Series Five Roundup Transcript

Melody Moore:
Welcome to the Secret Resume podcast hosted by me, Melody Moore. In this podcast we explore the people, places and experiences that have shaped my guests, those which have influenced who they are as people and where they are in their work life today, or as I like to call it, their secret resume. Before we dive in, I want to tell you about something that I’m really excited about, which is our being free membership. We’re developing an online community which is designed for people who are interested in personal growth. If you’re navigating career transitions, maybe feeling stuck or burnt out, or simply seeking more meaning in your life, then this is for you. Membership gives you access to a range of resources, a supportive community and monthly group coaching calls. It will allow you to explore what freedom means to you on your own terms. Head to liberareconsulting.co.uk being free to join.

Melody Moore:
The Waitlist I’m very excited to be here today. This is the second of my solo podcasts where I’m talking about some of the themes that I’ve really enjoyed thinking about and hearing about in series five, which was the DEI series and that had a fabulous range of guests who all are doing great things in the DEI diversity, equity and inclusion space. I’ve absolutely thoroughly enjoyed talking to them about their experiences and their journeys and what made them who they are and why they’re doing what they’re doing today. So I’ve got three key themes that I want to talk about today. One is impact of their upbringing and what that had on their desire to get involved in diversity and equity inclusion work, how they eventually ended up there. The second is about media representation and about role modelling and the impact that the media can have on us as individuals and how we feel about ourselves. And the third one really links to some degree to the, to the sort of authenticity and self image stuff that I talked about in one of the previous podcasts and just a little bit more exploration there, thinking about these people in particular and who’ve all chosen to focus in diversity and inclusion and making the world a better place. So let’s start off with something that came through really strongly in this series was the impact of certain people, in particular grandparents.

Melody Moore:
That was a really key theme that came through and how people in their past, in their upbringing had a really positive and a really negative impact on them as individual. So we heard from Toby, he talked about his grandmother, about how encouraging she was. She didn’t focus in on the fact that he was disabled and therefore thinking that he couldn’t do anything or that he would be held back by his disability. But she really encouraged him to believe that he could do anything, and he’s carried that through and had really quite a remarkable career. I was teasing him about collecting brands and collecting badges because he’s worked for some remarkable organisations in his time before setting up his own consultancy in the DEI world. Doyin also talked about her grandmothers, both of her grandmothers, and how they had an impact, that they were inspiring. One of her grandmas in particular was particularly inspiring for her and helped her understand what was possible for women. Natalia Nanna, she also talked about a role model, but her mother being a role model and also being surrounded by people both on her mother’s and father’s side, but their friends as well.

Melody Moore:
Her mother having a really strong network of powerful women and the impact that had on Natalia Nana and her understanding of what is possible for her and helping her see that there were lots of different options for her as a woman. We also heard from Nadia, who talked about her grandparents, where she had family, her mum here in the UK and her dad over in the us, and how her grandparents created a stable environment for her. And then finally we heard from Jane, and Jane talked about her not so positive experiences, particularly with her father and the abuse that she experienced at the hands of her father, and how that, I think, really gave her a fire in her belly about fairness. And what you can see in Jane’s story is her constantly fighting for fairness throughout her career, even before she started to even break, there was a really strong sense of fighting for fairness right from being a very small child. And that may well have been as a result of the fact that she didn’t feel that she was being treated fairly by her own father. And I think why these really stuck out for me is because it’s so powerful, the impact of our caregivers. Honours they can give us very positive experiences, they can give us negative experiences. And what for me was really interesting was three of the guests spoke about the role of their grandparents and how their grandparents gave them something and gave them encouragement and gave them that sense of being loved for who they are and giving them that sense of the possibility of life.

Melody Moore:
And I think we tend to underestimate how important role models are, how important it is to have people around us who believe in us and show us what’s possible. Natalia Dana also talked about developmental trauma and about young people that she worked with in the care system and how they may have been seen as disruptive, but she completely was reframing that. And I think what she merely made me think about was the really great book by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry called what Happened to you? And this, for me, was just a fabulous exploration of how the things that happen to us have a really strong influence on the way that we behave. And that’s not just as children, but as adults as well. We carry, all of us carry experiences from our childhood into our present day. Now, as you could hear from some of my guests, some of those things that they’re carrying with them are positive things. Their confidence, belief in themselves or belief in what’s possible through role models or through positive reinforcements from different caregivers.

Melody Moore:
But also there are negative things that we carry into adulthood where there’s times where maybe we didn’t get reinforced, we didn’t get what we needed from our caregivers. And those things show up for people as well. Things like focusing too much on other people’s needs or helping other people, having boundaries, not being strong enough because we were brought up, that it was wrong to say no, and that putting our needs above other people’s, for instance, was not the right thing to do. So it’s an area of real interest of mine, and it came through really strongly in this series and in previous series, actually about the impact of our caregivers and how that shapes us still as adults. The second topic is about media representation, and both Toby and Natalia Nanna talked about the media representation of people who are a bit different. So Natalia Nana talked about how people of colour are represented on screen and where you positively talked about Bridgerton and how it was amazing to see a South Asian woman not just having a leading role, but being the love interest. And how unusual that is in Hollywood or Western television and film to see that. And what an amazing thing for young girls from that heritage to see someone who looks like them actually being the love interest rather than the kooky best friend.

Melody Moore:
So they’re really important role models again, and representation and being able to see that you can be anything, you’re not just limited by what the media is telling you. And Toby said the same, that disabled people are portrayed as Bond villains, benefit cheats or Olympic heroes or Paralympic heroes. And those were your three options if you have a disability, and the importance of having. Of normalising people with disabilities in media portrayal so they’re just playing ordinary people, and that people with disabilities don’t feel that they have to go down one of those three routes. And Jane also talks, perhaps not so much about media, but about perception and about language and about how it’s really important that we make the right decisions when we’re choosing how to portray something. So she talked about evenbreak and not wanting it to be a charity. She made it into a social enterprise. And the choice for that being that she didn’t want disabled people to be seen as a charity care.

Melody Moore:
She didn’t want to see employing disabled people be seen as a charitable decision. She wanted it to be seen as a good business decision. So she made a really conscious decision to make even break a social enterprise rather than a charity. The third theme is about masking or covering or code switching. As Nadia talked about how she felt that she had to code switch a lot during her time in the civil service. And what she means by code switching is that she’s having to behave in a way that’s not naturally her, that she’s having to adopt behaviours and ways of operating that are not her natural way of behaving. And she talked about how exhausting that is and how that actually led to burnout with her. And then Toby talked really beautifully about shame and the feeling of shame that he carries around disability and being gay, and about how we have internalised biases that are societal biases that we carry within ourselves, even towards our own difference.

Melody Moore:
And how he feels that to some degree that’s driven his workaholism. He feels that he’s got to prove something because he is different. He’s disabled, he’s gay, and therefore he has to work incredibly hard to prove that he’s just as good as somebody else. And Joanne talked about her transitioning and how she got to a point in her life where she didn’t want to mask or cover anymore. She wanted to be fully herself. And the joy that has brought her and the sense of really being free and being authentic when she transitioned has been exceptionally powerful for her. And I think this applies to all of us, really, that we all. And this really links to the first theme of what we learn as we’re growing up, about what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable, what the world deems acceptable, what our caregivers, our families deem acceptable, and how we all have to cover parts of ourselves.

Melody Moore:
Every single one of us, regardless of whether we’re in a minority group or not, will have periods of time when we feel like we’re not being authentic to ourselves, where we’re not being true to ourselves. And as Nadia talks about this idea of code switching or covering, where it’s exhausting to be somebody who you’re not, and the tricky element of this is that when we are children, we have a very natural version of ourselves, and quite often we cover that natural version of ourselves up because we need to fit in with our families, with the people who look after us. We need to be loved. And what we learn very quickly is that we need to do the things that are going to get us love. So what we do is we give up parts of ourselves. And that’s, for me, a really interesting aspect of who we are as adults and how we work, how we show up at work, is that quite often the things that are holding us back, the things that are maybe that piece of feedback that we’ve always carried around through the whole of our lives and we never quite managed to shake, or maybe that sort of nagging sense of not quite being myself. And often that is related to things that we learned when we were young that were acceptable ways to behave. But deep down inside of us, there’s another part of us that doesn’t believe that.

Melody Moore:
And that other part of us wants to get out and come and play. And that’s part of the work that I’m increasingly doing with clients, is working with them to uncover those aspects of themselves that maybe have been long hidden so that they can more confidently step into, as Joanne talks about, more confidently step into, a more real and authentic version of themselves. I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief summary, little analysis of some of the themes that came up during series five, the DEI series. And we’re going to have a little bit of a break now as we get towards Christmas and the holiday period, but we’ll be back in January. I’ve got some really amazing, fantastic guests. Our next series is on the topic of entrepreneurship. So all of our guests are entrepreneurs and work in the world of entrepreneurship. So don’t forget to subscribe and then you’ll be the first to hear when the new episodes are out.

Melody Moore:
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Melody Moore:
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