving them technical training, but we expect people to lead other people just because they got technical skills in a particular field. It’s it’s madness, but we still follow that approach.

Nicky Lowe [00:07:23]:
Yeah. And in there, I think what I heard in your story and what comes across every time I speak to you is this common thread that even though you weren’t clear on what you were doing and made mistakes, you still deeply cared about the impact you were having on people and you cared enough to kind of really be resilient to discovering how to do this well?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:07:46]:
Yeah. I I I I think that was the case. Because I remember there was definitely a moment where the I I’d come from a head office role where I had a small team. They’re all around me, knew what they did. They knew what I did, and it it worked fine. And there was someone else who joined the kind of role I was doing. I was an area director, basically. So I had I went from having a small team in the head office to having about a 80 people across, I think it was about 20 sites.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:08:09]:
And there was someone else who did a similar kind of shift to me. And I remember that they they they left it. They kind of said, just no. This is too much. It’s not working. And they went back. And I remember thinking I could do the same, and I just didn’t wanna leave without having at least got to a reasonable level of competence. But it did take resilience.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:08:31]:
But it would it also the important thing was it it’s the support I got. I did get support. I was lucky that I could see people doing things well and think, well, maybe I could do some of that. Of course, I’ve seen a lot of people doing things badly and thought, well, I can now avoid that. And and I think having a a leader myself who I think was very frustrated with me, but didn’t want me to fail. And therefore, with some combination of tough love and some, you know, practical, you know, things I could do, it got me beyond that first difficult eighteen months. But I don’t think everyone’s that lucky. I don’t think everyone’s that lucky.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:09:07]:
And I think the I think the worst thing about it is I do think there are some people that go through their entire careers never really getting it. And and it’s not great for them, but it’s their people that suffer.

Nicky Lowe [00:09:17]:
Yeah. And I imagine hard work and and care in there. But that led you, as you said, you then went kind of internationally with your leadership and kind of manage teams in different cultures. So you’ve got, like, this huge amount of experience that you’ll bring into this conversation, and I think that’s really important. And, obviously, we’re here today to talk about male allyship in leadership as well. Can you share a little bit about what led you on that part of the journey? Because, obviously, that’s how I came to to meet you, and people may have come across you. And I know you’ve got your your famous slogan, as well. But would you mind sharing a bit about that?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:09:55]:
It is. T shirts on for the for the occasion. Yeah. So on Wednesdays, we do smash the patriarchy. And I’ll tell you about where that came about. My own the the truth is when I left Barclays in ’20 I left in 2019, set up what I did in 2020, I genuinely thought that I was one of the good guys. You know, I I I thought I understood some of the challenges that women faced. I had a good gender balance in my team.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:10:20]:
I sponsored mentored women. I got involved in female talent programs, and I I really thought I’d done everything I could. And then something happened in 2021 that made me realize I hadn’t done nearly enough because I just didn’t know enough. And it was when Sarah Everard was abducted, raped, and murdered by a police officer, which naturally caused a huge outcry cry. When you’ve got someone who’s doing everything they can to keep themselves safe, following all the tips that you shouldn’t have to follow as a woman to keep yourself safe, but then still wasn’t safe at the hands of the very people that are there to protect you. I was shocked, and I was struck by just the reaction of women around The UK and around the world. And I spoke to quite a few, one of which was someone who I said, well, I I wanna help. I want to do things, but what can I do to be a a better male ally? And she said, read two books.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:11:09]:
And the two books were Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates and Invisible Women by Caroline Credo Perez. And I read them, and they blew my mind. Because I just realized that I mean, I knew sexism existed. I’ve I’ve no doubt been sexist myself. And I knew there were there were definitely things that were designed by men for men. I had no idea of the scale, though. I had no idea of the scale of the things that women and girls have to go through every day just to go about their daily lives, the things they have to put up with, the things they have to do to keep themselves safe. And then the data biases that were mind blowing.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:11:43]:
I mean, one of the things in Caroline’s book is that women are forty seven percent more likely to suffer a serious injury in a road traffic accident than a man. Because all the safety features in cars today are still designed around a male body. How how can that be? I just And so what that did for me, it made me kind of curious to know more. I realized that at the age of 51, I just didn’t really know how the world worked. So I read many more books. And since I’ve spoken to hundreds of women and men, and I now know a bit more. I’ll never actually I will never have the female experience. I’ll never have that.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:12:20]:
I now sleep less stupid. That that’s all I’ll say. And so what I try to do is share what I’ve learned with others and encourage others to go on a similar kind of journey. Because I’m I’m a reasonable example of that. It’s never too old. You’re never too old to learn something new. I was half a century flying blind. Like I say, now I just know a little bit more about it, and I’m curious to to find out more.

Nicky Lowe [00:12:40]:
Loweve that. I’m also curious about what was it about you that went, what can I do to help? Because I think that’s such a powerful question that not everybody asks that because, obviously, so many people were shocked about this Sarah Sarah Arvad situation. But what was it for you that led you to want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:13:04]:
That’s that’s such a good question because I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that, Nicky. And so I’m I think it’s a combination of things. I think there was definitely the fact that, I had been involved in things, and I I did I don’t like unfairness and injustice. It’s my core value is definitely fairness. So I I kinda thought that it’s just not fair. I was really struck by how the women at the vigil, who, I think, courageously came together to talk about this and say this isn’t acceptable, and then the way they were treated by the police, the way they were treated in the media, I was I was really shocked by that. I you know, part of it is when I I know it’s not the only reason, but I’ve got a daughter. She’s now 22.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:13:50]:
I’ve often been thoughtful about the the experiences that she will have compared to my son, but also vice versa. So I think it’s a real combination of things. And and probably the fact that I thought I was a good guy. So so I wanted to, you know I I’d come from that point where, you know, I wasn’t a complete misogynist. And therefore yeah. And and I think also maybe it helps the fact that I, of a certain age now, you get to a point, I’m, you know, I’m 55 now. But when in my fifties, I really thought I can give I can give stuff now. I’ve learned a lot.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:14:23]:
I’ve I’ve been quite lucky to have had those those privilege and opportunities, so I can give stuff. So I just thought it’s something that I could it also comes back to the fact that when I talk about leadership, I say leadership is a privilege, and it and it comes with responsibility. It’s the old it’s the old Spider Man quote. But I also feel that I have a lot of privilege. And so the more privilege you have, the greater responsibility to do something positive with that. So it’s it’s a real combination of things, but it’s a great question because I haven’t been asked that before.

Nicky Lowe [00:14:53]:
And I and and you really hear that come through in the responsibility that you’ve personally taken and now the responsibility that you’re taking out into the world to say, actually, what can we do? And it’s almost what I was imagining was you were struck by the gap of, like, almost your blind spots of, oh, I thought I was one of the good ones. And you absolutely are, darling. I mean, that’s not to take away from that, but, actually, the unconscious bias that we all live and kind of breathe, you know, depending on where, where we sit in the world. So really being hit by that, it felt like it had such a strong impact on you. So you’ve now become a really positive male ally. And I just wanted to say for those that are listening audio and not on the video, you kind of are wearing a T shirt, aren’t you? That that can you share a little about that phrase and what that means?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:15:42]:
Yeah. So I I started writing some posts on LinkedIn nearly two years ago now, under the heading on Wednesdays, we smashed the patriarchy. And the reason I started writing those is because my daughter has got a t shirt, the exact same one I’m wearing, that says on Wednesdays, we smashed the patriarchy. We’ve often talked about it. I’ve often thought it was quite cool, and especially when she’s wandering around Bristol uni, you know, it does lead to conversations. And I so I persuaded her to let me just write a little post about it. I’ve asked her, you know, why do you wear the T shirt? What do you think of the patriarchy? Why Wednesdays? And, it got a good reaction. It it got a nice reaction.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:16:18]:
So the following week, I thought, well, I’m gonna build on that a bit. I’ll write about how the patriarchy impacts women based on what I’ve read and what I’ve, you know, been learning. And then the following week, I wrote about, well, it impacts men too. So how does it show up and impact men’s men’s lives? And I think based on the reaction I got, it be it it wasn’t intended to be a

Nicky Lowe [00:16:38]:
a thing, but it then became

Jeremy Stockdale [00:16:38]:
a thing. And I just after about six months of writing, I thought, well, I’ll just write them for a year. And now we’re coming up to nearly two years, and I I I’m never short of things to write. Yeah. It’s just especially now. But, you know, sometimes a post almost writes itself. You’ll you’ll I’ll have something in mind that I might wanna talk about, and then I’ll see something in the news, like, quite recently when Eilish McColgan, not for the first time, was body shamed, you know, when she was training for the Lowendon marathon. And I thought, okay.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:17:08]:
Well, that’s that’s this week’s post. So, yeah, that’s that’s what I do, and it has got a following. But the best thing about it for me or the thing that I’ve really gained from it is how much I learn from from what I write, but really from reading responses from people. Sometimes people just agree and add additional comments, they provide different insights. People disagree, sometimes quite vehemently, but you learn from that. So it’s all helping to expand my knowledge. And hopefully, what it’s also doing is encouraging more people to come into these conversations, including men.

Nicky Lowe [00:17:42]:
Yes. And for people that don’t follow you on LinkedIn, I would absolutely encourage them to. I’ll put your links into the show notes. But, you know, you you are using your platform in such a positive way. But, also, I wanted to say quite brave because it’s I love your curiosity, but there’s a level of kind of courage that’s needed to lean into those conversations, particularly as a man. And I know that when we met at the conference, you you shared some brilliant insights and and and kind of, statistics around men and actually how we show up as a male ally, but also how we might show up unintentionally and be part of the problem. Would you mind sharing a bit about that, about actually what is male allyship and almost what’s the flip of that? Like, how might men be showing up often unintentionally in ways that are part of the problem?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:18:36]:
Yes. So so a couple of things. First of all, I I’m not a massive fan. And this is something I when I first started thinking about my involvement in this, because after I read those first books, I then went through a lot of education. And it was only when I thought I’d I’d learned enough that I started to so about two years later when I first spoke about things, you know, for, it was for International Women’s Day. A company asked me to talk about male allyship. And that’s what I started doing. The the term male allyship isn’t one I particularly like.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:19:05]:
I think allyship has certain connotations of, you know, you’re an ally to someone, it means you have an enemy. It’s okay if the common common enemy is a pat patriarchy. But if you’re a male ally to women, it might imply you’re against men. That’s not the case, but it can be seen that way. It also has slightly militaristic connotations, which, I don’t think are particularly helpful. I mean, so I I I don’t mind the term allyship too much. I don’t mind the verb. It’s the noun I don’t like.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:19:29]:
I don’t like the idea that I am a male ally, and men can think of themselves as male allies. So it just feels a bit, it it’s making it it’s centering us too much, and it shouldn’t be about that. So but with that caveat to one side, I I think that the more men that the more men can realize how this will benefit them, the better it is. The the the more likely it is we can get get more engaged. The fact is that the the systems we are operating in, the social constructs, they’re damaging for all of us in different ways. And, and I think that’s the one of the biggest challenges is is how can you get people to come into these spaces without feeling they’re gonna be judged or they’re gonna be attacked. And, I mean, I think with me, there’s potentially a certain amount of naivety in the way I go about doing this. Like, you know, it’s just slightly how and why.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:20:26]:
But also, I think I have the benefit of age. You get to a certain stage in your life where you just don’t care as much what people think. But I’ve also done the work. I mean, genuinely, I’ve I’ve I’ve done the work and I’m still learning things all the time. And so, actually, I quite welcome the backlash that comes. But that’s easy for me to say. If we’re gonna get others dipping their toes in the water, we can’t batter them the first time they do that. And that’s still what I see happening quite a bit.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:20:53]:
Men asking questions, what what about this? And then it’s like, just get piled on. And what happens is then they just retreat, maybe go over to the dark side. So we have to create spaces where men can explore these things, talk about these things. And, frankly, men and women together. That’s the other thing.

Nicky Lowe [00:21:10]:
And I think to touch your point, I think you come at it with so much humility as well, and I think that makes such a difference. And so you’ve said a couple of times around, actually, the patriarchy doesn’t doesn’t benefit men either. For people that might not understand that, what is it you mean by that? Both kind of if there’s a woman listening going, hang on a second. It, you know, it disadvantages me, not my male partner or brother or whatever it might be. But also if there was a a man listening as well going, I don’t know what you mean. Could you just share a bit more about that?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:21:44]:
There are so many ways. The first thing to understand, the term patriarchy actually means rule of the father. Loweok at the definition, and it’s a it’s a an environment where men have most of the power and women are largely excluded from it. So as a pure definition, that doesn’t necessarily work. I think there are still you can still say men do still have most of the power, but most men don’t have power. That’s the thing. So when you look at, you know, senior leadership governments, you could you might be able to see that there’s still predominantly men in those environments with the power and the influence. Most men don’t benefit from that.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:22:15]:
So I think that’s one of the the important things to understand. There are many, many ways that it’s it it impacts women, which I could talk about till the cows come home because I’ve learned this stuff. But the it impacts men in in a multitude of ways as well. So just just some simple ones is that for men, it’s not really acceptable for us to show the full range of emotions that we might be feeling. It in fact, from the age of six I saw some research. From the age of six, boys have been have been conditioned to be only it’s only socially acceptable to show one emotion, which is anger. Anything else that you you’re not allowed to be sad. You’re certainly big boys don’t cry, do they? So you’re not not supposed to cry.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:22:59]:
Vulnerability? No. No. That’s weakness. Even actually joy, to show joy at something, real pleasure at something that might be beautiful, that’s gonna get you mocked and laughed at. And so we’re we’re we’re really restricted. And sometimes it means that our our ability to express things is limited, They can also have really terrible circumstances for, you know, men’s mental health. I mean, sure, probably a lot of people know that the statistics around men are four times more likely to die by suicide than women. It’s the number one killer of men between the age of 19 and 45 in The UK.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:23:34]:
More than cancer, heart disease, road traffic accidents, it it tops the lot. Forty percent of men in a in a survey recently said they feel lonely some or all of the time. Twenty percent of men said they got no actual friends. So the the patriarchy is a social construct that we’ve all been brought up in that has very detrimental impacts on men. And and maybe I was quite lucky when I grew up. I grew up in a certain generation. You look at the younger generation of men that don’t perhaps have the same economic opportunities that I had, that seem to be suffering increasingly when it comes to the education systems we got. So it’s almost like a double bind.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:24:12]:
On the one hand, they are suffering under the patriarchy. But on the other hand, they they they’re often being told that they’re problematic, and they’re toxic. And, you know, it’s no wonder that we we we have these divisions. So the patriarchy benefits hardly any people apart from those at the very top in the elite of society that that are quite happy to allow us to all to be divided so that they can continue to continue to prosper. But it massively impacts men in in a multitude of ways.

Nicky Lowe [00:24:42]:
It’s interesting. I was listening to the TV earlier, and they were doing an interview with I’m hoping I’m gonna get his name right. I think his name is Stephen Graham. He’s the, Liverpudlian actor. He’s a phenomenal, phenomenal actor, but he’s just that is literally hitting our TVs this week in The UK. He’s written and directed a new TV series, which is all about he plays the father of a 13 year old boy that gets arrested for murdering a young girl. And the prem and I when he was being interviewed, he was like, oh, what made you write this? Because he’s he’s written the script and, as I say, directed any stars in it. And he said, I I kept seeing on the news these incidents where young boys were stabbing their girlfriend or a girl that they liked but had deemed they deemed to reject them.

Nicky Lowe [00:25:34]:
And in that moment, the the I was just thinking about you going, actually, if the only emotion that has deemed kind of acceptable is anger about the the depth of shame and emotion they’re feeling in those moments. And their go to response is anger, which unfortunately is expressed in a way that leads to somebody losing their life. And I think there’s so many examples of that that we see in the press daily, unfortunately. And often that is women that are suffering, but actually we’re overlooking there is suffering going on there that, you know, the behavior is completely unacceptable. But as you say, what is the system doing that’s creating these responses? And, again, you were talking about, actually, there’s only few people that are benefiting and it tends to be kind of a very few kind of those in power. Yeah. And I think we’re seeing this playing out in society at the moment. And before we hit record, I was asking you about your take on, particularly in the last few months, we’re seeing kind of DEI initiatives being kind of rolled back.

Nicky Lowe [00:26:37]:
And what was your take on that? And you shared something really powerful, and I would love to hear your perspective on that and for people to hear what you shared, if that’s okay.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:26:45]:
Yeah, of course. I mean, it’s interesting what you said there because I was speaking to someone, last year, Again, someone else I met on LinkedIn. Her name is Tracy Sisk, and she’s American. And she was she was talking to me about how, effectively, what patriarchy is. It’s about power. It’s about power structures, and it really made me realize that, actually, that’s how I should be talking about it. It should be about it’s about it’s about power. It’s about how the power is used.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:27:09]:
So power can be can be used really responsibly and to benefit many, many people. It could be misused. And I think what we’re seeing in in so many parts of the world now is that it’s the misuse of power in in ways that I never thought I’d be seeing, if I’m if I’m honest. So I I think what’s happening with in terms of the DEI space, the DEI backlash, the woke backlash, if you actually think about it, it’s it’s crazy, isn’t it? What inherently is wrong about diversity? Having different people. I mean, there’s there can’t be anything wrong with that. Fairness. How could fairness be wrong? How can including people be something that’s wrong? Even woke, which is a term that has been been like DEI, has been weaponized, it just means you’re you’re more awake to social injustice. But I think the reason why we’re having the backlash is not because those things are inherently bad, but because the way we’ve done DEI has been really poor.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:28:05]:
The way we’ve executed DEI initiatives, the way we’ve talked about them, the way we’ve narrated them, and the way we’ve implemented them has been really poor. And what’s I find really bizarre is that very often, even though one of the one of the the words in in the DEI acronym is inclusion, we’ve excluded a very large proportion of the population. And very often, it’s we’re excluding those people that have most of the power. If you think about when you look at middle aged white men, well, who generally would you see in positions of power in organizations in society? We probably have a disproportionate amount. You include us from these things are you excluded from these things? And it’s not surprising there’s not been not probes being made. So I think what we’re seeing is a backlash as a result of the fact that we haven’t done a great job of of really implementing DEI initiatives or ideas particularly well when erasing them. It doesn’t mean they’re bad. We have to find a better way of doing it.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:29:03]:
That that’s really the point. We we we as I say, we I’m talking about us. We are sort of the royal we, but anyone who has is involved in those kind of things, we’ve got to look at what we’re doing and do it more effectively.

Nicky Lowe [00:29:15]:
Brilliant. And I think that is so important. When you said that earlier, I was like, yes. That is it. And, obviously, that’s what YLead is all about. So if we look at what you do around inclusive leadership, what is it that you would hope that organizations would do well? It sounds like many aren’t. What what are you seeing best working with organisations on to help them in this space?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:29:42]:
Again, it’s a good question. I’ve given this a lot of thought. Obviously, in the work I’ve been doing over the last four years with different organizations, I’ve learned a lot from doing that. And I’ve also been to go back and think about what works and didn’t work in my long corporate career. I think, typically, what what works when organizations do this well, the the first two fundamental things is that they have a vision. They have a vision about what they wanna create, and it and it’s not something they wanna do next year. It might be three to five years. And there might be some goals around it, but it’s not just about the goals.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:30:16]:
It’s not about just how many women we’re gonna get in senior positions. They have a vision for what they’re trying to create as an organization, what they want that to feel like, and they get people, you know, believing in that. They communicate it. So that’s the first thing. The second thing that that’s really crucial, but it’s so often missing, is that anything like this, you need to have the genuine authentic sponsorship and advocacy from the most senior and influential people in the organization. Very often, what they’ll do is they might write a check, sometimes quite a small one, and they will they will stand up and say, I’m really behind this. You would never see them again and just leave it to the HR or DI people to do. It it doesn’t work that way.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:30:53]:
They have to go on their own journeys. They have to go to be authentically behind it and really committed. But then I think aligned to that is it’s organizations looking at what it’s it’s the old Desmond Tutu quote, which always I really love, which says, we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We’ve gotta go upstream and find out why they’re falling in. And once you’ve found out why they’re falling in, that’s what you tackle. So what we’ve often done is a a simple example. One of the things that first got me really interested in this before the kind of the Sarah Everard tragedy and the epiphany after that was that I was always struck by the fact that when it comes to women’s initiatives, gender initiatives, which typically targets at getting more women in senior positions, we would take a group of women and we would work on them, you know, fix them. Very often, not so much now, but certainly very often, it was like, this is how you need to show up in this environment.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:31:45]:
In other words, how to speak perhaps a bit more masculine, a bit more assertive, a bit tougher. And then we just throw them back into the same old environment that didn’t get best out of them in the first place. In other words, we’re fixing the women who don’t really need fixing, but we’re not fixing the the root cause is what’s really creating that situation in the first place. So the outcome of that was that they would either suck it up, might do that for a while, but, typically, they would leave because you’ve equipped them now with more confidence and self belief and more knowledge about how to navigate these things. They will take it where it’s appreciated. And so I think that’s that’s the kind of stuff we need to be doing. We’re just looking quite deeply at what is actually going on. What are the systemic issues in society and in in our organizations? Recognize you won’t fix that with a few initiatives, but have the courage to say, we we really wanna get here in a reasonable time frame.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:32:33]:
So, you know, I think, you know, in your introduction, you said it’s like another hundred and thirty years until we achieve gender equity according to the World Economic Forum. But that’s not good enough. That’s five generations. We we are close to putting someone on Mars than we are to achieving gender equity. So let’s let’s pick some nearer term, medium term goals and go for those, but be doing the things that are going to get us towards that rather than just the tokenistic things that most organisations do.

Nicky Lowe [00:33:02]:
Loweve that. And what you’ve done there is beautifully gone, actually, here’s the macro piece, and let’s take it down to some micro initiatives. So if there’s somebody listening that’s either got somebody in their life that thinks might benefit from hearing this message and they’re a a male in their life, or it is a male that’s listening and going, I I get this. What is it I can start to do? What would your advice to them be?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:33:32]:
First trait that I always do when I talk about allyship that applies to leadership as well, you could also just say it’s you know, good humans do this. It’s just to be curious. And if you’re curious about something, you mean you’ve got a real desire to find out something about it. So the first thing I think people can do is just go out and educate yourself. Just go and read some books. I’ve recommended a couple of books already. There’s many others I could recommend, but The Authority Gap by Mary Anne Secart is amazing. There there’s so much there’s so many resources out there.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:34:04]:
There’s podcasts. There’s team TED Talks. There’s there’s books you can read. Just go out and do some education. Go and find out some things. Have have the intention of finding out what you’ve been wrong about. That’s a it’s a really good way of thinking about it. Go and find out something you might be wrong about, but do so without any judgment on yourself.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:34:21]:
Just think, oh, that’s great. It means tomorrow I’ll be less wrong. And then I think once you’ve done that and you’ve you’ve done some of the work yourself, then feel free to kind of share that with people, but ask questions. You know, I think I I learned a lot from reading those books, and that ignited my curiosity. I’ve learned far more from actually speaking to women and listening to them. You know, avoiding the temptation to manta up them, which we which we are conditioned to do. So so listen to women. And I think once you’ve done that, you’ll start to get to a point where you’re more aware of what’s going on.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:34:55]:
You will see perhaps a slightly different reality, and I think then that will put you in a position where you can then start to perhaps take some bolder action. But that’s fine. It will take it could take some time. It probably took me a couple of years before I felt I could probably talk a bit about this now. But in the last two years, I’ve learned so much more, and I’ll never stop learning about it. That’s the thing I’ll say. You can do that on your own. You can just go out and start to learn some stuff.

Nicky Lowe [00:35:22]:
Loweve that. And it made me think I was talking to a woman a few months ago and she was saying that she’d ended up just having a conversation with her husband. And I don’t know how they’d ended up having this conversation, but something had sparked it where she talked about, oh, actually, if I’m in a lift on my own and a man walks in, her experience. And I think it might have been that she was trying to say to her husband, just be aware when you walk into a lift and there might be a woman standing on her own, the impact you might have unintentionally. And he it was just such a blind spot. He was like, I don’t understand because it wasn’t an experience that was even on his radar. And she said it opened up this need in him to Yeah. I need to be far more curious because I hadn’t even realized that was a thing.

Nicky Lowe [00:36:09]:
But as you were talking, it also made me think that, obviously, we’re saying about men because male allyship is important. But even as women being curious about our own internal kind of how we’ve internalized the patriarchy and, actually, sometimes we’re not even aware, like, how women are pitted against each other and all of those things that actually, it’s not as you say, it’s not about men need to do this and women, you’ve got it all sorted. You’re just the victims. Actually, we perpetuate the system as well if we’re not careful.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:36:39]:
That that’s such a great point. And, again, if that’s something I didn’t realize at at first, and so I started to learn more about this. But, yeah, I mean, internalized misogyny is a is a massive thing. But it’s because we’ve all been brought up in the same system. In really simple terms, you know, boys are brought up from a very early age to be assertive, to be confident, to, you know, to kind of talk about their achievements and just to generally be boys as we understand it. Girls are taught to be agreeable and compliant and sweet and kind and not boastful. So it’s no not real surprise that this this happens. So very often when women see other women that don’t fit that mold, that are being assertive or are being a bit tougher, they will be given labels that you never label a man with.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:37:21]:
I sometimes talk about the tight rope that that women walk when it goes to progressing in an organization that you know you need to be tough and assertive and and, you know, focus on your career. You don’t want to be too assertive because then you’ll be called bossy. And don’t be too tough because you’re going to be called a bitch. Now, in thirty years, or maybe you’ll be called an uncaring mother because you’re too committed to your career. I’ve been working for over thirty years. I’ve never heard one man ever called any of those terms. I’ve rarely heard men called uncaring fathers for their commitment to work. It certainly never happened to me.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:38:01]:
So it’s so it’s things like that that we can just start to recognize. The the the example of that walking into a lift is a brilliant example. So how on earth could we be aware of that? Because we don’t experience it. But once we’re aware, we can start to make just adjustments that can help women to feel safer. And so so it’s it’s the power we have with fairly simple things is huge. We just need to share some of that and get people thinking more differently and becoming more aware of them.

Nicky Lowe [00:38:33]:
You’ve shared so much information that I am sure has whet people’s appetite to want to follow more about what you do and listen to more of your stuff. I suppose if there was just one thing that you would hope somebody listening to this conversation takes away, what would you want that to be?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:38:51]:
I’ll probably build on on what I was just was talking about, which is that through most of my life and career, you you kind of you you get rewarded based on your knowledge. And you you don’t really wanna show that you don’t have knowledge because then it makes it look like you’re weak or you don’t know stuff. And but it’s really shifted for me in the last sort of twelve months. And I said about, you know, I’m trying every night sleep. They’re stupid. You know, I wanna find out that I’m wrong because it means tomorrow I’ll be less wrong. So I guess the message I’ll say to people is is go out and find things that you’re wrong about on the basis that means you’ll be less wrong the next day. But what’s not okay is to stay wrong.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:39:31]:
Can you when you’re presented with lots of evidence and lots of knowledge and lots of realities, and you choose to stay wrong, that’s not cool. So, yeah, just aim each day to be slightly less wrong than the day before.

Nicky Lowe [00:39:41]:
I love that reframe. So where can people find out more about you and your work? And I’ll put all of these links into the show notes.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:39:50]:
Fabulous. So I I probably need to get a bit more media social media savvy. My main place where people could find out about what I do is on LinkedIn. So every Wednesday, I write my post about smashing the patriarchy. I I post and repost other things during the week. I comment on other people’s posts, but that’s the main vehicle I have for just communicating what I’m learning and bringing in a community to share what what they know as well. So LinkedIn is one place. People can be contacted by email.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:40:17]:
If anyone’s listening to this and wants to know more about, you know, resources they can tap into, if they got things they’re concerned about, I’m more than happy for people to email me, drop me a WhatsApp, so you can put all of those on there.

Nicky Lowe [00:40:30]:
What should you email, Jeremy, if you wish to?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:40:32]:
It’s jeremy@ylead.co.uk.

Nicky Lowe [00:40:36]:
And y is the letter y, isn’t it, rather than the word y?

Jeremy Stockdale [00:40:40]:
It is. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that that I’m I’m really happy to get people people to do that because, actually, what I want to do, I wanna bring more people into a community where we’re trying to affect change that benefits all of us. So, really, it’s the it’s more the merrier. So I would love to hear from other people on the back of this.

Nicky Lowe [00:40:54]:
Brilliant. Well, firstly, thank you for the work that you’re doing in the world, Jeremy. It’s you’re you’re using your voice, your platform, your experience for such good. So thank you, and thank you for giving your time today to this conversation.

Jeremy Stockdale [00:41:06]:
It’s been a pleasure, Nicky. Thanks for having me on.

Nicky Lowe [00:41:10]:
If you’ve enjoyed this episode of Wisdom for Working Mums, I’d love for you to share it on social media or with the amazing women in your life. I’d also love to connect with you, so head over to illuminate-group.co.uk, where you’ll find ways to stay in touch. And if this episode resonated with you, one of the best ways to support the show is by subscribing and leaving a review on iTunes. Your review helps other women discover this resource, so together, we can lift each other up as we rise. So thanks for listening, until next time, take care.