Conscious Leaders with Ruth Farenga

Renee Watson is Founder of Watson Consulting and the Curiosity Box (as well as a head coach in women’s touch rugby!). She is fantastic at tuning into her team and finding out what makes them tick and shares her specific methods for doing so.

This podcast’s purpose is to open up honest conversations. Ones that get under the surface and tell us what leadership and life are really like. When leaders share something personal or deep with us, we learn tangible and practical things.  We also connect as human beings. In hearing others’ challenges, we feel connected and validated as fellow imperfect humans.

Dominic was brought up to go for big goals but to do so in a way that was considerate to those around him. This is reflective in his company, which seems to build community as much as actual business.

Skyler Mattson is President of the global creative agency, Wongdoody. She is a corporate leader with a very ‘human’ style. This really comes across as she talks about looking after a large team of creatives. I really got the impression she was ‘one of them’! Despite her leadership role and schedule, she’s still there on the ground, involved in projects and balances the corporate elements of her role with her employees’ needs.

This month the tables have turned and I had the fortune of being interviewed for my own podcast by the wonderful Fi Macmillan.

From this episode you will take away:

• Why I wrote my new book Next Level Leadership, nine lessons from conscious leaders
• What holds leaders back
• Memorable and practical moments of great leadership from the podcast
• Simple practices you can adopt to take your leadership to the next level

I would love your feedback so do contact me [email protected] with any thoughts.

Shanice Mears is back on the Conscious Leaders Podcast two years later to update us on how far business has come on diversity and inclusion (D&I) since George Floyd’s death in 2020.

She shares great stories of leading businesses but talks through the reasons why much of this work is limited.

Shanice is a young, black Co-Founder of a highly successful marketing agency called The Elephant Room who help build inclusive brands.

Martyn got his latest business off the ground when he put himself out there, asked for help and then capitalised on those moments.

As a business leader, his company, Purple Goat now uses the power of disabled creatives and influencers to create engaging, progressive and representative marketing campaigns and serves big brands such as Tesco and Virgin Media.

Martyn is keen to highlight that the disability market is huge with approximately 1.3 billion people in it. He says that these audiences are underserved.

As an employer, Martyn employs 50% disabled people (across mobility, neurodiversity, hearing and visual) and he recognises that conversations around disability are not always comfortable even for someone like him because he feels like he, of all people, should get it right! He shares how we can lean into these difficult conversations and not worry about being perfect.

Martyn has experienced burnout in recent times and we explore how it’s helped him understand mindfulness at a much deeper level to help him through the tough moments as well as lean into a more modern type of masculinity.

In my revisit interview with Jon Alexander, Co-founder, the Citizenship Project and now Author of ‘Citizens’, we dive deeper into his philosophy. Jon believes the story of us as consumers is broken. Practically, he gets organisations to ask themselves ‘what would it look like to bring the same creative energy into selling stuff, into involving people?’.

He says that if you see people as consumers then you’re starting from the wrong place. This is then merely about ‘how can we sell people stuff’ whereas if you start from a place of seeing them as citizens then you can ask yourselves ‘what are you trying to do in the world?’, ‘what’s the point?’. Delving into purpose in this way and distributing power is central to Jon’s philosophy.

It sounds radical, perhaps even communist to some. It isn’t. It’s down to earth stories from across business, government and wider third sector and community groups.

We explore examples from The Bodyshop, the National Trust and explore the controversial role that Brewdog have had in the craft beer space.

Jon is a deep yet practical voice on how we rethink society.

Sue McLean started in a man’s world. Some of those men wanted her to have more ‘gravitas’. She wondered if they wanted her to be more like them. Furthermore, there weren’t many female role models that she could look up to as junior lawyer. Most of them worked crazy hours, just like the men and had kids in boarding school, something she didn’t want to do.

She could have accepted that and hung around the lower levels of her firms but she saw that her companies lost great women. Things needed to change.

Sue still works hard but she has broken the mould. She’s now a Partner at large, corporate law firm, Baker McKenzie working in senior roles 4 days a week while her husband took the larger parenting role of their three children. He was a stay-at-home Dad for many years.

Now, Sue is keen to give both men and women flexibility, for example, encouraging senior role job shares and more shared paternity leave. Sue says that leaders need to delegate and give younger, more junior leaders meaty opportunities so that they grow which brings team success.

Less focus on overwork, more on overall growth.

John Timpson is Chairman at Timpson, well-known as a high street brand for shoe repairs and key cutting which now has over 2,000 stores and makes £20million in profit.

What is it that works so well?

John sought to shake up the business when he originally became CEO, instilling a key principle of ‘Upside Down Management’. This means as much autonomy for staff as is humanly possible. He says there are only two rules to follow (which he shares) the rest is up to the individual to decide.

The faith that Timpson puts in people is most powerful when we consider that 10% of their workforce are ex-convicts. John talks about the difficulties people have coming out of prison and the high rates of reoffending when people don’t have a job. Timpson offer them a chance and it pays off for both sides.

John is very open about his own mental health challenges and struggles with depression. He shares openly about this in his writing and conversations with others. John is keen that we normalise this and that staff step up to support each other.

Indeed, he calls their area managers ‘social workers’ – it’s their job to support the people running the shops in both their personal and professional lives.