00:00:00
winning them over through talking and persuading and consensus building, that's better
00:00:07
than neutral aloofness or hiding behind some bureaucratic rules. I have a a kind of self-confidence
00:00:16
and a certain amount [music] of self-discipline or control that allows me to focus
00:00:28
more intellectually rather than emotionally on the issues. Standing by your values is always
00:00:35
what you should do, but one has to be pragmatic. >> Welcome to Grit in the Boardroom. I'm
00:00:43
Erica Ilias and Norris and today I'm joined by Professor Tariq Modood, one of Britain's most respected thinkers on
00:00:50
diversity, identity and leadership. Tariq, your journey began in the 1980s when Britain looked very different from
00:00:58
the country we live in today. What first made you realize that inclusion was not
00:01:03
simply a moral issue, but it was a leadership challenge? >> When I was a a student, uh this was at
00:01:09
Durham University, I was active in the anti-apartheid movement as you know, quite a lot of students were at the
00:01:16
time. And then um later, when I was working in Oxford, I was involved in community relations work. I
00:01:27
um the area I lived in had a Pakistani community and I worked with them and with the community relations council.
00:01:35
But I would say that um I about 1986 it was that I I noticed that there was a a public
00:01:45
debate, a general um debate taking place um that was beginning to characterize the country in
00:01:55
terms of what I call racial dualism, meaning thinking of the country and its people
00:02:03
in terms of black and white. And that wasn't my experience and it wasn't how I thought of myself. It
00:02:12
wasn't at all apparent in the uh communities that I I lived with, worked with, and and so on.
00:02:21
But it was becoming quite a big issue, mainly on the center left, and so the Labour Party got involved and so on.
00:02:30
And um by the end of that year, 1986, I became an equal opportunities officer in
00:02:37
the personnel or now as we might say human resources department of the London Borough of Hillingdon.
00:02:46
And I began to argue against this idea. I thought that Britain is a much more um plural and complex society and can't
00:02:58
be reduced to black and white. Um for instance, I don't And I said that at the time, I didn't think as black, so
00:03:08
and I didn't think as white. So, what were they What would this view say about myself?
00:03:14
And I began to argue for uh an alternative view. And it I think it's around that time
00:03:21
that I realized that um I had to get involved in something that required some campaigning.
00:03:29
Um and that I wanted to have some national influence. I wanted to make a difference.
00:03:36
And so, I set up an organization. Um and uh wrote to lots of people. Uh some kind of, you know, well-known uh
00:03:46
senior public figures, political figures, others, community activists that I knew and so on.
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And so if you like, I started playing a leadership role um because I cared about the issues. They were
00:04:03
my issues. They were existential to me. I cared about my country and what direction it should go in and shouldn't
00:04:09
go in. And I thought that the the kind of the activists that said it's all about
00:04:16
black and white were taking us in the wrong direction. We weren't like the United States and we shouldn't try to
00:04:22
copy that. Um and so yeah, I guess it's about then that I thought, "Look, I'm not just um
00:04:33
an academic or an ex-academic cuz I was actually working in local government that I needed to
00:04:41
rise up to what I saw as a political challenge for people like me and for the country
00:04:48
as a whole and began campaigning and both offering certain leadership, you know, obviously
00:04:57
at a quite low low level, but also um writing to, engaging with, trying to meet and influence
00:05:06
national leaders like senior people in the Labour Party and so on because the Labour Party was probably at the center
00:05:12
of this of this kind of political contestation. >> And looking back to your earlier years,
00:05:21
I was listening to an interview that you gave um in Canada, actually. Um and it was talking about your upbringing and
00:05:31
how your father influenced some of uh some of your kind of formative years. Can you talk a little bit about that? I
00:05:39
was really intrigued by the assembly story, for instance. >> Yeah. Yeah, so I don't know how unusual this is. I
00:05:47
suppose it's fairly unusual, but not unique. I have come across one or two people who have similar experiences.
00:05:52
So, my father was a devout Muslim. And he thought that faith and religion and the the discipline that religion
00:06:07
offers, and especially I suppose in in growing up, um was important. But, we we came to Britain in 1961 and
00:06:17
obviously I went into read to school as as as eight at the time. And uh in my secondary school,
00:06:25
there was a possibility of being excused from morning assembly if your parents sent in a note. And the
00:06:33
main people who did that were Jewish children. And so, I think maybe the school gave me a letter to
00:06:41
take to my to my dad. And I showed it to him. When he looked at it, he said, "What do these children
00:06:47
do that don't go into morning assembly?" which was, you know, a Christian assembly.
00:06:52
I said, "Well, some arrive late. There's a special room allocated for them. They sit and chat or read comics
00:07:00
or catch up on homework." And he said, "Oh, no. You won't be doing any of that."
00:07:06
He said, "Go into assembly. Um Christians more or less believe what we believe. But,
00:07:15
whenever it is said that Jesus is the son of God, without making any kind of fuss, just
00:07:21
quietly say to yourself, 'No, he's not.' But, otherwise, join in all all the um worship. And indeed, I did very um
00:07:31
enthusiastically and over all the years. And by the time I was in my sixth form,
00:07:37
I was the um one of the leading readers of what you might call the lesson. I used
00:07:44
pick things and read things from say the Old Testament, sometimes the New Testament as well.
00:07:49
Um because I don't know how many people are aware of this, but but Jesus is one of the most important prophets of Islam.
00:07:56
Um and um I organized um the carol singing in the streets at Christmas to raise money for charity.
00:08:06
Um and so yeah, so my dad had this very unusual view that if you like, putting it very
00:08:13
simply, some religion is better than none. But more sophisticatedly than that, he
00:08:19
had a a sense of uh Islam and Christianity being very close religions with certain theological differences,
00:08:30
but the theological differences uh didn't mean that we didn't share uh not only a lot of beliefs in common, but
00:08:39
a lot of values like respect for people, um uh compassion for people worse off than ourselves, uh
00:08:50
social justice, um you know, equality and um uh individual um freedom of conscience and so on. So um
00:09:03
yeah, it's quite interesting for me that I was brought up with the kind of a Muslim home background,
00:09:09
>> Yeah. >> but quite steeped in school Christianity. >> Mm. And looking back, what did you learn
00:09:16
about helping people feel that they belong? And how do you think leaders today can help build that sense,
00:09:23
particularly in the tough times that we're in? >> Um I suppose um as a a child, I
00:09:37
I was given a sense at home that we are somebody. We have an identity. We're not just anybody. So,
00:09:48
we came from Pakistan and we were Muslims. And these were identities that that were very important to my dad. The
00:09:55
reason I keep emphasizing my dad is because very, very unusually, it was my dad that brought us up. My parents
00:10:01
divorced and my dad that brought us up. So, actually this is in the 1960s. This is an absolute
00:10:08
statistical freak that I was brought up by a single parent who was an Asian Muslim
00:10:16
man. And so, we brought up with that that sense of identity that we shouldn't allow people to insult or rob us of that
00:10:31
identity. But at the same time, my dad wanted us to learn everything that we could about
00:10:39
well, from school and life in Britain and through friends and so on and television. I think television is one of
00:10:46
one of the biggest sources of learning for us as children and where I think I got my
00:10:54
accent, English accent. And the other thing So, that was home, but more than that,
00:11:02
as a child, all children want to belong. Um you know, they don't like to be pushed out of out of groups and left
00:11:13
marginal, left friendless. And so, of course, I wanted that. But I also wanted, which again I don't
00:11:21
think is is unique to me, a sense of belonging to the country in which I'm now setting up
00:11:28
setting down roots. And so, I think a sense of being British and and being accepted as British,
00:11:39
um, goes quite a long way back for me, to my childhood and certainly my teenage years.
00:11:47
And I used to find it very odd because the kinds of, um, person I was, the kinds of issues I was
00:11:53
involved in, and I got very interested in politics at a very early age, and this was, you
00:11:58
know, very much left-of-center politics. I was always kind of surprised and disappointed
00:12:06
that people on the left in the '60s, '70s, '80s, always kind of ran down the idea of Britain and people having
00:12:18
pride in Britain. And I I could see this wasn't true for other countries, certainly wasn't true
00:12:23
for France or the United States or Pakistan, for that matter. And yet, um, you know, there there is a
00:12:32
a burden of history, a burden of, um, historical guilt as well as historical pride.
00:12:39
And I think that the left in those days, and I'd say that to them, had an unbalanced view
00:12:47
about about Britain, and they had a very superficial view about, um, belonging. They all did feel British in
00:12:58
an important way, and certainly other people looking at them would say, "Well, you're
00:13:02
very British." But, they thought the best way of expressing national pride was to not talk about it,
00:13:09
that it should be unstated, it should be implicit, and we shouldn't have flag-waving and so on.
00:13:17
And I thought that wasn't good enough, especially as when in the 19 '70s, we saw the rise of groups like the
00:13:25
National Front that were marching down our streets waving the Union Jack. And I thought, "Well, no, that's my
00:13:33
flag. We should stand up for that flag." Whereas a lot of the protesters and the
00:13:38
demonstrators, and I went to some of these protests and demonstrations, um their view was
00:13:45
"No one should be flying this flag." That there was something slightly um dirty about this flag.
00:13:54
And I said, "Well, no, we have to stop them flying our flag. We have to um own it and, as it were, win it from
00:14:04
them." Uh and I found myself, you know, in a very small minority holding that view of
00:14:11
any of any, you know, color or background till finally I began to get some resonance in the 1990s. I think one of
00:14:21
the first major figures who began to think like I did, you know, in a public way was Tony Blair.
00:14:29
And he said, "No, you know." He wanted a Labour Party, which of course he transformed, called it New Labour, and
00:14:35
so on. But he wanted to be a patriotic party that wasn't ashamed of its flags, other symbols, and of history.
00:14:45
There are things uh in British history um that we should critically examine. And of course, people like me who were,
00:14:53
as it were, the rough end, at the bottom end of the British Imperial uh history and experience,
00:15:01
uh want that examined. But it doesn't mean that I want to throw away the idea of being British because I feel I became
00:15:08
part of the British story when the British came to India. Um and, you know, made some
00:15:17
Indians [snorts] um as much like the the as possible, at least in certain ways. And so,
00:15:26
I think we need to think a lot more about British imperial history, uh rather than dismiss it or pretend um it
00:15:35
never happened, and just be [snorts] focused on the island story or Europe or whatever.
00:15:42
Um And so, yeah. So, I think those kinds of um currents of belonging, both in terms of
00:15:51
home and community identity, but also in terms of national inclusion, active national
00:15:59
inclusion, um not just waiting for it to happen passively, and certainly not allowing
00:16:06
the divisive figures to wave our flag as if they had a bigger right to it than we do.
00:16:14
>> That's very interesting, and obviously it's quite topical at the moment as well.
00:16:18
>> is. >> When we talk about leadership, and we talk about influence or strategy,
00:16:26
um sometimes there can be opposing views. Um but showing that respect um for all different perspectives is something
00:16:38
that is probably one of the hardest tests, I think, of leadership or of leaders in organizations today.
00:16:45
You've challenged both sides um of the debate over the years. Um and I'm just interested to hear from you on what's
00:16:53
your What do you think the personal cost is of standing in one camp as opposed to
00:16:58
another? And how do you stay grounded in those particular values if you were a leader
00:17:04
in an organization, you obviously have your own views, but then the organization has their own potential
00:17:08
views, or they want to be apolitical, or whatever, um themselves. How How do you
00:17:13
manage that? Because you've been there. You've experienced it. >> Yes. Um you are right. Uh I have had to
00:17:23
stand up for um unpopular things, you know, unpopular in the group I belong to as it were,
00:17:32
that I'm, you know, institutionally part of, >> Mhm. >> um working with and so on.
00:17:37
Um So, I mean, when I was an anti-apartheid activist at Durham University, um you know, there'd be people who'd be
00:17:50
jeering and so on. But, I think I But, that was more at the mass, you know, like a
00:17:57
demonstration. I think the first time I began to experience um some hostility aimed at me personally because I was
00:18:09
arguing for something personally, um probably goes back to when I said to you that I became kind of
00:18:20
politically uh energized and the thought that I had to myself even set up an organization
00:18:27
and try and influence things nationally when I opposed the idea of racial dualism, a kind of black-white
00:18:35
dualism. So, I was working in um Hillingdon, um London Borough, as an equal options
00:18:43
officer, meeting others who were working in the same position in other London Boroughs,
00:18:51
and also just in my own organization, there were people who were very committed to anti-racism, which was a
00:18:57
good thing. But, unfortunately, quite a lot of people saw their anti-racism in exactly this kind of black-white way
00:19:04
that I was opposing. And so, they'd get quite annoyed with me and say how divisive I was.
00:19:12
Um so that kind of began then. And perhaps it um, one of the most extreme cases was at
00:19:21
the time of the the Muslim anger against Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses. And
00:19:29
obviously there was a big big uh, controversy battle and even an international crisis
00:19:36
with um, the leader of Iran intervening and so on. And I thought and you mentioned my dad's influence.
00:19:46
Mhm. So I was you know, caught up with this obviously as uh, someone working in equality issues at the time.
00:19:56
But I thought, well, should we really be fighting about a novel? And so I said to my dad, you know, what
00:20:03
do you think? And he you know, he was crying just thinking about it and so on. And I realized then that if my dad could
00:20:13
feel this that this was going to be a big issue. It wasn't going to be something that
00:20:19
will just blow away. And it was going to actually be a feature in some ways mark
00:20:27
um, Muslim British society relations. Um, and he said you are very lucky. You've
00:20:39
are privileged to have of education. You know, I had a PhD. Um, you speak well and you
00:20:48
seem to acquired a confidence to speak in public and say unpopular things. Um, you should use your
00:20:59
talents and opportunities to help British society understand why Muslims are angry, but
00:21:09
more generally understand Muslims and you should help Muslims understand why British society thinks
00:21:18
about their behavior as they do as it does or other features and you know, you are very well suited
00:21:27
to be this cross-cultural figure a bridge-building figure and I must say so that would have been
00:21:37
um 19 uh 80 early 1980 and um no sorry 90 that's right the book [snorts] came out in 1989 and I must say
00:21:51
that I took that on board and did participate quite publicly in discussions about the Satanic Verses
00:22:00
um trying to argue a very unpopular middle position saying that Muslims had a a grievance and we should hear it
00:22:10
without necessarily agreeing to it we should we should engage in dialogue with it rather than dismiss it saying oh
00:22:15
they're all backward they don't know how to read a novel they're illiterate uh they're
00:22:21
religious fanatics and on the other hand um we obviously should protect protect the
00:22:30
author we should protect the life of the author we should be seriously committed
00:22:34
to uh intellectual freedoms um but quite a lot of people including some friends thought I was being far too
00:22:45
sympathetic to the fundamentalists >> Right. >> and I lost friendships so there are personal costs
00:22:54
um >> How did that How did that make you feel? Because that was your view your perspective which is as valid as anybody
00:23:03
else's, whether it contradicts or doesn't. How How do you deal with that? Because that's that's personal.
00:23:11
>> Yeah. So, >> [sighs] >> how do do I deal with it? I mean, first of all, of course,
00:23:20
you know, it hurts. I don't like it. There are people I don't want to lose as friends, people I I like, people I I've
00:23:28
thought of as friends. Um sometimes they just say it to your face, and sometimes you can just feel a new a
00:23:36
new coldness has entered a relationship. Uh they don't get in touch with you, for
00:23:41
instance. They don't invite you to certain things. Um and even when I became a professor of
00:23:47
sociology, a lot of people thought, "Oh, going on about ethnicity, and above all,
00:23:53
going on about religious minorities, that's so superficial, and big issues are all to do with class and
00:24:03
gender. Why are you going on about these minor, marginal issues?" Um and the sociology tradition is
00:24:12
actually a tradition based around socioeconomic structures. So, to to talk about people's identities and people's
00:24:20
cultures is quite dominant in British sociology now, but when I, you know, started
00:24:26
saying in the 1990s, um it was quite marginal, but luckily, anti-racism and uh gender equality
00:24:35
issues had become quite important in British sociology, so I could kind of show what I was doing by relating it to
00:24:43
those issues. But, to answer your question about how do I deal with it, it's I'm kind of struggling to answer it,
00:24:54
because I don't know whether I have a particular formula or way of dealing with it.
00:25:00
I would say that I have a a kind of self-confidence and a certain amount of um self-discipline or control
00:25:14
self-control, that's probably the right word that allows me to focus more intellectually rather than
00:25:24
emotionally on the issues. So, one of the things that my wife says to me is that when I'm on a program, you
00:25:30
know, like say Newsnight or a studio debate um defending my point of view she says
00:25:39
"You always stay calm when the other side gets angry and st- starts losing their temper.
00:25:47
You never reply in kind. You're always still dissecting their arguments and telling them
00:25:55
for instance, that it's not consistent. They started off saying one thing and now saying another and so on." And I
00:26:00
said, "Yeah, I I kind of feel that's that's not good on TV." And she said, "No." I mean, she may be right or
00:26:06
wrong, but she said, "No, most people watching will say, 'Oh, this man's worth listening to because
00:26:14
he's carrying on talking calmly and coherently when other people are just getting
00:26:20
aggressive.'" So, I I guess it's just a certain kind of mix between self-confidence
00:26:28
and self-control and just carrying on under fire. >> It sounds like you're quite reflective
00:26:34
in the moment. Um I presume that that comes from your upbringing and your father.
00:26:42
>> and I think it comes also actually from you know being a migrant because when you're an outsider of any kind, and
00:26:53
I think this applies especially of course to children and young people, you work harder
00:27:01
to um make sure that you're not setting people and make sure that you're not doing
00:27:06
anything that will make you stick out as "Oh, what's wrong with him?" Um so, I suspect
00:27:18
And also, I I said to you that um I I was brought up by just my dad, and so I lost my mom,
00:27:26
you know, through divorce. I lost my mom at a very early age, and I think that also leads to a certain kind of
00:27:32
toughening up. And so, I kind of learned self-control at a very early age, both in personal context, but then as I
00:27:44
became more involved in public things, I just took it into that level as well. >> And boards often try to stay neutral
00:27:52
when the pressure builds, when when things go wrong, or when the organization doesn't potentially perform
00:27:59
or act in a way that they should do. Um but sometimes that neutrality can look like or feel like avoidance of
00:28:09
whatever that particular issue is. Do you think that from your experience that playing it safe is potentially a
00:28:18
failure of leadership in that sort of situation? Should people be standing by their principles and their values, or is
00:28:25
the neutral approach sometimes at the best option? >> Um I think standing by your values is
00:28:34
always um what you should do. But one has to be pragmatic. So, standing by your values can be done in a inflexible
00:28:48
way, and it can be done in a more kind of contextual way, and in a more consensual way, i.e.
00:28:57
carrying people with you, explaining yourself, and explaining why you think certain things need to be done. But
00:29:06
also, I mean, I imagine, you know, management is a little bit different to life at a university or in public
00:29:14
debates and so on. But trying to be dialogical, so not just saying sticking by your values doesn't
00:29:22
mean I've made a decision, I'm now telling you how it's got to be done. I mean, I'm not saying there aren't some
00:29:28
contexts where we don't do this, and as I say, I might not fully understand how some
00:29:34
business organizations work. But I think drawing people into a values-based dialogue,
00:29:45
and explaining, but also asking them what they think, and um winning them over through
00:29:54
talking and persuading, and consensus building, um I think that's that's better than than a
00:30:04
kind of neutral aloofness or hiding behind some bureaucratic rules. Um so I mean, as as as you can see from the
00:30:18
story I'm telling about myself and my perhaps my demeanor, I'm not a kind of gung-ho person like, you know, calling
00:30:24
things out and denouncing people and exposing people and firing [snorts] people and canceling people and so on. I
00:30:32
I think that generates quite a lot of um counterproductive responses. So I, very
00:30:39
much following up what my dad's said in 1980 about being dialogical and carrying people with you.
00:30:51
But recognizing that there are victims cuz I could see in the Satanic Verses affair
00:30:58
that Muslims were really upset and were not being treated at all respectfully. And as I said to you
00:31:08
earlier, I mean my dad was crying when he was talking to me about this. Now it may be that there were levels of
00:31:14
misunderstanding. You know, that people had taken offense >> [snorts] >> from a novel
00:31:21
and perhaps, you know, they shouldn't have done. And that other people, what you might call certain kinds of
00:31:28
activists or propagandists, had exaggerated certain things for effect. But that's
00:31:35
that always happens in politics and life. That wasn't by any means unique to that controversy or to to Muslims.
00:31:43
But nevertheless I I think that um trying to have what I call would call sensible
00:31:55
but sensitive dialogues, you know, so you are trying to be sensitive to other people's feelings even where you
00:32:04
don't agree and even where you're going to ultimately have to say to them that you don't agree and you recommend some
00:32:11
other way. Um so whether that works in all business organizations a university is one place it can work.
00:32:22
And though I think actually universities are becoming far too managerial over the
00:32:27
last couple of decades, they really have. Um and you may say, well, how can we have a
00:32:33
public debate with, you know, very right-wing people or for that matter, very left-wing people, when when they're
00:32:39
kind of shouting and we and we see how terrible um social media's become. I mean, it's
00:32:46
destroying the idea of dialogue because it's just a matter of um aggression and abuse and denouncing
00:32:55
people and um trying to big up your own side and undermine other people or the other
00:33:02
side. Um so, I think social media's done a lot of harm um to our public conversations.
00:33:13
And I'm now seeing um public expressions of racism that I last saw in the 1970s. It's
00:33:22
absolutely amazing. We've gone so backward because as a country, we had actually been making
00:33:27
fairly good progress. Um certainly if we compare ourselves to our our neighboring countries, for
00:33:33
instance. But, I think in general, we obviously hadn't done everything right and there was more
00:33:39
to do and we could have even done more, but nevertheless, I think we were moving
00:33:43
in a um racially egalitarian, multicultural direction. Um and yes, to some extent, there will be a
00:33:53
backlash because people have an alternative view. But, the form that it's currently taking in Britain,
00:34:01
um much of of it um leaking out, as it were, from the social media and all the misinformation
00:34:10
campaigns that are leading to anxiety and alarm and confrontation in the streets and
00:34:18
and shouting and flag-waving in completely the wrong way, divisive flag-waving, rather than
00:34:25
unifying flag-waving. Um I think social media has a a lot to answer for, and so I find
00:34:34
my, you know, engagement in social media is becoming less and less because it's not a place
00:34:41
for for dialogue and learning, learning about what other people think and widening your sensibilities. It's It's
00:34:50
just the opposite. It's It's narrowing narrowing you down into, well, I must stand up for this because I'm being
00:34:56
attacked just on this. Um >> Do you think that some of that is to do with how faceless social media can be?
00:35:06
So, you're behind a computer screen, behind a phone, in the security of your home or wherever else you might be, and
00:35:14
you don't see that as another person you're really interacting with. You just send a message out, and whereas if that
00:35:20
was a face-to-face conversation, I think potentially people wouldn't act or say some of the things that they say.
00:35:27
>> Yes, I think um that's absolutely right, America. Um people act uh on social media
00:35:35
in um with a rudeness and an abruptness that they wouldn't in an ordinary human interaction, in a conversation. You
00:35:45
know, it's like people say uh a person behind the wheel of a car becomes a very different person to the
00:35:52
person that you that you knew when you was My wife, for instance, as she says, "You're so, you know, calm and
00:35:59
well-mannered, but when you're driving, you become a totally different person." I don't agree with her, but she seems to
00:36:04
notice it. And this point about social media is made worse by the fact that you can be anonymous.
00:36:13
I think that's so poisonous. Some of the worst um excesses are coming from anonym- anonymous accounts or fake
00:36:23
accounts, people pretending to be people that they're not. Um and of course the worst cases are those that that that
00:36:32
then lead to, you know, sexual grooming and sexual abuses and prob- probably also frauds and scams and
00:36:39
so on. But even in uh public conversations, public debates, I think there are quite a lot of um accounts
00:36:46
where people are pretending to be people they're not so they can s- put forward a view
00:36:55
that will to some extent look as a bit more acceptable because they'll put forward a view from, as it were, a
00:37:02
victim's point of view when they really aren't a victim at all. They're probably, you know, a middle-aged white
00:37:07
man pretending to be uh a young woman or uh a young black person or something. So
00:37:14
um social media, I mean, there's so many advantages to internet and the advance of our technologies,
00:37:22
but social media is really is quite not even mixed now at the moment. I think it's more of a curse than a
00:37:28
blessing. >> Mhm. And boards today, they fell they face a real tension between inclusion and
00:37:36
clarity. And they often want to hear every voice to take into account what that is. But by doing that, potentially,
00:37:45
they don't stand for anything um in particular. When do you think that trying to represent every viewpoint kind
00:37:53
of it waters down an organization potentially, but do you think that there's any um
00:37:59
I suppose positivity that comes out of that or do you think that standing for something and having those values and a
00:38:05
particular perspective on something is is really important? >> So I said to you before that I thought
00:38:13
standing for your values or for an institution's values uh is important. Um and sometimes
00:38:23
if we don't consciously think about that, we can lose our way and find ourselves
00:38:30
um, in a position we wouldn't have wished to be in, letting down some employees for
00:38:37
instance, or you know, damaging public reputation. Um, but we do need to, um, be
00:38:49
more aware of diversity of views and diversity of sensibilities. People don't all react to,
00:38:58
uh, in the same way. And I know businesses and so on obviously do a lot of market research,
00:39:04
you know, before they bring a product to market or to find out why people aren't buying
00:39:09
something or would they like it more [snorts] if it was packaged in a different way, called something
00:39:15
else, or associated with a a personality and so on. Um, So, I do think there's something right in that, um,
00:39:26
strategy, which means trying to find out what people think and how they react to
00:39:33
certain, um, stimuli. Whether it's to do with packaging or to do with a slogan uh, to sell a product
00:39:45
and so on. So, I I would say let's take that further, and especially not just for research, but in one's own
00:39:53
organization, and find out what people think, especially people who are relatively marginal, people who don't
00:40:01
normally get a chance to speak or be heard, apart from in, you know, small conversations in the corner.
00:40:11
So, yeah, we we do need a little bit more active viewpoint diversity identifying and bringing that into the
00:40:22
center. Um but that's not the opposite of standing for your values. That should be one of
00:40:28
your values. >> That's really interesting. And final question from me. I see culture within organizations as a
00:40:37
really early warning sign um of systems um that are about to fail. So, it gets allows you to see what's working. It
00:40:46
also allows you to see potentially what's about to break long before the headlines kind of reach that
00:40:52
organization. And if culture is part of governance, what signs do you think directors or
00:41:00
people that work in organizations can watch out for to notice that people, potentially people like you,
00:41:08
um that would be in organizations may there may be issues. There may be challenges in that culture way before
00:41:15
the headlines hit. I think that'll be really interesting for the people that are listening and watching.
00:41:20
>> Yeah. Well, I imagine that what I will say is probably even less knowledgeable than
00:41:29
the people watching, but I'll have a go. I mean, demoralization. If um people don't seem to be as enthusiastic
00:41:39
as they used to be or as that you wished them to be or that there's a particular
00:41:44
set of tasks that they don't seem to relish. Um obviously, you'd you'd want to know
00:41:51
why suddenly people are getting demoralized. And I mean, in the extreme case where where a certain amount of
00:41:58
absenteeism becomes apparent, you think, well, gosh, not everybody can have have the stomach bug. I mean,
00:42:05
what's happening? Um so, um possibly also if um um the workforce is breaking up into cliques, some people
00:42:19
>> Yes. >> not wanting to talk to other people, and some people only thinking these are my
00:42:23
buddies. Um that's obviously a sign that any manager would have to pick up and uh find out more
00:42:32
and um do something about. Um and it may be that they're part of the problem because of they're
00:42:39
implementing a policy or implementing a policy in the wrong way. >> Mhm. >> Badly and so on. So So it's not just,
00:42:46
"Oh, there's a problem with the employees." Because the manager is part of that situation, part of that
00:42:54
structure. So that's what they have to identify. What's happening here? Um what's What's the source?
00:43:02
Um And in a way if you had a culture that did those things, that that would be um
00:43:15
heading off some [snorts] of the problems. There will always be problems. I'm not talking
00:43:20
about perfect organizations or a perfect society. There will always be problems.
00:43:25
So what you need are um people who are encouraged to have some antennae for picking up
00:43:36
where something is not working, and especially is not working because some people feel um
00:43:46
their views are not being taken into account, or their experience, or their expertise, or
00:43:52
their loyalty um to the organization. Um so that kind of dissatisfaction Yeah, I think any good manager would
00:44:01
have to pick that up. Um and I hope they do. You know, I mean, I hope that's what
00:44:06
they're taught to do. I I feel very amateurish. Uh You know, because I'm very lucky.
00:44:14
I work in with very small research teams and so, you know, those things are much
00:44:21
easier to pick up than than someone who's in charge of quite a lot of people. One thing I will say
00:44:27
about an aspect of culture would be be careful about a certain kind of self-congratulation.
00:44:38
So, I'll mention an example because it's one that everyone will be able to pick up. But, it's not to do with business.
00:44:46
So, like many people, I'm a great admirer of Gareth Southgate. Former um England football manager who I think as
00:44:57
an individual and as a England manager um is a very admirable admirable person. And he said
00:45:08
I want a team that reflects the country. And many people, including me, said, "Yes, that's that's laudable. That's
00:45:16
that's good. That's what you should be doing." and so on. And and he was very, very caring about his players
00:45:26
and especially black players who were abused um and so on. But, the point I'm really
00:45:33
getting at is many people said to him and he came to think himself that he was achieving this
00:45:43
goal of having a country that reflected the country. And the term sometimes he used was that
00:45:54
he wanted a diverse team. But, the team was just black and white. It clearly was not diverse. And I'm not
00:46:05
saying Gareth Southgate was to blame for this. I mean, you know, these these would be big structural
00:46:11
issues, where players are coming from and what level they've got to, etc. So, I'm not saying that there's a
00:46:18
simple solution and that he was in any sense um leaving people out that he should be
00:46:27
including. I mean, it's not as simple as that. But, nevertheless, he and everybody, you know,
00:46:36
was congratulating him for having achieved a diverse team. And therefore, they were blind
00:46:45
to something. And I think um you know, sometimes self-congratulation is a good thing, especially if it's a
00:46:55
team effort, you're not congratulating yourself as an individual, you're congratulation congratulating
00:47:01
um your team. But, be careful of the blind spots that we all have and that we we can talk up one
00:47:11
particular thing up to a certain level, not realizing that actually um we're being blind to the limitations of
00:47:23
what we've achieved. Um and therefore, we should be careful about celebrating it.
00:47:30
Or the celebration should go hand in hand with trying to identify and address the limitations.
00:47:38
>> That's really interesting. Thank you so much for joining me today in Grace in
00:47:44
the Boardroom. >> Thank you, Erica. >> I think the conversation with Tariq today was really interesting. He had a
00:47:53
number of points to raise about where he'd had to stand in the face of adversity. He'd also had to face into
00:48:03
friendship losses and other relationship breakdowns as a result of his own values and his own
00:48:09
views and perspectives, which was definitely something that leaders face quite often.
00:48:15
There was also a conversation about faceless social media and we spoke [music] a bit about what that was like
00:48:23
and why people feel that they can air their perspectives, judgments, views potentially more openly than they would
00:48:30
do face-to-face. [music] And I think it was telling that he said that it brought back some memories for
00:48:38
him of what it was like at the beginning of of his career with some of the interactions that he
00:48:42
sees on social media now and he thought that the world and England, Britain had moved on since then and potentially
00:48:49
[music] it hasn't at least social media potentially has brought some of that back. And finally the
00:48:56
self-congratulatory piece that he brought out about Gareth Southgate, that was really interesting
00:49:02
in terms of the perspective that people have on that approach to saying well done for what we've achieved because the
00:49:12
reality is that the people that are in society at large may well not feel that that particular [music] perspective has
00:49:21
been taken into account. They might feel that whatever changes are suggested haven't actually been
00:49:29
adjusted or changed [music] enough for them and for their own personality fit. I know it's something that Tariq
00:49:35
mentioned about the fact that there were white and black people on the team, but
00:49:39
that was it and that was seen to be a win. And of course it is to a certain extent,
00:49:44
but if you don't see someone that looks like you in those particular roles or situations, then it can be quite
00:49:50
alienating and ostracizing for those particular individuals. Um, so, a note to leadership to think about what it
00:49:57
means, um, when you are saying well done and patting yourself or the organization
00:50:01
on the back for doing a job well done. Is it really a job well done, um, in [music] the eyes of other people outside
00:50:08
the organization and perhaps people from different ethnic backgrounds? That's it for this episode of Written in
00:50:14
the Boardroom. Thank you to Tariq for sharing his story with honesty and insight, [music] and thank you for
00:50:19
listening.