“Choose Which Bits You Hear” — Hannah Wilson

How do you deal with criticism without letting it change how you see yourself? And what happens when becoming more visible means becoming more open to other people’s opinions of you?

This week on A Thought I Kept, I’m talking to leadership development coach, trainer and author Hannah Wilson about a piece of advice she was given early in her leadership career: when you put your head above the parapet, people will have something to say about you. The important part is learning to choose which bits you hear, which bits you leave, and which you can reframe into something useful. 

It’s a thought that opens up a much bigger conversation about criticism, confidence, women in leadership, visibility, belonging and our desire to be liked. Hannah talks about being the youngest and only woman on a senior leadership team, being described as “emotional” and learning to reframe that as emotional intelligence, and why she eventually adopted the mantra: “I’m here to be respected, not liked.” We also explore why so many women struggle to receive positive feedback as readily as criticism, and what happens when we make room for ourselves — and other people — to be seen. 

Hannah is the founder and director of Belonging Effect and the author of Cultivating Belonging in Schools. Our conversation moves from the personal to the societal as we explore what belonging actually means, why diversity, equity and inclusion still matter within that conversation, and how we can have courageous conversations when we’re frightened of saying the wrong thing. We also talk about psychological safety, allyship and advocacy, taking risks, leaving a successful career at 40, and why sometimes the most important thing you can do is say the thing everyone else is afraid to say. 

If you’ve ever found yourself replaying someone’s criticism long after they’ve forgotten saying it, struggled with being visible at work, worried about being liked, or wondered how to stand more confidently in who you are without becoming closed to feedback, this conversation is for you.

In this episode, we talk about

• How to handle criticism and decide which feedback is actually useful
• Why confident women can attract particular kinds of criticism
• The difference between being “emotional” and emotionally intelligent
• Why Hannah chooses respect over likability
• Women, leadership, visibility and taking up space
• How to receive compliments instead of brushing them aside
• Psychological safety and having courageous conversations
• What belonging really means — and why it’s more than simply fitting in
• Diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging (DEIB)
• Allyship, advocacy and becoming an accomplice or co-conspirator
• Risk, resilience and Hannah’s decision to leave headship at 40
• How we can use our own influence to make more room for other people 

About Hannah Wilson

Hannah Wilson is a leadership development consultant, coach and trainer, and the founder and director of Belonging Effect, formerly Diverse Educators. She is co-founder of #WomenEd and #DiverseEd and has spent 20 years teaching and leading in secondary state schools, including roles as Vice Principal, founding Headteacher and Executive Headteacher. Her work now focuses on leadership development, DEIB, psychological safety, courageous conversations and coaching senior and executive leaders. 

Hannah is the author of Cultivating Belonging in Schools and co-editor of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Her new book explores belonging across society, school systems, staffrooms, classrooms and curricula, with practical ways educators can create more inclusive cultures. 

Find Hannah:
Hannah Wilson on LinkedIn

Books, ideas and resources mentioned

What White People Can Do Next — Emma Dabiri

Radical Candor — Kim Scott · Fierce Conversations — Susan Scott · Daring Greatly — Brené Brown

Windows, Mirrors and Sliding Glass Doors — Dr Rudine Sims Bishop 

Also mentioned: #WomenEd · #DiverseEd · iAmRemarkable · emotional intelligence · psychological safety · unconscious bias · microaggressions · allyship · advocacy · DEIB.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hi, and welcome to this week's episode of A Thought I Kept, a podcast about the ideas that stay. I'm Claire Fitzsimmons. I'm a well-being writer, author, coach, and the co-founder of If Lost Art Here. And every Monday I invite someone thoughtful and creative and inspiring to answer one deceptively simple question. And that is, what's someone thought that you've kept? Because sometimes it is one idea, one sentence, one shift in perspective, one thing that someone says offhand at exactly the right moment. That does alter how we move through a week, a season, and even our lives. This week's guest is someone that I've had countless conversations with in private, and it was a real joy to talk to her on the podcast in a very different format with a very different set of questions. I'm talking to Hannah Wilson, a leadership development coach, trainer, former teacher and school leader, the co-founder of hashtag WomenEd and hashtag DiverseEd, and author of Cultivating Belonging in Schools. We talk about something that I think has become a real defining conversation right now, and that is belonging. We talk about why it can be misunderstood, particularly in this moment, and what belonging actually means beyond fitting in. We get into the backlash, the fear, and the discomfort around some of these conversations right now, and how maybe we're moving backwards as much as forwards. We also talk about women supporting women. Hannah is the most extraordinary connector. She's someone who seems to move through the world actively making space for others. Opening doors, amplifying voices, insisting that people who've been pushed to the edge of rooms deserve to be heard from the center of them. Hannah brings a thought this week that is one that I think can be really easily applied, and that can have wonderful cascading ripple effects. I do hope you try it out in your own lives, and I would really love to hear what impacts it has on you and the people around you. So here is my conversation with Hannah Wilson. Hi Hannah, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Good morning, Clack. Great to be here.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

So every week on the podcast, I ask my guests the same question, which is what is the one thought that you've kept? So out of all your experiences, your extraordinary work in education, your incredible writing, what is the one thought that has stayed with you?

SPEAKER_01 3:03

So the one thought that has stayed with me is a piece of wisdom or advice that someone gifted to me quite early on in my leadership career. And I shared this in different formats because I think it's really helpful. My name manager was male, a bit older than me, very relaxed, and he found me quite entertaining, Claire. Um and when I used to go in and have a bit of a man of the rave about people's behaviour, what was going on, um, he'd often laugh at laugh with me. And I was particularly aggravated by some criticism I had received from someone that I felt was really unfair and undue. And he helped me reframe it, and he helped me reframe the fact of was it actually criticism or was it a compliment and an affirmation? And he helped me to almost like hear through and hear what wasn't being said rather than what was being said. And he basically said to me, like, you have a choice when you become more senior and you're really visible, and like I was the only female on IFLT, so I was particularly visible, and I was also the youngest. Um, he said, like, you are gonna get critique, so you need to be resilient to it. You make a choice to be a leader, and when you're a leader, you put your head above the palpit, and people are gonna shoot at you, you need to be prepared for that, but you also need to choose which bits you hear and which bits you leave, or choose to reframe it so it helps you. And it's just like it was one of those conversations where I was quite emotionally charged, I was really quite annoyed at this person. I thought he was being really unfair, and this very relaxed older guy is kind of like gifted this to me, and that was probably about 15 years ago, and it's really stayed with me. It's not that I don't listen to feedback, I don't hear critique, I do, but I also choose which bits I'm gonna respond to and carry forward, and which bits actually say more about the person saying it than they do about me.

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Could you give some examples of how you've reframed something and what you have started to hear that wasn't being said? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

Okay, so in in that same school, there was quite an alpha male leadership culture, and I'm six foot one and I'm really confident, but I'm also quite emotionally intelligent and sort of like a I'm very emotionally aware. So I brought a different lens to my leadership, and I got criticism from other male counterparts that I was quite emotional. I'm really not that emotional, but I I do cry watching adverts, but I've got my teeth, my my eyes leak at how my tear ducts leak, but kind of I'm quite emotionally balanced and emotionally aware. So I get called emotional. Well, I used to get called emotional. I used to say, I don't think I actually am emotional, I think I'm emotionally intelligent, and there's a difference. You're suggesting there's a weakness there. I think actually the rest of you need to be more emotionally aware and more emotionally intelligent because it's about being a human as a leader. So I guess I found my way of pushing back on criticism that was quite gendered, that was quite biased, that wasn't very helpful. And that not only helped me, but some of the my male counterparts who were more emotionally intelligent, they'd get criticized and it was seen as a weakness that they were good at things that were perceived to be like female nurturing traits. So when I did break through some of those grass ceilings and get some of those big jobs, and I was the only female in those spaces, I had a lot of affirmation from my female counterparts, but also some from the men who wanted to lead differently, who didn't want to be in that mould of how a traditional male leader might be expected to show up.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Okay, so you both took the learning, but you also did something different with it later. So you also you took on board that you were being emotionally intelligent, not emotional, and then you shifted your leadership style in order for other people to see emotionality as a positive thing. Yeah, which speaks to the talk you did for our dinner, actually, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 6:31

When you use the word emotionality on that, we've tried this conversation before. Do you mean that whole idea of like we are emotional beings? But being emotional is not a weakness, it's a stroke. And it makes us human. And when you centre your humanness, your humanity as a leader, it makes you a better leader.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

But for me, that's a no-brainer. Agreed. So wait, so once you had that realisation in that moment from your manager, what do you then do with that? So you've managed to reframe it, you've managed to take the learning from it. How do you then in situ respond to somebody who is seeing you as being an emotional woman?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Uh well, a little bit of self-coaching, a little bit of a pet talk, a little bit of an affirmation of who I am, and also like one of the things I'm gonna talk about later on in the in the conversation is about like how we challenge others and actually like having a conversation about that bias, like bringing awareness to the fact that it's actually like, do you see the bias that's playing out right here? And yes, I'm a female leader, but I am six foot one and I'm really confident, and I also am very aware that a lot of my female peers counterparts are half my size who aren't as confident as I am, and I think there's a bias that I've been promoted as a leader quite quickly because I have some of the traits of my male counterparts. So I tried to bridge those two spaces and leverage my privilege and my status and my position to hold people to account to not let them off the hook at those kind of like those casual, stereotypical, generic comments that people say sometimes that it might not be about me, it might be about a counterpart. Actually, like, is she emotional or she just being human? Like, is she just actually like being emotionally intelligent? Like you're you're making it sound as a criticism, actually, that there's a strike there that you're not seeing.

SPEAKER_00 8:12

How do you manage to have those more challenging and I think you call them courageous conversations? If you ever met my mother, you don't understand.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

Like we we get brought up in households, don't we, where we either have permission to have these conversations or we don't. And my mum's quite formidable. She got my parents weren't self-employed, but my mum ran a very successful business. She's very straight talking. And I guess I've been brought up in a house where I wasn't allowed to have an opinion and I wasn't allowed to challenge, and then I've worked in different settings. I've worked in six schools, a couple of universities, and now in my own business. And I've navigated those different spaces where there's been permission and psychological safety to speak up and speak out, but there's also sometimes been a resistance to that. And even when I am quite clear on who I am and how I show up, and people say that's what they want on the team, and then when you start being who you are, the team, they're like, Oh, could you rape it in a little bit? But I was like, But I told you at an interview, like I am really candid, I'm really straight talking, you always know where you stand with me. So against it started as my upbringing, it became, I guess, like my personal brand of who I am as a leader. I describe myself as being mammite, like I I have people who absolutely love me and want to work with me, and I have people who find me quite difficult, and that's I'm quite comfortable with that. I think I'd rather be Mamite than vanilla. So I think it's being clear on who you are, and then because I because of how I show up and what I model, lots of people have asked me to run training on it. So I've built a whole programme called Creative Conversations Around It where I've harvested all the different models, like radical candor, fierce conversations, doing greatly and drawn on some great thought leadership, but a lot of that's quite theoretical, and I've made it practical. And I've done, I do training and I do scripting, and I've helped people to get out of their own way, really, to have the conversations they need to have.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

It sounds though in that moment that you had this realization or this thought came to you. There was something that was quite hurtful, or you had received something that's quite wounding in that conversation. So before then, what did you do with criticism? Like before this moment, like how did you deal with criticism? What did that do to you and for you? Yeah, good question.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

Someone said to me, I'm quite proud. I didn't necessarily that didn't necessarily resonate with me, but I worked really hard and I'm good at my job, and I do take pride in working hard and having impact and like building respect that way. So when someone said, Oh, you're quite like your pride, and that also sounded like an insult. We had a conversation, and that came from another woman, and she was defending one of her male reportees. So that that was a bit salty, should we say? And then another one of the male colleagues who had made a comment about we were talking about the difference between confidence and arrogance. And I always I'm very mindful of where I sit on that because I'm a really confident person, but the worst thing you could probably say about me would be, you're arrogant. I I really try to manage that modesty and that humility and being confident in who I am and what I do, but not letting it teeter into arrogance. And I think this guy on that moment had made a comment that I was a bit arrogant, and that was that that had really ruined me because that was like one of the words I don't want to be used about me, and I try really hard to self-manage to not have that word used about me. So I literally went into this guy's office, shut the door, effed and jeffed, and had a bit of a moment. But I felt psychologically safe enough to do that, and it had been a build-up, I guess, that like when you are the only seaman on a senior leadership team and you are younger than everyone else, and there's quite a you called it like broko earlier on, like that kind of a certain culture, I was constantly having to prove myself, and I was being excluded in invisible and invisible ways in that different space. So I guess I had to fight a little bit harder, but the more experience I got, I learned how to resist and fight in a less combative way, shall we say?

SPEAKER_00 12:00

Yes, it's so difficult, isn't it? Because I speak to so many women who they are both conscious of what they see as their personal failings, and they are working in environments where those supposed personal failings are being reflected back at them all the time. And add to that, they're unable to say anything around it, or they feel like they're unable to say something around it. And I feel as women we're constantly negotiating this who we are, what we're allowed to feel, what we're allowed to think, how we're allowed to show up, what we're even supposed to say against the people that are like, you know, criticizing us, or even sometimes it's hard for us to take on the positive feedback. I I see that a lot too. And I'm wondering how you have found ways to create spaces for other women to because this is something I see that you're really good at. Like there is you as a person who uh is formidable and is able to kind of move through the world in this like marmite way and be comfortable with that. And also, you are an incredible spacemaker, you're an incredible connector. You make it possible for other women to show up in ways that feel visible and strong and connecting and affirming. How have you learned to do that? And why was that so important that you do that for other women as well and not just for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 13:25

Well, firstly, thank you for the compliments and the affirmations, okay? And that's me modelling the fact that we have to accept and we have to own and we have to honour when we get a compliment because so many people, so many women brush it off. Like you see, someone's had a new haircut or a new dress or they've lost a bit of weight, you give them a compliment and they they dismiss it, they brush it off, they give it a flippant come up like, oh, this old thing, it was in the sale being of Dorothy Perkins. Like, do you like do you mean for me? Like we have to practice and we have to model that it's okay to be seen doing something well, it's okay to have strength, and that and we need to affirm that. And I have held to account a lot of the um existing and aspirational female leaders who I've worked with who I know hate public spotlight, hate having flowers and briefing, hate having main checks. And I've said to them, like, big girl pads on tomorrow, you're getting some flowers and briefing. Like, oh, really? I thought, yeah, because all the other staff need to see in fact you're absolutely bloody brilliant at what you do, and I'm not you're gonna be in the shadows, like you need to stand there and have a couple of minutes of discomfort, but show that it's okay to be appreciated and show that it's okay to be celebrated. So I name it and I build people up and I give them the heads up, it's gonna happen. And I don't do it all the time, so it's not performative and it's not like tokenistic. But when you are going to do it, like be quite a night. So I'm a facilitator for I'm Remarkable, which is one of the Google visibility in the workplace kind of programs. I've won about a hundred sessions for them over the last five, six years, and it's the idea that like there's enough room and enough night for all of us, that it's not about me hogging the spotlight and everyone else is left in the shadows, but it's also not about me pushing you all into the spotlight and me staying in the shadows. Like, there's something about like there's enough night and space for all of us to be seen, and we can lift all of ourselves up. So for me, like how we actually own our strengths, and that and you're right, and I coach so many women who default into everything they're doing wrong, and I always capture them and say, Okay, we'll talk about what you need to work on in a minute. Firstly, can you tell me three things you're doing well at the moment? Can you tell me three of your strengths? And there's something comfortable with that, but I hold them to account for the fact that know yourself, be proud of who you are and what you do, and then tell me what you need to work on, and don't call it a weakness, call it an area for development. We've all got areas for development. So for me, it's about like giving space and permission, but also holding one another to account at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Visibility is so important, isn't it? It's what it's actually my word of the year, is around I don't know, I think maybe it's because I came into midlife and I was noticing that my relationship to visibility had started to change. I've been thinking a lot about what happens to people when they never see themselves reflected back, or when they never see themselves in ways that can be affirming. You talk about belonging, you talk about like cultivating spaces around belonging. What have you come to learn about visibility and a need for visibility in our lives?

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Yeah, it's massive, and it's something I've massively taken for granted. So I'm a straight white, anybody cis-gendered christened woman. And although I've had beef throughout my schooling, education, rock career about the lack of female representation at times, that's been my drum to bang. Actually, when you stand back and you look at all the other identity groups who are marginalised, who don't have visibility, you realise that you've had quite a lot of affirmation. So when I think about who taught me, who led me, who I read, I'm a massive reader, and who I covered in the curriculum. My identity was constantly affirmed from the age of three to 2023. And when I compare that, I did an English degree, so I made a post-clinical literature at university, and that was an active choice. I didn't want to study the pale male stale dead guys who I'd studied for two CC available English. I want I've got a passion for reading, but I wanted it to be representative, inclusive reading rather than the kind of the traditional canon. And then becoming an English teacher, I've got a network of fantastic English practitioners. And when you then listen to peers stories, women of colour, gay women, disabled women, who never saw themselves in the library, never saw themselves in the curriculum, never saw themselves in the staffing structure, let alone the leadership structure. For me, it's the implicit messages and affirmation I constantly received that I didn't appreciate that other people weren't receiving that. So that to me is why visibility is so important. But we do a lot of work at our company, The Belonging Effect, around the need to increase visibility in the library. So children need to see themselves as the protagonist, as the author of that book. There's a brilliant TED talk by Dr. Radeen Sim Bishop called Windows and Mirrors. And every book should be an opportunity for you to see yourself in the mirror, but for you to learn about someone else through the window. Those two lenses I think are quite important. Then there's lots of work happening around the curriculum and making sure that the curriculum is representative, breadth and depth, and is including the voice that have been forgotten or excluded historically. And when I think about that, I went up the arts pathway because I saw myself in English, drama, media. I didn't see myself in science and math. So maybe that is something that then shaped my direct my direction of travel. And then we do lots of work around recruitment. So thinking about who steps into the classroom, who becomes a teacher, who becomes a mill leader, a senior leader, a governor, a headteacher, we've got a significant underrepresentation within the sector when it comes to who our children are actually seeing. So it touches all aspects really, and that's about like the children's experience in education. But then you've got the adults who work in education who often don't look up the ladder and see themselves, but let's see themselves represented on SLT, represented in the more senior roles in education. So I think visibility is so important. It does make you question your worth, it makes you question your place, it makes you question the possibilities or the opportunities that you might get.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Has this always been important to you, the idea of visibility? Was there a moment for you that you realised that something around this was where you were going to spend your life? It's a really good question.

SPEAKER_01 19:36

I get I get asked it so much, but like what kicked me down this path, and I'm from Devon. I went to a really traditional school that was a boys' school. When I went to the boys' school, it became a current school. I think two things my parents gave us as children was the passion for reading. We went to the library every Saturday for years, and I've always been an avid reader, and I've always read above my age group. And my mum had to really advocate for me with my English teacher and the librarian about letting me read what I could read rather than telling me what I should be reading at my age because I was reading books that they didn't approve of. So, like for my dad's 40th, when I was, I think I was in the year 10, we went to Kenya. It was about a couple of weeks. In Kenya, we went on Safari, my dad's mass be into animals, and I can't I can't remember this moment, but mum and dad posed it back to me because I've asked them this question to help me almost like fill in the gaps. They said to me we were in Mombasa and we saw somebody who was really unwell in the streets, and he was homeless, he was disabled, no one was helping him, and they said it really emotionally impacted me. And I didn't speak for a few days. And I'm a talk for you made this about me. But like the fact that I went so quiet, it's it really, it really impacted me, and I couldn't quite understand why no one was helping this person who was needy. I think those two things together, coupled with the fact that at Annevin mum and dad said no, I was going to go to a private school for five years, and I wasn't particularly happy about that. I didn't think I needed to go there. I thought my parents were wasting their money, and I think there's a thing there that really kicked in about social justice about the fact that the local school should have been good enough for anybody to go to. And my parents could swimp and save to some way to get a better education, but that's not found everyone who can't. So I think those are the three things that perhaps really shaped my value system that we value reading, we value education, we value travelling. And it then, yes, I guess propelled me into my degree. And I wasn't going to be a teacher, but I ended up falling into teaching and loving it.

SPEAKER_00 21:32

So I want to go back to this idea about belonging because you've written this book about it, and this wonderful book about it, which is here, cultivating belonging in schools. And I got so much out of reading it, and I'm not an educator and I'm not in that field. And I wonder what you have seen shift around this discussion around belonging recently. Because it feels like something that feels really current. What shifts are you seeing around this conversation? conversation around belonging because that in itself feels like a courageous conversation to be having right now.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yeah, thank you. Um thanks for reading it. And lots of people have said to me, like the titles almost in other people reading it who probably could get quite a lot out of it because it centres schools, but actually it's about society. It's about being if that being a citizen. And as you know the book structured around like how we belong in UK society right now in the school system, in the staff them, in the classroom, in the curriculum. So I try to go from like macro to micro because I think people get into the weeds quite quickly and start thinking about belonging in the curriculum, belonging in the library and start putting places on the problem and don't actually get into the roots of fundamentally what we need to be unlearning, relearning, doing differently. And I think that's one of my fears where we're at right now. I'm actually talking about inclusive workplaces at RAF uni and event tomorrow and I've just been finishing my slides and I've I've started by going to the literacy off the core of the topic because assuming acronyms Claire like people band you around all these different letters. So I talk about the fact that like 15 years ago this work was called DI Diversity Inclusion. Then it became EDI Ecology Diversity Inclusion. In the wake of George's murders for the last five, six years we see people using DEI diversity equity inclusion. We adopted the B quite quickly so for the last five years consistently we've been using DEI B and the B for belonging. That actually came from corporate corporate the corporate world started talking about belonging before the education world did. But education and health which is where I mainly work like the B really resonates. But what's going wrong with it is that people now just talk about belonging and don't talk about diversity, equity and inclusion. So we've got this big belonging bandwagon in education and every event and every article and every book is about belonging and I've seen this it's ironic for me to say this out loud that it's all by white people straight people able-bodied people so yes I fall into that category but I've done very deep work and I've got consciousness and I've tried to use the book to open it out and say you can't get to belonging if you don't pay attention to diversity equity and inclusion. That's the strategic space and this is what the outcome is and I do worry that this bandwagon that is now the belonging conversation in society and in education specifically like we are putting classes on problems. And I think why it's been propelled into everyone's consciousness is because of what's going on in the world right now. Like the last five, six years globally have been problematic. In the UK we've had a lot of social disconnection and tensions like the last two summers have been horrific in the UK and I'm sayful for what could happen in the World Cup that might then knock out another massive social fallout this summer. So I think because of what's happening like post-Brexit politically globally we've got this lens on who is belonging who gets to belong who doesn't get to belong and then there's very loud messages in the mainstream press in social media like othering people and excluding people and telling people they don't belong in this country which is also highly political so for me like I guess like belonging is almost the threat that pulls together a lot of the things that are happening around us at the moment and it's giving people a way into the conversation maybe.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Why do you think people are so nervous to have that conversation now? Because something I hear a lot is around getting it wrong not understanding the terminology so you did speak to that about how it's shifted so much about some sense that there's a trend against it so it's not what we talk about anymore.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Like why do you think we're so nervous about having those conversations I think there's a lack of psychological safety about where you can have those conversations so I think it's that like not knowing can you have them in the workplace can you have them in your team like how you have those conversations with people who might have a very different perspective to you or different value setups to you this comes up a lot like I work with big organizations. I think social media has not helped like I was on Twitter for a long time Twitter used to be great it became because it was absolutely toxic but what but platforms like that like almost got people into this binary argument state where like right wrong right wrong like a tennis game and actually there's more nuanced and like and I think social media has reduced the ability for people to have conversations and dialogues and debates where we might not all agree that we can listen to one another and we can learn to one another and I think learn from one another I think people have also like they're falling into sinos and they're falling into echo chambers where where their perspective or their identity and their experience has been affirmed but they're not empathetic of other people and there's a great saying I don't know who to attribute it to but I use it a lot in my training it doesn't have to happen to you to matter to you. Yes and when people say to me like why do you care so much Hannah because like I shouldn't have to experience racism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia the list goes on. I shouldn't have to experience those things to care about how people are treated so for me like it's everyone's responsibility it's about us being like human like good humans good citizens emotionally intelligent looking after people I shouldn't have to have the identity to know that it's not okay to talk to or talk about people like that. It does make me think about your thought that you kept this idea of reframing criticism because you must be given the field that you work in you must very sadly be exposed to criticism of your position of your work even of your life's purpose around doing this work around belonging how do you deal with that kind of criticism you you've hit the nail on the head I get a lot I get a lot of criticality and my poor coach Michelle who you might have met at one of our coffee Dolar Domens has spoken for five years we have an ongoing thread of like what criticism is how to navigate right now. And I I've got quite a reasonable social media footprint like I have a bit a big following on on Twitter I've left Twitter but on LinkedIn like I do get unsolicited critical feedback from people via DM on social media evenings, weekends holidays and when I say unsolicited like going back to psychological safety I've got an amazing circle of supporters and critical friends around me where we can hold the mirror up to one another give each other feedback but it's done with love and it's done with support and you can hear it and you learn from it but you know that they are safe people and there's mutual reciprocity. So for me that's contracted criticality that I welcome when it is someone who I don't know or someone who I don't like or someone who I know doesn't respect me in our team and our work who just sends me a really shirt DM on a Saturday night giving me feedback about a blog I've written or something I've spoken about or something we're doing and they still think you should be doing. Oh it's frustrating it's really frustrating so I have had to find it quite a thick skin because I'm consciously and constantly like navigating the tightrope of who I am doing the work I'm doing but I get affirmation from my team who are very diverse all the time about the fact that I ask them for feedback I listen to feedback I change what I say and what I do I'm always a work in progress and a lot of people don't know how much work I do behind the scenes to be conscious of who I am when I'm doing the work.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

Do you think that surprises people this idea that because you are you do there's an interesting thing around confidence isn't there there's an idea I think about confidence that is it's rigid. It's about like we found out who we are we found out how we operate like we are solid and actually so much of what I'm thinking about just talking to you is that there is a real fluidity about you. There's a real sense of I am prepared to adapt and to receive and to be in conversation in relationship and I know who I am but it doesn't mean that I won't listen to you and it doesn't mean that I will push through regardless there's a real sense of being in relationship.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

I try I tried really hard and I also think there's something about taking responsibility and ownership as well so like going back to accepting positive feedback is also about how we receive critical feedback and when I think on my team I'll say if I might use different words what I'm gonna say I'm a bit of a twit like I've just had this feedback like tell me if I've got this wrong they'll say no Han like we check that blog that blog spang on so I think it's like I am a really confident person but I also triangulate to make sure that things land right I try not to be a bullet in the training shop I try not to be someone who just pushes on regardless. I don't always get it right and like we do lots of training around conscious bias challenging talkatri language disrupting microaggressions and I'm not saying I'm flawless I'm not saying I haven't done those things but I learn quite quickly when I get them wrong and I respond to the feedback and I hold myself to account try and then model moving forward the language you should use or the behavior you should be embodying.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

We have this segment that makes it sound a bit posh um on the podcast that's about looking at what words mean and so much I think of your work is about the terms, the words the assumptions that we make because of those words. And so I just want to throw out some words and see what they mean to you. And this word wasn't on my list but there's a theme that really comes up in these conversations that is around unlearning that is really about you know the messages the thoughts the beliefs we have taken on often from school often in early education around something and then we spend the next decades unlearning that thing to arrive at a whole new thought that kind of does empowers and affirm us. And one of the words that kept coming up to me was this idea about likability and I've heard you talk about likability before and I think you're really fascinating on this and I find you really inspiring on this particular as a woman who like I my tendency is around people pleasing it's around likability it's around like connecting through in a different way what is likability to you do you think I think likeability is a magic problem for a lot of women that so many women fall under the trap of seeking to be liked and I can't remember who gifted me this or how I developed this carpet mantra but when I became assistant head in my late 20s as the only female SLT I was really aware of the fact was gonna impact me and make me less liked.

SPEAKER_01 32:17

And I braced myself for that. I guess it hands in hands with the criticality doesn't it but my mantra since I became a senior leader has been I'm here to be respected not liked which might sound a bit brutal and a bit cold but for me I want to be respected for being really good at what I do, what I know the impact I have that's the professional value that I want to be affirmed by. I don't need to be liked. I like myself my friends and family like me and a lot of people in my network really like me. And I often get the feedback from people who like I managed maybe or worked with I didn't like you for the first few months but you actually really get your job and you actually are all right. You are enough like you are XYZ and I do really like you now and I've had so many female friends who are now like really really close friends of mine like almost like saying that to me multiple times and I think I've seen so many women lose themselves in their roles and in their leadership in particular where they've almost given away their power and they've sought to be liked and they haven't built the respect and it's really hard to get the respect once once you've given that power away so I would always say that seek to be respected first and then work on the being liked and how you do your job. Don't go to the being liked because it's much harder to get the respect. So I think it's about perhaps alternating the focus.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Yeah and I've watched you do this it's like you are an extraordinary people person. I've watched you connect a room full of women from very different backgrounds and bring them together and do that through I don't know you have all these wonderful skills about making people feel comfortable and accepted and welcome and also you really show up as yourself doing that. And I think it's a real gift. My next word is around risk and I say this because you are somebody that I have seen take extraordinary risks in your career. You left education you have built this business you are talking in a field that is fraught in its own way you are taking some personal risks with that what do you think risk has come to mean to you're spotlighting some really key words here for me.

SPEAKER_01 34:21

So I've I've got a financial advisor who every year gets me to do a a risk on my on my investment. And it's interesting when you have something held up to you to think about like you see yourself as being someone who takes risks but then there's different ways you can take risks and I think my parents have brought me up in a household where we were risk takers. Like that was just like the standard of how the Wilsons kind of showed up they were both freelancers self-employed so they had to take risks but we've also done some quite like adrenaline sealed sports like horse riding skiing like water skiing like taking risks was almost like built into our D and and I think that was also then built alongside building resilience as well. So I think I've been given I guess the kind of the confidence the empowerment to take risks and what my friends and family remember about me is I tend to plan the risk take the risk and tell if one I've done it afterwards because I've got quite a strong sense of who I am and what's right for me and if I listen to too many voices I actually end up doing what's not right for me. So when I resigned from headship I turned 14 resigned from headship and I told everyone I resigned they're like oh we're not going to talk about this I was like no it's done it's done like this is what's right for me and my CEO was completely blind so I didn't see it coming and didn't react very well at all so I think I've got a very strong sense of who I am what I do what I need to do to make myself happy and I think a privilege that comes with who I am playing is I haven't got a partner or any children. So when I take a risk the only person it's going to impact is me. So when I resigned from headship and a decent salary and pension and security and stability I didn't know we're gonna go into lockdown but I did then think oh my gosh what have I done by taking this risk but going back to humility and modesty I'd very happily go and work anywhere to pay my mortgage so I think like I know that I'm employable I know that I've got transferable skills so when I take a risk I'm quite happy to muck it out and then pivot and do something different as well.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Okay my last word let's think I want to get a juicy word for you it's actually allyship and I wanted to talk about that because I find that we're confusing right now to be honest. I'm just curious about what allyship really what you've come to learn about it and where you think we are with it.

SPEAKER_01 36:38

Yeah okay great question I was just trying to find the book a minute ago I thought it was on my bookshelf a really good book I'd recommend people read is Emma DeBeary's book What White People Can Do Next. So in this book she talks about allyship's not enough and she talks you through like what allowship is but how allows it needs to evolve into advocacy but then she introduces the word of being an accomplice that allied can be that actually it's really performative it's really tokenistic it's when you're in the room but when you're not in the room you're not being an ally ally can allow can be problematic because in trying to support someone you can sometimes disempower them and undermine them. So you think you're helping but you're actually hindering the situation that's something I navigate all the time that when I see things going wrong around me I always try to check in and center the person and ask them what they need and not assume what they need because you see people like swoop in as a saviour and actually perpetuate the harm all the problems I think that's where allyship gets quite a lot of critique the advocacy P to me is really important the going back to the phrase it doesn't have to happen to me to matter to me so to me I'm I'm not black or brown but I commit to anti-racism I call people out I challenge things I again I might make mistakes but I try really hard to lean into that space to remove the barriers and to have the conversations and it makes a lot of people feel really uncomfortable but a lot of my colleagues and friends and contacts know that I'm prepared to say the thing that no one else is saying I can say it with a safety in my identity and my privilege that they can't say it. So I quite often become the person who says the thing that needs to be said but they can't say it because it might directly or detrimentally impact them. So I guess that links to the risk bit as well that I'm prepared to take the risk and say the thing and the encompassed bit that Emma debe introduces is about working in coalition with people that she also is as a language be a co-conspirator okay so this idea that I help a lot of people behind the scenes. So optically it might be as white women running a business and like making money out of DIB like that's the kind of the base critique I get that people don't know how much work I'm doing behind the scenes. I take crisis calls evenings and weekends from people who are in tricky situations usually because they're marginalized. So for me that's the co-conspirator bit I'm helping people navigate the system their unions their contracts difficult situations.

SPEAKER_00 39:05

I think allied can sometimes be very visible and external but actually it's what you do behind the scenes when no one's looking that that's a bit we have been talking about visibility and it's been a thread through this but the invisibility of certain things the unsaid the unseen that's also equally as impactful though.

SPEAKER_01 39:24

Yes and the conversations you're having with people that people don't know you're having and then when you put something out on LinkedIn or you have a conversation with someone you and you're holding on to account for something they're the scene oh hand it's got been off again but they don't actually know the fact that there's been multiple people contact me to say have you seen this is problematic would you be okay being the person to say it yeah absolutely so I think it's that they only people only see the kind of the tip of the iceberg and not everything that's happening below the waterline maybe.

SPEAKER_00 39:50

Which also speaks to the likability that actually you are willing to say the thing that everybody is thinking or feeling or wanting someone to say and you're the one that says it. And that also goes back beautifully to your thought capt because there is something in that too about the vulnerability of being open to receiving criticism differently and reframing something in a more affirming way.

SPEAKER_01 40:12

And so I'm just wondering I always finish these conversations with how you hope that you will continue to remember that and to kind of keep that thought I think through my coaching so I've had a coaching session every month in the last five years since my business with Michelle she holds me to account but I bring these things up and we talk them out regularly. So I think that's how I keep it present and like you talked about confidence earlier on we in our training our DIB training we talk about the three C's consciousness confidence and competence and how we need to be developing those three things in ourselves and others so I guess it's constantly being conscious of who I am how I'm showing up what feedback I'm getting because I think the discombordinating bit can be you can do the same thing two different people and get contradictory feedback and I think that's where your point about making mistakes using the wrong words taking the wrong approach might work with one person doesn't work with the other that can be quite confusing. The constant piece in our work is about the confidence to use the language understand the concepts have the courage conversations challenge and then the competence is what specific skills do you need for what you do and how do you then commit to DEIB and thinking about being more inclusive helping to create that belonging for others whatever role you have to think about your own sphere of influence. So I think for me it's just keeping it as an ongoing conversation about myself but then in the coaching and the training I do with others it's about them sort of like cascading it and distributing it into other people's consciousness as well.

SPEAKER_00 41:40

And that cascading is so beautiful that's such a great word that in a sense sums you up to me when I think about you because I really got to know you in the context of like a local networking group but I've also experienced you with wide networks you'll work like nationwide you also work abroad you'll work in different fields and so there is this beautiful cascading effect that I think that you have. So thank you so much for coming here today talking to us and really like going through all these really important areas that I think so many of us are thinking about and and trying to to navigate right now. So thank you for being on the show. Thanks Claire for having me appreciate the conversation thank you for listening to this episode of A Thought I Kept with Hannah Wilson. If you are curious about Hannah's work and bringing her into your organisation working with her personally or even just picking up her book I've added details for how to find her on LinkedIn her company and also where to get a copy of Cultivating Belonging in schools in the show notes. As I said you do not need to be an educator. I think it's a really impactful book for anybody who is hoping to create more affirming spaces for people wherever you work and however you move through the world. You can also find out more about me and if Lost Start Here both the book and the company by heading over to our website and I've added details for that in the show notes too. We have just released our new book If Lost Here Wellbeing for the anxious, the disconnected or uncertain it's a well-being journal that is created to help people find their own way to well without rigid routines or impossible expectations. It's a book kind of companion and a really great place to think things through about how you do like to show up in the world and how you like to be around others. There's also a link in the show notes about how to get that book but it is available at Waterstones and independent bookshops and bookshop.org as well as Amazon. So this episode was hosted by me Claire Simmons and made possible with your support thank you to everybody who has become a paying member on Substack at more good days. You do get video episodes of these conversations and some extra bonuses and all your support over there really is helping keep these episodes going. So let me know how you find this week's thought whether it's one that you'll keep share or even forget I hope not forget it feels like this is one that we could all try on and see where it takes us. Until next Monday when I'll be back with another thought that one of my guests has kept and you might want to as well bye for now