[Intro Music]

00:00:08:11 – 00:01:02:25
Hannah
Welcome to the Diverse Ed podcast. Diverse Educators is an intersectional community of educators who are passionate about diversity, equity and inclusion. Our vision: everyone is celebrated, in every classroom, in every school. Our mission: a collaborative community that celebrates the successes and amplifies the stories of diverse people. Our values: promoting acceptance, increasing visibility, encouraging celebration, creating belonging and enabling learning. In series one of the Diverse Ed podcast we have ten episodes. In each episode our co-hosts Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi will interview one contributor from each of the ten chapters of Diverse Educators: A Manifesto. Each conversation will reflect on how they have found and used their voice, discuss how identity shapes them as an educator, share the challenges they’ve had to navigate on their journey, and identify the changes they would like to see in the school system.

00:01:05:18 – 00:01:17:07
Nick
Hello and welcome to The Diverse Ed Podcast. My name is Nick Kitchener-Bentley and I’m a lead practitioner and drama / inclusion teacher at Sarah Bonnell School. I’m also on the steering group for LGBT ed.

00:01:17:27 – 00:01:27:28
Yamina
And I’m Yamina Bibi. I’m an assistant head teacher, also at Sarah Bonnell school. I’m also a network leader for Women Ed in London. In this episode, we’ll be talking to Diana from the sex chapter.

00:01:29:10 – 00:01:42:04
Nick
Okay. So thanks for joining us, Diana. It’s really great to have you here. One of the things we like to do, just at the start is to get people joining us to introduce themselves to the audience in one sentence. So do you think you’ll be able to do that for us? Please?

00:01:42:13 – 00:01:51:27
Diana
In one sentence, I am Diana Osagie. I am a courageous leader, and I spend my time creating courageous leaders.

00:01:52:22 – 00:02:01:17
Yamina
I love that because I am one of those, so thank you, Diana. And what inspired you to write your contribution to Diverse Educators: A Manifesto?

00:02:01:24 – 00:06:21:07
Diana
It’s one of those things where you say the sex chapter, I didn’t write about sex. Okay? So let’s just, let’s clarify before people and my mother hears this and gets the wrong idea, and says ‘Diana what have you been doing with your life?’ Okay. I wanted to write about females and women in leadership, because I also run the Academy of Women’s Leadership and there is a gap that has to be addressed and that gap is the gap between the competence that a woman has for leadership. Her CV says she has a M.A. She has an NPQH. She has accounting qualifications and she has HR qualifications. She has 20-years’ experience in the sector. So her CV says competence. But her heart often says lack of confidence. So she will look at her CV and say, That is me, but when a job comes along and she wants to apply, she will wait until she fits 99.8% of the person spec and then not apply because it wasn’t 100% because the confidence doesn’t match the competence. There’s a gap between those two things and so, on the Academy and for the book, I wanted to explain why that gap exists and what we should do as society, as leaders, as educational people and those who are in the profession to close that gap. Because if we don’t, then we are losing strategic advantage and nobody, nobody says, I want my organisation to have the least amount of advantage as possible. No one says that. So when you don’t positively, explicitly and intentionally nurture, develop, pursue talent in all its forms, be it from the global majority community, from the LGBTQ community, from the women committee, wherever it is found, if you don’t explicitly pursue it, then you are losing advantage, head over fist in your organisation. And what happens is, where women find this organisation realises the advances that I bring, I will go there. You will find expertise just walking out of your door. You will have your exit interviews in which they may say something, but more likely they’ll be polite and say, oh no, it was a pleasure working for you, but it’s time for me to move to pastures new. She may not even have the vocabulary to express what it is that made me leave. She won’t actually realise what it is that made me leave. But she knew that I had to seek somewhere else that would nurture the greatness in me. And so when we on the Academy, we teach about women closing that gap. And in the chapter that I wrote, I wanted organisations who will read it to understand the gap is there, the gap is real, but the gap is easily closed. But you have to be intentional. And if you’re not intentional, if you are blasé or you add a bit on to your programs or you do something about Women’s Day, we have International Women’s Day, all get the flags out and we all wear something that represents that and then that we got back to normal. She puts air quotes up. Then your organisation is at a disadvantage. It truly is. So you must pursue leadership in all its forms around your leadership tables. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense to exclude a group of people from the leadership table. That actually doesn’t make business sense, let alone moral sense. So if you’re not morally minded, but you are business minded, it makes sense for you to include everyone around the table. So that’s why I wrote my chapter. But it’s not about sex, Mom. It is not about sex. I promise.

00:06:22:05 – 00:06:55:12
Nick
Diana, what an absolutely incredible response. I absolutely loved that. I mean, there is so much there that we could unpack and talk about. So, yeah, just thank you. Just absolutely brilliant. And I love that little disclaimer at the end there too. We were really interested, Yamina and I, about the overall chapter as well. So the other contributions of people who wrote about sex in the chapter, including Yamina who wrote in this chapter aswell. I was just really interested if you could maybe tell us about some of the different themes that the whole chapter team explored as part of this.

00:06:56:13 – 00:10:51:11
Diana
So we were looking at gender and how you in your organisation, how you look at that agenda with unbiased eyes. And again, we are asking people to do a very mature thing to think and to operate differently to how you have been trained or how you grew up, or what might be counter to your natural culture. And actually, that is why the book is, it’s special, because when you read something and again and again and you go back and underline and you highlight and you annotate then it has a chance of sinking in, then it has a chance of actually adapting your practice. So we looked at gender, we looked at women, we looked at, you know, all sorts of of differences. And it is about that. We looked at differences. But with the lens of difference is good, difference is powerful, difference brings advantage. And it doesn’t make sense to cut off your own advantage in your own organisation. No leader gets up and says, ‘I’m going to do that to my organisation.’ And so I think each chapter was curated carefully to represent, listen, you can’t do everything we know that. But there are things that you can do better. There are things that you can do very well, and there are some things that you just need to start thinking about because you haven’t even begun that part of your journey. You need to start planning, not doing, just start planning conversations and then planning actions and then planning strategies. So we’re hopeful that the book will give people a toolkit of things to think about, things to plan for, and things to do, you know. And when you bring it all together, I mean, it is a tome. It is a big book. So it’s not meant for bedtime reading, you know, from one end to the other. But it is meant for you to share with your senior teams, to share with your leaders, to share with people who have influence and authority within your organisation. As with everybody else, of course. But let people who have influence and authority have this window that opens their thinking. Good leaders, great leaders are deep, intentional thinkers. And this book challenges thinking, assures you in other areas of your thinking where you’re on the right track, it will make you think, no, that’s not right and that’s good. I like a debate, a bit of healthy, passionate debate. Because when you have a healthy, passionate debate, you have innovation and from innovation, you get new things being born and being birthed in your organisation. So if it challenges you and makes you think, I don’t agree, good, get in touch. Get in touch. If you don’t agree. If it makes you think, oh, my goodness, I’ve been waiting for this, fantastic. Get in touch. It’s a very, very special piece of work. But it is in the right time. This is the age of this piece of work, it’s the right time for organisations to pivot and to take this seriously. But it is a marathon. This is not about you swapping, changing tonight. It’s a marathon. And this book will guide you through the marathon.

00:10:51:26 – 00:11:15:21
Yamina
I love that, that is a marathon. I think sometimes as leaders, we can see something, we see, oh, that’s brilliant. Okay, let’s just do it. And we don’t plan. And that planning is so key from what you’re saying, Diana. And thinking about that then, you’ve kind of touched upon it already. But what would you say are some of the challenges for people with this protected characteristic of sex, let’s say biological sex for my family as well, that the team really wanted to address in the book.

00:11:17:09 – 00:14:16:25
Diana
When I’m thinking about biological sex that comes with baggage. So a woman will bring to the table her experience, her assets, her quality, her skills. But she will also bring to the table her cultural burdens of what it means to be a woman in her culture. She’ll also bring to the table other things, such as she might be looking after elderly parents. She may well be a wife or a partner and have children or have grandchildren or have nieces and nephews and have these other, I call them burdens because that’s how people in the organisation see them. They’re not burdens, they are just a part of her life, but she may well bring to you the potential to have four pregnancies while she’s working for you. If you as a leader are not trained, I do mean this sincerely, you are not trained to think and to see her as an asset, you will see her as a burden. You’ll see it as a difficulty. And as a complication. And it’s easier to employ a white old male, simple as that. And that’s just the reality of it. So when you see her application on the desk and you are shortlisting or whatever and you have it all lined out and you look at her, and you have to fight your internal biases, literally fight. And I’ve done this when I’m shortlisting for my organisation, I’m trying to build a new piece of leadership in my organisation. I am fighting internal biases that say to me, Diana, that represents a complication. Oh, I wonder what that means. And I’m looking at her with a harder lens, with a sharper lens than I would look at somebody who represents simplicity. And that is inherently unfair. We know. But also, what am I doing? I’m potentially cutting off my own advantage because I can’t get over myself. So when the book highlights in a stark but gentle, intellectual but friendly way, and I hope people get that from the book that it was written. Not at you, but for you. From us, with love. I wrote my chapter with love, sincerity and honesty. But I didn’t want people to take away oh I’ve just been shouted at by Diana Osagie, which can be a scary experience. I want people to take away from that, I’ve just had a light shine upon some areas of my thinking. It’s a gentle light, but it’s light nevertheless.

00:14:16:25 – 00:15:24:19
Nick
It’s an amazing light because literally your chapter is just fantastic. Yamina and I were saying earlier about how impressive it was and how much you took from it. And when you’re speaking there, it’s moving, it’s genuinely moving to hear you talk about these things. And it’s so, so important. So thank you. And then what you were talking there about the internal biases as well, and I think is a really important topic that I wanted to touch on because you spoke about it in your key takeaways and I would love you to just expand on these a little bit more and just say why they’re so important. I’m going to read them. I’m going to try and read them quickly because I want to hear more from you and less from me. Limiting beliefs about yourself that make you feel like you cannot do something because something is inherently wrong with you. This is also true if you examine the beliefs you hold about others. Do you have limiting beliefs about others that are inherent in the way that you think, limiting beliefs about the world that make you think that you cannot do something because no one will let you, limiting beliefs about life that make you feel like you cannot do something because it is difficult. Is it just too complicated to be an ally to someone whose pathway is not as straight is yours? I mean, it’s brilliant, but can you tell us more about it?

00:15:24:19 – 00:22:05:22
Diana
When I think about that, if I get personal and become vulnerable in your hands. Let me give you an example where I’m ashamed of it, but it helped me to grow. When I was newly appointed as head, I needed to appoint a new teacher for ICT I think. I had a range of people come and in those days recruiting wasn’t difficult, right. So, you know, I had a good field, let’s put it that way. And I always insist that I see people teach in a class because I knew that that’s what I want you to do. Right? So I want to see, I want to see the practice. And a gentleman came in and he was big, you know, he was it was a big fella. He must have been 25 stone. He was a big guy. And as he was teaching, he’s going around the classroom, delivering a good lesson, my mind wasn’t even on the lesson, this is where I’m ashamed of myself, if you like, because my limiting belief was how will he deal with my year 11s who will take him apart, you know, with their comments about his size. And as he was going around doing the lesson, he was sweating profusely. You know, it was obviously a physical strain for him. So he was wiping his brow, doing the lesson, sweating through his shirt. This was a 20-minute lesson. So I thought, how is he going to get through the day? How is he going to get through the year? He’s going to be off, I just went down this track. In my mind. He’s going to be off sick. The kids are going to think it’s hilarious. They’re going to make fun of him. I’m going to have loads of referrals and exclusions. So I am plotting this negative path with this gentleman who was teaching a good lesson. Why? Because my beliefs limited me as to what he could do. Totally. Totally. So I missed potential advantage. He might have been the best thing since sliced bread. I will never know. Why? Because Diana didn’t get over her own bias. Yeah. So my bias about the world was people who look like that can’t do the job I want them to do. That is inherently wrong. Wrong. But it was innate. It was deep in me. I didn’t even have the vocabulary to describe it as a bias. We’re talking ten or 15 years, 15 years ago now. I just knew that’s how I felt. So I wrote him off completely. Didn’t take him to the second day. Wrote him off. It’s now I’m older and wiser that I understand how my limiting beliefs cut off my own advantage. So let me go back now, to an example, for a woman, I know what I can do. I know it. I’ve seen it. I’m convinced of it. I know the effect I have on people’s lives. The other day, someone said to me, would you become the strategic business person and bring the strategic business ideas to this organisation? So I thought, yes, I can do that. Then the voice came, oh, I’m not really a business person. I’m a, I’m an educationalist, I’m not really that. I’ve got no business qualifications whatsoever. I’m limiting myself because business people have business degrees in my mind, an MBA and all these things. So immediately I could hear that voice trying to rise. Immediately, I have to not just think it away, but speak it away literally. I said to myself out loud leave me alone. I am more than capable of this. You have to tell yourself other stories, your beliefs that you have about your self, about what people like you can do, what people who look like you, who sound like you do or don’t do. You have to take those stories out of your mind and replace them with other stories. Sometimes our stories will serve a purpose in our lives. They keep us safe. Oh, okay. So people like me don’t really stretch out and do that. I will stay here and stay as deputy. For example, I don’t want to become the head and I have a story around that that keeps me safe rather than the story could have many, many, many endings. I’m going to explore headship. I’ll do it for five years and if I’m crap at it I’ll leave, you know, what’s the difference, I’ll leave, I don’t have to stay there. But what if I’m fantastic at it? What if I’m brilliant at it? What if I am the next best thing since sliced bread when it comes to headship? What if? Let me explore that story rather than this one that I keep and it limits my greatness and we think greatness is reserved for people like Michelle Obama or Nelson Mandela or whomever you admire. No, they were all born babies just like you. They have big teams behind them that write their speeches. Don’t get it twisted. You can be the next big Yamina, the next big Nick, you be you. Don’t limit yourself with the stories of old. And that’s what they are. Stories from before, before, before. Stories from your parents, not even yours, it’s your parents story and you are living it. It’s your auntie’s story who said X to you or said Y to you and you are living her ending. Put those stories down. Remove the limits from your life, be explicit and be intentional and decide. I will not be limited by my protected characteristic. I will be liberated into the greatness that that characteristic holds. Now come on, come on.

00:22:06:18 – 00:22:55:01
Yamina
I’m in tears, as always. Whenever Diana speaks or says anything, I, I just cry. But it just resonates so much with me and I’m sure with Nick as well, and with lots of our listeners. And actually I’m just so moved by that because it’s exactly what you did for us in our courageous leadership course. You helped us remove those stories and change the stories. Sorry listeners, but Diana is living and breathing with that and I know your commitment to the manifesto is exactly that. To intentionally choose to relinquish the role of being your own internal enemy, refuse to be confined by your perceptions, make room for a change in your understandings of what is true or false. Nick and I were just wondering, while I cry, if you could tell us more about that commitment to the manifesto and how you want to really galvanise the readers and our listeners today?

00:22:55:27 – 00:26:45:03
Diana
You know, our manifesto, we have a negative connotation of what a manifesto is because politicians take that word and make it dirty, right? Here’s our manifesto. Nobody reads the damn thing. Right? But people get it out a year later. You haven’t done what’s on the manifesto. So let’s just reclaim that word and reframe that. Here is a toolkit, here’s a manifesto for change. But change is an active word. It’s a verb. It’s a doing word. You don’t just sit there. You don’t change. You’ve got to do something now. And if that doing just means from today I will not criticise myself with my mouth. That’s a doing change that will change your life if you stop being your internal critic and start being your internal advocate. Just that internal change, just one where you say from today, I am not going to cut off the advantage that is available to me because I don’t normally talk to people like that. I don’t normally go to dinner with people like that. I’ve got no clue what that means. I was going to walk away from it, so I’m not going to ask questions in case I look stupid. There’s nothing wrong with looking stupid. I do it all the time. Yeah, I ask questions. If you think I look stupid, that’s your problem. Not my problem. I’m asking the question. Answer my question. What are you going to do today that will bring about change in you personally? One in your family life? Because we don’t go to work as leaders and come back and be something else. We’re always family and then in your professional arena, if you decide to be different just by doing two things, stop criticising yourself. Start praising yourself. That’s it. Just start there. You will spark a fire in you that cannot be extinguished unless you do it. You can choose today to be different and take one step into your greatness. Great people have stable minds that don’t allow internal criticism to take over, and I certainly don’t allow other people to criticise me and I take that to a level where I personally condemn myself. You could criticise what I’ve done. You can criticise what I’ve said, take it apart, but I will not internalise that and become your criticism. Do you see the difference? So what are you going to do today? Today, today? There’s no other day looking for change. Swallow that frog. Make a decision. Today I stop doing X and I start doing Y. If you do one thing, listeners do this. Stop paying out royalties on mistakes you’ve made in the past. Such as, you still feel guilty because you did X or you did Y, you still shed tears because of this or that, things you did years ago, things you said ages ago. You are still paying out royalties on it. You didn’t understand then, but you do now. Don’t pay out any more royalties. Close that mistake’s account.

00:26:45:03 – 00:27:08:13
Nick
I hope there are a lot of listeners to this because a lot of people need to hear it. It’s so powerful. Yamina and I wanted to just, I suppose, bring it towards a conclusion, ask about the changes that now need to happen. So with regarding the conversations that we’ve been having today, the protected characteristics that we’ve been talking about, what do you think now needs to happen in education and I suppose beyond to make things better?

00:27:09:28 – 00:29:05:29
Diana
The key thing, lots of things, but the key thing I would say is we need diversity at governance and trustee level throughout education because that is where strategic decision making occurs, which then guides the organisation’s trajectory. And if diverse voices and expertise and experience and perspective is not at that table, you’re always fixing stuff, never starting from a position of strength, but you’re always fixing and having a committee and having a meeting and having a working party. Your working party needs to be at trustee level. So I would say every trustee, every trust, every trust board, every MAT, every governing body of every school in this country needs to pursue diversity with such ferocity, ferocity. Not having one black governor, one gay one and one one woman. Right, we’ve ticked that box. I mean, ferocious diversity. Young, old, black, white, Muslim, Christian, no faith, everyone at these because we have all these young people in our schools and we need to ensure that we are not hindering ourselves by having only a certain kind of voice as strategic level and then diversifying after. That is what I would say. If, if we are serious. I think some people are. I think some are ready to pivot, then talk to your organisation and say, at trustee level this year, by this time next year, we must see change in our trustees so that we truly have advantage in our organisation.

00:29:07:13 – 00:29:23:05
Nick
Thank you so much, Diana. You are absolutely amazing. And I genuinely don’t have the words to respond to how great you’ve been. You’re just fantastic. It’s been so good to hear from you. And I know that Yamina and I are really, really grateful. So thank you so much.

00:29:24:00 – 00:29:33:26
Yamina
Thank you so much, Diana. Thank you. We’ve been Nick Kitchener-Bentley and Yamina Bibi the co-hosts of the Diverse Ed podcast.

[Outro Music]

00:29:33:26 – 00:29:50:07
Hannah
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Diverse Educators Podcast. Check out the show notes for the recommendations of today’s guest. We’d love to hear what you think so do leave us a review. We’ll be back soon with another author from our book Diverse Educators: A Manifesto.