You now sit at the top table in this industry. As you have risen in seniority, has the way you are treated by others changed?
Sitting around the executive table, you have a more powerful voice. It comes with the role.
This is about finding my own courage to speak about my experience. Previously I hid it away. I wouldn’t have talked about my own difficulties in growing up and maturing. I saw them as my problem, not a societal problem. As you grow in seniority, you learn that it is OK to have some difficult views.
I think what changes most is that at a more senior level you develop a more natural ability to be heard. It was much more difficult to speak out of turn when I was at more junior levels.
I’m very aware of how this conversation may appear to others. I’m a white, middle-class, educated British chap living in the countryside and wearing tweed, having a conversation about race relations.
I look at myself, and believe I have no personal bias or antipathy towards anyone of a background or culture different from my own.
But, of course, I have an unconscious bias that is built-in, because of how and where I grew up. And the railway is dominated by people like me: middle-aged white men.
When you look at me, how do you think I need to change my behaviour to neutralise that unconscious bias?
The truth is that all of us have unconscious bias. Sometimes it matters and sometimes it does not. I’ve done some work on my own unconscious bias. When I recruit, I have a bias towards white applicants. How ironic is that?
One reason is that when I was growing up, there was a culture of assimilation. To get on, I was taught, don’t show your difference. Fit in. Be like others. That’s what my parents believed.
So, in the following round of recruitment, I asked our HR people to make the CVs anonymous. I found the people I shortlisted were entirely different to those I would have shortlisted had I known their identities. Given who I am, if I show an unconscious bias, then it’s likely that everyone else does, too.
It didn’t take much to change that. Awareness is the key. As soon as I recognised it and was prepared to talk about it openly, I caught myself and took my own vices into account.
That’s really all we are asking for. We don’t need people to take a fundamental shift in behaviour. Small adjustments in awareness are sufficient for most people. Recognising that these things are personally uncomfortable, as you have done, and then talking about them, is generally enough.
What made you choose to do this: to submit to this level of personal scrutiny? You’re at the peak of a successful career, you’ve risen to the top of the heap, in a way that anybody from any background might aspire to do. It would appear that your cultural background has not held you back.
If you don’t dare speak about something, you can’t blame anyone else for not voicing it. Or criticise them for failing to respond to something you didn’t say. For too long, I think, I was not prepared to talk about uncomfortable things. I now recognise that as selfish.
There’s an element of giving people hope. It’s also about working out where I put barriers in front of myself, and perhaps those barriers did not need to be there.
Perhaps they didn’t even exist: were they real or perceived? Did I hold myself back, or did the system do so?
Have I had to work harder or smarter than a white counterpart?
If you’re preparing for an interview, you need to think of situations where your ethnicity may play a part.
What I hope I am showing you is that voicing these concerns shows I am the kind of individual who is prepared to take on a difficult situation and work with it. That in itself can promote success.
You’re avoiding eye contact as you talk to me, especially when I ask for your personal experience rather than a professional perspective. You’re giving the impression that this conversation is a long way outside your comfort zone.
Oh, massively. You’re dead right, Paul. It goes back to the way I dealt with difficulties before. I built a wall. I dealt with them, put them behind that wall. The George Floyd thing in particular, put chinks into that wall and brought back some bad memories. Memories of being in some quite physically intimidating situations. I changed my behaviour to deal with that. Even if that was the only way to deal with it back then, not dealing with it now was a selfish, privileged attitude to take.
I have an 18-year-old son and a 15-year-old son. They are now beginning to understand that barriers still exist in this country. It really hurt me to realise that I was not doing anything to solve their problems.
As a parent, that was sobering. I had a sense that I had not been playing my part. That was an awakening. I am senior now. I am in a position to do something about it, and until recently I have not been doing it.
