We Are Power Podcast
The We Are PoWEr podcast spotlights voices and perspectives that need to be heard. Our weekly podcast, with listeners in over 60 countries, delivers PoWErful conversations that inspire, challenge, and empower... from personal life stories to business insights and leadership lessons.
We share diverse experiences, bold discussions, and real solutions. Whether you're looking for career advice, topical themes, or stories of resilience and success - this is where voices spark change.
We Are Power Podcast
Creating Trusted Spaces and Driving Change at ASDA
The brilliant Adrian Jones joins the We Are PoWEr Podcast – bringing reflections on leadership, representation, and creating trusted spaces for people to thrive.
As Senior Director, Anglia & South Midlands Superstores at ASDA and a 2025 Northern PoWEr Women Advocate, Adrian looks after 31 stores and thousands of colleagues – but his focus goes far beyond retail. From mentoring female leaders to co-chairing the Women in ASDA network, he is committed to driving diversity, amplifying unheard voices, and building teams that perform by being truly inclusive.
Adrian shares why filling in his own award nomination was such a powerful moment, why listening before acting is the most underrated leadership skill, and how acknowledging the “quiet people in the room” can change outcomes for the better. He also opens up about family, sport, and the importance of helping his children – and the next generation – find confidence to stand up for what they believe in.
In this episode:
- Why the Northern PoWEr Women Awards matter to him
- Championing diversity and inclusion in leadership at ASDA
- How creating trusted spaces leads to real change
- The importance of spotting unconscious bias and acting on it
- Mentoring 5–10 female leaders every year
- Family life, rugby, motor racing, and the wine aisle as a metaphor for leadership
- What he hopes the world looks like for the next generation
Find out more about We Are PoWEr here. 💫
Hello, hello and welcome to the we Are Power podcast. If this is your first time here, the we Are Power podcast is the podcast for you, your career and your life. We release an episode every single Monday with listeners in over 60 countries worldwide, where you'll hear personal life stories, top-notch industry advice and key leadership insight from amazing role models. As we Are Power is the umbrella brand to Northern Power Women Awards, which celebrates hundreds of female role models and advocates every year. This is where you can hear stories from all of our awards alumni and stay up to date with everything MPW awards and we Are Power. Well, this week, I am delighted to be joined by Adrian from ASDA, our fantastic partners. Welcome to the podcast studio, to the teal sofa and proudly wearing your Advocacy Badge 2025. Congratulations.
Speaker 2:Thank you, and thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Well, we first stumbled into each other at the Foyer on the day of the Northern Power Women Awards this year in Manchester back in March, and you came in with your rugby shirt on and we'll get to that later because I was like which club is that? And we had a conversation and you wanted to just wreck the place out, didn't you? Before you came in to the largest event celebrating gender equality in Europe.
Speaker 2:That's great. My wife likes to know where she's going and what time she's got to be, so I had to do a quick recce to understand where we were going to go.
Speaker 1:You were, you were doing the advance party. What did it feel like that evening?
Speaker 2:How would I describe it? I would describe it as a real accolade for me, but quite overwhelming because I genuinely feel that great leadership is about inclusion and recognising talent, supporting people's careers and their aspirations, and I see that's part of my job. So to be recognised in a positive way for it was a bit overwhelming because I see, as me it was, I was doing my job, but certainly nice, certainly amazing to be seen in that environment.
Speaker 1:And what is that job? Because I look at this and I'm like there's a lot of things on there.
Speaker 2:So essentially I look after 31 stores for Asda and all the colleagues and managers look after those stores. So a large part of my role is running stores and retail operations. But equally, to underpin any performance in any company is about having a brilliant team working for you. So to engage with the colleagues, to bring leaders through, to help people feel that we get to their full potential and have a really clear succession plan haven't, and we call it aces in places. So I have our very best people in our very best position, our most challenging positions, to get our very best results like a human chess board.
Speaker 1:It can be a bit like that, but just taking you back to that nomination, when you got that nomination, when anyone is nominated for any of the awards for the Northern Power Women Awards and submission is completed and then the awkward bit, isn't it, Adrian? Is then you've got to respond with some questions.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have the pleasure of working with Jenny Taylor-Smith and Suzanne Arnold and I think you know Jenny very well, she's a force of nature. So she rang me up and said I think you'd be nominated. You really need to get your application in. I know Jenny's expectation is very big. So I boxed off an evening and then just literally went through my nomination and put my application. And it's the same when I applied for the Women in Asda co-chairchair role, I just spoke about things I've done and things I've experienced helping people through their careers and I say the word people through their careers and put that on the paper and hoped it was good enough. Unfortunately it was.
Speaker 1:And there you were on the evening of March with your fellow advocates. It's year two and since when we created the Northern Power Women Awards, which will be coming into its 10th year now, there was always the premise for me about collecting the good guys. Collect the good guys. And the awards have always been open to all genders, but it was last year that we we wanted to bring in this specific role and importance of advocates.
Speaker 2:Um, what would you say to people out there thinking, oh, I think I do good stuff, but I think I only do little stuff I think you can never underestimate the impact you can have on somebody that works for you or with you in a positive way, and I think I've always taken the time to listen and be inquisitive, and it certainly taught me loads of things along the way that I can then help other people to do, and I think that unconscious awareness is the best advice I can give to anyone that thinks that they want to help or want to help inclusion in their, in their businesses is to just be inquisitive and don't be frightened to ask the question, because if you, if we're not aware, you can never do anything positive to change.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's easy not to do stuff sometimes, and I know your colleagues have described you as that inclusive leader, without even realising it. Why do you think they say that?
Speaker 2:I've got a really strong belief that diverse teams drive better performance and certainly in any business you're driven to better performance or better your performance. I think if you don't have a diverse team in the first instance, you'll never get the best performance. If you haven't got people that will speak up, offer their opinion from different perspectives, you'll never get the performance that we're looking for. So it starts with a place of performance and then it builds into really making sure that I have great representation and I see that as my job. So my job is about performance and people and if you bring those two two things together, you have to have a diverse team and that's why I think people. I don't see it as extra to my job. I see as part of my job to have great talent and great diversity within my teams and one of the things that you've done is created trusted spaces.
Speaker 1:Isn't it to have conversations, um? Is there one conversation that has really stood out for you? That you've gone?
Speaker 2:I think that it was an experience, and it's probably seven or eight years ago, when I came across to asda. Now, listen, I'm a middle-aged man. I generally wear a jumper and a shirt to work, I've got no hair, um, quite round, and I sit in a meeting and I am, I suppose, the opposite of what we would perceive diversity to be. And then I think in my first meeting, my first retail because I would say in the home office there is quite good balance of diversity my first retail meeting with the retail directors in stores was quite a surprise to see in the room I was in, probably 20 photocopies of me and one female in the room and coming into that room it was a real moment for me to say, well, I want to do something about this, I want to make some, to make a difference here, spoke to the female sd who's in the room, um, spoke about her experiences and then kind of played that forward and I really had the opportunity coming out when I came out from home office, where I was doing online, to come out to retail stores three years ago where I sat in a room of retail store managers and was observing behaviors.
Speaker 2:I very much like to be. I believe in a servant leadership model and was observing behaviors in the room. I noticed that the women were quite. The women in the room were quite submissive, were making cups of tea, taking notes, and I made a point of recognizing that and then speaking to them and being inquisitive and asking a question what to do differently, and then giving them more positive, more senior roles in the room in terms of project work and and how they would feature in the room and bringing them into conversations, but really wanted to make a difference. But come back to that unconscious bias when I spoke to the store managers in the room, they weren't aware of their behavior. It was a natural state for them, but awareness brought the change in behavior and then, you know, they took probably both of them were aware took a successful turn in their career in terms of moving into broad roles by having the confidence to do that and asking the question how did you feel about that? How did that make you feel? Made them realise that somebody noticed it?
Speaker 1:And cared.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When you notice you're thinking hold on a second. Why are you making the tea? Why are you making the notes? You've got valid points in here. Was there anything that ever? You thought I might not do that, because actually I might not be welcome?
Speaker 2:um, my wife would tell you I enjoy conflict. So, um, I think I have a really strong belief if something's not right, then it's my, my role as a senior leader, to do something about it, and I fundamentally believe that behavior was wrong. So I had no problem talking to my male store managers about their behavior and the impact it's having on people in the room and if there's maybe a couple of other top tips you would say out there, we've talked about the small things so I am fortunate enough to be one of the co-chairs for women.
Speaker 2:As to network, and we've got a diverse, we've got a team of a working group where there's three co-chairs and a working group across all different parts of the business that come together once a month to talk about topics, talk things, talk about things that are coming through the networks.
Speaker 2:It's important and if I was to give one tip, it's just to listen, to give a platform for people to talk confidently, to listen and then take action, because I think, once you've listened, it's incumbent on me to take action and be honest about the actions I'm going to take. Um, and we've had some real success, whether it be in the parental leave policy we're working on, whether it be bringing in external speakers into the company, whether it be the international women's day, the intentional ownership program we're working on, we've managed to weave ourselves or weave our support into those programs and it feels like it's really adding value and the women, the, the members because there's males in the team as well feel like they're being listened to and feel like action's being taken, which is really important and I think that's that's a real key.
Speaker 1:It's you can sometimes be heard but not listened to, and you are working a really, really fast-paced environment, aren't you retail? I, I wouldn't. What season are you working on now? You must be probably gone Christmas, christmas is over.
Speaker 2:One of the statements is I've been with different retailers, but Christmas in July is a statement yeah, um. So in terms of the buying and getting the stock rid of the offers, really now is we're really focused into Christmas. Um so, yeah, very fast paced.
Speaker 1:But how do you take people with you on that change?
Speaker 2:I think for me, I'm really clear about the why. So if there's one thing that's constant in retail, we do change. I'm making the people in my team understand the need for change. The positive outcome from change is a really good starting point to keep engagement, and then seeing positive outcomes as a result of change keeps engagement moving forward because that helps gives the example, isn't it?
Speaker 1:it's the metrics and it's the the story that you can follow on. Was there anything that kind of jumped out at you on the way and think, oh gosh, I didn't expect to see that in terms of the change.
Speaker 2:Um, I think it's easy for to miss people getting left behind and I think, when there's the pace of change, as a leader, to observe the group and observe the quiet people in the room are probably the people that are either being very reflective or not getting caught up in the change and the pace of any business. Right now, in the current economic conditions, we have to react quickly, we have to move forward quickly, and observing more people being quiet would be one of my, would be one of the points I would raise and then taking positive action with those people and I always like to ask like a fun fact in advance of our guests.
Speaker 1:I've never, ever had a picture before now if you're listening to the podcast, it's probably not going to help, but adrian sent me over here um a graphic. I don't know they can even pick this up in here, and it's it's your story, isn't it? Yeah, you know, because there's probably many facts in here and you've just you know you talked about your wife, because I know your wife works on the front line, doesn't she?
Speaker 1:she's a sister in intensive yeah, you know, not an easy job there. You've got a fast-paced, tough job. You know your, your wife is busy. That's really busy. Now, how I always think this is, you know, it's not so much how you have it all, because that's impossible, but how can you fit all this in? So we've got this diagram here. 52, surely not adrian right? Um?
Speaker 2:hard to believe, I know yeah, umematics 24 hour.
Speaker 1:Is that your guilty pleasure?
Speaker 2:Is it 24 hour? Le Mans. I do motor racing and we have a trip with a few friends down to the south of France every year for Le Mans motor racing, where we generally have barbecues, drink a few beers and then watch 24 hours of motor racing.
Speaker 1:And then you've been married for 24 years.
Speaker 2:I have been married for 24 years. Everyone said I did uh my wife.
Speaker 1:I was punching above my weight, my wife, so I'm always reflective of that. But no, be married 24 years, sarah. Yes, and then two big birthdays, 18 and 21st, for the kids very expensive, very expensive, yes so my daughter's 21 uh, she's studying to be sports therapy at bournemouth university.
Speaker 2:And my son's 18 he's just finished sitting his a levels, just waiting for results, hopefully going to go to leeds, one of the leeds universities and then ben benny uh bertie bertie, sorry, bertie the beagle, bertie, the lockdown uh lockdown dog.
Speaker 2:Yes, so he's six. Uh, we've had him for five years, um, but yeah, wouldn't be without him. I keep his busy. Um keeps my wife busy. She says he sheds more than a dog every day because it loses a lot of hair. I managed to convince her to get a dog with to get a beagle, so they had said they were short hair and wouldn't molt. Um, I was probably the most wrong I've ever been shedding hair like it's a whole, whole animal.
Speaker 1:What do you hope?
Speaker 2:your world, uh, the world is like for your, for your kids um, I think we we bring our kids up to be, um, independent. My daughter my wife always say is a photocopy of me. She's fiercely independent, very focused on what she wants to do and confident to take on situations, and I think that's something that's really important to me. We don't worry about Georgia in difficult situations because she will always do the right thing and she will stand up if she believes things are wrong. Charlie, again, again very sports focused and very focused on things that are important to him, and again, we brought them both up to be independent and be able to survive survive survives probably a harsh word, but be able to exist in a marketplace, um. So yeah, in terms of what I'd hope for them, that they find their place. They further get the opportunity to do something they love in their careers and have confidence in their lives and have confidence to stand up for what they believe is correct.
Speaker 1:And your wife as well. This is a busy job, but the first time I met you, you were an advocate for your wife, the first thing you did.
Speaker 2:I often feel I don't say enough, but I'm very proud of what my wife does. Essentially, we sell products to customers. She holds people's lives in her hands every day and, I think, working in the NHS, which is a female-dominated industry. It's very interesting to hear her view of the world versus my view of the world and how different positions are viewed by the world in terms of importance Literally, someone that can hold your life in your hand versus someone that will sell you a product and rugby is key in your world, isn't it?
Speaker 2:you used to play rugby um, yeah, I'm not built to play football. Um, so I was fortunate enough to play um for bristol um in bristol academy. Um played for cultural rugby club. We are rugby rugby house. I have no clue about football. I don't follow a football team um, so my son plays rugby union and rugby league. Fortunately, when he was four, he said he wanted to play rugby, which I was really pleased about. I'm not quite sure if he'd have followed football I would have gone with it, but I'm not sure I'd have to learn football at that point. But no, a big rugby house, um, georgia enjoys watching rugby as a family. We've been to Twickenham as with my son. I go to Twickenham when we can. So, yeah, rugby is part of our life.
Speaker 1:What do you think the learnings are? Because I always think, you know you've seen there's been a massive rise in women's sport. You know this is a big summer of women's sport as well. What do you think the learnings are? Both ways it lags behind very much financially.
Speaker 2:I think it's. If you talk about the women's, the England women's, the england women's rugby team is probably more successful than the men's rugby team. Um, when I first as a twicken, they would always be the warm-up match for the for the men's to go back 15 years for the men's internationals and now they have standalone international matches and are very, very, very successful. So I think the, the awareness, the growth and the skill of the sport and the way the sport's played and the success of the sport is driving further interest into the sport, which is great for the sport itself.
Speaker 1:And what learnings could we take into the world of work?
Speaker 2:I think again, it's just awareness, listening and understanding how to make the most to give people the opportunity to make the most of themselves. So I'm not an advocate of positive discrimination, but helping people reach their full potential probably drives me more in work than in succession planning and in sports and in life, necessarily performance itself.
Speaker 1:So power, you can see often and currently globally, not always used for good, but power, what does power mean to you in a leadership perspective?
Speaker 2:So I'm really clear in my leadership style. I adopt a servant leadership style. So my view is I'm there to help my team grow, be the best they can be. So if there's an obstacle they face, I'll help them to face into it. If there's some learning that they want to do, I'll help them face into it. It's a performance that needs to improve. I'll help them with that. My role is to help them be the best they can be for themselves. Um so and power it that that's where the power lands. So, helping understand solutions, helping drive performance, giving confidence um to take decisions and move forward. That's the power I have. I think we a lot, of, a lot of time power is wielded um dictatorially, when it should be about making people the, giving people the best opportunity to do what they can do 100, a platform that, and what would you hope your legacy will be?
Speaker 2:I would hope behind me to leave people throughout my career that have fulfilled their potential, whether that be a colleague on the sales floor, whether that be a manager that's now a director or a COO. I would absolutely hope that my legacy is people that have worked with me and around me have realized their potential with me and what supermarket aisle best represents your leadership.
Speaker 2:I did look at you I did look at your questions and smirk. I'm waiting for the dog question. So, um, I would say that I thought about this hard. Actually, the wine aisle, um, so the wine aisle is a bit of fun, um, but it has great diversity. It comes from lots of different places, um, whether by grape or by country I think we just moved back to country um, lots of different places that can bring lots of happiness in different ways love it.
Speaker 1:I think mine would always be the why now, but then, and bertie, bertie the beagle I love this. It's one of my favorite questions ever. If your bertie the dog could describe you as a boss, what would he say?
Speaker 2:he would say what did I come up with? He would say good fun, but can be strict.
Speaker 1:Harsh bit of fur. Maybe Does that mean you're being honest. He's like stop it, dad. Now I'm done with the walk and I like lockdown when we couldn't go out as much.
Speaker 2:Oh, no, no, no, no. I think if you feed a dog, treat a dog well, they're happy, and if they're happy, they this might make if you, if you feed a dog, treat a dog well, um, they're happy, and if they're happy they generally do what they need to do. But yeah, he's a great dog. I don't have to be strict that often sarah's probably stricter than I am with him um, but no, I think, yeah, having some fun, and then, um, but be making sure he's clear on his boundaries.
Speaker 1:He's all good and and we've talked about you you, you know you're the co-chair. You applied. You weren't voluntold. You wanted to do this, didn't you? What have you learned from that role? Because it's key, isn't it? It's a key role within organizations such as ASDA.
Speaker 2:We've run the Intentional Ally Allyship Program now for three years and I've taken so many learnings and so many stories and always so amazed at some of the stories that come across my desk or come across from the team that I mentor. So I mentor five to ten female leaders a year through this intentional allyship program. We also do ethnicity through that as well, and the thing I've learned is to listen, to probe and to ask questions. Just the stories are amazing. Whether it be a colleague that's been a colleague 16 years and is now a store manager. Whether it be a minister who's got 12 children and is now a manager. Whether it be some people that come to this country with some amazing qualifications that didn't think they were good enough, that's now a manager. And if you didn't slow down and listen to their story, I would never know their background, I would never know the potential, I'd never had the opportunity to mentor and support them in their career.
Speaker 1:And mentoring is so key, isn't it? Is that something you had on your career adventure?
Speaker 2:So I always think I'm a product of the people I've worked for over the years and I've worked for a few years, clearly, and I think there's a bit of everyone that's worked for me, that I've worked for in me across many different businesses, and I always look for mentors at least two mentors for myself in the business that I'm in that I can ring and ask a question of and be thoughtful of and I've been privileged to have probably 10, 15 mentors over my time in ASDA and it's been a huge help to me grow my experience and grow my knowledge in the business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, take yourself out of your comfort zone, isn't it 100%? And what would be the sort of that best bit of advice you would give to your Charlie or Georgia age Don't party too hard and ask for too big presents.
Speaker 2:My son still doesn't drink but definitely parties hard. I would say be clear on what you want and be clear on how you're going to get there. You, how, you, how you're going to get there, but understand the people that are going to help you get there as well and was that you?
Speaker 2:were you clear? Uh no. So I think I've learned along the way. I think when I I've got a maths degree, I left university thought I'd be an accountant. Um, I ended up working part-time for tesco and then was was was fortunate to be mentored by a huge amount of people on the way and then had the opportunity to join ASDA and then be mentored through ASDA. So I think I wasn't perhaps clear enough. My daughter is crystal clear she wants to be a physiotherapist. My son's a bit ambiguous, but he knows he wants to work in business, which is why he's hopefully going to get into Leeds and he wants to play rugby. So good luck to him.
Speaker 1:There you go, multitasking. I know we. Advocacy is a big part of why you're here today. Um, and I know you're so. We've had many offline conversations and talked about it, but is that everyday advocacy? It doesn't, you know we. I know we've talked about the small things early, but what could somebody do tomorrow?
Speaker 2:I know we've talked about listening I think it's um, mentoring is key. So to have a mentoring circle I learn as much from it as the mentors hopefully get game for myself to have a working group that feeds in. That just makes you stop and think and listen. I said before, listening observation is probably key and I would say to anyone that wants to be thoughtful of diversity sit in a meeting and don't say anything, and if you observe the behaviors and see what's going on, then you can decide to make positive change or not. And I you know I was talking to one of our executives like the other week says you know, a lot of the um behavior is unintentional.
Speaker 2:And when I slow down and talk to people about says you know, calling someone love isn't really appropriate. They're horrified because they're not doing it. Um, and when we, when I talk to members of the team, it says you know, you shouldn't always take notes, you shouldn't always um be the servant to people. You need to stand and be proud of what you did and take, take a lead on something. Um, it's just that observation and then that action and I think the actions are really important and then positive reinforcement. So Tracy Brabyn came and spoke in ASDA a few months ago and talked about calling out the success stories, calling out the people from a diverse background that have made progress or done something really positive to reinforce the message.
Speaker 1:And if you had an unlimited powered magic wand to make change and unlimited budget, what would you do?
Speaker 2:Wow, that's a big question.
Speaker 1:Obviously, you know partner with. We Are Power. You know just saying.
Speaker 2:For me, diverse teams are important. I said that at the head. I don't possibly promote the right people into the right role. I've been accused of being agnostic to diversity because I just look for the right person. But what I've really worked hard on if I could make a change is in succession planning. So the important part about having a diverse team is having a diverse succession plan and a diverse talent pool, and that's where I probably work the hardest and you don't get immediate result because the talent pool's got to grow. There's got to be movement.
Speaker 2:You can move people through into broader roles but over time we've got quite a diverse talent pool now and part of my role is even through the mentorship is giving someone the confidence to stick their hand up and say you know what I could have a go at that.
Speaker 2:I'm not going to go into it straight away, but there's some things I'm going to do along the way and I'm going to put myself in a position where I could be considered and give it a confidence to through a development and a talent planning for an individual to have the confidence to apply for a role. Then you get your diversity. I've seen in previous businesses too quickly positive promotion focused on the stat, not the long term, and you will get the gender split or the diversity split in the moment. But I've seen the unfortunate outcome of that is people being unsuccessful in their career and actually stepping back, not pushing through. So I think that whole point about development, talent, succession planning if I could wave a magic wand, I'd invest there, knowing that we get the output at the top and what's your superpower?
Speaker 2:um, I don't know, I'm very, I'm very humbled even to be sat here and get this award. I'm really humbled. I genuinely believe it's part of my job. Um, if I'd say there's one thing what have I asked your wife?
Speaker 2:she would struggle to find a super. I think, um, if I would say, um, making it part of the day job. So if there was one positive change that I've made, is whether I find a day a month, a few hours a week, just provide some headspace to being a women as the co-chair, thinking about succession planning and talent, bringing the right people through, having the right people around the table, just taking the time to do that and seeing that as a day job rather than see it as an extra.
Speaker 1:It's part of what you do and who you are, adrian thank you so much for joining me thank you for wearing your badge with pride. Thank you so much and I'm so delighted that you've joined us today, and big thanks to ASDA for all the support that you offer us. You're welcome subscribe on YouTube, apple, amazon Music, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Leave us a review or follow us on socials. We are power underscore net on Insta, tiktok and Twitter, or we are power on LinkedIn, facebook and we are underscore power on YouTube.
