Links:

'Reclaim Time to Read' 2022 reading challenge:  https://www.helenbeedham.com/2022-reading-challenge

Helen's business book: The Future of Time: how 're-working' time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing

Win a free signed copy of The Future of Time

Register here for The Future of Time at Work public webinars in March and April

Oliver Burkeman's article

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden

Mitra on Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mitra-janes-a734414b/

Inclusive Leadership by Charlotte Sweeney & Fleur Bothwick

The Gendered Brain by Gina Rippon

Transcript:

Helen: Hello this week I'm talking to Mitra Janes. Mitra is a Diversity and Inclusion leader who started her career as an HR business partner at Ford Motor Company. She has since held senior Diversity and Inclusion roles in the law, insurance, and now banking, where she leads on D&I for two out of three of HSBC's global businesses. She has worked extensively to bring about positive change in organisations and in 2020 was named as one of the top 20 diversity champions on the Global Diversity list. Welcome to The Business of Being Brilliant Mitra!

Mitra: Thank you so much Helen.

Helen: Wonderful to have you here. We were just chatting off air about how it's been a little while since we've caught up and how it was only maybe five or six years ago that we first met in the City. You kindly hosted a number of networking events, and I don't know about you, but it feels strange to imagine that time when we welcomed lots of strangers into our offices and held these big gatherings.

Mitra: I know we held events with actual human beings present, we served refreshments, we socialised together. It feels like a lot longer than just a couple of years ago.

Helen: We all shook hands happily didn't we! Sneezed away in meeting rooms!

Mitra: Without sanitiser.

Helen: Exactly. Gosh, one of the many ways our world of work has changed and I've given a very quick sketch of your career to date, but to help our listeners get a feel for who you are as a person, as well as the roles you've held, can you tell me what three words you think or others think best describe you?

Mitra: It's always a tricky one isn't it? So I thought that one of my words would be pragmatic. In the type of work that I do as a D&I professional, there are lots of different ways of approaching that, but I'm someone that comes at this from a very 'can do', let's be pragmatic about how we approach this.

My second word, I would say, is honest. Integrity is very important to me, being able to be candid and frank and expecting that in return is really important to me. And then I know you've asked for a third word, Helen, but I couldn't find the words to articulate this so I'll just explain it. What people often say about me is that I make them think about things a little bit differently. So I give them a different perspective or I challenge their thinking, or I just give them food for thought. And certainly in the work that I do, that's so crucial in taking people on that journey of thinking about how can we value diversity in a different way? How can we be more inclusive in the way we approach our work or just our general interactions to be honest. I know that isn't a third word, but I hope that's still ok.

Helen: Yeah, definitely and that's such an interesting aspect to mention. I'm kind of curious to know how you do that. Do you think it's by asking lots of questions, for example, because you can't push people into a different way of seeing things or taking a different stance on something.

Mitra: I think it comes from a place of empathy. So really being able to imagine myself in someone else's shoes and see things from their perspective even if that perspective is entirely different from my own. So I think the essence is in that empathetic mindset and empathetic approach, but then thinking about: okay, how can I connect with this individual? So it's not just about empathizing and seeing things from their perspective, but I need to give them something that takes them to a slightly different place.

Helen: That's a really generous approach to conversations isn't it? You have to listen really well and as you say, forget about you and your shoes and try and imagine what it's like to be them in their shoes. That's a very giving way of participating in relationships so I can see why you do so well in your role and in the field you work in.

And has there been a particular piece of advice that's stuck in your mind over the course of your career so far that has personally helped you, that someone else has offered to you?

Mitra: A couple of things actually, and they're very different pieces of advice from very different people. So one was from a very senior individual that I had the opportunity to work for for a period of time. And when I first started working for him, I wanted to impress him. He was very senior, he was very well regarded. I wanted to show how competent I was and what ideas I had. And so I came to him with a whole shopping list of things that I thought we should be doing and working on and trying to progress. And he was very honest with me and he said 'Mitra you're not going to do all of those things. What you should be doing is identifying the top three things and do them really, really well. And then we'll use that momentum to bring in other things later on down the track. But if you try and do - you know, there were probably 30 things on my list - if you try and do those 30 things, number one, you won't achieve them all; number two, those that you do achieve will be diluted because you're trying to do too much and you're not doing it to a great enough depth or breadth. So don't try and do that. Don't get distracted by all the things that you could do. Really prioritize. Focus on those top three and just absolutely nail them.

 And I often think about that and it's an approach that I've taken forward into subsequent roles and subsequent projects and work that I've done to really ruthlessly prioritize and to be really focused on why are we identifying these actions? Which are going to be most impactful? Which are going to move the needle? And let's use that momentum to drive even better progress rather than trying to do too much from the start. So I think that's one really important piece of advice that I keep with me now.

And the second piece was more personal to me and my career. There was a time, a long time ago when I was at Ford and I hadn't been promoted and I'd gone through the promotion cycle and hadn't been successful and that for me was hugely disappointing. And a colleague said to me 'Your career has got decades still to play out'. And this is in the scheme of those decades that you've still got - it's kind of a depressing way to think about it and we've got decades and decades ahead of us - but what she was saying is 'This is a minor setback. When you are in your sixties, looking back on the career that you've had, this is just a tiny little bump in the road, and it feels like it's something enormous right now. Because you know, I was bitterly disappointed. But actually this isn't going to hold you back from what you're going to achieve, and it's this small little bump in this decades and decades of your career. I needed to hear that at the time, it was really valuable advice to hear. And it's something that I've shared with other colleagues and people that I mentor; when you experience the setback, is it really the end of everything or is it actually just a bump that takes you in a different direction at that point in time?

Helen: Thank you. They're both such great pieces of advice and so relevant today, and in fact, in the book, The Future of Time, I touch on both of those pieces of advice in some way. So your first one about prioritize to the top three things that are going to make a difference, and you mentioned about don't get distracted by the other 27 things on the list that you'd really like to achieve, and maybe people are asking you to deliver. We are so easily distracted or accidentally drawn into a scattergun approach if there's lots of competing demands and if that sense of priority isn't really clear. Did you find that, that you had to push back and say no to lots of things as a consequence in order to prioritize? Because that might feel quite tough for some people.

Mitra: Absolutely. And in the diversity and inclusion space, what you don't want to do is turn people off from what they're trying to achieve, they're trying to achieve good things. So it's really positioning that in the sense of if we focus in this way, we can do better. If we focus on everyone's special projects and the special interests that people have got that could be very worthy, but actually not going to be as impactful as these three priorities that we've identified, then ultimately it will be doing a disservice in terms of what we can achieve collectively. But that really takes a lot of these types of conversations, of convincing and reassuring people that we're on the right track. But also once they start to see progress that's a really good convincing tool that we're on the right track.

Helen: I totally agree. It's having those conversations over and over again about what we're collectively focusing on and working towards, and what's the most important and, and saying no, or de- prioritizing other stuff as well. I think it's quite hard, isn't it? Because our instinct is always to get excited about new possibilities and to start things up, but it takes quite an act of courage to put an end to something or to put it on the back burner and say, actually, we're going to stop doing some stuff too. So it's great to hear how you approach that as a leader as well.

And looking back over your career, is there a time when you look back and think, gosh, I was really flourishing then, I have a really good memory of that time or was there a particular aspect of support or your circumstances that have helped you to do well in your career?

Mitra: Yeah. So I can definitely think about a specific period the individual who gave me advice around the priorities actually, when I was working for him. And there were negatives, you know, I'm not sitting here with rose-tinted spectacles. There was a lot of pressure; there were really high expectations; certainly I felt a personal pressure to deliver and to keep consistently delivering and no let up in that. But at the same time, that was someone who really believed in me and really saw my strengths and gave lots of positive encouragement around what I was capable of. And knowing that someone that I had so much respect for, that I really valued, I thought a lot of him, knowing that someone that I personally respected so much thought that I was talented and capable, really that was the environment for me that I did my best work. And I was reflecting on that ahead of this conversation and thinking, we're not always lucky to have that person who can do that for us, but we can decide that we're going to do that for someone else. So who's the person that we mentor or we coach, or that we look out for? And really give that person some positive encouragement around what their capabilities are and what their strengths are and what they can achieve.

Helen: That's great. And I love your advice about well, who can I now do that for? Who can I be that person for? Because especially even when we're kind of mid and senior career, we may still have ambitions and we may still be excited about the next things we want to achieve in our career. But we're perhaps at the risk of underestimating actually how much we've learned and accumulated so far that might really benefit other people.

And has there been a time at work where actually it felt really difficult to flourish? Can you tell us a bit

Mitra: I guess if I think about the roles that I've had going right back to the very first role that I had as an undergraduate on my placement year in Dagenham, I've worked in a lot of tough roles, a lot of tough environments from a culture perspective, often met with quite a lot of hostility. Certainly moving into the D&I space you're often working with people in your role is around convincing people and persuading people who perhaps don't see any value in diversity and inclusion, either diversity or inclusion and, and definitely both. And so you're going into a situation where you're facing perhaps personal hostility, lots of obstacles, lots of barriers, pressures, stress of deadlines and expectations. And so I can think of pretty much every role that I've ever done, where there's been a combination of those. I think the periods that I've found most challenging are those that I felt became very political. Perhaps there were factions within a team, a different agenda than the stated agenda and all of the obstacles that I talked about, the hostility and the timelines and the deadlines, I've seen all of those as a challenge, something that can be overcome. But I have found those examples where things have become very political, that can be a really tricky challenge to just keep digging deep and trying to address. And I think the thing that has kept me positive and kept me going through all of those tricky situations is having colleagues around me that I feel will have my back, will support me, that I can be open and honest with and they can be open and honest with me. And I can think about a very specific period and someone that I shared an office with and we absolutely supported each other in the good times and definitely in the bad times. We absolutely had each other's backs. We encouraged each other when we needed it, we cried together and we laughed together. And in fact other people would comment on this and they would say, when you two are both in the office together, the whole environment is different for everyone. And honestly, I would have really struggled in certain roles that I've had if I didn't have the support of colleagues around me. You spend a lot of time at work or a lot of time working; if you can't have those positive relationships with people around you it can be really, really hard just to just keep going.

Helen: That's so true. And particularly, as you say, when you're in a role where you are trying to lead and influence change in some way, there's always going to be some form of resistance or disagreement, and something's going to feel uphill. And it's such a good reminder that you're saying, to think about who can I have some really honest, unpolitical conversations with about what's going on, what I'm seeing and hearing, how you're feeling about it. Just coming back to one of your three words, honesty, we do need that don't we as individuals, we need someone that we can just say, can I just talk this over with you?

Mitra: Absolutely, it just makes such a difference in, in making work a more positive experience.

Helen: Definitely. And we were just chatting before we started to record about how last year you moved into a new role during the pandemic and mostly had your selection processes done virtually and how hard it is, therefore to build those relationships, like the ones you're just describing when we're really limited as to how often we can meet people face to face.

Mitra: Yeah and you know, I've worked in global organizations my entire career, so I'm very used to building relationships and having interactions with people that perhaps I'm never going to meet. If it's a colleague in Sydney, I'm not going to be jumping on the plane unfortunately to fly over to Sydney to have regular conversations. So you need to find ways to build relationships with people that isn't always face to face. But I think the thing that I've really noticed building relationships remotely, right from the start of a role is all of those informal interactions. The conversations that you're not in that happen around you, but ordinarily in the office, you just pick up on that, you'd hear it just behind you. And that would be really valuable for you to be aware of what's going on. So the way that I'm building relationships is a bit more formalized. It's, you know, we're going to meet at 10 o'clock and we're going to have a zoom call at that time, rather than let's go for a coffee or let's just have a bit more of a conversation after a meeting.

And I know lots of people are finding that in different roles and certainly for me, the experience that I've had in global organizations has been really useful because I've got the experience of having done that, but that informal interaction, I don't feel that we have an adequate replacement for that yet.

Helen: No, I think that's such a good point. We're definitely having to schedule things; we can't schedule spontaneity It'd be so nice! Someone somewhere is going to come up with an app for that I know, and it'll be the huge hit of 2022. But that is the real challenge isn't it, that so many businesses are wrestling with, with large swathes of employees having to work remotely again. And even just thinking about when they can get back into offices, what are we going to use that office space for and thinking about how do we keep those social bonds active, help build that sense of community and the social glue around it. And as we were easing out of lockdowns last year, I think we all discovered how valuable those opportunities are. So it'll be interesting to see how that continues to evolve this year.

And it's another thing that I write about in The Future of Time, about the importance of time for nurturing relationships, for building a sense of community. Also time for non-task activities that are actually behaviours that drive inclusion, like listening and empathy and inquiry, and taking the time to really understand where someone's coming from, that's so hard to replicate online. And in the book I talk about our time culture and how we have all these time norms around speed and urgency and the cult of busyness and also how our working time has dramatically changed in recent years to be much more fluid, highly fragmented as we chop and change between different conversations during a working day. And that can make it a real challenge for people to work productively and in a healthy way, and in a way that really allows them to flourish, given who they are and their home life situation and their background and they may be disadvantaged in some way by this particular way of treating time at work. Does that resonate with you at all? What have you noticed about habits at work around time and how they help or hinder people?

Mitra: I think I've worked in such different environments. So if I think about some environments that I've worked in where there's almost this clock watching approach of we get to four o'clock and this part of the business will just stop because you're not paying overtime and our hours are done and it doesn't matter what's going on. It doesn't matter what crisis; I will literally just pack up my laptop and I'm done for the day. And so I've seen that amongst whole teams and whole parts of the organization. And you know, when people are looking through my career, it won't be difficult to mix match which organizations I'm talking about.

If I then think about other organizations where your status depends on how busy you are. So the whole narrative that you create around yourself is being busy and that equating making lots of money and being very successful. And so what behaviours does that drive? And just the way you talk about yourself and the way you talk about what you're doing and the way you approach your work is coming from the sense of, I must demonstrate my busyness and my busyness doing quite specific things, not busyness doing personal growth or coaching junior colleagues, or thinking about creating an inclusive culture, but against quite narrow defined activities; I am very busy.

So I think each of those contexts drive certain behaviours for individuals. And if I think about how things have changed in the course of my career so far, it used to be, we were talking about encouraging working from home and encouraging flexibility, people working at different times. And then we had a pandemic and we all proved that we could, in most of the roles, certainly most of the roles that your listeners are in, people are working from home and we're showing that we can work at different times of the day and actually the world doesn't end and things don't stop. So we proved some of those concerns by the very nature of the pandemic and the way we needed to work.

And if I think about some of the organizations I've worked in that have a very long hours culture, where it is absolutely the norm that you will work incredibly long hours, I think the pandemic has only exacerbated that, with some of those boundaries between personal time and working time being utterly blurred. Because yes, there were very long hours cultures, but those typically were people working in the office and yes, you'd be on your Blackberry, but at least you'd have a change in scenery, a change in environment. If I think about now, all of those boundaries between personal life and working life are utterly blurred. Sometimes in a really positive way, so people are not commuting and they using that time to do different things and they're having a different lifestyle and that's really positive, but sometimes there are negativities and not having that boundary between this is my work and this is my home can be really troublesome for some individuals.

Helen: Such good observations because it's making us recognise, hopefully that we need to be much more intentional and thoughtful about our time every day isn't it? Otherwise we almost have to create some new, healthy habits for this world we're now in that perhaps we didn't bother thinking about before, because we had the nice transition points of the commute at the start and end of the day, et cetera.

So is there something in particular that you're working on in your current role and organization or perhaps in a previous role or organization that is aimed at helping people to really think carefully about how they spend their working time and helping to free up their time so they can concentrate on the important stuff, so they can manage their energy levels well to stay healthy and to help everybody succeed in what they're doing. Is there any particular initiative now, or in the past that springs to mind?

Mitra: Yeah so a couple of different examples, Helen. The example that we had previously, we called golden hour and it was an hour each day that no meetings could be scheduled, no internal meetings could be scheduled I know lots of organizations have perhaps no meetings on a Friday or no meetings on a Friday morning. It's quite a common practice that organizations have implemented. Certainly where I've seen that introduced previously, it's been really well received, because these zoom calls can be exhausting. They're very different to having a day of back to back meetings face-to-face; just the way we interact by Zoom or by Teams is different than we do face-to-face. So just knowing that you have an hour each day, that is quiet time, is zero interaction unless you want to have interaction, unless you just want to have a chat with someone; and that you can have that focused activity was very, very well received and certainly organizations that have no meetings for an entire day or an entire afternoon the feedback is really positive around that.

I want to share something specifically from my time at DLA Piper because I think that this is really important to talk about. Lawyers are around four times more likely to experience depression than people who aren't lawyers. And part of that is the nature of who becomes a lawyer and part of that is what is the nature of a law firm, but you put those two things together and you create this perfect storm. And so certainly thinking about mental health and supporting people for positive mental health was something that we took incredibly seriously at DLA. And we did some great work, with someone that I think is absolutely fantastic Dr Brian Marien of The Positive Group, that was very much focused on building resilience. So saying there are things that you can do to protect yourself from poor mental health outcomes and to build this resilient approach in the same way that if we were talking about physical health, we would list off give up smoking, cut down on the drinking, have more exercise, move more, eat five fruits and vegetables a day. And yet when we think about mental health, we struggle to list off what do I need to do? But that work was very much oriented around: there are things that we can each do around our mindset and how we approach interactions and how we approach conversations; treating our mind as a muscle in the same way that any other parts of our body we can condition, we can try and we can see more favorable outcomes.

And so we did a lot of work of thinking about what are the very small steps that you can take as individuals and then as leaders, what are the things that you can do in your team to help people flourish and thrive and be more effective and more productive, but in a positive way. And to really try and address that stigma around mental health.

If I say I've broken my leg, you're going to probably ask me how I did that; you're going to commiserate with me; you're going to show some sympathy. But if I say to you I'm feeling really depressed, that might be a conversation ender. And so really thinking about as an organization, what can you do to address that stigma and provide better support to people?

Helen: That's so helpful to hear and great to hear that you've put so much thought into that and effort into getting those conversations going in the workplace as well. And with regard to what you were talking about, about mental health at DLA Piper, I'm struck by how you're saying some of the things that you were encouraging, they weren't rocket science, they're not this great big new wellness programme or expensive initiatives or benefits. It's the small, simple things that are within each of us individually, within our control to consciously adopt and to practice. And I think because they're not great big glamorous or branded programmes, we tend to perhaps forget about how effective they are.

Has there been a particular resource that you have found really helpful to you? Helped you shape your thinking or you just thought, actually this is brilliant and insightful ,that you think listeners might enjoy accessing whether that's a book or a video or a podcast or a talk?

Mitra: So there's loads that I would draw upon actually. There are certain professionals in my industry that I really respect, people like Charlotte Sweeney, I think is absolutely fantastic. I love the book that she wrote with Fleur Bothwick, I think it was absolutely fantastic: "Inclusive Leadership". Things around specialist parts of D&I, so things like 'The gendered brain' by Dr Gina Rippon I also think people like Binna Kandola and Pearn Kandola, the occupational psychologist team that specialize in diversity and inclusion. I think they have done some phenomenal research. I'm always having my thinking challenged. I talked right at the start around, you know, I try and challenge other people's thinking, they're always sharing insights and findings from their research that that may be challenge what we would have thought was going to be the outcome. But always so pragmatic and practical and insightful.

Helen: Brilliant, some fantastic recommendations there, thank you. I'm definitely going to add 'The gendered brain' to my reading list and I know of Charlotte Sweeney's work and book too. So definitely they're hopping onto my already very long reading list but one I'm enjoying cracking through on a regular basis.

And if listeners have enjoyed hearing our conversation and want to connect with you professionally after the podcast, what's the best way for them to do that?

Mitra: Definitely the best way is by LinkedIn. So I'm active on LinkedIn, readily accept connection requests so yeah, please do connect with me and let's continue the conversation.

Helen: Wonderful. Thank you so much Mitra, it's been such a pleasure talking with you again and hearing all your reflections on your career and what it takes to grow healthy, happy, productive workplaces and employees. So thank you for spending your time today talking about this.

Mitra: Thank you for inviting me, Helen. I've really enjoyed it.