Interview: inspiring bravery in the boardroom

We speak with Monique Carayol, Leadership and Talent Development Coach and co-founder of the Bravery in the Boardroom movement, about how to encourage diversity in social care leadership.

Tell us more about yourself?

I’m an ex-NHS director, and I had a 20 year career in the NHS, starting off in an administrative role and navigating my way into the boardroom. Most recently, I was Director of Strategy and Transformation, and Lead Covid-19 Recovery Director for the first 12 months of the pandemic. Throughout my time in that role, I built and developed quite dynamic, diverse teams and encouraged people to progress in their careers and be their authentic selves at work. My leadership style and approach stood me in good stead when trying to drive and influence change during very challenging periods.

I made the decision to leave the NHS last year because I wanted to pursue my passion of helping people to fulfil their potential and lead bravely. I describe my purpose as building a movement of brave leaders so that together we can tackle society’s most fundamental needs.

What makes great leadership is the ability to be brave in actions – not just words. To be real and lead in your own way and bring your uniqueness and diversity into senior roles as you progress in your career, combined with your capability and experience to deliver. I really wanted to be able to support more people and support organisations to lead bravely and that was my main reason for setting up my own coaching and leadership development consultancy.

Tell us about the Bravery in the Boardroom movement

The movement was sparked from a conversation I had with a mutual contact who I reached out to online. We discussed the lack of diversity in senior leadership, lack of equal opportunity for all and most importantly what we could do about it and how to really boil it down to seeing more action now.

There’s lots of good work happening to support improving equality, diversity, and inclusion but I think there's more we can all do because it feels like it moves quite slow at times. It feels like it can be quite theoretical and this year's Black History Month theme says it all, doesn't it? Action, not words.

We wanted to challenge ourselves and everybody else on what more can we all do to help turn the dial now on developing more senior diverse talent pipelines and to see more inclusive leadership.

We want to see boardrooms more representative of the staff and communities they serve. When I joined the board in my previous role, I was the youngest and only black director; I was also a mum of three.

So, there are two elements to what we do - preparing more people to be ready to know what it's really like to lead at a very senior level when you're in the minority, and also working with boardrooms and senior leaders to say this is what you need to be doing to lead more inclusively, to understand where your biases are, to break those barriers down. And not to just tick the box of having more people from different groups, but accepting and welcoming and seeing them as an equal and understanding and celebrating their differences.

So, we felt that creating some space where people can come together to be energised and to challenge each other, to learn from good practice, but also to be motivated by seeing ethnically diverse senior leaders in action. It’s also a space to call out some of the things that are going on that are really challenging so that everyone can see and hear that more. So that's what the movement is about really; it's bringing people together in a space to be energised and to keep pushing for and driving the change.

What activity does the movement include?

We’ve kicked off with a series of roundtable Q&As where we've had panels of senior NHS executives and non-executives from ethnically diverse backgrounds coming and speaking about their experience and their journeys. We also open the session up to the online audience so that they can ask questions as well.

We started with the NHS because we know the NHS (I co-founded the movement with Woodrow Mercer Healthcare a healthcare recruitment company). So, we’ve started doing a roundtable session for each region in England and we're halfway through that journey so far.

How is it going so far?

It’s been more than we ever dreamed of. The numbers that we've had attending tells us this is needed and the feedback has been powerful. We’ve been told by attendees what it's meant to them, and how it's helped them to understand about navigating their careers to senior levels. People have said the sessions feel like online mentoring sessions.

CEOs and people managers at the sessions have also told us how insightful it's been for them. They have responsibility for recruiting and supporting senior colleagues and they said it's opened their eyes to what they need to do more of and to understand better.

One piece of feedback that really hit me was someone saying that they felt helpless about their next steps and on their knees prior to joining the session, but this has given them hope and given them confidence to pick themselves up and carry on with their career.

Our panellists have been very candid about their journeys and how they've put themselves out there. We acknowledge that there are systemic barriers that must be tackled and we mustn’t stop pushing for that, but we also highlight and share straight talking advice about taking ownership for your career progression too. So, thinking about are you taking the opportunities? Are you being proactive? Are you actioning the advice you're hearing here?

If you want to get to the top job, you're not just going to walk into that role. It takes hard work. It takes stepping out of your comfort zone. It's takes being the first many times and having that understanding. That's why we want to talk about being equipped to be the only one in some of those situations where there’s a lot of pressure that will sit on your shoulders.

Why do you think there’s a lack of representation at senior levels in social care?

I think there's a number of reasons. People recruit what they know and what they think good looks like. We all have unconscious biases and if you haven't got diversity of thought and diversity of experience and diversity of background in your boardroom, you just get groupthink.

Some people don't understand it. Some people are actively blocking it, some people are scared to make a change, scared to be brave and do something different.

There’s also the other side of the coin as I mentioned where people don't want be the only one. I've spoken to many experienced and talented senior colleagues from ethnically diverse backgrounds who will say ‘I don't want be the only one, I don't want to face these situations on my own’.

That’s heartbreaking to hear, And that's why I talk about the movement, because if we can support people to rise up together, you won't be the only one. There'll be someone there with you or not far away.

What can managers can do to support diverse leaders to progress?

If you’re responsible for a team, you need to respect and appreciate difference. You have to understand your own strengths first and look to see where your gaps are. Recruit the gaps that you need, recruit the different dynamics that you need, build your own confidence in being able to lead diverse teams and also celebrate the difference because you can empower your team and that will help you.

It will help you to deliver your job if you've got a dynamic team with a wealth and spread of skills, from a wealth of different backgrounds; that melting pot normally produces the best results.

And as a manager, ask your team how they’re feeling. What do they need? What do they think? Because all too often we assume we know, and although it's coming from a good place a lot of the time, the truth is it's not a one-size-fits-all

What do you think needs to do to be done to help support diversity in leadership across the sector?

I know about the Moving Up programme which Skills for Care has run for a long time, and I think it’s important to offer these leadership development programmes that are tailored specifically for people from ethnically diverse backgrounds. I do think they’re integral and important because they teach you some of what I’m talking about - not the technical skills for the job, but understanding how to lead when you’re in a minority, how to lead when you're in a minoritised environment, how to manoeuvre your career, how to operate at a different level, building your networks of support etc. I think those are integral.

Work being done in boardrooms and among senior leaders who are in the majority to understand how to lead inclusively and how to recognise and stop discriminative behaviour is also key.

And those two things side-by-side is crucial.

You can find out more about the bravery in the boardroom movement on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Bravery in the Boardroom is looking for senior leaders from ethnically diverse backgrounds to join the panel at their upcoming webinars. Contact monique@yournewavenue.com to find out more.

View our #BlackHistoryMonth spotlight.

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