 Hey folks, welcome to Don't Take Out Your Phone. I had a really cool chat with Leon Walker today. We heard about his journey from Manchester to London, which is a pretty hard journey to make, and the various challenges he's faced entering into the London insurance market. We talked a little bit about what we can do to increase diversity and level the playing field, so making sure that people have a quality of opportunity and there are no obstacles in the way. So yeah, it was really good. I hope you enjoy it. Hey, it's Lewis. Welcome to the podcast. Enjoy our conversations anytime, anywhere. Thank you, Leon, for joining me. Thanks for having me. Pleasure, pleasure. So Josh Breckenfeld introduced us. We should mention him. Good old Josh. Yeah, I haven't had one of my podcasts yet. Good old Josh. Good old Josh. Just to highlight that point. I think he's older than both of us. He's definitely old. Yeah. And he arranged a little gin tasting that we went to. Which is cool. And then I saw you talk at Diving Fest, which was really good. So I thought I'd get you on. Thank you very much for having me. Pleasure. Thanks for joining us. So what's your story? How did you come down from Manchester? Oh, coal mining. I'm joking. Football. Yeah, definitely football. So I started my career. I studied law first because I wanted to be in LA law. And I think for suits. But suits wasn't available yet. I still thought I was Harvey Specter. And I think for a few days I was called Donovan before Leon. Because my mum was obsessed with Don Johnson. So all of these American things had an impact on my life. And I thought law was the way to go because I loved arguing. You didn't copy their accent? I didn't copy their accent. I couldn't ever get rid of my Mancunian accent. Which is why I got a D in German. And effectively I went into law but I didn't enjoy it as much as I did in theory when I was in practice. So I was a paralegal. I worked for a number of firms. The last one being a sports law firm. Which, you know, I was in the meetings where Carlos Tevez was signing for Man United from West Ham and trying to draft new rules or trying to look at the differences between years of FA football rules thinking this is not LA law. This is not suits. This is not what I thought. The sports are sexy part of the rules. That's what I thought. And honestly I thought to myself I'm going to get out of law and I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I thought I'd been trained to kind of read contracts and I had pretty good attention to detail. So I went into a recruiter's office and they sent me to an insurance broker. Was this up in Manchester? Up in Manchester, yeah. They sent me to an insurance broker and I went for a compliance role at a broker and I sat in front of the CEO very similar to as we're sat now and he's like, what? You'll hate compliance. What about broken? I had no idea about broken. And he says, you'll be good at it. And I thought, oh god, I'm on the apprentice. I need to stand my ground. I need to be very focused. So every time he said broken, I said, compliance, broken compliance. And he said, right, I'm going to stop you there. I'm going to give you a job in my broken business in real estate. So I started out real estate broken and we had massive clients like Irvin Seller who was behind the shard. And one of my biggest clients had a thousand residential properties in London. So you think about some of the scale, some of the portfolios we worked on where Cot Darjeon is, one poultry building. I'd never seen that, but we ensured it up in Manchester. So I kind of started out in the market that way. Worked in sales roles, corporate development type roles where I'd be travelling from Manchester to Scotland in a car. I think I drove to Glasgow three days after my driving test. It was the most frightening experience of my life. I mean, yeah, I had nightmares about falling asleep at the wheel for months. And after a couple of years, I realised that the insurance world was kind of where I wanted to be in terms of the foundations of what you can get were very different to law. Law I left because I was 10 years away from getting client contact. On my second day in a broker, I went out to see a client and ratified for me why I was making the move. And one of the interesting things is in my second year, my last broken firm in Manchester, I ruptured my patella tendon playing football. So for anyone that's squeamish, effectively my kneecap was in my thigh. And I was off work for a couple of months and watching Bloomberg every day and looking at the TV thinking the centre of the insurance world doesn't overlook Salford Chippy. I think there's more to it than this. Football career had finished by then. Oh, absolutely. My chances of playing for Man United ended probably when I was seven. But I dragged it out. You could have played for Man City at that time. Never. I'm from Stratford. You can't even wear blue in Stratford. And honestly, I sort of sat there thinking I have to get to London. How am I going to do it? Just because more opportunities. More opportunities. It seemed like the centre of the universe and if you were going to do insurance come to the city and do it here. And it was actually quite a stretch to go from Manchester to New York or Dubai or wherever. You have to have done your grounding in London. Yeah. So I got a role at Willis working in the heart of the city. It was a carrier management role and I was quite tactical about why I did that. And that was because it spanned the whole business. So I was talking about aviation one day and find out another and energy and obviously you don't do this in Manchester. So for me it was a steep learning curve. And a transition to living in London? Living in London was okay. One of my uncles has lived here for a long time so I came here every summer as a kid. But I think working in London was very different. Because one I thought it would be I was one of three people that I ever saw in the market in Manchester. And I came to London because I thought it would be more diverse. Or one of the reasons I thought it would be more diverse. And when I started at Willis and maybe this was just where I was at the time there was very few and actually I saw more people that worked in the kitchens and the catering and cleaning and the security that were of ethnic minorities than I saw in the office and I thought that was very strange. Did you find London just as a whole very diverse? Yeah, but London's in fiefdoms. London isn't the right one. East London resonates with me more because that's a bit like Manchester it's a bit grittier and it's got a bit of an edge. And Mancunions have that edge so I look at the Gallagher brothers that seem to have an edge. And we all want to be the Gallagher brothers or David Beckham or Ada. He was on Essex. Yeah, but he was adopted of Manchester and came in King of Manchester. And effectively when I got here I thought everyone kind of sticks to their group which was really quite weird. And the group hasn't liked where you live. Yeah, for sure. You had people that saw a lot of pinkie rings never seen those before in Manchester. I'm not a fan of a pinkie ring. And then of course in the city you have this sort of crashing together of sort of Eton and Essex. And some army. And what's fascinating here is boarding school is massive as is army. But where I'd come from, you only went to army or boarding school if you were really naughty. So it was very... Yeah, because it couldn't control you whereas here maybe the standard's much higher. There's people from different backgrounds and actually that part of that diversity is something that I loved. But I still felt quite lonely. And it took a long time to find people that look like me. But I replaced that with people that thought like me. And I think that's where my view of what diversity has shifted from what people look like to what people think like and how they act and what their values. It was a shock. It was transformational in terms of how I thought about the world. But it was... I think I got my ass kicked for the first couple of years in London because I didn't understand hierarchy. I didn't understand structure and ego and I didn't understand that people needed to be made to feel important. Office politics I guess. Because I'd worked in roles where my line was the driver. So how much do you produce? How much do you add to the company? And nothing else mattered. So when I came here and it became very political the size of the companies grew etc. I thought I need to step my game up. That learning curve was steep. You did go to a massive firm. And that does make a big difference I think. Willis must have been infinitely bigger than them. I worked for JLT in Manchester. But I worked for a part of JLT which was 30 people with 400 people around us that were employee benefits. So ex-mercer people. So effectively I'd only ever worked for small companies. Whilst I had a big name I'd only ever worked for small companies. Even from the property investor broker I worked for 56 people when I left. That's where I was one of 19,000 at the time was just mind-blowing. Crazy. Have you faced any discrimination? Yes. And I think given before I touched on my own experience given what's going on in the world given what's some of the challenges we have I think 2016 was probably one of the worst years of my life. Because every day I'd turn on news there was a black person being arrested or murdered or shot out by police or choked out like Mike Brown was choked out. This is US. This is all US. But it was published on BBC News and all these things and news at 10 and all of that news night Channel 4 it was hard because frankly it would be remiss of me to say that all of this didn't have an impact on the way people viewed us globally. And turning those seeing that every day it wasn't that it was happening it was that it was being filmed and it became news and news is more like entertainment these days. So it was just a constant barrage and I thought well of course if you say you're a recruitment person in a company or you're a CEO and you get a CV and it's a black person or a Muslim person if your image of those people is only ever derived because your circle doesn't include those people it's only derived from what you see on the news then of course you're going to it's not unconscious you just you'd rather not have that around you so it'd be remiss of me to say that hasn't affected me at some stage in my life as it relates to my own experience of discrimination to give you a bit of background where I grew up there was only two black families on the council estate I grew up on and effectively when we moved in my mum and dad went to the local pub and they were quite young so my mum had me when she was quite young and they went to the local pub and stopped drinking until they left really? this was 87 8 crazy so for me it was fascinating growing up in that environment because my parents view was we don't belong here but all of the kids of these people became my best friends so many times where I'd be in fights when I was younger trying to defend you were always on the back foot but they were not so the kids and your peers you experienced like no discrimination so it was a mixture because whilst if anyone attacked me from the outside I would always have the protection of these people who just grew up with me I often would get into fights within my own group and they would come and repeat some of the things that they'd hear from their parents so this is a case of the worst discriminatory experience I've had is I was playing a football match in a certain part of Manchester and I was quite good at football to be fair and a lot of people came to watch it and one of the spectators had torn a coke can in half and then sliced the air of one of the players on our team while he was taking a throw in so it was quite a rough name that was a racial attack but what was fascinating was one of the parents who happened to be a white guy shouted at me and called me an albino which I thought was quite funny at the time because clearly understand what an albino was so I thought if that's the worst racial experience I'm going to have in my life publicly, directly I think I'll take it I think I can move on from that crazy and then moving to London and working in insurance where it's not particularly diverse have you experienced anything or have you found your journey making your way in that in your career I think it's an interesting point here because the London market isn't very diverse and I think working or getting closer to diversity and inclusion as an agenda the market feels like it has diversity, fatigue almost like they view it as a message being rammed down their throat which is really frustrating because if you're on the other side of that you feel that progress has been very slow so you're not really seeing any change I'll tell you they have diversity and fatigue it suggests that they don't want to change do you think that's true I can only go for the evidence we've got taking insurance aside we've got more CEOs and the FTSE 100 call David than we do for my black and ethnic minority background so how can we argue with the numbers but I also think quite radically that there are two sides to this there's a fence almost and I think on the side of the fence of the establishment and the establishment tends to be middle age or middle class white men on the side of the establishment if I sit with them I feel like diversity and inclusion is presented as a zero sum game in what way almost that for it to become more diverse I have to lose something from my table so you're taking food off my table to feed everybody else and it feels like I'm constantly under attack and I don't think diversity and inclusion is meant to come across that way because it's supposed to be inclusive by definition and at the moment it feels like we attack this person and we've all ran teams and set up teams in the past you don't go in and sack the most experienced person you build around that person some of the diversity and inclusion initiatives are not done well correct and you can see how that will all happen I mean even so far as some I run a headhunting firm some clients have asked specifically this is on gender but 50% has to be female which again creates big problems right because ultimately really being inclusive who cares where people have come from what they look like I mean who cares right I don't care but maybe as my colleague Odi was saying young people I'm classing myself as young even though I'm like 37 young people are much more optimistic so I'd love to think I do believe my social circle and my peers aren't racist, homophobic whatever but the reality in the world is really a bit different completely and I echo that but I think you know you'll sit on that side of the fence you're thinking I'm under attack here and I don't want to why would I if you're going to attack me and then say actually do you want to come and be part of the solution I'm probably going to say no it's not a good way to so then if I go to the other side of the fence where I sit as a young black with a very strong which is probably coming through today I look at it and say we have significant challenges and one of those is that insurance is not something that we pick typically because in our communities and whether you're black or Asian or any of these in our communities we look for the ones that we can see so for instance I always say that my grandparents came here to get our job like any job, get on the ladder my mum's generation had to get a job that you could point to in the community so gas board, council health authority it had to be something that you could point to postman, you had to be able to see it and then they hit the glass ceiling so my generation's job is to become senior in those companies that they couldn't become senior in that's my historical responsibility to my culture I see so then the generation after me so my kids or the people that I mentor at the moment their job is to start their own businesses because then the generation after them is on equal parity they can go in and do the gas board they can go in and be a labourer they can go in and do the CEO job they can go in and be the entrepreneur and it will take five generations to do that five, yeah, wow and I'm sort of three in the line so we're not far off but we're still a long way away from where we want to be the same with my family, both my parents emigrants, one dad's from Egypt one's from South Africa my mum had a different upbringing we're up in the part of South Africa my dad was chocolate out of Egypt for being Jewish and came here and the whole thing so it's not too dissimilar but in Jewish culture a lot of the parents push the kids into being accountable and emigrants tend to want to contribute to the society they've moved into and as you see them as the generations go on they start to get more integrated and assimilated my first broken job was in a Jewish real estate investor broker and I learnt everything I know about business from that firm because that was about us and the community and helping and teaching and that's what I saw teaching I didn't see challenge I saw how can I help you do this and everything I learnt from business from those bosses the key to leadership is thinking about servicing your employees teaching, education if we all do better so having that mindset if we can get that instilled in people then I think we'll go a long way absolutely so what should we do what can we do to achieve equality of opportunity do you think I think equality is a big question right I think equality is something that kind of starts outside the office I think companies have a responsibility to set a framework where people feel that they can do their best and their best might be half as good as someone else but it's still their best and they want to be able to do that you have to understand that some people come to work for just the paycheck and then they support their lifestyle with that which is fine and then certain people if you're like me or certainly like when Josh and I speak we're kind of pinking the brain trying to take over the world and I think that you have to give room to those people as well but equality to me is something that touches politics housing, economics relationships exposure, media as I touched on before equality is there and companies kind of need to pressure media like I went to a talk with someone very senior at WPP the biggest advertising agency in the world and I pressed that person as to how do you allow these companies to position us in such a way from a black and ethnic minority background how do you allow that to be the case where the only time we ever see anyone celebrated is if they're a sports person or if they're an entertainer they're the same because sports is entertainment these days where do you go and find the leaders and the owners and the developers and why don't you celebrate them in the same way that you celebrate Steve Jobs or the same way you celebrate Richard Branson and that person didn't really have an answer other than I can only work off the brief I'm given by the client so if the client is the company and the company's role is to then start to change narratives I spoke at an event recently for the diving festival as you saw and I talked about the movie Black Panther and that was a seminal movie for anyone from a black background I think it's a 12 and I sat next to a 6 year old like it was ridiculous people needed it they needed that confidence boost maybe after 2016 I don't know and the reason why I think that's important is not necessarily well in addition to the fact that you saw someone there that was a warrior, a woman a scientist, a young girl and the king was black and he had heritage and he relied on his ancestors and all these things that you get taught of when you come from a black background to look for and reach on it was important because it made a billion dollars in a month it's crazy isn't it a billion dollars in a month and do you think that was important because of the role model aspect I think it was important because every advertising agency realised that they could tap into that dollar that Jordan has been getting for years Michael Jordan tapped into that dollar that black people will certainly in America will queue for days to get the next release and Black Panther tapped into that so now when I pick up GQ I pick up Esquire and any other fashion magazines that end up in my house because my fiance works for a fashion company all of those have diverse models in now and the fashion industry changed overnight because it went to get that dollar not because it had any moral obligation not because it wanted to change the world but because they realised that if you can put these people on a page they will buy my clothes so I was speaking at a school recently I've become a school governor for Seoul and East London and I was talking about labels like Trapstar and Puma and all these things have now become cool in black and ethnic minority communities and I asked the kids why do you think that is and they said oh well because it's cool and Supreme that was the other label and it was why do you think that's cool and they said because Jay-Z wears it or because Beyonce wears it and I said no it's because you wear it it's because they know you will save up all of your money everything you have and you'll spend it on this item that's why it's cool and that's why they push it and you need to have a look at that from a frame of how powerful this message has become how powerful these people are and people don't like the term babe like I didn't like it at first but then I realised that that just cemented all of these different parts of this question into one big group and now we can say right what do we want to do about it but it's great I mean you've got I think you need more role models so there's the sports stars there's the musicians Kanye went to meet Donald Trump Kanye has had his hood packed revoked revoked I tell you he's had it revoked but no one that's got close to the Kardashians has come off well so it's always ruled the sisters like was the quickest billionaire exactly from Instagram because her sister did a porn video crazy there's a few memes about that but I think back to kind of like non-like sports stars and musicians and stuff certainly we need more role models and more representative in these types of industries but I mean it's a challenge to get people to want to work in like let's say insurance or financial services I think not only because their families don't do it or they don't respect it like I said my grandmother cried so she thought I was knocking on everyone's door on the street I'm trying to explain to her I think at the time we were looking at some of the early plans for the cheese grater and she's like what are you going to be knocking on someone's door like it's very very strange I think yeah there's an attraction problem to the market at all levels I think we need to look at I think if the average age of an active underwriter at Lloyds of London is 53 and I have to be careful because I don't want to be aged this is not an age thing but if the average age of an active underwriter is that age if I say I'm supportive of diversity and inclusion and focus on the grad scheme then that means that by the time those people come through to challenge me to challenge for senior jobs I've already retired I'm out I'm supportive of it but as long as I don't have to work for it underwriting is an example where you have to have started young and worked your way up there are a bunch of roles where you can hire someone from a different industry 100% technology, data science all of these new kind of things that are coming through but you typically don't see people hiring them they still take people from similar firms from rivals they're scared to make a bad hire but then I push back on recruiters and you can only go off the brief right so what we do we're going to take a brief from a client we'll go through all of our various questions they open up the spec and probe as to why they want certain skills and experience and it's always the same so to start with they're open to someone from outside the market but in the end and then you deliver that diverse list different sectors and stuff wider financial services is much more diverse than insurance so you can start to increase diversity and insurance if you start recruiting from different sectors but in the end they always end up 90% of the time going for someone from the insurance sector from a rival it's a safer hire let's say you go down to mid-level or junior level and you're asking a middle manager to make a hire if they make a bad hire because they've hired someone from a Cardo or whatever other company to hire someone from one of our rivals but how is it that an organisation or an industry that is designed around risk won't take any well firstly people like people like themselves so sector whatever the commonalities are but if you're in a job for and the average 10 in a job now is 2.5 to 3 years so you're in this job you want to do well, you want to progress why take a risk on someone that's left field let's say maybe they're not empowered to do it it's been a different economic environment you've got Brexit coming up maybe people in this mindset let's just make a safe hire it's like 100% of the 5100 use the week before accounting firms they didn't take a well it's like you never get fired for hiring Mackenzie it's like a classic thing for me from my perspective there's a bit of an issue around that and we do what I can because for us it's great to have a larger pool of people to source from much easier to find good people and diverse in the end it's more often than not the insurance experience sounds like you're beating your head against a brick wall probably but you keep trying because I think ultimately it hasn't changed actually for a while I've been recruiting in insurance and wider finance services for like maybe 14-15 years and it's always the same conversation that has been from the start sometimes they take a risk on someone most of the time they don't and you end up the same people moving around these jobs there's a few things there that you said that I want to just touch on so first about taking a risk on someone that will have to happen to change the demographic of the London market and there's a perception that it's easier to train Charlie from Charles to have a school than it is to train Jamal from Brickstone right there's just a perception like I'm going to have to teach this person stuff to operate in this world and some of that's true but then most of it isn't and I think because you don't experience that person in your circle and again over them what you see on the news so that's one on that point on that point I think so if you look at the low socio-economic backgrounds comprehensive schools and stuff we can do a lot to work with kids in those scenarios because if you want to be let's say you want to be an accountant or a scientist or an investment banker your choice of GCSE starts at 14 years old and mostly people in that in that part of society do worse at GCSEs then get the GCSEs to the right levels if you don't do the right levels you can never be a scientist or so companies in this industry just generally can do a lot more work with schools at that level so whoever it is from the local comprehensive school understands that here you can be an underwriter or you can be an investment banker or you can be a scientist the guy from the private school has the benefit of people coming in and talking to them about their jobs, about coming on work experiences and so they really get a head start so this is a quality of opportunity I feel people miss out on them from 13 to 14 100% it starts there was a program on BBC about this talking about the chance of someone from a black background becoming Prime Minister being in the many millions of percent because it was because of all these socio-economic challenges and I don't want to divide the person from the public school I don't think that person should ever have to apologise for their background just because their parents have been successful their grandparents have been successful you can't apologise for that but what you can do is recognise your own privilege and privilege is very important so now people talk a lot about white privilege because it's fashionable to do it and I think that white privilege is why we talk about this sort of stuff around our table because we have the additional challenge of if we're blessed enough to do it having a mixed race child so we have to work as hard as media is to make sure that child feels like it belongs somewhere and belongs to us and feels equal part but when we talk about white privilege I say to her that that's because the way it presents is that you only have to apologise for yourself as an individual whereas when I feel like I have to apologise the way in which society is set up is if I'm apologising for everybody because you're the only reference point for many people they'll say so why do black people do this as if you can answer for every black person or why do Jewish people do that and you think how do I know if I said to her why do white people do this she's like well I can only answer for myself and that's okay but I think privilege is very important whilst I can point at privilege in other people I have to be humble enough to realise I have my own so my privileges of just being a man or being born in the west or being born in the UK or the difference between even being born in Manchester versus other parts of the north you know all of these things so you have to be people have to show a little bit more humility to then get this equality that you're looking for and I guess as it relates to Jamal or my fictional Brixton Boy or it relates to Charlie from Charles House all they need to do is align around an objective because what happens in small companies versus big companies in my experiences in a small company they're aligned around an objective and it doesn't matter where you come from everyone's going for it when you get to a big company it becomes more political and that's where you start hiring your own image and wrap people around you that you know are going to protect you so there's an element of democratising the objectives and saying it doesn't really matter I don't care where you come from male, female, age, LGBT wheelchair whatever you have because we're going to need it to get to this objective and I think that the city of London one needs to acknowledge some of its past as to how it's got what it's got and two needs to step out of the train tracks it feels like people are saying well David was successful so I'm going to follow David and then do exactly what he says and then the person following David does exactly what David does to innovate there's a tough on that because if you think of that from the other perspective if you're lucky enough to have two parents who are successful doing something in their career and you look to them as role models or other family members or people in society if you don't have that then it's quite easy to just you don't know what's possible your goals are much shorter than they should be honestly when I was growing up where I grew up that was patently obvious it was common I lived probably half a mile away from Man United's ground and probably 50 or 60 meters away from Trafford Park which had lots of factories and that's where you were supposed to work that was absolutely where you were supposed to work so my grandparents came here in the 60s and they definitely experienced racism and the stories that our grandmother would tell about just going to the butchers and having to wait until the last white person was served and she could be in there for three hours because when she's the next person to be served if someone came in then she'd have to wait until they were served and all of these things but my grandad was a tailor he set the standard for our family in what way? in every way how we looked, how we presented how we talked how we carried ourselves what our aspirations were he was quite big in the local community in terms of helping people from the Caribbean settle in the UK giving jobs, giving them a suit getting them settled and you look back at pictures of the 60s and the way that the sort of Hollywood version of it now where you're panting around your ankles then it was suits and ties every day and my grandad wore a suit and tie every day you did come in and see and tie today and look and smile and what's really interesting is that's because of my family standard that's got nothing to do with the city of London, that's got nothing to do with what anyone tells me here that's our standard and we don't let that standard drop I have several uncles that I'm very proud of and I have my mum who is probably one of my heroes because they maintain that standard and then we all grow off the back of that you could pick our family up and put us in any country and our values about hard work and graft and being presentable and articulate hopefully and focus around changing the community that is a relevance to where we are now not everyone's as lucky as us my grandad was a very strong character, any bread strong characters and I'm a strong character being a good family correct and whilst I have a lot of the traits of many people you come from a single background and all of these things whilst I have many of the traits of those people anyone I tell or I mentor a few people five people I talk about you set your standard so there is one thing in keeping with this podcast that I'll share and I got it from Game of Thrones so watching Game of Thrones one of the big differences between we talked about the Pinky Wingers and certainly people from my background is heritage and if you watch Game of Thrones I'll always say this is the son of the son of the son of who is ex and what we lack is that we don't have the people that have done it before to go off and so I started to think about what would be great is if I had been able to see or hear my grandad's experiences in his life so I could use them as a reference point absolutely so what I started to do was record voice notes and I save them into a drop box for my grandkids nice so I can talk to them about being the first one that came to work in the city and I can talk to them about office politics because we don't get taught that I talk to them about management of international relationships I talk to them about what it was like when I was preparing to propose and how it took me sort of seven years to figure out whether I wanted to get married at all at all and as soon as I decided I decided on the Saturday I wanted to do it and then I proposed the following week like I wasn't there was no messing there was just and you record all of that wow how long have you done that for? probably about 12 months love that so the aim is like a town capsule and you pass that down and it was Game of Thrones that taught me that because these people just I know it's acting but what they're acting is kind of art imitating life so they're kind of saying we know how to behave because our family behave this way so like Lannister's always pay their debts or whatever it is and what we have in the Bayam community is the ability now to combine and sand based on all we've learned and say right this is my family brand it's great you're just layering and do you think that's going to be the catalyst for real change I think the catalyst because you were talking about I want more people in ten positions now and do you think this is going to yeah I think there's a few things really I think there's an element of and I was reading recently about the end of slavery in the US and for a few years the slaves did what was called walking around and they would go into the bars and the restaurants that they weren't previously allowed into just to kind of show that they could do it so they'd go and sit in the bar and you know think of it here and I never was able to before but now I can and now I'm here and I didn't have a job to support that and I didn't have a life to support that but I was here and I just want to show you that I can do it too and I worry that within certainly our community excuse me if we're still doing that I want to be senior at PWC because I wasn't able to do that before and now I am what we should do is start our own absolutely we don't like role models I challenge we don't like role models, we have role models some of them are role models that we don't deserve like as much as I love his music Lil Wayne is not my role model but old Kanye now but old Kanye was because he was cool but we lack owners we lack leaders we lack people that can shape the destiny we lack entrepreneurial time we lack people that can hire whoever they want if I start a company after talking the way I've been talking to you for 20 minutes I can't then just allow it to become homogeneous I can't just allow it to become an all black company or an all female company I have to mix it I have to control in which to do that and I think that's what we lack in our community we don't lack role models there are you're right so what can we do to make the interview process as fairer if you think they're not fair because that's the other there's a lot of talk about it first thing do you think it's a fair process now generally I mean you can only look at the result and the result in the London market I walk around loads everyone still has their own image is that because it's not fair or they just have a lack of choice both so no it's not fair because everyone has their own image that's just a result as I said before on our side of the fence we need to get the candidates interested in insurance there's an attraction problem and we can't kick the can down the road and just focus on grads we need to try and get middle marriages getting people from other parts of FS so all of that matters but I also think that given my background I'm going to be predisposed to hire someone from a working class background that's a fact how do you know they're from a working class background though just talking to them having the conversation, learning about their experience and their challenge so I'm going to be predisposed to be looking for that so as a result you then change the environment you don't change like when a flower's broken you don't change the leaves, you change the soil you change the environment so instead of allowing me to just interview someone on my own where I'm going to obviously favor the person working class background you put me in a room with other people on my panel that aren't going to look for that aren't going to be turned on by that so that way you get a more balanced view and are you doing that at the moment so we're pushing for multiple things so I lead the cultural awareness network at Lloyd's at the moment which is what? so we've got representation chat goals we've got goals around celebrating different cultures and religions and ethnicities and we've got a committee together that's done a number of things which I'll touch on in a second one of them is around diverse recruitment panels and what we've done as a cultural awareness network as a community itself is we've done inclusive hiring training all of us and we are then offering ourselves out to the business as people that can go into an interview process and support the interviewer rather than the interviewee so I'm not really looking at you as a candidate I'm looking at the person interviewing you and making sure they're asking questions that are more inclusive than they would typically so if I'm so if they were sat in with me for instance and I'm absolutely loving the fact this person's a Man United fan and letting that skew the fact that they have their experience could be probed a little bit more or letting that skew the fact that just because they they've got the newest Jordans that are like and all these sorts of things they can give that person a nudge and sort of shape the interview to a slightly more balanced view so diversity recruitment panels is one blind CVs is another because again do you do blind CVs? so we're piloting it in operations at the moment at every level? so we're piloting blind CVs because what tends to happen in an interview process is the whole unconscious bias process starts with where have you come in from yeah classic question because when you say I'll travel down from Manchester instantly I'm going to be a mate you might even just be able to put on a great Mancunian accent and I'm sold so that's why we need the panel to go in hand with the plan to you that's conscious well I think more bias is conscious than unconscious I don't think unconscious bias is enough I think people focus on that and they think anything happens will send you an unconscious bias training as if that ticks the box whereas actually we need to just challenge your conscious biases and then allow you to talk about them we had an issue at Lloyd's where we did a Ramadanathon which effectively we had a number of us fasted for Ramadan and it sounds very altruistic for the whole month? well so it sounded very altruistic but one of the Muslim guys at work bet me that I couldn't fast for a day so I fasted for 12 days and the aim was to do a day in the first week, two days, three days four days until I got got on speed and we launched the Ramadanathon with a talk from a scholar in Lloyd's and we had a poster that said this is Ramadanathon popping to understand a little bit more about it and then we had complaints because it was a day after the Manchester bombing and certain people in the market were of the view that we shouldn't be promoting Islam in Lloyd's building because of the Manchester bombing and of course I can't go too much more into it because there's obvious confidentiality challenges but we I wanted to speak to the person individually who had made the complaint yeah definitely but it was a normal complaint I wanted to more than anything because they have the right to make the complaint no one has the right not to be offended you can take issue with being offended but you don't have a there's no God-given right not to be offended however I wanted to understand why that person felt that right? so it's the same with changing not changing the leaf or the flower you change the environment so you take that person away and you say open up and let me understand why you feel the way you understand and I don't think that happens enough and actually the diving festival would be much more successful if I was able to attract those people because most of the people that go went into it oh yeah you preach into the convert it I think there's an element of some of the silent majority want to stay silent because they're convinced that what they say is racist and what I'm saying is the head of the cultural awareness network or just a decent guy that loves to chat is some of the stuff you will say is racist just let's just own that some of the stuff that you will say to me will offend me let's just own that but let's have the conversation yeah yeah because if we don't have the conversation you go back to your dinner table and say what you want I go back to my dinner table and say what I want but we don't move forward so when we talk about the interview process there's loads of different things like the planned CVs and the structural differences do you go into helping to write the job specs initially because like wording terminology often pits people off yeah I've heard about this tech now so for example if you're in Brixton let's say and you actually quite want to be an underwriter and you look at a company website and you see everyone's white and old whatever it might be the stereotypes might be or you read the job spec and it doesn't quite attract you so I think there's a lot of work that can be done on that regard just even from writing the spec also the key skills you're looking for it's a lot of looking into that and then the actual interview questions so is it just like what do you do which might be good enough but the other thing is like so when I take feedback from candidates and clients we do board searches and heads of functions and stuff it's always the first thing anyone always says is I really feel like I've gotten well with that person I'm like what do you mean it's just a feeling I had so it's always the everyone goes on about fit cultural fit which is what does that even mean so I'm doing a course at the moment at London Business School it's like a Lloyd's leadership course and our question is around how important is culture for business what's the role of leaders in culture and how does Lloyd's future proof it's culture for success and culture is massive at the moment because it's nebulous it's so hard to grasp and does this person fit my culture is so subjective I believe that your culture could be focused around how do I get as many different viewpoints of the world into this place and at the moment it's about how do I not mess it up yeah which goes back to people that are scared to take a risk because you know that the whole thing of diversity is diversity in riches you want people with different backgrounds experiences and you have options better decision making but very hard to manage really hard to manage if you have a political discussion Brexit people from all over the country different educational backgrounds born in different countries religious backgrounds whatever you're going to have so many different worldviews and opinions it's great yeah it's hard to control but you see so my where my answer is from voted 100% for Brexit 100% for Brexit correct it's crazy and what's really interesting about that is I have no I have no insight into turnout or anything like that but they voted 100% Brexit when I go to this place there's probably three black people and when I leave there are two it's not a very diverse part of the world so it's more around the fear of change and if you look at the media and I come back to the media I think the media has a huge role to play and we should be forcing media to be more accountable for their actions all they saw was images of the jungle migration camp jungle migration camp is gone when's the last time you ever heard of ISIS on the news gone we don't need it anymore we don't need that as a vehicle to frighten people to do what we want so they'll move on to something else and now it's all about US and China and Russia so these people kind of made a view and I'm not saying this has got nothing to do with their education because everyone I've met there is super smart and very entrepreneurial but they voted 100% Brexit based on fear and I believe that we need to challenge that narrative the other thing I think I'll say Brexit is actually if you think about where most people get their news and information from, podcasts online, social media and you had the Cambridge Analytica staff, all the fat news so you don't half the time you don't know where people are learning from well I see a number of copies of the Sun up there and the Daily Mail which don't get me wrong, if Daily Mail was just showbiz and sport it would be the best newspaper in the world but it's all the other stuff that comes with it and I guess the point I was driving at with the people that I'm referring to in this particular part of the world is they did this out of fear but if your experience, your day to day experience is never ever with anybody of colour or anybody from a different background then you have no reason to believe that anything's broken so why fix it whereas in London it's different and I look at comic relief, I can't watch comic relief as much as I love Lenny Henry I can't watch it because the view of Africa hasn't changed since I was a child it's always starving children, flies on their face skinny Theresa May danced in I'll come to that, I've got the best means ever I've seen that with Skepta in the background but that is the image and it hasn't shifted but when you come to the city of London and talk about Africa all it's all about is opportunity and money is to be made there and that's almost this colonial view of Africa that's not changed so we'll pump out to the normal people that it's still going through challenge and you don't want to go there meanwhile I'm going to go there and make a load of money off it I see what you mean Africa is great population growth, it's a young motivated workforce great technological changes so the Theresa May thing I don't know which news channel it was I was watching on news and then there was Theresa May dancing and I was like I think they were in Jo Berg or something and then it panned to the reporter in front of an elephant I was thinking hold on a sec they're on their elephants in Jo Berg they're outside Jo Berg why are you reporting in front of an elephant and it was just classic that's the image they won't need to think of it and we've got to change that and I think we have a tremendous opportunity because we have people that are like minded coming together and as I said at the start of this diversity is less about what you look like and when we're doing our culture project we've spent a long time talking about what the market looks like because that's a hot topic but that's not diversity in my head diversity is diversity of ideas of experience of skill set so the opportunity that we have is to create an environment where that comes to the fore and it matters companies have a humongous opportunity to position it in such a way of not bringing your best self to work because it will make you feel good even though mental health is a huge issue it's bringing your best self to work because we need it and that's a different message that's to solve this problem we need more people from different viewpoints you know I look at empathy I did a Myers Briggs the other day my empathy level is very low naturally because I'm very task oriented whereas my fiance's empathy level is through the roof as she works in HR so we make her a good couple hopefully I'm pretty much invested into that we make a good couple because she approaches things very differently to how I do and often she'll talk to me about something at work and I'll say did you sack them and she'll be like no because of this factor and this factor and this factor and I'm thinking what's that got to do with the result it works and that has to happen in the office, it has to happen within the team it has to happen in your interview process and you have to actually look to piece together a jigsaw and that always changes under pressure and you'll know this when someone says I need to hire someone it needs to be done in the next three weeks that's different to I need to hire someone in the next six months we've been using technology because I'm starting to talk about automation so there's some really cool apps that have gamified recruitment so there's two I know Qmetrix which quite a few big phones use and then there's NAC KNACK really cool Indian firm and they do a lot of work and so essentially you well with NACK let's say you decide what attributes you're looking for so an accountant numerical skills, analytical you send the games to the candidate, they'll play the games and then out and pop their NACKs and so you'll receive the data and you'll say I think this person is closely aligned with the traits we're looking for and then you can invite them for interview so it takes away that blind CV, it's just a nice thing that you can use at some point in the interview process it shouldn't be to validate the decision you've already made so it should be either upfront or certainly after stage one like Qmetrix they do a very similar thing there's also quite an interesting facial recognition software it's called We Are Human I think and basically you send the candidate a video interview and so it films the person on the smartphone or whatever device you're using and then it has their live emotions and their live characteristics and then it would produce a report personality report based on facial expressions and there's some science behind we all have a certain number of facial expressions and so if we know we can use people to face it I'd love to try that The We Are Human stuff, the report wasn't that great but I'm sure it will get better so we don't use it but we will do and then the gamification stuff is a no brainer one of our private equity clients use it as standard for all of their highs and it's great. It also says quite a lot about the firm if you were using that stuff and I think it goes a little bit further than just, you know, let's take the names off Oh, consent I think, you know to touch on some of the themes we've said today about, you know, equality of opportunity and talking about levelling the playing field recognising people's differences and celebrating them the interview process backgrounds, media all of these things like you said if a company can draw a line in the sand and say, like I said with my family brand if a company can draw a line in the sand and say, yeah but this is how we're going to do it whether we're 330 years old or we're 2 years old this is a statement we're going to make to anyone that joins us from now I think that's a very powerful definitely powerful statement and it doesn't just attract young people it retains the people that you've got because it shows that you're willing to make a commitment to change and I think as a person from a black and ethnic minority background or just someone working in an industry that's desperate to attract people well, it's too proud to say so but it wants to all of that stuff sounds really positive and it sounds like we're at a water shed moment that there's a lot to be positive about there's a lot to be focused on there's less difference I'm not walking into a pub now and people are putting their drinks down like my parents did I'm walking to a pub where my best friend's white and I've got friends in from moving to London, I've got friends from India and I've got friends from China and Japan all of these different places, Africa and that's good and it's celebrated and it's right and I think there's a lot to be optimistic about we've just got to action it London's the most diverse city around it's great to be working here but all of these things we've talked about we just need to crack on I agree just crack on and it happens I've got to commit to it it feels like that's a good place to wind up thanks a lot, thanks for joining me thanks for having me hey folks thanks for listening don't forget to subscribe in all the usual places