My leadership story

This was my recent icebreaker speech I gave at the Toastmasters I just joined (again after many years). Following on from my previous posts, my thoughts about how to deal with this STEM minority issue stuff have gone new and interesting directions which the below encapsulates. When I stand back and look at this, I'm really surprised it's ended up here. But there you go. There are odd connections to life everywhere.

Some details changed to preserve anonymity. I also no longer care if people know I've dealt with depression in the past. Frankly I think if you've dealt with something like that and come out of it, it makes you a better person. Also in 2015 I got yet another new manger who went back to the bad old ways but haven't bothered with those details here. Fortunately I have received a 6 month secondment into a very different section which has been excellent distance to clarify perspective.

Delivered on 11th October, 2016.

The leadership of the large corporate I work for have recently taken to doing their personal 'leadership stories' on video posting them in the corporate forums. Today I would like to do my own personal leadership story. However as I don't actually manage any people, it's more how the study of leadership has served as a palliative to the marginalisation and isolation I have felt during a certain time over my many years at working at this large corporate. And how going forward I've realised how valuable personal leadership can be for all of us.

So what is a personal leadership story? Well your personal story is what has happened to you, and why it has made you what you are today. For a leadership story, well first let's define a leader and I'll use Nancy Ortbery's, a leadership consultant , definition of "A leader creates a way for people to contribute in order to make something extraordinary happen".

So my personal story is that I started out as a graduate engineer at this corporate and had a great time in various sections and various projects, all while managing clinical depression.

Clinical depression is just 'a thing' like any old 'thing' for those who have to manage it. Although of course I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy's pet dog. It started when I was 12, I was diagnosed when I was 23. The usual medication, counselling, exercise, practising thought techniques like CBT. I was what is known as "high functioning". So picture my friend and I sitting in hospital emergency, in business suits, while a surprised resident psychiatrist gives me details for the local emergency mental health team. It's been so routine for me to deal with depression that I find it hard to believe that everyone doesn't have to deal with this. I am unsurprised by the comment that depression is the common cold of mental illness.

So how does depression connect to leadership? Well let me go a bit further in my story. In 2004, after spending some of the happiest months of my time in this large corporate in a technical team that I had been supposedly relegated to, I was called up to an interview, with someone who is now a director, and asked one of those questions where the only answer is 'yes'. So I found myself back in the mobiles networks engineering section I had come from starting the following week.

Within 2 days while handing over work to the previous section, I had been hauled into an office with the then acting manager and told I wasn't wanted, wasn't' needed, and if I didn't want to be there they could make that happen. Oh how I wish I had taken them up on that offer. Thus began my descent into what, had I been healthier, would have caused me to leave this large corporate.

I was handed an area to look after with no training, no mentoring in work I had never done before. After doing everything I could while asking for help, that area was removed from me and I was given another area. I observed members of the what was regularly referred to as "the boys club" personally go to help their friends if they made an error while I would receive an email with a CC to my boss being told of my mistake. Work well done was ignored. Praise and opportunities unevenly given. So it got to the point in 2007 when I didn't want to take leave as my work would not get done and I would get into trouble when I came back. My depression got very, very bad. Very very very very bad.

At this point I'm going to skip over a few details. By 2009 me, my manager, my managers manger, the HR person and the HR person's manager has reached a kind of polite truce and backing off. I had been given an area in the middle of nowhere with little responsibility. And when I commented about this, this was halved.

But I was still there as by this stage I believed myself totally unemployable and was financially dependant.

I disengaged.

Come 2014 I had a new manager who had the guts to take a chance on me. And gave me the feedback and support I had asked for.

I re-engaged.

But now I started to realise what had happened to me wasn't right. I started post processing it. Was what had happened to me because I was female? Was what had happened to me because I didn't fit in with the 'cool' crowd? At one point I had mentioned to my manager's manager that only hip white males had been employed in the last 3 years. I read a bit of feminism. The language and concepts there helped give me the words and a framework to work out what had happened to me.

The moment you start looking at gender equality you must look at the other types of equality: race, disability, sexuality, or just anyone who is different really. In fact at the 2015 COO roadshow I pointed out during question time that despite this large corporate making plans to go into Asia, the stage only had white males on it. Incidentally they all were dressed in similar clothes - and all had the same haircut.

It gets a bit down just pointing out what is wrong though. My engineering brain went into 'fix it' mode. So how do you fix inequality? The key word is 'inclusion'.

And this is where I circle back to leadership, and personal leadership. It's pretty ordinary when people are excluded for whatever reason in a workplace, whether malicious or just careless thoughtlessness. It takes a tiny bit of personal effort to make sure that a person is heard in that meeting, that person is given credit, that that person is included. And everyone then benefits when you do this. That's the extra ordinary. That's what good leaders do. A leader creates ways for people to contribute so that something extra ordinary happens.

There has been a recent rush of articles suggesting that if you just sprinkle a few women into top management positions up the top there, and shove in more female graduates in the bottom there, that you'll get diversity and therefore magically get better economic performance.

That's rubbish. Poor diversity is the outcome of poor leadership all the way through a company.

It's not my plan today to work out why good diversity gives better economic performance. I'm just focusing in on how you actually get that diversity: It's clear from my experience that it is through small moments of inclusion that happen in the everyday. And inclusion happens with good leadership.

So that's my leadership story. I continue to work on what a good leader is and how to become one. And who knows I may even manage people one day.

Dis-solution

I never actually did post my final solution did I? Guess I will post it now although originally I was coming here to post something else so I'll do that next.

My solution to the answer "Would you encourage my daughter to go into STEM?" is yes definitely but she also needs to be trained to recognise bullying, discrimination, marginalisation, victimisation and be given smart social skills with what to do about them. That could be as easy as reading a few story books where the main characters have fully adult social skills in how to deal.  Or practising a few scenarios - maybe even in a computer game? There's an idea.

Everyone is different (obvious statement). Everyone has different things that they care about, that makes them 'alive inside' (obvious statement). And you're like that from a tiny child (obvious statement).

So if an approach to this big, wide world that you start to make your way in involves an 'alive inside' that is from a direction of science and engineering, why should *anyone* take that away from you?

Screw that. Screw them.

It's part of you. Why should you deny and suppress that part of yourself? Be only half alive?

Even if I'm not "THE BEST" at it, it's a part of me. One of the ways I've been undermined that has really hurt is when I make mistakes they have pounced on these to try to show me I shouldn't be there. Or I haven't been immediately good at something. But mistakes and learning is a part of life that never stops. Despite the haters I have to keep trying.

I think it's ridiculous and cruel that girls are being shoved into STEM without being taught skills to cope with the toxic BS that they will bump into.