74. Mike Nicholson: Progressive Masculinity (and why boys do want to talk)

Wild Card - Whose Shoes? Podcast | Mike Nicholson: Progressive Masculinity (and why boys do want to talk)

What if the real issue isn’t that boys don’t talk - but that we rarely create spaces where they feel safe enough to?

In this episode, I’m joined by Mike Nicholson, former English teacher and founder of Progressive Masculinity. I first heard Mike speak at an education conference in Wolverhampton organised by Sarah Milne, and his session stayed with me long afterwards - especially the powerful “mask” exercise exploring how young men feel they must appear versus how they really feel.

Drawing on nearly two decades in the classroom, Mike shares what he saw: thoughtful, capable boys quietly limiting themselves to fit narrow expectations of masculinity - and what changed when they were simply given permission to talk.

We explore:

• Why the idea that boys don’t talk is a myth
• The impact of safe, non-judgemental spaces
• Early intervention and “upstream” prevention
• Online rabbit holes and algorithm-driven risks
• Helping boys decide what kind of men they want to become
• A values-led approach to confidence, identity and belonging

There are strong echoes here of my #CYPWhoseShoes work - listening deeply, understanding different perspectives, and recognising that real change is often felt before it can ever be measured.

🎧 If you have boys or young men in your life - as parents, teachers, grandparents or colleagues - this conversation is well worth a listen.

🍋💡🍋 Lemon Lightbulbs from this episode

• Boys don’t avoid talking - they avoid judgement.
• The gap between the “outside mask” and inside feelings is often huge.
• Prevention starts with belonging, not behaviour management.
• Algorithms can take curiosity to harmful places faster than adults realise.
• Listening with young people changes everything.
• Some of the most important outcomes can’t be captured on a spreadsheet.
• If we remove unhealthy spaces, we must create healthier ones.
• Values help young people navigate peer pressure.
• Supporting boys and empowering girls are not opposing goals.
• There isn’t one way to be a man - only the freedom to become yourself.

Links

Progressive Masculinity

Whose Shoes?

Our #CYPWhoseShoes project

Men and boys' champions

#WhoseShoes #WildCardWhoseShoes #CYPWhoseShoes #Belonging #Education #MentalHealth #EarlyIntervention

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Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care. 

Transcript

Mike Nicholson podcast – transcript
 
 Gill Phillips  0:00  

My name is Gill Phillips, and I'm the creator of whose shoes, a popular approach to coproduction. I was named as an HSJ 100 wild card, and want to help give a voice to others talking about their experiences and ideas. I love chatting with people from all sorts of different perspectives, walking in their shoes. If you are interested in the future of health care, and like to hear what other people think, or perhaps even contribute at some point, wild card who shoes is for you. 

Gill Phillips  0:47  

So we're back today with another wild card who shoes podcast, and I'm delighted to welcome Mike Nicholson. We're going to be talking about progressive masculinity. What's that I hear you say, Well, I heard Mike give an extraordinary presentation on this topic at an education event I attended in Wolverhampton. It has stuck with me. It has haunted me. That is why I invited Mike to be a podcast guest today and to share his story, and I was delighted when he agreed anyone with young men or boys in their lives, which is pretty much all of us, needs to stop in their tracks and listen here. It is often common wisdom that boys and men don't like to talk well. My experience from our whose shoes workshops is that this is rubbish. You just need to create safe, non judgmental spaces, and everyone likes to talk and to be heard. So Mike is an English teacher by background, and he saw the impact of this stereotyping on the young men in his classes, mental health, relationships, aspirations for the future and so on. As a mother and a grandmother of boys and indeed, with two sons who are teachers themselves, I saw just how important this topic is, and I was fascinated to learn more. So welcome, Mike, thank you so much for agreeing to be a podcast guest today. Can you tell us a bit more about yourself and introduce us to progressive masculinity?

Mike Nicholson 2:28  

Yeah, no. First off, thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure to be here for the kind words about the talk in Wolverhampton. So as you mentioned, I was an English teacher for 18 years, and it was during that time that I became really aware of how many amazing boys, how many amazing young men were sabotaging themselves? When I say sabotaging, I mean their mental health, their relationships, their academics, everything in order to look the way they thought they were supposed to look in order to live up to these kind of narrow scripts of masculinity they've been handed down to them the performance of masculinity. So that's really what got me interested in. It was never meant to be an escape from teaching. It was never meant to be a business plan. It was just something that I thought, These boys need a space to be able to engage with this. So seven years ago, while So still a teacher, I went to the head, and I said to head, you know these boys, would you mind if I put something together? Would you back me on it? And he said, Yeah, of course. So they started off as a lunchtime drop in. Really casual. Yeah, that's just crazy how it started. As you can imagine, everyone laughed and said, you know, boys want to be out playing football. They don't want to be in a room with you talking about whatever. But within a month, we actually had a queue of boys down the corridor trying to get into this drop in. And there was no agenda. It wasn't a lesson. It was, bring your lunch. We'll chat about whatever you want to chat about, will slightly relax the rules so you can, you know, be really honest in what you want to say. And then we have to do two different drop ins, one for the older boys and one for the younger boys, because some of the stuff they wanted to talk about was very different, and that's really what thought, like you said earlier, this idea that boys and men don't like to talk, it is a load of rubbish, like we do love to talk. It's just so rare that we have access to a space that is safe and non judgmental. And what we found with boys who went through early versions of our program was that actually they had better attendance, lower exclusion rates, more reward points or house points. It was having these kind of sessions were having a huge holistic benefit on their whole life. So that's when I left and set up progressive masculinity. And the word progressive, I think, is a bit of a yellow flag for some people. Kind of comes with connotations of woke snowflake. And I don't even know what those words mean anymore, but in some people's minds, that's what they link it to. Progressive masculinity is not about teaching boys how to be men. I'm very, very uncomfortable with that framing. It's, I think it's arrogant. I think it's restrictive, presumptuous. Who am I to teach anyone how to be a man? Progressive masculinity is all about helping boys realize they've got the agency to challenge these narrow scripts of masculinity and design this wonderful man, friend, partner, Father, that they want to be in the future. We always say we're not here to teach you how to be men, lads. We're here to help you think. About what kind of man you want to be and how we can help you become that man.

Gill Phillips  5:04  

Yeah, it's incredibly powerful. I remember, you know, as you're talking various things you talked about in Wolverhampton and the mask, things like that, really stick with people. I think that's a great speaker, because it's so easy to give a good talk, and people, you know at the time. Think it's really significant, but it's what you remember, isn't it? You know, a month after, or a few months afterwards. And the image, I think you showed some photos of the mask with the boys writing on the outside how they felt they wanted to be perceived, or needed to be perceived, and then writing on the inside how they really felt, is that an accurate reflection?

Mike Nicholson 5:43  

Yeah, that's that's so that activity is called the masculine living, and it's all about the performative nature of masculinity. So our work is research based. We're connected to pretty much all the leading academics. But I don't just want to come and present research. That's part of it. I also want to come and present this is what boys are saying to us on the shop floor, the media representation of boys and young men, I do not recognize it in the young men that we work with. You know, the constant demonization of boys and young man the refrain of toxic masculinity is this, this deficit based approach to masculinity, where masculinity is broken. It needs fixing. And no wonder so many boys and young men feel a bit frustrated and disenfranchised. So so this mask activity on the outside, like you said, the boys represent how they want to be seen. On the inside, they write down what they wouldn't want people to know. One of the best parts of the program is when the boys choose to read the inside of their mask out to everyone else that they wouldn't want people to see, and when they say things like, you know, I don't like my body, I don't think I'm mostly enough, or I'm not as confident as I appear to be. But when they read the inside of their mask out, and they don't have to, it's up to them whether they choose to share that every other boy in the room, you can see them this massive sense of relief, like I'm not the only one other people. I thought it was just me, and it produces this wonderful kind of brotherhood and support in the room. But we always say the same two things to the boys, nothing on the inside of your mask makes you less of a man, absolutely nothing. But you shouldn't be the only person in the world who knows about it. So a big part of this work is, how can we as parents and educators and caring people, how can we create spaces where boys feel like they could drop the outside of the mask and show us the inside?

Gill Phillips  7:19  

Yeah, it's it's so powerful. And I've seen some of the posts you've put on LinkedIn with some of the comments that the young men have made after the sessions, and that must be so rewarding. I think just simple comments about the first time I've been felt really kind of safe and listened to,

Mike Nicholson 7:38  

yeah, and that's, that's one of the major frustrations that boys and young men have is that they feel like everyone talks about them, but people don't really talk with them, and it's just quite, it's quite a simple thing to just to sit and give them space and say, you know, like you said earlier, I'm gonna make you feel seen, heard and buried. I'm gonna challenge it. You know, if we're if we're exhibiting unhealthy or harmful attitudes, that we are going to learn how to challenge each other. Let's learn how to challenge each other in a way that is healthy, in a way that doesn't escalate. Because actually, we should be able to challenge each other. We should be able to hold each other and ourselves to account.

Gill Phillips  8:11  

Yeah, and I think something else that stuck with me, and the fact that I came along and I saw you in Wolverhampton, and it was immediately after Stephen Russell's talk, and Stephen's someone I've linked him with close to and recorded a podcast with. And the link was around getting things more upstream, and if the result for certain of these children in care, you know, was the, obviously, the main topic that Stephen was talking about, or just boys who are disadvantaged in some ways or don't get these opportunities. If the result is ultimately prison or non attendance at school or disengagement or not feeling you can fulfill yourself with academic results and so on. What can you do upstream to prevent those outcomes. I think all my work really is around what can we do in terms of prevention and early intervention? And in a lot of the work, I do non medical stuff, rather than just superficial solutions, pills or 100% attendance targets or whatever it might be. That's easy to count, but it's not about counting stuff. It's about, you know, finding out what motivates people really.

Mike Nicholson 9:27  

Yeah, this. This is social and emotional learning. And social and emotional learning is very difficult to quantify knowing a spreadsheet or in a graphic. It's expressed more in the comments. Like you mentioned earlier, the things that boys say to you afterwards, think boys, maybe the kind of boys who wouldn't normally say those things Same to you, and that's when you know you've had the impact. But the upstream strategy is absolutely central to our work, and that's something that we're working with the government at the moment. So we, for the last 12 months, we've been acting as government consultants to help shape national policies around boys and young men and the downstream. Statistics on masculinity, and boys and men are very, very concerned. We underachieve at every single stage of our education. We are three times more likely to be excluded from school. And there's that exclusion to prison pipeline that is very established. We're more likely to be homeless, addicted to substances, go to prison, suicide. But at the moment, as a society, we're looking at all of those things as if they're in separate silos, and they're not there, they're not neutral, they're connected by men. So what we're trying to do is go upstream and ask questions like, What is it about the male experience in our society that produces those kind of outcomes? What is it about the constructs and our understanding of masculinity, and not just the boys and men? Everyone you know, parents, business leaders, policymakers, these constructs around masculinity. What is it about those constructs that is leading to those kind of outcomes? So if we can put an effective upstream strategy in, it actually mitigates a lot of those downstream factors.

Gill Phillips  10:55  

Yeah, and I think for girls as well. I mean, the whole kind of stereotyping of the agendas is very, very unhelpful, isn't it? And you know, boys are idiots, or, you know, girls, we know whatever it is, and I think it is what, what we what society, what schools, you know, can do early enough, because you see little children together, and they're just so lovely, aren't they? You know, there's no question of spotting differences. You know, they whoever they are, whatever visible differences, racial differences, gender, whatever it is, little children are just so accepting. So Is it them growing up, or is it society's expectations that, you know, makes it so that it's almost embarrassing to be accepting and softer and I mean, I remember you talking about and this is something that interests me, because I love poetry, and I use a lot of poetry in my work, and also music. And as an English teacher, if you have boys in your class who clearly loved poetry, but it's not a cool thing perhaps to be into, yeah.

Mike Nicholson 12:07  

So this, this is what we call the constant negotiation of risk. So a boy's experience of the education sister is a juggling of risk factors. So I know lots and lots of boys who I can tell from their exercise books really enjoy Shakespeare or poetry or, you know, things that are stereotypically not seen as masculine, but they will not show it in a lesson. They won't engage. They won't put the hand up. They won't give opinions. And the reason for that is, in their mind, they're thinking, if I show any enthusiasm here for this academic subject, I'm going to get, you know, socially isolated, socially targeted. You know, socially, even physically at lunchtime, which they want to protect themselves from, understandably, but they're also clever enough to know that if they don't engage academically, that will hurt them in the exams, that will hurt their, you know, applications for apprenticeships or colleges. So there is no way for that poor boy to win. The question is, how do I lose least badly, and the way that you lose least badly is by disengaging academically, protecting yourself in the short term, and taking whatever long term hit may come, which is incredibly sad. We're trying to produce cultures where boys think being academically aspirational is actually a very masculine thing to do, and actually your masculinity is in no way affected by your interests and hobbies? No, there are boys who are into not. Every boy is into sport, if you are fantastic, but there are boys who are into musical theater, guitars, cars. These are all healthy interests, and none of them have anything to do with your masculinity.

Gill Phillips  13:34  

Yeah, yeah. So what about Okay? Social media. How does that help? It doesn't. And since, since we spoke before, the Australians have actually banned social media for under 16. So, you know, very much topical in the news.

Mike Nicholson 13:49  

Yeah, yeah, it is an we, one of the things we were consulting on was the Online Safety Act, which is coming in in three parts, and the first part came in over the summer, which, you know, required age verification for pornography, and it was a step in the right direction, but it wasn't far enough. Yeah, I'm really, I'm really not sure where I stand with the Australian social media banks. A massive part of me thinks this is amazing. They're taking action. This is exactly what we need to protect the clearly harmful effects on young people. But then another part of me thinks I've seen so much positive I've seen so many amazing things, and, you know, so many positive connections formed through social media. That is this a 19th century solution to a 21st Century problem we set we slap ourselves on the map being such a clever society, is there not a middle ground where we can keep the benefits of digital interaction, but actually protect them from the more harmful is it? Surely, with our clever society, we can, we can achieve that that I'm really not sure where, where I stand with this, because, like I said, part of me loves the band, and part of me thinks I'm sure there's a better way.

Gill Phillips  14:50  

Yeah, and it's so it's so definite, isn't it? I mean, if you're I tend to think perhaps, as a grandmother and of younger children, you know, if we, if. We went in that direction that would keep them safe, and they've never been exposed to that world of screens and social media and so on. But if you've got a 14 or 15 year old who's more tech savvy than you are, and you know it's got their own Tiktok channel, or whatever it might be, you know, it's not something that in terms of immediately just imposing a ban on one day. It's far more nuanced than that, isn't it?

Mike Nicholson 15:27  

But it is, and we all know that overly rigid systems produce sneaky children. That's what it produces. So I mean, three months before age verification for pornography came in, three months before that, we were having boys telling us which VPN was the best to get around that it made me really that ban has not stopped anyone from watching pornography. People just downloaded VPN to get around it. So, yeah, this this kind of band. But also I'm really concerned about the vacuum that that will create. If you're going to bring in a social media ban, you then have to counter that with more support for the youth sector, more opportunities for people to do, because with the youth center in this country, it's been absolutely devastated. You're very lucky if you've got a youth center close to you. Sports Clubs are closed and left Horizon Center, the local pitches have been sold off for housing developments or retail. So many boys that we work with, say, Mike, your generation hates us for being on our phones and our tablets. But where are we supposed to go? What are we supposed to do? So if you are going to restrict people, or young people from social media to protect them, you then have to invest in something healthier to take its place. If you leave a void, I'm not sure something healthy is going to be filled by that void.

Gill Phillips  16:33  

Yeah, that's so interesting. The work that I've been doing over the last four or five years now is we've called it CYP whose shoes, and we've been working with Staffordshire, and it's just been brilliant. We've absolutely loved it, and it's been a project that's developed and naturally gone, you know, organically from one topic to another topic and so on. And we've ended up with, I think it's 45 new poems, and one of them is about … your world isn't my world. So when you tell me that you weren't on screens in your day, you lived in a different world. And I think people have found that just revealing really or you suddenly get what we call lemon light bulb moments whereby it's so easy to just, you know, sit back in your chair and say, Oh, we didn't do that in our day. We used to speak to our grandparents, and we used to, you know, all the old fashioned stuff, but we didn't have these addictive devices. We also had, you know, families where people sat round tables and spoke to each other, because that's, that's what you did, and that was what was available to do, really. So it's very easy to stereotype, isn't it, and just put things in easy boxes, but it's so complex. I mean, it's proper whose shoes territory, isn't it? Yeah, in terms of looking at things from different perspectives,

Mike Nicholson 17:56  

it's really fascinating, yeah, and I think that's absolutely key. I think there is a tendency for our generations to create a nostalgic view of a wonderful past that maybe wasn't actually like that either. And I think having that empathy based approach, where you think, what must it be like to be a 1415, year old today, in today's world, I mean sitting down and listening to them, really. And when you do sit down and listen to them, I think what they communicate are a lot of very, very valid concerns. You know, it's very rare that someone says something our workshop, we're thinking, Where does that come from? I know. I think, wow, from your point of view, I can see why that is a big issue for you. And I'm not sure there's quite enough of that going on, you know. Oh, you're so lucky. We didn't have iPads and we were younger, you know, we were off climbing trees. And our generation can be guilty of that sometimes,

Gill Phillips  18:44  

yeah, and I think, I mean, Tim was referring back to the talk that I heard before, and specifically about social media. And when I used the word that it haunted me, which is, you know, obviously a strong word, but the part that really did sort of haunt me, in a way, was learning, because I didn't know this, just how vulnerable young men or children, young people can be, in terms of, you've got your phone, you've got social media, you've got the internet and so On, how few clicks it takes, and how little intention to end up very quickly in a very bad place. And that shocked me to the core, really, because I kind of knew a bit about that, but you gave very specific examples, and I learned a lot.

Mike Nicholson 19:35  

Yeah, these rabbit holes are algorithmically designed to be very, very slippery, and you go down them very, very quickly. And we are not doing enough as a society and as a government to legislate against big tech, because big tech are profiting from this kind of stuff. And again, what we try and promote is this idea that we are going to hold boys and young men to account for their behaviors. But can we do it through a sympathetic lens? Because actually a lot of this is stacked the system stacked against them as. Showed in that talk, you can create a Tiktok account at 15, and just because you are a 15 year old boy, it will automatically recommend quite harmful content. And if you engage with that, even if it's just out of curiosity, the amount that you're recommended will increase rapidly. You'll go down increasingly kind of severe ideologies, until you're looking at some stuff that is really gender ideology that is really extremely harmful, kind of black pill kind of mentality. Actually, you didn't do a lot wrong. It's just that the system was set up against you. And it's that kind of thing that I think non digital natives, I wouldn't know that if this wasn't my space. And you know, all of our parent and teacher sessions are very sympathetic from the perspective of the parent and teacher. You know, if you're an accountant, a builder, an electrician, you're not going to know this. Why would you? So here's how the system is set up against your young people, and here's how you can help protect them. Is, is the angle that we come from with our staff training, right?

Gill Phillips  20:53  

And, you know, I think I heard that that if I was trying to learn more and set up a Tiktok account, or, you know, I've got an Insta account, or whatever it might be that my algorithms would be set for a woman of a certain age. We won't go into any more detail, and I wouldn't be seeing and I wouldn't be experiencing, so I wouldn't see the the risk and the harm of if I set up as a 15 year old boy.

Mike Nicholson 21:20  

And, yeah, if you are really interested in this, it's, I do this. It's good activities. You really want to see what it's like when people set up an account as a 15 year old. I can see that. See what you get recommended. Because we get a lot of teachers and parents saying to us, you know, I'm on Snapchat, I'm on Insta, I'm on X, I don't, I don't see this stuff. And that's because, well, yeah, because you have you're targeted very, very differently. The little joke that I like to make in the workshop is, I'm a 44 year old man. When I set, if I set up a social media account, I'm going to go in that bucket and I'm going to get golf clubs, red wine, sensible jumpers, which is just fantastic. You know, it's exactly what it's exactly what I want. But I can promise you, I can promise you 1415, year old boys are getting some very, very different content

Gill Phillips  22:04  

to that. And the word that jumped out and made me sad there, as you spoke, was curiosity. Like, if these boys show curiosity, well, don't we want young people? Don't we want everyone to show curiosity? I mean, it's probably my number one lesson, you know, in terms of seeing life a bit more multi perspective, you know, to actually be interested in other people who seem different to you, but actually you've got things in common if you show a bit more curiosity. So just the children who and the young people who perhaps are more curious, are perhaps in even greater danger of going down these rabbit holes.

Mike Nicholson 22:40  

Yeah, yeah, they are. And who can blame them for being curious about topics they know are Cebu or they know are, you know, societally kind of frowned upon again. You know, when I was younger, I remember my parents. I remember trying to protect me. I really wanted to watch the exorcist when I was about 11 or 12, and we had the VHS in our house, and my mom and dad, like, Absolutely not. You're not watching it will haunt you forever. You know, you're not old enough yet. So what I did was I got one of my football tapes, took the Exorcist, I put the exit in my football kind of went to my Gran's house. I said, Grant, I'm just gonna watch football upstairs. And then I watched The Exorcist, and they were right. I was haunted for many years for that. I wish I hadn't watched it. You know, that was that curiosity you were talking about, and it is very natural, especially around taboo topics. So first off, we need to put safeguards around young people online so their curiosity is rewarded, but not with harmful content. But also, I think we need real world spaces. That's the key, real world spaces where you can interact with someone who is knowledgeable, who does care about you, who's not trying to profit from you, and you can ask those questions that you've never been able to ask before, and that's what our that's, that's a massive part of our workshops. You know, we're, we're not your I'm not your teacher, I'm not your father. Yes, safeguarding is a part of this, and we're going to follow say, but actually, let's ask the questions you've always felt were too awkward to ask, and we did these some of the questions we get asked are brilliant and hilarious, and they lead to some no two workshops are ever the same with a group of boys where they want to take it, the things they want to focus on. Recently, I was working with a group of year 10s. So they were 15 years old, and towards the end of the program, we do this activity where we map out what kind of father we might want to be in the future. And some of the things the boys were saying were absolutely beautiful my especially from boys that maybe didn't have that kind of dad in their own right. Yeah, it's one of my favorite parts of the workshop, and one of the Ladur and he said, Mike, do you think you'll have any more kids? Because I know, you know. Have you spoken? I know you've got two kids. I said, Well, after we had our second child, lads, my wife and I decided the best thing for our family was for me to have a vasectomy. And the the temperature of the room absolutely plummeted. They were giving me the weirdest, the weirdest looks. And I said, I said, Hang Hang on. I think we all just felt that like, what do you boys think of vasectomy is? And this lad next to me went, Well, it means your magic balls cut off, doesn't it? Ha. Oh, and all the other lads were kind of nodding along. I said, Hang on, you think I've had my testicles surgically removed, and that's what a vasectomy is. So for the next 10 minutes, they were asking me questions like, you know, what physically happens to you in a vasectomy? Why do some men choose to have it? Do you have any regrets? Is there any going back if you change your mind? All these really healthy questions about what, and that's just what that happens with different topics every week.

Gill Phillips  25:25  

That's hilarious and really, really important, yeah, because it just shows them that, you know, young people are growing up and learning and, you know, we can make assumptions, but actually, you know, something like that. I mean, it must have been so funny to see their faces. And basically they're probably all on the same page in a very different page to you. Yeah, there's

Mike Nicholson 25:45  

fear is brilliant. And, yeah, it was really funny to see their faces. And I think these workshops are an absolute joy to facilitate. When people find out what we do, they almost have the sympathetic look on the face like, Oh, you must be very brave. This work is joyous. I absolutely love it. You know, yes, there are some issues at the start where the start where the lads will act up to protect themselves and they feel awkward, and once you get past that, it's absolutely amazing. This work, and one of our big mantras is Be who you needed when you were younger. Who we needed when we were younger. Was an older man who's been through some of the stuff that we've been through is not going to judge us, is going to listen to us and take the time to explain things and make us feel valued.

Gill Phillips  26:23  

Yeah, I think you talked about the typical kind of trajectory of a workshop where they're all sitting thinking, you know, this is snowflake and woke and, you know, it's not for me, and so on. And then, I mean, I think anything, you know, links to my work again, really, in terms of anything a bit more creative, like, you know, how could you have a board game to improve healthcare? And some people, more creative, people will naturally embrace different, more innovative approaches. And other people will start from a different place, and you've got to kind of draw them in, in a way, rather than have some kind of top down. I bet your sessions just by having them. You say you started off and they were sort of voluntary, and at lunchtime and so on. And you know, it's just loving it when you were talking about because I can imagine the kids so who don't want to go to that, and then you've got the ones who've been to it, and are then telling the others, and then the others will, perhaps I'll give it a try then. And you know, it's just human nature,

Mike Nicholson 27:20  

isn't it? It is, it is. But also in their in their young lives, they're expecting to be attacked, and that's the main thing. In their young lives, they've picked up. Their conversations around masculinity tend to be from a deficit-based perspective. You know, he's going to come in, he's going to talk about toxic masculinity, how we all love Andrew Tate and all that kind of because that's all they hear. That's the narrative that surrounds them, and so they're naturally going to be defensive and even a little bit aggressive at the start, but you're right, once we get past that and they realize it's not what they feared. On day two of the program, a load of their friends try and sneak in. Say, Ladur, I'm sorry you've not been picked for this, but you've got to go to your lesson. I can't have 50 people in the room. But that shows you, the boys have gone away and said, Oh, it's really good actually, you know, yeah, we can talk about the stuff that we're not normally allowed to talk about. And so, yeah, they do. They really enjoy it.

Gill Phillips  28:06  

Yeah, no, it's so valuable. I can feel that. So I was going to tell you as we as we were talking, and really, the moments passed now, but I still want to tell you, so when you were talking about you watching The Exorcist and that story, it took me straight back to when my children, my older two, were about 15 and 13, I think, and grandma used to live around the corner, and they'd take a film that wasn't that appropriate, and they'd take it round to Grandma's, and they'd take some crisps and they'd take some drinks, and they put it on at grandma's, and grandma would always fall asleep, and they'd watch their film, and then at the end, grandma would always wake up as the credits came up. And then they'd say, Did you enjoy that film, grandma? And she'd say, yeah, yeah, it was really, really good. And they'd say, do you think it was one of your favourites? Yeah, I think it was one of my favourites. And then they think this was absolutely hilarious. And, I mean, obviously we'd given them something that was, you know, was okay, but they just felt a little bit risky and, but you could control things so much more in those days, you know, they weren't going around to Grandma's and hacking the Netflix account and watching goodness or, you know,

Mike Nicholson 29:22  

yeah, and that's that's where we need to make these platforms accountable for what these our young our young people are extremely creative when it comes to finding ways to get around safeguards that no matter what level of curiosity you have, you should not be three clicks away from hardcore pornography or gang violence or decapitations, any of the stuff that young people tell us they have engaged with online. That's why it's so important that we pressure for legislation against this.

Gill Phillips  29:50  

Well, I think the work you're doing is amazing. I think the story of how you didn't set out to do this fascinates. Me, because that's  like me, really. You know, I worked in local government, and one day I found myself literally putting my notice in to go and set up my own business. I hadn't got a clue what I was doing. I got a lot of help from Coventry University. Doors in the universe seemed to open because I was sort of passionate about what I wanted to do, but didn't know how. And I bet there's quite a kind of similarity in the in the story,

Mike Nicholson 30:24  

yeah, when it comes to running a business, obviously, I had no experience for 18 years as a teacher. It's all I ever did. But what I figured out very early is that there's no one way to run a business. You run it the way you think a business should be run. We worked with we worked with some business consultants early on, that we're all about profit, all about the bottom line. That was the drive, that we're a social impact business. Yes, we need to earn enough to keep the lights on. But actually, I disengaged and broke off with that. I thought, You know what? I'm just gonna we're just gonna run progressive masculinity the way we think a good business should be run. We're going to treat people the way that I would want to be treated. We're going to deliver quality content that is fairly priced, and I think sticking to those basic principles have served us very well.

Gill Phillips  31:06  

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think one of the biggest sort of pressures I've had, and luckily, you know, I've been running this business, really, at a point in life where I don't particularly have to respond to other people's pressures. I mean, you know, I think when you're young and you've got a mortgage and I haven't needed to jump through other people's hoops, is what I'm trying to say. And the pressure has been to measure what you do. You know, I remember running once the most incredibly moving workshop around baby loss, and we'd had a bereaved mother stand up and talk about her experience. We'd had the most incredibly supportive conversations in the room. We'd had laughter, even though it was a serious topic. We'd had such real conversations, and someone from NHS, England had come along specially to find out about whose shoes and what we were doing and so on. And basically I could feel that pressure to write something on a spreadsheet at the end of it. And she said to me, but I'm going to ask you the million dollar question, you know, what difference has it made? And basically, if I'd given her a quote to put on the spreadsheet, would have been happy. And I thought, you know, if you haven't felt something at that workshop, if you haven't seen the impact on people, if you haven't seen the ripples and people realizing, perhaps, that the language that they use and different examples, and, you know, I'm never going to use those words again, because I didn't realize that those kind of medical words, or, you know, words that I've learned in training the impact they have on people and everybody in the room apart from this person, could have told you the impact and the difference, but you can't necessarily put it in words. And I think you collecting those comments from the boys is incredibly powerful, because you've got the volume of evidence there really, haven't you?

Mike Nicholson 33:05  

Yeah, and I want people to see what we see. You know, I think if you don't have young boys in your life, and you rely on the media narrative as your primary source of information, that young boys are being grossly misrepresented by the media narrative around them. So a big part of why we're putting out, what we're putting out is, yes, to show the impact of what we're doing, but also to help show people that actually, boys and young men, a lot of them, are struggling. They do want to talk. Here's how you can help them create spaces to go to talk about this kind of stuff. So yeah, you're absolutely right with the impact stuff. There's that school of thought where, if you can't put it on a graph or a spreadsheet, it mustn't have had impact, when, actually, when it comes to impacting hearts and minds, you can't quantify the data in that way. You kind of have to be in the room, you have to listen to those stories, and you have to see the looks on the faces. And yeah, unfortunately, that's the system that we're in where so many people put so much and quantitative data is important. You know, if it does improve attendance and attainment, fantastic. Yes, yeah, absolutely. If that for us, if that young man walks out of our sessions thinking, I've got a really clear idea about this man that I want to be in the future. That's hard to put quantitatively, but that's, that's we would consider that to be a success.

Gill Phillips  34:12  

Yeah, that's probably the biggest success, isn't it, because you've actually changed, changed their thinking, and given them confidence and so on. Well, Mike, this is so interesting. So What haven't we covered? Do you think,

Mike Nicholson 34:28  

I think maybe where this work sits in the larger landscape of gender and gender politics at the moment is really important? Because I think some people have this misguided impression that if you invest in boys and young men, you have somehow neglected winning. Or if you invest in female empowerment, you're leaving men behind. And that's that's a zero sum mentality, you know, where, yeah, we're kind of pit against each other. And for you to win, I have to lose. For you to make gains, those gains have to come at my expense. And as you know, Joe, gender is such a. A kind of political hot topic. And I feel like particularly online, we are being framed as if we're against each other. All the language around gender is very binary and oppositional. Actually, we're promoting the exact opposite. If you invest in boys and young men, everybody wins. Society wins women and the same the other way men benefit. This world benefits from liberated, independent, empowered women. And I think this idea that we work together on gender and we rise together rather than allow ourselves be framed against each other, is really important in online culture. In particular, I feel like a lot of us are being drawn into this zero sum mentality where we're being pit against each other.

Gill Phillips  35:36  

Wow, it's a big topic, isn't

Mike Nicholson 35:39  

it? Oh, yeah, they can take you down so many sub topics.

Gill Phillips  35:41  

Yeah, I'm absolutely loving it, and my head is full of rabbit holes. So, So Mike, this is just such a rich topic. And I mean really in terms of whose shoes and getting people to think from different perspectives, and, you know, just the wider concept of critical thinking, really, and not taking things as is, or, you know, these boys not feeling the pressure to be what they don't want to be. But that's a huge courage, really. You know, especially, we all know what it's like peer pressure and at school, it's so, so much easier to to fit in. How do we encourage, well, boys and girls, but we're talking here specifically about boys, to not take things at face value, to somehow have the strength to resist the easy route of peer pressure and just fitting in with the gang. It's a huge question, really.

Mike Nicholson 36:42  

Yeah, it is. And listen, when I was a younger man, I definitely was guilty about I wanted to be one of the boys, one of the lats. I wanted to blend in and go into the radar, and I did things that were not who I was in order to to kind of be that. And I'm, you know, I'm a little bit embarrassed and ashamed to say that, but also, I think that's what boys need to hear. You know, they don't need someone pontificating from a place of perfection. I think if I'm asking them to be real, it's important for me to be real as well, and the way that we do it is through a values driven approach. So we ask each boy to pick three core values from this massive list, and there's no right or wrong answers. You pick whatever you want, but these are the three core values that you think are most important to you as a young man. And what we're going to do, we're going to help you build your masculinity around those three core values. And when you come to maybe you're watching something online, or maybe your friends behave in a way that the thing you're watching you disagree with, or you disagree with, the behavior is that consistent with your values. And if it's not, are you able to either disengage or challenge it, because if you can lead a values driven approach, a values based life that will take you to become this amazing man, but it's not easy to do that. You know, the world your friends, I want to drag you away from those values. And if you have a bad day, if you let yourself down, like we all do next day, you apologize if you have to, you try and put it right. Then you forgive yourself, you reset, you realign, and you go back to those three core values, really kind of positively that the three most popular values that the boys picking out workshops are resilience, selflessness and loyalty, which is, mean, I think that's absolutely beautiful. Yeah. I mean, those are the foundational building blocks of a wonderful, wonderful human being. Number four is compassion. So compassion, resilience, selflessness and loyalty. We worked with over 50,000 boys now, and those are the four most popular values that they

Gill Phillips  38:30  

pick and to get that consistency coming through. I mean, the work that you're doing, I think, is extraordinary, and I think I heard you say that you're trying to help people celebrate the incredible potential of being a man. And it is true, isn't it? It's just to be a woman, to be a man, to be comfortable in your own skin. I think you know as an older person, that's something, I think it's the biggest gift that you can have, but you can't give it to someone. You've got to help people find their way of being comfortable in their own skin, being themselves, not being part of a herd. But and a lot of this stuff for young people, you've just got to work through, haven't you, but people who can help you along the way, it's

Mike Nicholson 39:19  

incredibly liberating this message that with over 4 billion men in the world, there can be over 4 billion different ways to be a man, over 4 billion different masculinities to someone who has had a kind of very restrictive code placed upon them, that's an incredibly liberating message. And then it's a kind of exciting journey of exploration to figure out your masculine identity and what that looks like, and, you know, helping that young man shape what that looks like.

Gill Phillips  39:45  

So we might have listening to this podcast, hopefully might include some teachers, definitely include some parents and some grandparents, possibly some young people themselves. How could. They link with the work that you're doing through progressive masculinity, either directly with you or through the principles that we've talked about, What? What? What? What action points, what lemon light bulbs? Can we leave people with? Well, if you want

Mike Nicholson 40:13  

to work directly with us, you know progressive masculinity, search for us online. Just Google us. You'll find us very quickly. But I think really, my main takeaways would be, let's approach masculinity from an aspirational rather than a deficit based approach. That paradigm shift is extremely important. Let's listen to boys and young men, I mean, like, truly, not just be quiet while they talk. Really, really listen to them, because they have some very, very valid concerns about the environment around them. And yeah, let's not fall into this trap of where we're being kind of this gender ideology War, where we're allowing ourselves to be pit against each other, because it's not true. We can support each other. We can rise together.

Gill Phillips  40:53  

Brilliant Mike, thank you so much. I'll definitely include a link in the in the show notes to progressive masculinity, and I'd really recommend that people follow Mike and the work that he's doing on LinkedIn, which is one of the main ways that I'm connecting and becoming a bit more knowledgeable about what you're doing. So thank you so much for agreeing to be a guest and keep up the good work. It's early in 2026 and look forward to seeing what you do next.

Mike Nicholson 41:20  

It's an absolute pleasure. Gill. Thank you so much for having me.

Gill Phillips  41:24  

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, it would be fantastic if you would leave a review and a rating, as well as recommending the wild card who shoes podcast series to anyone who you think might find it interesting, and please subscribe, that way you get to hear when new episodes are available. I have lots more wonderful podcast guests in the pipeline, and don't forget to explore and share previous episodes so many conversations with amazing people who are courageously sharing their stories and experiences across a very wide range of topics. I tweet as whose shoes. Thank you for being on this journey with me, and let's hope that together, we can make a difference. See you next time you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai