The Evolving Leader

‘Normalising Human Leadership’ with Nicky Lowe

• Nicky Lowe • Season 7 • Episode 17

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In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Nicky Lowe. 

Nicky started her career working for a Silicon Valley tech company during the lead up to Y2K, where the financial rewards were great but for many their own wellbeing was secondary. After having her first child Nicky experienced burnout on her return to work, as she says ‘underestimating the psychosocial factors that impact women - especially mothers in the workplace’. Nicky became extremely curious as to what had happened and as a result reimagined her approach to her career and motherhood - learning what it takes to thrive both as a leader, mother and woman and for the last 20 years, Nicky has been an executive coach specialising in helping her clients achieve success in their lives without sacrificing their health or wellbeing. 

 

Referenced during this episode:

https://luminate-group.co.uk/


Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)


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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Jean Gomes:

In an automating world, our future economic success depends on valuing and amplifying our most precious human qualities, including our capacity to bring energy, awareness, creativity, empathy and emotional conviction to our work, but to liberate these sources of value, leaders must recognise new value exchanges. If you want human energy, you have to provide the means for renewal. If you want creativity, you have to provide the space and resources to be inspired and imagined. As the personal becomes professional, we need to break down the barriers to accessing this precious set of vast interior resources that will propel our economy forward. 20 years ago, I was met with cynicism and anger by the board members of a global oil company when I showed them the evidence that their sleep was undermining their performance and long term health. Being able to function on four to five hours of sleep is my competitive advantage. One of the executives told us the reason I was there was that the data showed that the lifespan of senior executives at this company after retirement was in sharp decline. They were dying sooner today, harnessing the science of sleep is a routine part of leadership development in this show, we explore another vast source of opportunity to harness the needs of women, to enable them to bring their greatest value to the table with the wonderful Nikki low, an award winning coach who specialises in helping women leaders to succeed, tune In to a crucial conversation on The Evolving Leader.

Scott Allender:

Hi friends, welcome to The Evolving Leader the show born from the belief that we need deeper, more accountable and more human leadership to confront the world's biggest challenges. I'm Scott Allender,

Jean Gomes:

and I'm John Gomes.

Scott Allender:

Mr. Gomes, how are you feeling today? What are you bringing with you?

Jean Gomes:

I'm feeling that strange feeling of January, which is kind of a mixture of things, are a little bit quiet in some respects, and there is a looming storm of demand just about around the corner, so I'm trying to kind of get myself really ready, and I've been using this time to do a lot of thinking and preparation planning with the team and so on. So I'm really enjoying that, but I know we're going to hit a lot of stuff happening. And, you know, the world is continuing to, you know, play out in this very odd way. But some some light in there, some positive stuff that's happened this week, we hope in the Middle East. So let's just keep our fingers crossed that keeps on moving in the right direction. And I am feeling a lot of warmth and affection for our guests, because I know that we'll have a great conversation for with her. You know, we've talked in the past, and Nikki knows lots of people I know as well, and so I'm really looking forward to that. How you feeling? Scott,

Scott Allender:

ah, yeah, I'm feeling, I'm feeling pretty content today. January has been a good month so far. Felt really grateful for the time over the holidays with family and friends and feeling like the year starting off really positively from a work perspective, and yeah, just a lot of gratitude and a lot of openness and eagerness today, because I'm really excited to learn from our guest, as you've referenced, Nicky Lowe, has joined us. Nicky, for the last 20 years, has been supporting leaders and some of the world's best known organisations to thrive, both personally and professionally. She's an award winning executive coach whose focus is now increasingly on helping women leaders to thrive and create an environment in which more women can lead our organisations and institutions while enjoying positive well being. She's our own living laboratory, constantly learning and applying new tools to her own life. So she lives a life she's proud of, including being a mom and making a huge impact to all of her clients. Nicky, welcome to The Evolving Leader.

Nicky Lowe:

It's a pleasure to be here.

Jean Gomes:

Nicky, welcome to the show. How are you feeling today?

Nicky Lowe:

I'm feeling...I can really relate to what you said. Actually, Jean, I've had a lovely Christmas, had some time away with my family, and come back in January. I've created a lot of white space at the beginning of the year intentionally. So I've been enjoying that white space. Been doing thinking and planning and going fairly slow into the new year knowing that literally around the corner it ramps up. So I'm trying to put all the foundations in place to protect my well being as the year ahead looks incredibly busy, so I'm. Feeling really good. I'm feeling energised. I'm feeling really excited about this conversation. So yeah, great to be here.

Scott Allender:

Well before becoming an executive coach, as I mentioned in your in our opening remarks, you had a successful corporate career. And can we start with that like, what? What was that experience like, and how did it lead you to doing what you're doing today?

Nicky Lowe:

Yeah. So I started my career working for a Silicon Valley Tech company, and I joined in the late 90s, at a very exciting time in tech, because it was just before y 2k so if everybody remembers, we were going into year 2000 everybody thought all of these computers were going to kind of have a glitch and the world would stop. So each of our customers was upgrading all of our IT systems. So we were in this massive boom period, and it was a fantastic time to be joining it. And I worked for a really entrepreneurial company. Our founder was very much like in the same category as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Went to university with them. So is this a hugely entrepreneurial Maverick, and I worked in the UK for them, and found myself in my very early 20s being promoted into quite senior roles. So in my mid 20s, became an accidental leader, and it was a really interesting time, because professionally, it was phenomenal. I was being paid a massive salary, all of the benefits of working for, like a really kind of fast growing corporate company. I was getting to do some really exciting work. I was selling high end IT systems into big global companies, massive revenue targets. But kind of, as I say, it was this kind of booming time, and I found myself, as I say, being an accidental leader. So I was managing account teams globally, managing people twice my age, twice my experience, in quite a male dominated environment. So I had this really steep learning curve of leadership, because I found myself in a role where I kept kind of looking over my shoulder, going, somebody's going to find out I haven't got a clue what I'm doing, and they have promoted me way beyond my capability, because at that point, I didn't know what my strengths were. So I wasn't the most technical and I wasn't the most commercially savvy, I didn't really understand the value that I was bringing and what other people were seeing in me. So I found myself working harder and faster and longer to really prove to myself that I could do this. But what it meant is I got really I got really curious about, well, how can I add value as a leader? Like, what is a leader? What is leadership? What does great leadership look like? And so I went on this journey. I I'm naturally a learner. I'm a learner at heart, like I love to I just love to absorb information. So I went off and tried to read and listen and learn as much as I possibly could. And I found myself on a training course, and a fantastic training course about managing cross cultural virtual teams. And they did an hour on this two day training course on coaching, and I kind of sat there and had this epiphany moment where I realised that actually my natural leadership style had been coaching, because I couldn't tell people what to do they knew, you know, they were far more experienced than me, but actually that was my natural style as well, and it kind of planted this seed about falling in love with coaching and bringing that into my leadership and seeing the benefits of it and applying it in the real world. But it was what led me then to kind of leave that corporate environment. Was I think I knew that at some point I wanted to become a coach, but I was a bit of a corporate prisoner. I was on this massive salary. I started to build a lifestyle around that salary. We bought a house in the countryside. We were converting, and I knew that I wanted to get out, but I hadn't got a clue what I could do and what would pay me as just as well. So I kept thinking, I'll just do another year and I'll figure it out. And I was on holiday. I'd booked this kind of holiday to the Maldives. We were a week into a two week holiday, sat in Paradise, and I got a call from my brother to say that my mum had passed away, really suddenly, really unexpectedly, in her 50s. And I remember sitting in paradise, looking out, kind of just having one of those soul searching moments of like, what is this all about, like I'd built external success, but I was really kind of suffering on the inside. I wasn't enjoying it. I certainly didn't have well being. I'd become a person I didn't like, and my last interaction with my mum wasn't one that I was proud of. So I like, I really had this soul wrenching moment of what, what? What was the lesson in all of this? And I think in that moment, it was my mum's death, was a real call to say, You got to start living like this, that you cannot carry on like this. So I made a decision before it's 24 hours before I could get a flight home, and I made a decision that I was going to leave the corporate job. And. To take a, you know, invest in myself and take a risk on myself and retrain as a coach and take it from them. So that's what I did. And then, so that was 20 years ago this year, and I took a year out to qualify as an exec coach. And actually, at that point, I had a lot of resentment towards the corporate world, and thought, I just want to become a life just want to become a life coach. I just want to help other corporate prisoners, you know, find their kind of sole purpose. And I think, but at the heart of it was this piece about, how do you do work that you love, but also be able to show up personally in the way that you want to? And I think I couldn't work out at that point how how to do it, because I wasn't doing it. And very quickly I realised that I did want to work in a corporate environment, and I did want to help other people to do that. And so the last 20 years really has been about doing that, going into organisations working with high potentials, or senior executives around how do you live and work well and follow your ambitions progress in your career, but also not sacrifice your well being or sanity along the way?

Scott Allender:

You said coaching is your natural style. What do you think's behind that? What motivates that style for you?

Nicky Lowe:

A huge curiosity. I think I am curious, and I'm I'm naturally non judgmental, and like, I kind of get that each of us are different, and we think in different ways, and I'm just curious about that. So how do you see the world? How do you walk in the world, and what impact is that having? So I think it's that natural curiosity.

Jean Gomes:

And before we get into the kind of more current stuff that you're doing, I'm interested to to get a sense of in that journey. Because, yes, a long time, a lot of experience, a lot of you know, highs and lows in that can you give a sense of, you know, some of the shifts that you went through as an individual in that journey to where you are today?

Nicky Lowe:

Yeah, great question. I think what I now know looking back, but I didn't have the language for at the time, is in that corporate kind of over the last couple of years of my corporate job, I was burning out, but I didn't have the language for that, or the knowledge of what, even what that was at that point. And I think I didn't know what to do, so at the time, I'd gone out and I'd hired an occupational psychologist, I think actually help me figure out who I am and how I apply that to my work. And it wasn't particularly helpful. I actually then went and hired an executive coach, and that was transformational. But what it made me realise was I'd got alignment burnout, or lack of alignment burnout, and I realised that actually I wasn't working in alignment with my values and how important that was. So I think that start of my journey taught me this piece around what I would call core alignment. And I almost use the analogy of Pilates that you know most people kind of now know that if we want to pick up a heavy weight, it's not our muscles that do it, it's our core stability. And if we've got that kind of core strength, we can approach any weight and not injure ourselves. And I think that's what I started to learn at that point, is if you can work in alignment, you can take on the challenging roles. It's not that you need to lean back from the challenges, but if you can do it in alignment with your natural preferences, and kind of find your zone of genius with your personality and preferences and skills, and align that with your values and your purpose. Like that's really, really powerful. So I think that kind of alignment, burnout or misalignment, burnout started to teach me that. And then I thought, Oh, actually, if I just put myself into the right environment, I'll be I'll be great. And so I, you know, I set up my own business, I built it up to be really successful in those first 10 years. Was travelling the world, and then I got married and decided to have children, and I thought, I'm in a great position. Personally, I'm in a great position. Professionally, like this, this is going to be great. And at that point, I was actually working with senior female leaders and big organisations, and was helping a lot of women manage that transition into motherhood. So although I wasn't a mother at that point, I thought I was well positioned. I'd got a good perspective on this, and I look back and I don't have to laugh or cry at that naivety now, because I had my first child, who's now nearly 12. So 12 years ago, returned back to work and literally burnt out. So I got really, really ill and didn't know what was going on. Kept going to the doctors, having blood tests, and like you, just a new mum. All new mums are tired. And I was like, this is not tiredness. This is another level of kind of it was like every cell in my body had not got energy, and I just kept being told I was an Emma and I and I got to the point where I thought I must have a serious kind of illness that nobody can detect because I knew that I wasn't well. And I ended up finding somebody to go privately and get tests, and I got diagnosed. Used with adrenal fatigue. It's now not called that, but effectively, I burnt my adrenal system out, and it was a huge wake up call, because it blindsided me. Did not see it coming. And as a coach as well, I did that whole I should know better. You know, this shouldn't be happening to me. So I got fiercely curious at that point about how the hell did this happen? Because it was a two year actual recovery to get my to get my physical wellness back. So it was, it was kind of quite a long journey of kind of peeling back the layers of, how did this happen? You know, to begin with, I did that. I'm somebody that's got quite high efficacy. I've got high personal power. And I was like, obviously I didn't eat enough kale and do enough yoga and do enough meditation. And so I went down that route of, kind of beating myself up and looking at the psycho biological side first, but then started to see the psychosocial aspects of being a working mum and how that had impacted me, and how I tried to still be the ideal worker. Of, like, approaching my work like nothing else mattered, and then tried to show up as the ideal mother of, you know, I'm, you know, trying to turn up like I didn't have work and I'd kind of got squeezed in that, those two paradigms, so that then opened up my my kind of, my eyes and my awareness and my curiosity to that side. So a long kind of answer to your to your question, John, but I think what I've I've learned along the way is I'm probably predisposed to burnout. If I'm not careful, you can pretty much put me into any environment. And I am conscientious, driven. I'm a people pleaser, all of these little aspects that when you combine them, um, if I'm not careful and put the guard raids in, guard rails in place, I can push myself beyond my limits.

Scott Allender:

So knowing that, how do you what have you learned in terms of how does that inform the work you do now? How does that change how you approach your work?

Nicky Lowe:

Yeah so I used to be very much in the intellectual space, like I lived a little way from my body. I was always in my head, you know, willpower, intellect. I've become a lot more connected to my body. So that intersection that you talk about, you know how important that is, and I realised that over the years how I'd become disconnected from my body. And I think this is quite interesting in the topic we're talking about, about how I think a lot of women potentially, have become that way, because culturally and some of the experiences that we have that we tend to have to disassociate to, particularly if we're trying to show up in a male environment, and a lot of the culture is about, how can we show up as a man to succeed in a male dominated environment, we might have to disconnect from Our bodies to try and navigate in that way. So what it's taught me is to be a hell of a lot more connected to my body, my somatic awareness and practices I have to build in to stay connected, because I still notice how how disconnected I can be, and almost to protect myself from myself. Because, yeah, I have kind of daily, weekly, monthly practices that are now just non negotiables for me that I have to put in place otherwise I can find myself in the burnout kind of funnel.

Jean Gomes:

What out of all of those things, what's the kind of non negotiable? What's the most powerful one for you?

Nicky Lowe:

Oh, there's a couple of things, one of which is one you taught me, John, which is that body scan of a morning. So literally, before I get out of bed, I will intentionally go connect to your body before you do anything else. Because even getting out of bed, I can go to my to do list, right? You gotta do this like and I can power up and get into my adrenaline system kind of straight away. And then another practice I have is I've got a seven minute non negotiable, which is, I spend seven minutes every morning stretching, and if that's the only thing I can do for my body each day, it's and I it's the kind of, if I can't find seven minutes, then I almost don't deserve to have this body functioning. So I have a seven minute where I just stretch, and a part of that is keeping me flexible and agile, but also it is just intentionally going, there's a body here. Don't forget me. You.

Jean Gomes:

I mean, I think you just alluded to this idea that that we generally have become disconnected from our bodies, and there's this massive source of information out there about how to manage well being, how to you know, everything, Tiktok, YouTube, everywhere, television and so on. And without that connection, it's just knowledge. It's not never going to be actioned. But you alluded in our in an early conversation we had about the global leadership well being survey that you, you have been involved in, and I'm truly interested to understand what the data shows there about the the gap in gender well being.

Nicky Lowe:

Yeah, so the the global leadership well being survey was created to really help leaders understand about well being, and it looks at physical. Um, psychological, intellectual well being. It looks all the different sources of well being. There's 121 questions to kind of capture, how do we live and work well so it measures it in both of our personal and our professional domains. And there's about 5000 professionals and leaders that have gone and completed this survey, so we've got about around about half a million data sets that we've analysed and looked at how gender shows up in this and what we can see is that there is a significant and growing gender wellbeing gap. So we know about the gender pay gap, and we know that it's closing, but really at glacial speeds, actually the well being gaps increasing, which I find really worrying and fascinating. And what we know mostly is that it's psychological well being that's the biggest impact. So women are experiencing more stress, more anxiety, and that is mostly cultural driven. You know, women often are carrying the double shift so they're carrying most of the domestic load, even if they're senior leaders, the data shows that women still carry the majority of the domestic load in their home, that they experience more work life conflict than men often, and particularly through the pandemic, what we saw was that the social well being realising that actually women rely on social well being far more than men to kind of navigate those challenges. So we were more significantly impacted in lockdown because of that kind of isolation piece about actually it takes a village and how much we rely on our villages so and what we also know is, when we look across the decades, there's, there's a happiness paradox in that each decade where, effectively, women are getting, you know, more equality in the workplace. We have kind of more tools in the home to help us. You know, washing machines, dishwashers, actually, women's happiness is declining, and that, again, is fascinating, because, again, you would expect it to be going the opposite way, but since the 70s, it's been declining. And this piece about actually, because we can now have it all, we should be doing it all, but we're trying to do it on our own, and we're holding ourselves to really, really high standards about kind of having the perfect home, having the perfect body, but also showing up and having this phenomenal career and that squeeze of actually, conditions in society haven't really caught up with the opportunities that we now have, and how do we navigate that in a way that supports us so that that's the piece where I am really curious about, and really do a lot of my work with female leaders, about, actually, if we are going to perform at these senior levels, what do we need around us, and what are the conditions that need to be in place that we're not experiencing the kind of psychological well being decline and the happiness like I I realised that I had what I would call toxic success back in my career. On the outside it looked great, but on the inside it was it was shallow, it was hollow, and actually it was quite distressing for me. So how do we help people find that sweet success where it's sustainable, it feels good as well as kind of looks good on paper.

Jean Gomes:

Is there any difference in the generations in this survey,

Nicky Lowe:

it's an interesting it's an interesting question because I think actually, we haven't got a wide enough distribution of the generations, so I think there's a piece of research there about looking across the five generations to see that. But what we do know from things like McKinsey women in the workplace report is that more of the the younger generations that are coming through are going, I don't want to pay the cost of what we're seeing our senior female leaders pay. I'm not. I don't want to go there. So again, the data shows that every female that's making it to a senior leadership level two are deciding to step back because they're not willing to pay the cost, or it's, it's taking too much cost on them. So again, that's where we're like, actually, we're never gonna, you know, we might take one step forward, two step back this. We really need to be paying attention to this, because it's, it's, the long term impact of it is quite worrying. You

Jean Gomes:

when we talked a few weeks ago, Nicky, we talked about the four M's that we need to surface, to normalise and to solve for in transforming, forming the future of female leadership. Can we briefly outline the four M's and what the big challenges are that we need to solve across each Yeah? So

Nicky Lowe:

when we look at this, there's a really interesting debate out there about leadership development, of, should there be female leadership development, or is it just leadership development, like, it's not about fixing the women? Is it about fixing the systems? There's this really interesting debate that goes on. And actually we. Don't want to kind of go women need different leadership because they're broken in some way. But we do need to pay attention to actually, some of the psychosocial and psycho biological aspects are different. And one of those aspects is this thing that we talked about called the Four M's. And this comes from the work of a lady called Joy burnford, from encompassing quality. And she talks about, actually, for women, they will experience at least two, if not all, of these four M's, which is month list, which is the menstrual cycle, it's miscarriage, motherhood and the menopause. Now all women will have to navigate, in some way, shape or form, their menstrual cycle and the menopause, and they may choose to or may not be able to have children, so there's that in the mix along the way, but each of those has a significant impact on our well being. And as I mentioned earlier, that actually a lot of women, we've detached from our bodies, we've disassociated. It's interesting because I was running a female leader retreat, actually, with our good friend James Glover a little while ago, and just before Christmas, and we had these senior female leaders, and we were talking about, what's their experience of being a female leader in their industry? And they all kind of said, well, we don't want to be just treated differently to men. We, you know, we have a similar experience. And talked about some factors that were more kind of psychosocial around the culture. And then I asked them the question, and how does your menstrual cycle or the menopause impact this? And they were like, dumbstruck, like, literally took a breath and went, I've never considered that. And when we dived a little bit deeper, one of them responded by but I don't want that be it to be an excuse about why I can't be a leader. I don't want to be seen as weaker. I don't want it to get in the way. And I could really relate to that about and that's that disassociation piece about, yes, it's there, but it's an annoyance. It's an inconvenience. I've got to kind of I've got to detach from it, because I don't want it to hold me back or be perceived as a potential weakness. And so a lot of women, I believe, are more disconnected from their bodies because of that so and that we know has an impact on their well being and also their performance. So for a lot of women, the menstrual cycle is almost about what sanitary products do I need, and how does it affect my conception? And that's really the only attention that we'll ever pay to it. It's seen as more of an inconvenience, and what I've come to learn is actually the more that we can tap into the power of our cycle, the more powerful we can be. So women cycle, and this is a kind of it's, it's very dumbed down version of something I suppose that's a lot. Got a lot more intricacies to it. But just to keep it at a high level, women cycle on a 28 days. Men cycle over 24 hours. So you could think women are more like the moon, men are more like the sun. So it's more easy for a man to show up consistently. And I've got clients. I've got a woman I was coaching only last week, and she was frustrated that she was being inconsistent in her words. Some days she could show up and was refocused. Some days she could show up and do these client calls and was like nailing it, and then other days she didn't want to do that, she didn't want to make client calls, and she was beating herself up for being inconsistent. And I just kind of use the lens of looking through her cycle. And again, she'd never, ever done this. Because there, if you imagine the female cycle is almost like the throughout those 28 days you go through almost the seasons of a year. So you'll be in your spring, summer, autumn and winter, and each of those phases of your cycle, you bring different strengths. And what was happening for her was that she was expecting herself to show up on this 24 hour cycle and just be able to be consistent in that way, when she could tap into so in our summer, we are great for like, customer facing engagement like that. Would be a great time for me to be doing a podcast, public speaking. You know, that type of customer interaction in our winter, we're much better at interception, reflection, just going inward and listen to in our intuition and just knowing that a it stops you beating yourself up for not being this kind of robot that can just show up con, you know, consistently. In that way, it also allows you to harness the power of where your cycle's at and just connect to your body. So, for example, my personal trainer now, I've educated him on my cycle at different points in my cycle, we do different training regime, and there'll be times when I'm really good at working out, and there's going to be times when I'm better at working in both need movement, but there's different types of movement, and there's a lot of research coming out about this now. And so the more that we can tap into that, I think the more powerful we can be in terms of our own well being and our performance.

Jean Gomes:

I love the. Love any kind of way of thinking about things that gives people a greater sense of control over what's happening. What can we? Can we flip it for a second in this conversation? Just think about, you know, what's in it for the man in this relationship, either you know, partner, colleague, friend, how do, how do we make it? You know, not just about what I have to do as a woman to kind of take control of this, yeah, and

Nicky Lowe:

I think for men, just even listening to this, just hopefully, just having that awareness may spark some kind of interest and curiosity. I, I was always taught growing up that treat people how you like to be treated, and that's a really good thing. And I, you know, always held on to that as a value until I learnt more about human behaviour, and I realised actually, if I treat you how i like treated, I'm assuming you're like me. So I think for any man listening, it's just not assuming that you experience the world in the same way as anybody you know, male, female or whatever you know, just that getting curious about what somebody else's experience is, knowing that actually people might experience the world in a different way. And I think, you know, if you take it as somebody that's a partner, just recognising that, oh, you know, I think men can often see women as this well, like you're just, one day you're this, and one day you're that, and just knowing that that's psycho biologically, that's something that happens for for us, and it's, you know, it's part of our power and probably our confusion that we might create if you were somebody's partner, and just asking, because, as my experience, my cycle were very different to another woman's cycle. So just getting curious and being compassionate, you know, in that curiosity, and I think as leaders again, recognising that there's some huge super powers, and if you can give be inclusive in just again, recognising, and this isn't just for women, because the more we know, the more human workplaces are, the more it benefits everybody. So just again, recognising that people are having different experiences. How can we understand that and leverage it for performance and well being?

Scott Allender:

It seems there's so much taboo around a topic like this that it's preventing the education and that sort of knowledge, right? I'm learning from you right now, but you know, in other environments that would feel like a taboo subject. So how do we break through in an appropriate way, kind of some of these taboos? It's

Nicky Lowe:

a really great question. And I was saying to to John, I've got a post that I've been sitting on, literally and wondering whether to post about my own cycle and putting it out on kind of LinkedIn and just like, Oh, that feels really kind of courageous to do it, and it's like, oh, isn't that interesting? You know, just that, because it is such a taboo, and I think for women, there's probably a lot of shame attached to it, and that piece of, I don't want to be perceived as different, and we're already trying to struggle in a kind of, you know, patriarchal world, you know, does it add another kind of nuance to that? But I think it comes back to all the stuff that we know about great leadership, about how do we create psychologically safe environments where people can show up as their full selves and have the kind of conversations that we know are going to support us to do our best work and have the best impact. So I think if we think about it generally like that, I think the more that we can as leaders, role model that and show it ourselves and our full humanness and be vulnerable. I think it helps to shift that forward. And I think it takes people, you know, and I say this, it takes people, and it's making me go. I just need to share this post and be willing to take that risk, to go. Actually, if we start talking about it. How can we start to shift the conversation in a helpful way, in an appropriate way? You know, not over sharing, but sharing enough that kind of just raises awareness.

Jean Gomes:

Yeah, I mean, I'm I think this is a brilliant conversation. I think, you know, what gives me hope around this is that there has been progress in and rapidly picking up across lots of different domains. There's probably a whole bunch of, you know, kind of huge, historical, political, religious, all sorts of things that are kind of holding this back on so many different levels. And it's easier not to talk about because of that. Yeah, but you know when we when we think about the topic of menopause, that's recently become more discussed topic in any healthy way. Where do you feel we're on the journey to normalising and positively adapting around that one? Yeah,

Nicky Lowe:

I think, you know, the data that we're now getting is really supporting this. So I think that the stats for just the UK alone is there are around 900,000 women that are have set back from the workforce because of their menopause, either because of symptoms or because of the lack of support. And so it's significant numbers, and I think companies are now recognising that. And I think for me, there's this piece. About, actually, when we're hitting that as an age, as women, we've got all this wisdom, all this experience that's so valuable, that's kind of getting lost. And there's a whole again, cultural piece around, you know, we don't honour women ageing as much as we honour men ageing. So there's this whole kind of, there's layers to this, as you've said, cultural, religious, political, all of that piece. But I think now we're getting more data and the lights being shone on it. I think what we're seeing is that organisations recognising, if we're getting these women that get into leadership positions in that kind of midlife, and they're bringing all that expertise and wisdom, and we're and we're losing it, there's like a massive leak in the leadership pipeline for females. How do we start to address it? So the conversations that are going on and the organisations that are doing awareness raising, I think it's fantastic. I think again, the fact that we're creating the environments where we're having those conversations about actually, what is it that we need? What is the support, whether it be the healthcare support, whether it be just kind of the human conversations that say, what do you need right now, I think it's interesting because I talk about AI is my perimenopause partner. Like, AI is brilliant for me when I'm in my brain fog and I just need, kind of help me, help me launch my thoughts. Like, I think AI is going to be phenomenal for that. And I was only having a conversation with some uni, old uni friends on WhatsApp, and we were all saying that. But like, actually, this midlife and AI colliding is pretty good. We can use this well. So I think it definitely is something that needs to be addressed, because we will, we will see a real negative impact over time, if we don't, and you know, 50% of the population will go through it so and the fact that organisations are recognising that, I think, is great. But again, it comes down to, are we creating the environments where we can have the kind of conversations, where we can address it in a safe and appropriate way and get the performance impact that we're all looking for.

Jean Gomes:

I'm guessing the kind of the the another driver around that will be the ageing workforce. Absolutely, the population is changing dramatically from a composition perspective, so become something that there's going to be more opportunity around as much. Yeah, and that

Nicky Lowe:

kind of loops back to one of the other ends, which is around the motherhood piece, because we're still seeing a huge motherhood penalty in the workplace. We the statistics show that 60% of the gender pay gap is down to the to the motherhood penalty. We're seeing huge maternal bias still in the workplace. And actually what it's meaning is more women when they become mums feel that the only option is to to to kind of downgrade their career or or lean out completely, or the gender next generations are kind of going, I'm not going to have children because I can't, I can't see how I can make this all work. So when you look at we've got an ageing workforce and we've got a lowering birth rate, it's, you know, that's, it becomes a real, really difficult kind of societal thing for us to navigate, because economically and just, are there going to be enough to people to support the the the ageing population? So, you know, from a purely selfish perspective, we need to address kind of motherhood in the workplace and parenthood more generally, because it's still a huge issue.

Scott Allender:

The third M you mentioned is an incredibly painful one for many, which is miscarriage. How should we be talking about what do we need to be discussing in this topic? Yeah,

Nicky Lowe:

I think it's another real taboo subject. So the statistics show that that one in five pregnancies ends in miscarriage, but what we we think is actually that number is far higher, but often a miscarriage happens before there's kind of a known pregnancy. So there's a really high percentage that might navigate this at any point myself, I actually had recurrent miscarriage. So I had a my eldest is 12, and I then had recurrent miscarriages, and was told that I'd got secondary infertility, that I couldn't have another child. And luckily, I went on to have another child. I've got a six year old, but and when I started talking about it, realising how many of my friends and how many other women had experienced miscarriage, and again, it's a very unique it's a very unique experience, depending on you know, just your where you are, who you are, personally, where that miscarriage might happen in a in a in a Pregnancy, but just knowing that that is happening to potentially a significant amount of women and they again, how are we going to support that? Because if it's happening, whether we know it or not, it's having an impact, whether we know it or not, and just somebody feels safe to share that and then for ask what they need to get to. Through that and feel supported, or are they going through it and silently suffering and and that, from a human perspective, is not right, but also from an organisational performance, will be having an impact. But how are we creating an environment where we can, we can raise those subjects and just let people know that they're that they feel safe to voice it and feel supported. A lot of organisations are putting in policies around baby loss, around kind of miscarriage, around those kind of areas to say, look, there's policies in place that you are supported. You can take time off, you can get the support you need, and we're here to support you. So just recognising that that will be an issue. If you employ women, yeah, the woman will be going through but even if you don't, you know the the Father will be going through it and having their own experience as well.

Sara Deschamps:

If the conversations we've been having on The Evolving Leader have helped you in any way. Please share this episode with your network, friends and family. Thank you for listening. Now let's get back to the conversation.

Jean Gomes:

So on to motherhood. The counterpoint to to this, which is the joy of all of that, but it also brings a whole bunch of new realities, and there has been some progress and in this also some weird things, you know, like, but we won't mention the name of the investment bank, but paying, you know, high potential women to freeze their eggs so that they don't they don't leave the workplace. What's your state of the nation on on motherhood and work?

Nicky Lowe:

The state, for me is that it's promising and it looks optimistic, but we're still in pretty dire, kind of archaic situations still. So what we know from the data of people like pregnant and Scrooge the UK charity have done some massive kind of work in this area, that, as I said, you know, 60% of the pay gap is down to the motherhood penalty. So when a woman reaches child bearing age, even if she's not yet had children, she often will be impacted by this. So we know that if somebody gets engaged, for example, it will be assumed that they'll get married and have children, and therefore might not be given promotional opportunities, that once somebody becomes a mum, they're deemed as less competent, less capable and less committed. So therefore they are passed over for promotion, or they are negatively assessed in their performance reviews. There's all this unconscious bias that exists that people might not even be aware of even exists in their own kind of mindset. But from my own experience and working with 1000s of women in this area, is that it is a it is what I would term a vertical development transition. So, you know, we do have these horizontal development transitions where we gain skills or we get promoted sidewards, but kind of when we know that we have a promotion, it's seen as a vertical development where we might be going from an individual contributor to a manager, or a manager to a kind of functional leader. It's recognised that there's a change in values, beliefs, identity, and that support needs to be put in place to enable that smooth transition and really support that person. And I very much see the transition into motherhood and parenthood in that way. You know, values often shift, our identity shifts, and for some people, that is a fairly smooth transition. But for a lot of people, it's not, particularly when the environment is not deemed to be supportive, particularly if they've built their career up to that point on strategies of what I would call the ideal worker. You know, I just work all the hours it takes to get the job done, and kind of nothing distracts me from it, and then all of a sudden they're like, oh, that's either no longer what I want to do, or it's no longer sustainable. It's, yeah, I'm paying a cost, or my family's paying a cost. And how do we make that transition to work in a different way that supports us, still performing at work, but also living well if we've, if we've sacrificed that part to have our success. And I think unless people are really supported through that transition, it's incredibly hard. And I see the mostly women really, really suffering in that transition, either paying the personal well being cost of it or fighting an uphill battle to have the authority and credibility that they once had in the workplace and been able to progress their career effectively. Where are

Scott Allender:

you seeing examples of practices and organisations that are doing this really well and aren't unintentionally, but, you know, potentially furthering polarisation and sort of creating more taboos in the in the fact that they're trying to take this on in a healthy way. Where are you seeing successes, the

Nicky Lowe:

great successes around organisations that are putting in equal parenting policy? So they're not kind of going, Oh, as a mother, you will get all this maternity leave, but as a father, you'll get two weeks. The progressive organisations are going, right, as a parent, we are empowering you to choose how you do that as a family and that as a father, you have the same rights as a mother. And you know, organisations have taken huge risks and leaps and investment on this, but they're absolutely paying off. I mean, people like John Lewis partnership in the UK are doing phenomenal work around this. So those equal parenting policies are really important. But alongside that, policies alone are not are not enough. It's the education of leaders and line managers, because what we know is men that have asked for shared parentally, for example, experience the fatherhood forfeit of they're then deemed as well you're not committed to your career. So there's an education around the bias that still exists. So kind of I run a programme called parenthood management matters about how do you manage parents in the workplace effectively, and remove those unconscious bias around you know, if you've got somebody that's a single parent, the support you they need is slightly different, versus also solo parents. That might not be kind of co parenting. They are literally the sole parent. You know that the support and resources they need are different, and every family system is different. So just that, again, that curiosity and compassion to go, you're a human. You have a life outside work. I don't expect you to leave it at the door. The more people that can parent out loud, I think is really important as leaders, to go actually, I'm going to go and do the school pickup today and not kind of feel that you've got to kind of move side with that of a meeting and hope nobody notices for fear that you're going to be judged for not being committed. So those are the things that we're seeing done really well around equal parenting policies, the education and unconscious bias training of leaders and managers and just that more human approach to how do we let people show up as their full selves?

Scott Allender:

Let's build on that a little bit, because we have listeners listening right now who may not have direct influence over policy changes. So for somebody listening who says, I want to make changes on my own team, I want to influence these kinds of things, but I'm not in charge in that way. What What are, what's some advice you have for those leaders? Well,

Nicky Lowe:

I think there's, there's a, like a micro level around, you know, as a leader, how do I create the culture within my micro team that we can have those conversations? You know, I know people that work in organisations, organisations that might not be supportive, but they've created their own own like micro climate, where they're like, actually, this is how I want to lead and show you that I'm a human and I'm going to respect you and give you the autonomy to get the work done. How you do it is up to you and how you choose to use your hours to do that. I'll measure your output and the impact you have. I'm not going to measure the hours you'll hear, and that might go counter to the culture of the organisation, but they've created those micro environments. But even if they're not a leader, just to kind of start to share, if it feels safe to kind of go, this is, this is how my life works. You know, thinking of one of my clients, she she took the leap of she was a female in a very male dominated industry. So she was one of the few onlys. So only females was one of the few only kind of parents, and one of the few kind of only solo parents. And she started to just drip feed and just kind of go, just to let you know, like I, I don't have any flexibility in that way, and her, her, her leader, was trying to be really helpful in putting policies in place, but he didn't understand the lived experience of being a solo parent, so she just started to kind of slowly and gently educate him not to say, you know, I deserve and I need, but just let you know this is the kind of stuff I'm having to navigate, and this is why it Sometimes might be seen as a little bit more difficult. I think that can work really well. Other things that I'm seeing done really well is where people are setting up kind of employee resource groups to start these conversations going. So it might be around kind of working parents, or working parents and carers, or, you know, it can be around, you know, working parents with neurodivergent children, and I've seen kind of these little pockets of Employee Resource Groups pop up, where you're finding your tribe. You're creating safe environments where you're kind of normalising the shared experience. That can work incredibly well to then make more of a macro impact, but you're kind of creating your own kind of micro initiatives that support it.

Jean Gomes:

I think, you know, one of the intergenerational challenges is always to try and it's not to kind of go well, this generation is different. It's also to recognise this generation is exactly the same, but in different contexts. Yeah, a lot of the time, sure, there are differences, but. That's the bit we as leaders, we often forget. And I think bringing up children, particularly is such a traumatic experience in terms of sleep deprivation and new stuff and conflicting commitments and so on, that it's almost as if you just desperately want to forget it. Yeah. And so when, when you, you know your your kids have left the house and so on, there's a part of you that's sort of free again, and you see other people going through it, and you're sort of going, Well, wait and see what's really going to be like, and so on. So I think there's, there's probably an element here of remembering and sort of tuning back into that to be a great leader in this. Does that strike you as being, you know, something that we need to kind of,

Nicky Lowe:

yeah, and I think that's a really, really interesting point, because I think it can both serve us, but be unhelpful in that. Recognising our own humanness, I think, is so important in that. But what as what we see play out a lot, actually, with female leaders. So often the the maternal bias and the motherhood penalty that women experience, the data shows that it's often more from other female leaders with this thing of I suffered. So why should you have it easier forward? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, you see that potentially a lot. I've heard a lot of stories from the legal profession about I had to, you know, hire a Nami. Never see my children. Why should you be able to see your children and work from home and work flexibly? And it's almost like I've paid the cost, and you you have to as well. And so I think that bringing your own experience to it can be helpful, but can also be unhelpful. And just knowing that and paying attention to it, I think is really, you know, is really important. That's

Jean Gomes:

really useful to kind of bring back that kind of sacrifice mindset point, what's next for you? What? What's the next kind of challenge that you're leaning into? At the moment,

Nicky Lowe:

I'm doing a lot around, as I said, female kind of leadership. And for me it's, I'm developing a female leadership development programmes, but that really, really are dial down into evidence based that make a real life difference. Because I think there's a lot of great programmes out there, but I think there's still a long way that we can go that's bringing in the changes in the workplace, the changes in what we're learning from neuroscience, from our psycho biology, from kind of all the menopause data and all of the information that we've got to create something really, really impactful. So I'm currently in the process of designing and working and collaborating around that

Scott Allender:

wonderful how can people get in contact with you, Nicky, so

Nicky Lowe:

I'm on LinkedIn. Nicky Lowe, on LinkedIn. So n, i, c, k, y, l, O, W, E, Nicky Lowe, my business is illuminate. So, l, u, M, I, N, A, T, illuminate. Hyphen, group.co.uk, and you can find kind of all the information over there.

Jean Gomes:

Brilliant. Well, we'll put that in the show notes so that people can quickly get hold of you. I found this incredibly illuminating, and it's made me think in lots of different directions. So thank you, and I'm sure people listening now, yeah, but we'll really appreciate the contribution you making into this, this conversation. Thank you. Well,

Nicky Lowe:

thank you for inviting me, and it's been a pleasure.

Scott Allender:

All right, folks, until next time, remember the world is evolving. Are you?

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Jean Gomes

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Scott Allender

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