---
title: "Beyond Performative Inclusion"
episode: 192
date: 2026-01-15
guest: "Sile Walsh"
canonical: https://inclusionbites.co.uk/podcast/192-beyond-performative-inclusion
audio: https://cdn.seech.uk/podcast/episodes/ibs-192/audio.mp3
---

# Beyond Performative Inclusion

Joanne Lockwood is joined by coach and leadership specialist Sile Walsh to unpack what it means to go beyond performative inclusion in organisations. They explore how inclusion shows up in everyday leadership practice, and why psychological safety and a well-designed environment often matter more than surface-level gestures. Sile shares how identity, culture and lived experience shape how we are perceived and how we belong, reflecting on growing up between Ireland and the UK and the ways people adapt—or translate—themselves to be understood. The conversation also examines gender and labels, highlighting the tension between how individuals relate to identity and how workplaces and societies categorise people. Together, they challenge common workplace mantras such as “bring your whole self to work,” discuss the risks of moral certainty and polarisation, and consider how leaders can create boundaries for dialogue without shutting it down. They emphasise curiosity, compassionate accountability, and practical leadership behaviours that reduce harm and support performance, rather than inclusion that is framed as simply “being nice.”

## Chapters

- 00:00 — Sheila Walsh Name Story
- 07:51 — Mixed Cultural Identity Challenges
- 12:26 — Navigating Identity and Respect
- 20:31 — Equality and Harm in Identity
- 23:51 — Practical Inclusive Leadership Insights
- 28:43 — DEI Missteps in Organisations
- 32:29 — Navigating Conflict with Compassion
- 38:05 — Moving Forward, Not Staying Sorry
- 46:40 — Authenticity and Leadership Boundaries
- 48:01 — Leadership, Communication, and Cancel Culture
- 57:07 — Compassionate Accountability in Polarisation
- 58:31 — LGBTQ Rights and Internal Hierarchies
- 01:03:48 — Amplify Inclusion Together

## Key takeaways

- The distinction between translation of identity and the expectation of assimilation in multicultural and organisational contexts.
- Navigating challenges of authentic self-expression, including gender, names, and cultural identity, within diverse environments.
- Why psychological safety and equity are foundational to sustainable inclusion and effective leadership.
- Practical reasons for the backlash against DEI initiatives and how to address both external criticism and internal mission drift.
- The crucial role of compassionate accountability in reconciling divergent worldviews while maintaining dignity and respect in the workplace.
- Strategies to encourage open, honest conversations that enable learning while setting boundaries for appropriate workplace behaviour.
- The importance of collective, rather than individual, protections and how organisations can move from tolerance to true acceptance.

## FAQs

### What is the core message of “Beyond Performative Inclusion”?

This episode centres on the distinction between performative gestures around inclusion and the genuine, deep transformations needed within organisational culture. The conversation critiques surface-level diversity initiatives and instead advocates for authentic psychological safety and equity, where all individuals can truly thrive without masking or hiding parts of themselves.

### How does the guest describe the experience of adapting personal identity within different cultures?

The guest, Sile Walsh, discusses the intricacies of navigating multiple cultural identities, particularly when personal names or backgrounds don’t fit the prevailing societal norms. The expectation to modify or “translate” one’s identity for others is described less as “fitting in” and more as facilitating mutual understanding, whilst emphasising the importance of self-acceptance irrespective of external recognition.

### What does psychological safety mean in the context of inclusion?

Psychological safety refers to a work environment where individuals feel safe to express themselves without fear of negative consequences. Authentic inclusion is more than being “nice”—it involves allowing space for diverse identities and perspectives, as well as acknowledging the external harms people may face within organisational systems.

### Why can “bring your whole self to work” be problematic?

Both Joanne Lockwood and the guest highlight that this phrase can be misleading. While the intention was to reduce the pressure for marginalised people to hide who they are, “bring your whole self” is not always practical or legally advisable. Instead, people should be supported to bring the parts of their identity that matter while remaining appropriate for the workspace.

### What is the difference between tolerance, acceptance, and true inclusion?

The conversation distinguishes tolerance (simply “putting up with” difference) from acceptance (welcoming diversity), and further from genuine inclusion, where environments are actively co-created for all to thrive. True inclusion demands accountability and compassionate engagement that goes beyond mere surface-level agreements.

### How can leaders foster genuine inclusion rather than performative efforts?

Leaders should prioritise creating environments where safety and equity are present, focusing less on ticking diversity boxes and more on structural and relational change. It’s important for leaders to understand that inclusion should serve the organisation and all its people, not simply respond to the loudest or most politically engaged voices.

## Transcript

Joanne Lockwood: Foreign. Welcome to Inclusion Bites, your sanctuary for bold conversations that spark change. I'm Joanne Lockwood, your guide on this journey of exploration into the heart of inclusion, belonging and societal transformation. Ever wondered what it truly takes to create a world? Remember, everyone not only belongs, but thrives. You're not alone. Join me as we uncover the unseen, challenge the status quo and share storeys that resonate deep within. Ready to dive in. Whether you're sipping your morning coffee or winding down after a long day, let's connect, reflect and inspire action together. Don't forget, you can be part of the conversation too. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk to share your insights or to join me on the show. So adjust your earbuds and settle in. It's time to ignite the spark of inclusion with Inclusion Bites. And today is episode 192 with the title Beyond Performative Inclusion. And I have the absolute honour and privilege to welcome Sile Walsh. Sile is an award winning coach, author and leadership specialist dedicated to embedding equity and psychological safety into leadership and organisational culture worldwide. When I asked Sile to describe their superpower, they said it is bridging lived experience with leadership insight to drive systemic inclusion. Hello, Sile.

Sile Walsh: Welcome to the show, Joanne. Thank you for having me.

Joanne Lockwood: Absolute pleasures. And when I was just logging on this morning to set this episode up, I was looking at your name, thinking, I wonder how I pronounce that? And I had to nip onto LinkedIn. So whilst you're speaking English, you're not from England, you're from Ireland. Yeah? Yes, yes. And my

Sile Walsh: name is spelled, it's actually, I've butchered it a little bit. It's actually with a father, so S I fader L E. But a lot of people call me Sile, which I am fine with. But when I used to live in England, actually, and I'd be called like in the hospital or something, they used to come out and say, silly, do we have sill? Because they didn't want to say silly and that's what they thought my name was. But yes. So I'm based in Ireland, in Dublin. I have lived and worked in the UK and I still do go back and forth for work, but my name, and actually my name here is Walsh, but my Irish name is Sile Branock, but it's, it's a mouthful to spell for people, so Sile Walsh is much quicker and it's. It's kind of a shame really that you have

Joanne Lockwood: to adapt who you are to make it easier for other People, as you say. Yeah, your. Your authentic surname is hard for people to spell or hard for people to. To read and pronounce, I guess, and find ourselves having to fit into other people's cultures, don't we? Yeah, it's an interesting one because in Ireland, being

Sile Walsh: Irish is very like. Is very important and I know every country has it, but because of our history with the uk, it is very important. And having an Irish name for lots of people is more than their name, it's about their. Their history and. And what side of the history that they. They are Irish from, let's say. I actually don't mind because for me, who I am and my identity is about my relationship with myself first and foremost. And then my. For me in the world, my job is to find the places where I can meet other people and they can meet me. And sometimes I have to adjust, sometimes they have to adjust. It doesn't. Even though it's my name, it doesn't feel like an adjustment of who I am. It feels like a translation, which is different to this idea of fitting. I'm just translating it to something that's understandable. But, yeah, it's a bit like when I deal with my nephew who's now 11 and I adore, or my niece, who's 17. I adjust my conversations to meet them in a way that we can meet each other. So I don't. I don't feel that same pressure. Whereas there's other people who do very strongly feel that it's important that you know their authentic name and can pronounce it in their language. I know most people don't speak Irish and so saying my Irish name, they butcher it anyway, you know what I mean? Even with the best attempt, if you don't speak a tongue. Like, I'm not great at Irish myself, but I know enough to be able to pronounce the word. So it's an. It's an interesting one. You know, how we're seen in the world and how we interact based on our names. I think, yeah, that's important.

Joanne Lockwood: You know this. What you do is psychological safety, organisational culture. Sometimes what we find when we talk about inclusion is demands of people to meet us where we are, rather than trying to find that middle ground and meeting each other somewhere in the middle there to help each other come a barrier or a conflict or a challenge. What you're doing here is you're putting yourself into the middle rather than expecting everyone to come to you. But the reason that I do that is

Sile Walsh: because I'm not letting myself behind when I do that. So there'll be parts of my identity that I might feel if I don't bring with me very strongly I've left something important behind. And I'm sure for people, we all have different versions of what part that would be. But my name, like my name, for me, I'm named after my grandmother. I'm the eldest of that. That line. I was the first grandchild, but I'm also the first female. The name means so much more than what anyone would ever conceive anyway. And so I bring it with me where I am, as opposed to needing other people to see it the way I see it. Yeah. So it's interesting. But for other people, it has very different meanings and weights, but I do. It depends whether we have to, when we meet someone, wherever we meet them, whether leaving it behind is protective in some way and we don't really have the choice. Whereas for me, it's in me, so it doesn't matter if other people understand it. I can hold it for myself and it doesn't have a negative impact on me, you know, Whereas maybe if people presume I'm English, that has a different impact. So I don't just leave that in the background. So there's these kind of subtle things that I guess we all have that have more and less need for external witnessing. And just my name isn't. Because it comes from. Well, it's Irish, so it has a deep heritage meaning. It's my grandmother's name. It's an honour to be named after someone who raised my aunts and uncles with such courage and velocity and, you know, so. So to me, I don't need somebody to know all that for me to. To be comfortable with it. But there would be other things, as I'm sure we all have, that it would. Like when people assume I'm English abroad, that's quite frustrating as an Irish person. Right. So. And sometimes even in Ireland, because I grew up in, in the uk, I spent a couple of years in uk and in the uk I was Irish because that was how we understood ourselves growing up in London. Come back to Ireland and I assume I'm Irish, but I'm actually English to the Irish kids. Right. So in both places, I was never quite enough, I guess, or, or. Or didn't belong enough. And so when someone mistakes my heritage, that hurts, but not when they mistake my. My name or, you know, I hold that differently. Although I'm getting better now when they mistake where I'm from, I'm Thinking, yeah, well, it's your best guess. It's not bad guess.

Joanne Lockwood: I've chatted to other people in the past who have mixed heritage and this lady I spoke to always said that she's too white to be black and too black to be white. So you're, you're too English to be Irish and too Irish to be English, and it's obviously. But you're not, you don't want to be English, but you, your native, if you like, you've inherited a worldly Persona.

Sile Walsh: And it's an interesting one because I spoke to a psychologist at a conference a couple of years ago. She's a child psychologist and she talked about people from mixed cultural backgrounds. Now, both my parents are Irish, but living in a country that isn't of your culture for formative years changes your cultural identity. And she talks about how those of us who are, who are, have had cultural experiences during development years having mixed culture, even if our parents aren't from a mixed culture, because we've grown up in different cultures and how this sense of home is so, so different. And I really resonate with that because I have brothers who have. So also my accent, it might not be obvious to you, Joanne, but my accent in Ireland is considered English and in England my accent is consider considered Irish, but my brothers have Irish accents. My dad and my mom generally have Irish accents. And so it's also very unusual in my family because I remember talking to, I don't know, when I was out dating, whatever, talking to some guy at the bar and he was saying, he was talking about my dad and my brothers because my dad trained him at one point and he said, no, no, there's no girl there, there's only two lads. I was like, no, no, they, you've just. They're my brothers and my dad and he's like, no, no, no, they, no, they were never in England. So he was cracking my accent and couldn't place me with my family because of it. And so, so it's interesting these kind of how that kind of cultural mixed background, even though technically both my parents are Irish and my heritage is Irish, still comes into effect because of my lived experiences and being cultured in different, different norms. And like a very subtle one, this one used to come up a lot, was when I started going to school in Ireland, I used to bring pate on toast, which is very. But it's because when our neighbour used to give us pate on toast constantly and it was the only thing I would eat at. And so at home, Everyone thought I was absolutely insane because first of all it's smelly. And second of all, nobody was getting pate on toast in East Cork, small country school and Sheila's like rocking up with her, her burnt toast in her pate. So there was all these like subtle things, you know. Or we grew up with a Thai person next to us cooking gorgeous Thai food and there was no spices in Ireland when I was growing up, you know what I mean? So we come back with spicy food and they're like, you know. But for us, for me, I just thought everyone grew up with different foods. But that wasn't the case in the countryside in Ireland. Potato. Potato, wasn't it? It was, yeah, like it was potato, it was white sandwiches. There was other things, but nothing like what I had exposure from coming from London. And so even that was this kind of cultural odd. Like your 8 year old eats pate on toast, your, you know, they like curries. Like these were very strange things at that time. Now they're not, thankfully, but they were then. We were then

Joanne Lockwood: into that because I mentioned in the green room. In the 90s I worked for a bank and travelled extensively over the world for that bank. And also I was a member of a club and the club used to have meets in different countries, different traditional. You stayed in people's houses. So you go to Finland, stay for a week in a Finnish family with their children and you'd sit in the hot tub outside, they'd put logs in the burner and they'd heat the hot tub and vodka. And Estonia running around in naked and jumping into plunge pools at three in the morning, having a lot of work done. But you're living within the culture and you really get to understand them. I suppose that was part of my formative years in my mid to late 20s to my mid to late 30s. That was part of my adult formulation, if you like. And I got a greater appreciation of the world and culture and ways of people interacting with each other, which I'd never had had. I just stayed as a UK focused person going on holiday once a year. I see myself as more multicultural, which I guess is why the UK's decision to leave the EU did so much at the time. Because that's futures being global, not not local. And I see what you're saying there, it's of culture and the value add that people bring through their history. It was once nothing you said in the green one, because I was just checking how you're identifying your gender so I could make sure I use the Right, pronouns. In the introduction you said agnostic, you know, of the gender. It's not that you're non binary or not female, you're just not bothered by it. So, yeah.

Sile Walsh: It'S taken me a while to move through it because from a human rights perspective, I wouldn't want to undermine anyone else else's relationship with their own gender. And I say that because often at the moment, within the kind of LGBTQ plus population, there's all sorts of breaks and arguments and this idea that if you have that identity, it challenges mine and, you know, lots of prob, to me, lots of problematic, oppressive practises occurring when. When. So one of the things with kind of coming from a background and not being Irish enough and then not being English enough and all of these things and then going on to be, you know, to find out I was dyslexic and not really quite being smart on paper, but being quite smart verbally and cognitively, but just not being able to capture on paper and then kind of moving through the queer community. And that's how I identify it more because it's just quicker for me to say I'm queer and not being lesbian enough, gay enough, not being feminine in one way, but then not being this assumption that I'm a certain gender, a certain kind of identity. I started to realise that the only time my gender is relevant is when other people are assessing how they want to interact with me. So the pronouns is a respectful way to do it. That's like a question of how do I respect you in this conversation. That's great. But often when somebody's trying to put me into any identity group, whether it's through my sexuality or through gender, they're kind of trying to pick a box to put me in to decide how I should be interacted with. And when someone says to me, you know about my gender, like, the only times I know about my gender is based on how other people interact with me. I don't wake up and feel like a strong woman, let's say, unless in that moment something connected to my womanhood is relevant. And if I'm really honest, the only time that anything is connected to something like that, it's more connected to being assigned female at birth, which is mostly around healthcare. That's the most time that anything is relevant to me about these things. And I understand that they're relevant to other people for other reasons, but I just. And I understand, I even understand why, like critical gender feminists hold their position. I understand why pro trans and non binary People hold their position. I just don't care what you think I am. It doesn't give me anything. The only thing I have an issue with is if you decide I'm something and then you decide how I should be because of it. But my real issue is that your decision about how I should be is my. It's my problem. And if I'm honest, I think it came from first the sexuality stuff, which is, you know, my wife looks they soft, butch, I guess, typically. And people assume I'm femme. But, like, when we have to deal with situations, I deal with the things that are traditionally considered butch. I grew up in the country, you know, I can do that stuff. She doesn't, let's say. And so when people are putting us in these boxes, I find it really interesting because they're just deciding, first of all that we're female, and then they're deciding what type of female, and then they're deciding what kind of, like, lesbian, you know, and then they go on and on and none of that fits. I'm like, you know, the only time you need to worry about my gender is when it's relevant to you. And that's very rare. And the only time you need to worry about my sexuality is if I'm interested in you. Because you being interested in me doesn't change my sexuality. So the only time you need to cheque what my sexuality is is if I'm pursuing you. And that's important to you in some way to know a lot of the time. And I just listened to a beautiful piece about one of the activists in the States about who. Who was activating for trans people's rights. And she identified as a. Sorry, he identified as a lesbian and then went on and identified as a trans man, but continued to identify as a lesbian. And one of the quotes that I thought was really powerful was the labels are only meant to be used to help us understand each other, not to stereotype us and put another box. And I suppose that's why I kind of don't interact very actively around gender, because I don't mind interacting about other people's gender if it's important to them. But my gender to me is only going to be used to make decisions about me that I'd rather you just ask, you know, like, if you want to treat me a certain way, maybe just treat me like a decent human being and don't assume things based on my gender. And if you do assume things, I can say yes or no to them, but it just doesn't it just doesn't make sense to me to tell people what my gender is when it. It's not relevant to them usually. And if I'm. As long as I'm not offended and I'm not offended by any pronoun use. If I was offended, that might be different. But I'm not hurt or offended or I give no weight to the pronouns that are used about me because that's not my experience of me. That's just how someone's making sense of me. That's fine for me. It's much more important that I know me.

Joanne Lockwood: Yeah, people can make sense of me. I. I like that as a kind of. A kind of meeting people where they are. You're recognising that the society needs to have some sort of hand or to hook you on. It's. It's you. You're having to use this terminology, these words, these pronouns for other people's reference, not for your own. It relates to that I looking the green rice. I just thought about this which I was going to raise, which I'll do now. Is my marooned on a desert island self reflection. So if I'm washed up on a desert island, I'm the only human being on that island. Am I a sexuality? Do I have a gender identity or am I just a survivor? I don't think on my own I'm a survivor. I'm beef human being because that's relative to other creatures on that island that I may be trying to eat. So I guess I'm a human if I'm on my own. Gender's relative. Sexuality is relative to who I'm around. And when someone comes to rescue me, someone else gets stranded with me that I become relative to them. Am I more feminine or more masculine than the person I'm with? That it has a relativity. But other than that I'm just, I'm just even have a name maybe. Maybe my deep thoughts. I may talk to myself maybe. But my name's not important, my gender's not important, my sexuality is not important. Just whether I can eat, drink and sleep and survive. I often wonder whether we all concept of gender sexuality. I think as you said it's only relevant if I fancy you then decide if you fancy me then. So yeah, yeah. Isn't that a wonderful place to be where actually matter until I'm interested?

Sile Walsh: Well, I think there's. There's kind of. Because I get caught on this quite a lot because I think that that speaks to our relationship with ourselves which is kind of. I think One point, and then there's how we're responded to in society is based on how society perceives us, not actually based on how we are, and so often not based on how we are, but actually how they perceive us or how the group. Because I kind of come from a group dynamics perspective. And at that point then we do need to have some sense of clarity, not necessarily about an individual's identity, but about collective protections. You know, so legislation, code of conduct with each other. And I think that sometimes in my. For me, what I've realised is if I have something unprocessed individually, I bring it into the collective and look for approval. But if, and this is just for me, if I have something that I have a good relationship with within myself, I don't need the collective approval, but I do need to make sure that the collective doesn't harm me because of it, which is a different thing to approval. But a lot of the stuff that I would have wanted kind of some kind of external approval on is usually the stuff I haven't got where I need to get to in myself, where I'm comfortable with me. But the part that we do need to work on collectively is the protections. And I think that's. Sometimes those two things get collapsed. Nobody can protect me from somebody not understanding me. And that's appropriate because I don't understand everyone, but I shouldn't. And you know, and it's my belief from a human rights perspective, my identity shouldn't mean I am more exposed to, like, whether, you know, whether it's because I'm a trans person, whether it's because I'm a woman, whether it's because I'm a man, whether it's because I'm black, whether it's because. And for anyone watching the video, I'm a white person, I'm not, but I'm just giving an example. Regardless of the part of the identity that is presented from a human rights perspective, I don't believe that should equate to further harm or more harm or higher risk. And that's maybe where I think we sometimes collapse two separate things, which is my relationship with myself, the desire for us to have external approval, which I get, and then the harm part. And I do think we should be resolving the harm part, but I do find that sometimes we go other places with it, which can be unhelpful long term. You

Joanne Lockwood: work with organisations, the leadership space, a bit of psychology. It's inclusive culture, if you like, what got you into what you were doing, if you did all your Life or is it something you bumped into?

Sile Walsh: Yeah, so I haven't, I've been doing it for about 14 years I guess is the starting point. But before I was working in this field I left school at 15 because I was, I am, I was highly dyslexic. I am very dyslexic and school was just torture. And I went on and did an apprenticeship to be a chef and I was an awful manager. And I don't say that lightly. I roared and shouted, I demeaned people I didn't know any better. I was 15, 16, running my first team. Everyone's older than me, you know, but I, I kind of started to. And I grew up during that whole time volunteering. I've been volunteering since I was very young and being involved in community groups and inequity was always visible to me because of the communities that I was working with and I came from, even where I worked was a really well off place with lots of well off people. But I was also working with people from, you know, underprivileged areas or I myself come from like a working class background. So I was constantly seeing that the same thing didn't result in the same outcome for everyone. And I was always quite fascinated. Went back and forth to India for a few years, kind of exploring spirituality and kind of got into psychology and started doing some courses, side courses to learn about myself. And as I was doing that, I was still in my volunteering work and I was saying, you know, I'm working with leaders who are, who have lots of power and privilege. And then I turn around and I go into a community room where people have very little access to what they need. And it just felt really contradictory, constantly this tension between this room we could nearly do anything we wanted and this room we've to beg for resourcing or something or just understanding or approval. And so I was kind of always had this tension and I grew up in a home where they wouldn't use this language. But you weren't just obligated to yourself, you're obligated to your collective in some way. So we would have always supported others. Our family would have had people stay, you know, we would have invited people to Christmas dinner. We would have been involved in charity work. Not like sit all singing, all dancing, just it was like a normal part of my family experience that you take care of those near you who need it and they will do the same for you and did do the same for us. And so it was always kind of there and Then I was working with leaders. And before I ever called it inclusive leadership, I come from a relational and collective leadership perspective because of my background, community work, you know, and I was always using inclusion without that word, because I was helping people understand that the environment you put people in has as much impact on their performance as their capability, and that if that environment is set up correctly. And I knew this because I'd been going to school and suffering and failing, but also I was working part time and thriving and I was running a team at 16 in a really important pastry kitchen in Ireland and I wasn't able to like, barely get through a test. So I knew that the environment mattered and so that was always in my work. And then about five years ago, I made a few calls and I said, if I was going to do a PhD on something and I have access to leaders because that's who I work with, what would I do? And one person said, look into what inclusive leadership could be practically in real organisations. And the other person said, please don't effing look at D. And I generally look at something specific so that I can tell leaders, this is how you engage with it. So they were very clear that whatever I did had to be practical for leaders to connect with. And so I kind of started to sow in my previous experience and the knowledge I had from all the different small courses I had done and my coaching training. And I started to realise that if I was to understand inclusion scientifically, I could help leaders more effectively. Because leaders often think to be inclusive they have to know everything about everyone. And what I figured out was you don't need to know everything about everyone, you need to know how to work with everyone. That's a different, different beast altogether. And so it kind of evolved in that way. But one thing I will tell you is the minute I use the term inclusive leadership, the people who sought me out changed. And that was interesting because I've always been working with inclusive leadership. As long as I've been doing coaching with leaders, it's been an inclusive model. But I didn't use the language. And so all types of leaders came to me. Now there's a different set of people who look for me. Recommendations can still be varied, they're very different set. And that's quite interesting. I think that that word inclusion meant that the people who thought I could help them changed and yet I was doing the same work I just used just was more clear on the label. So people don't contact you as much then. So what I will say is that the majority of people who contact me contact me because of the word inclusion in the leadership. Inclusive leadership. Previously they contacted me because of leadership. Now anyone who previously worked with me refers people and that's still of the same genre. All identities. A lot of men, a lot of white people, because that's who's in senior leadership in Ireland and the UK and Europe, predominantly numbers wise. But the minute I put the word inclusive leadership, I had more employee resource groups call me, more HR people to do diversity work. It became really clear that inclusive leadership was seen as something for the marginalised to do and not what it actually is, which is for leaders to do. And it was. It was just really, really interesting. So my referrals still. Still look the same, but if somebody comes and looks for me online, it's. It's a different demographic. It's HR people instead of the CEOs, which is usually who I'd get the direct. The directors on the board or the CEOs. Now HR contact me more. People from employee resource groups contact me more. And we'll say people with DNI roles contact me more. Previously it was. It was senior leaders contact me directly. Yeah.

Joanne Lockwood: On the world right now. This is middle of 2025 and first of July. Well, how did that happen? Kind of got a bad name or it broke a broken reputation. I suppose finding that inclusion is misunderstood yourself. Because what you're talking about there is the environment. And that's what inclusively trying to do, create a better environment, which is Hertzberg's two factor theory, really, isn't it? And time is the detractor, not the motivator. And what leaders often have to focus on is they spend so much time trying to make people feel wonderful, they forget about the basics, logical safety. And I noticed you had that as part of your bio as well, those important elements so that people feel safe and feel secure and feel valued.

Sile Walsh: That's all. Inclusive leadership, is it? Creating environments where people feel safe and

Joanne Lockwood: valued and could succeed. Yeah. So I have to

Sile Walsh: say this, and it doesn't go down well, but there's a good reason. DI has got bad reputation and some of those reasons are being leveraged by bad actors. But some of those reasons are reasonable. Sometimes people with lived experiences will come on and speak as experts without any additional work on that area and only share from their point of view. We wouldn't let that happen in any other area. So it's problematic that. That's that before you get hired for a job. Like, I'm nearly asked what my Sexuality, identity. They nearly say, like, what kind of oppression have you had before? They hire me sometimes and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Your question should be, am I qualified and capable of speaking about this topic in a nuanced and complex way? Because it is complex, but. So there's been a lot of people with lived experiences using that without furthering their understanding of the topic, which means leads to really bad advice, you know, sometimes illegally non compliant, you know, but it also leads to social activism coming into the workplace, but not necessarily understanding organisational change and the psychology of organisations and how they function as systems. So one of the reasons for the bad reputation is DEI has been done really badly by some groups and some people because there's lots of money in it. And if people are asking your identity before understanding your ability to create an impact and whether it's compliant and appropriate, you know, then that's problematic. The other reason that there's been an issue is a lot of people have brought in their political views. I have political views, but when I step into an organisation, my duty is to what's been agreed with the organisation. But what often happens in DI work is that a lot of us are activists outside of it and we bring it into the corporate setting without appreciating the potential harm that might happen in that room when we do that. So I think there's that. The other thing is people think inclusion is for the other. So when you speak to someone this weekend that says there's an over focus on the minority, and I was saying, actually, if you are dealing with an effective inclusive practitioner, they're not focused on the minority, they're focused on what is required for the whole group, which includes the minority. But I used to push back on this and say, no, no, it's because the minority are being ignored. That's not always the case. Sometimes the minority's actually got the loudest voice in the room now and they might only be representing a small proportion of what's needed. And it's not that it shouldn't be represented, but it's that for people who have no clue about what's going on because they're not relevant in this area, they're so confused, not harmful, not against it, just lost in the conversation. So to me, I think people think and people think I will take a very particular position because of my work, my research, my identity. But the reality is, for me, inclusion should. Inclusive leadership should help you lead effectively in your organisation and inclusion should be appropriate for the setting. And I use the example all the time of I can't go to the Law Society in the UK and say, I want to be president because I'm not a lawyer. I don't have a right to access that space and then become a lawyer. But I could say they're excluding me, because they are, but they're excluding me with a purpose to the purpose of the organisation. And I think that a lot of inclusion work has forgotten or doesn't overtly explain that inclusion in organisations has to serve the organisation's purpose and serving it is making sure that all people, including marginalised people, are able to come to work and thrive without having to do additional masking or hiding or dealing with jabs or fear during the day. And when we don't have to deal with those, you get equal or better performance. That's the purpose of inclusion in workplaces, in my mind. And inclusive leadership is getting kind of lumped into being nice. And inclusion isn't always nice. Sometimes you have to make really hard decisions. But I do think that there's not just a misconception in mainstream. I think that in my opinion, there's a misconception in those of us who are activists in society and impacted by the topic, this kind of idea that our desire is the only desire. But I've yet to get a group of people in a room, even from marginalised communities, who all agree on the same outcome. And so that makes workplaces a complex reality to kind of navigate. And so I do think there's confusion, but I don't think it's from the side we usually blame. I think it's actually maybe a weaponizing of the work or a misunderstanding or like I described earlier, a lack of process in one's own stuff. You know, like I say, I work with a lot of people who are homophobic, and a lot of people in my kind of sphere would say, how can you do that? And I would say, because, first of all, if I don't work with them, who will? And second of all, just because they have belief that I am less human doesn't make me less human. And when I'm working with them, if I make them less human in my interaction, I'm just replicating the very thing I don't want to occur. And so to me, I'm not doing because I'm a good person, I'm doing it because if I'm not capable of working with people who are homophobic, I shouldn't be doing this work in organisations because I'm not able to process my stuff in it. And so I think we collapsing that.

Joanne Lockwood: Label, moving someone as homophobic, transphobic or racist or whatever, those are very inflammatory type words. What we're doing is we're basically sort of either shutting down a conversation or dehumanising another view. I'm not saying that having gay actives is right, fair or otherwise. Saying is that person has a perspective based on a lived experience and they have a why, they believe that. Yes. Trying to uncover the why. Why do you think that? Do I actually matter? Does it matter to you who I am, what my sexuality is? And as you said earlier, unless I fancy you, it really doesn't make any difference to you, does it? Unless you fancy me and you're confused by me. We get so. I think picking up another thing actually said was get so hung up on this outcome finality, this having to be right, that we forget about how we think something in the first place. And that's part of that humanization of the conversation, isn't it? Yeah, and I talk about that in my

Sile Walsh: book specifically because I'm. What frustrated me was this idea that to be inclusive we must all agree, but that is anti diversity. Like, like. And this is a bit of a controversial view. I believe people have the right to believe homophobic, racist, you know, sexist, transphobic things. I don't believe they have the right to discriminate. And legally they don't. Right. And we know that it's not easy to prove these things anyway. But because I believe in human rights, I believe people have the right to believe things. And that means that they have the right to believe things I highly disagree with. Just like I have the right to believe something they highly disagree with. What we don't have a right to do, in my opinion, is to harm each other. And I'm not talking about. A lot of people say that. I find that harmful because I disagree with you or I feel offended. I'm talking about. Harm is not disliking what people say. You know, harm is actually that it's something negative happens to a person, you know, usually externally. But I also think that one of the issues we have around this idea of inclusion right now is that we. What we really mean is I want to include the people I like and agree with. Because when I say. When people say bring your authentic self to work, I say, first of all, legally that's problematic. People can win cases against anything if you say that. But secondly, we're not generally in the inclusion space, meaning the homophobic, racist, sexist transphobes. We don't want them to bring their whole authentic self to work. Right. So we want to deplatform them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I do believe, and it's a bit of a kind of spiritual belief, but I really do believe that if anyone holds hate towards someone else about a part of their identity, it's because they couldn't possibly process that about themselves. So they hold hate within themselves, for themselves. I don't need to get into that with them because I don't hold that hate. So like, I don't want to get into it, but I do think that we get caught up in trying to control what people think. And that I have a problem with because that's from a human rights perspective, that's not okay. But we do in the workplace have discrimination legislation and treating people less favourably based on one of the protected characteristics is discrimination. Thinking something differently isn't, unfortunately, and potentially saying something differently isn't. It's a grey area depending on what they say and how they say it and the general consensus on it. But we do have a bit of this righteous moral ground stuff that I. That is a form of oppressive power that I have an issue with personally using. I'm like being right and being better than is just a way of oppressing and dehumanising another person. And I don't think that's very inclusive.

Joanne Lockwood: Because being right is a perspective, it's not an absolute. And we all have. We all believe we're right and we all believe we have the outcome. It's a human bias. Ego is extreme and that's how we believe. And which is why affinity groups are powerful because we believe people who look like us and feel like us, think like us, are more right than people who don't. And yeah, our war start and yeah, I'd say that you got no idea what's going on in the Middle East. I know that people are dying, children are dying. I know that people are starving. I know that there's poverty and famine and things going on and people are being bombed at their homes. I don't know who's right at this point. I don't really care who's right. I just want people to stop dying and people to find a way through it. So yeah, people are so invested in their own truth. I'll put that down. I mean, we see the example of the England, Ireland conflicts in the past never solved the problems of what was going on between England and Ireland, of the United Kingdom and Ireland by continuing to fight and blow each other up, we can only Solve it by saying I'm. That we want to be here now how can we get to here? I find in my own personal relationships. What about being sorry? Because you can be sorry once, but ask me to keep being sorry because I'm sorry makes you feel better for me to keep apologising, it doesn't help, it just makes you feel. Yeah, it becomes an uncompromising situation. So I think what we need to try and do is where do we want to be tomorrow? That's where we want to go. Acknowledge the past is it. Hold prisoners of that? And how do we find the way forward? And I think inclusion space is very similar. We end up excluding rather than leaving people behind through the fear of getting it wrong, through the fear of language, through policing them. Creating buzzwords or buzz phrases or scenarios that go against social constructs that we're all kind of familiar with. Evolution's good forcing people say at the beginning about pronouns, forcing people to take their pronouns every time they interact with each other. Not societal's way of communicating. And the thing is, it is

Sile Walsh: oppressive to do that. So I'm always thinking about how the power is being used. And so if, like your example is sorry, if I require someone to be sorry forever, I'm requiring to have power over them forever. Right. Which is just like a deflection of the power. It's a reversal. If I'm telling people what they can and can't say, I'm just trying to dominate them with my righteousness. And to me, it's really important that we know what we're doing with power in these kind of conversations because that changes the landscape of what we're doing. Discussing for me, I think, and it's very hard to do because sometimes I hear someone say something and I think, you're some idiot. Right? And then I've got to catch myself and I've got to say, their worldview brought them there. Your worldview brought you here. Why is it easier for you to think they're in Egypt than it is to actually be curious about it? And then I have to walk myself into it and be like, where is that coming from? Tell me more about that. And a lot of people would say you're just giving people space to air their frustrations. And I'm saying, no, I'm trying to understand why someone can have such a different worldview to me. And I think it goes on to the same situation in Gaza. I do not. And maybe this is from being an Irish person and understanding the complexities of the North I do not understand the complexities of that situation in the way that people living it do. I couldn't. Couldn't even potentially. But what I do understand is that one group is resourced with more power than another group, that I have an issue with the history. I don't know enough. But what I do know is that when one group has power over another group through resourcing or whatever they have, that's problematic. And then when that results in life being ended, killing. I don't care who's right or wrong. You can argue about right and wrong, but what our role as human beings, in my opinion, is to stop harm as soon as we are aware of it. And unfortunately, I don't think we're doing that in that situation. And there is an imbalance in power and resourcing and that. That will be a problem for me, whether I'm in a boardroom and there's an imbalance of power and resourcing or we're talking about a global stage. Because it's in those moments where, you know, that human rights perspective kick in. But it's also in those moments where we say, actually, you know, the end justifies the means. No, no, it doesn't. In my opinion, it doesn't. You know, the loss of life, of any life for any reason should be a problem, in my opinion. And so I think, like, that, you know, at the hands of other human beings at least, should be a problem. So I think we get so caught up in a political stance that we actually forget the humans and maybe thinking about what stance is required for human harm to be reduced or to be intervened with or to be stopped. And then there's lots of. Lots of media being released. Like, if you see the difference in what's being released on the UK media and the Irish media, we'll say around Gaza. It's really interesting that we're so close and so far the media's wildly different that we're seeing. We're so close and so far it's. Also very

Joanne Lockwood: vastly different. If you're over the Atlantic and in the US looking at the media as well. Yeah, And I was in the US for a month. It was really

Sile Walsh: strange because in Ireland there's a big pro Palestinian position. Just naturally, we've been protesting before it became media news. Like, we've been having weekly protest years. Like, it's not a new thing here. And there's this kind of sentiment. When I went there, it was clearly Israeli and I was like, oh, that's a really big culture. Shock. I've walked from one room where there's a clear position in one direction into another room where. Where what's appropriate to openly talk about is an Israeli view, whereas in Ireland, generally speaking, the Palestinian view is what's been appropriate to talk about. And I was like, all I've done is be in a different country and the rules are wildly different about what's acceptable, but so is the information that they're getting. That was what I was really shocked by the difference in the information. It's really difficult to try and work out what the

Joanne Lockwood: truth is or these perspectives are, and trying to marry them up other than the dying and that's gotta stop. That's kind of the fundamental what we're trying to get to as well. Yeah, and I

Sile Walsh: think that's the. And maybe it's, you know, somebody reported recently that the peace process, the peace process in Northern Ireland is one of the most successful in the world today. And like, we're holding it tightly. It's really important. It continues for lots of reasons, but we also know that there's still activity. We still have young people being groomed on both sides. And like, we know that there's still. There's still a ready to go if we don't hold it tightly and carry. Yeah, it's fragile, but it's still. It's still quite powerful. And I suppose when you see a process like that and you realise the safety that it offers the human beings on both sides, you know that actually continuing to fight is not the solution. It doesn't stop. The only two ways it stops is one obliterates the other and that's terrible for everybody. We should all be worried about any group of people being killed simply because of where they live. Or the other option is they agree peace in some kind of process. They're usually the only two outcomes that kind of occur in either some kind of agreement or we keep going till everyone's killed. And like the. Everyone killed is never a good outcome, in my opinion. No matter what side of the fence you're on, on anything. Everyone killed is. It's, you know, families losing loved ones is not a good outcome for anyone, you know. Yeah, we've gone into the worldplitted.

Joanne Lockwood: Bringing us back to the boardroom. We get our leaders. I mean, the conversation we've just had here, it's difficult to have in a workplace because, you know, we're taught don't talk about politics, don't talk about religion, don't talk about money. Yet we want people to bring Their whole self to work. How can we have cultures and environments where people can eat within boundaries, yet not feel that? You know, as I think you said right at the beginning, I can put bit of me into the middle here. And that's the bit of me that I'm happy to share, happy to talk about. How can we get people to bring that part of themselves into the middle and be able to have conversations and explore? I don't know. I don't know. Because people want to be right, don't they? They want to have this authoritarian view of the world. Yeah. It's

Sile Walsh: interesting because what I'm finding is leaders are less inclined to be right now and more scared of being wrong, which is a slightly different motivation. The first thing I want to say is I don't believe we should bring our whole selves to work. The reason that that's become normed is because people who are marginalised were hiding parts of themselves and we wanted them not to worry about that, that they could bring that part of themselves to work. And I think that's appropriate. But when we say bring your whole self to work, we're giving mixed messages because again, we're not talking about the racist homophobe. We don't want them to bring that to work. Actually keep that at home for your bodies. That's not the space we want at work. And legally, it's not a clever thing to bring into work. But what we do want is that people don't have to hide who they are. I think that's, you know, and the original reason for this was because people were having to pretend they were something they weren't, to be safe at work. But that's not everyone, not every part, not everyone needs to bring their whole selves to work. We need to bring our appropriate self to work. So the parts of my identity that are important to me, that's what I bring to work. And I do my job and I use that myself as an instrument of my role. And I do my best to thrive at work, but I don't bring my whole self. I don't karaoke sing at work because people would leave, there'd be complaints to hr. You know, I don't wear my fluffy pyjamas to a keynote because it's not agreed as appropriate. You know, so there's a piece around that. But what I would say about leaders is what I tend to do with clients is when I work with a leadership team who are going through something around this area, I ask to meet them individually. That's the first thing I do and I say in this meeting, you can say anything and ask anything and it will not be recorded or noted as long as you're bringing good intent, like you're not doing it as a bad actor. You're coming in, you're saying, I don't know why we use this word. You know, is it okay to say this? I'm so confused about that. You know, you know, do I have to change my beliefs in order to lead here? And I don't believe people should have to change their beliefs. It's interesting because we think leaders should believe what's right to lead. Well actually leaders jobs in workplaces is to equip you with the ability to do your job well and bring you in a direction that's their, their role. And so I often say if we can get leaders into private one on ones and let them bring up their fears and concerns, I get through way more. I do say to HR, teams don't do it in a group because you have policies, procedures and codes of conduct. And the minute you do it in a group, I have to enact them. You've to enact them. If I do it in a confidential coaching setting, nothing gets enacted. They are absolutely protected in this conversation. Then I will help them before we go into a group setting with find the boundaries of the difference between what they need to say to help others do well at work. Which is the point of anything a leader says should be about helping their teams right their, their organisation move forward. It's not about their political beliefs. So it shouldn't matter what they believe as long as they are equipping their people with the knowledge, information and support required to do their jobs. And then I also think we need to be careful about cancel culture because I talk to a lot of leaders who aren't actually committed to being right. They're actually more fearful of being wrong, which is a different motivation. They're afraid of saying the wrong thing and being cancelled. So now they're not saying anything or they're saying Pittsburgh again, isn't it? The environment is down. Yeah, yeah. So I talk to leaders about whatever you say in the workplace should be focused on helping people do their task and feeling safe to do their task. If everything you say connects to those two things, your personal beliefs are not that important. And if somebody says to you that's racist, that's homophobic, that's something you don't say. No, it's not. You say how so let them explain it to you. And you say Let me reflect on that and come back to you. I need some time to process it, because you're a human being who needs to make sense of things. And not everything that is labelled as homophobic or racist or transphobic is those things. It's just somebody's understanding of what you've said. So I had someone tell me that I didn't, because I don't start any talk with my identity because it's not relevant, right? And then it does become relevant throughout the talk, and that's fine. But I said something about the fact that some people in the LGBTQ community hate the word queer, and other people, like, you know, feel the word queer is very important. That's all I said. And I had someone say, excuse me, that's highly offensive. You shouldn't be using that language, blah, blah. I said, well, I am queer, and I have no issue not using that language for someone else, but I am queer. I don't see the world in a heteronormative way. I don't engage with it in a linear way or a kind of binary way. And so that they're like, oh, okay, you're allowed to say it. I was like, no, you were asserting a decision because you made a judgement of me as a straight white woman without taking into account my identity, because I didn't lead with it. You made judgments about me and then decided that my position must be wrong. But the minute I explained that my position is based on my identity, that was right. And that's an example of where we kind of make assumptions. Originally, they were suggesting I was being homophobic by saying that. And then when I explained that's how I identify. I wasn't homophobic anyway anymore. But the truth was, it was never homophobic in the first place. I was simply stating a fact. Some people in that population like that word for lots of reasons, and some people don't. That is fact. That's not political position I hold, it's fact. You ask some people, they say, I like it. Other people say they don't like it. But that person decided to turn that factual statement into a meaning about me. That wasn't accurate. But that happens all the time, because we get stuck in our own worldview. And when we listen to people speak, we don't always listen to them. We listen to them mostly through our idea of what's right and wrong and then project it onto them. And so leaders do need the chance to process things because they will find out that sometimes what they've said is homophobic, transphobic racist, sexist. And sometimes they'll find that the person misunderstood what they actually said, not what they meant, what they actually said. They're two different things. Because sometimes people say, that's not what I meant. I'm like, there's a difference between what you meant, what you actually said. Sometimes what you actually said is misunderstood. That's different. Like my factual example to you meant something else, but you said something. And that's a sign that you've been brought up in a society that has homophobia, transphobia, racism weaved into it. And so we're all going to hold parts of that and we will make mistakes.

Joanne Lockwood: Back to my desert island thing, where who am I on a desert island with nobody else there? And within my affinity group, within my echo chamber, I homophobic within that group. And that the group might. It might be this Tanner conversation people are having, the banter, the conversations, the disagreement they have. It's a relative contextual position. You introduce somebody into that group that is not part of the. In group, they. They have a different perspective. Therefore, relatively speaking, you are homophobic compared with this person. Your views aren't homophobic by general societal standards. But within your echo chamber there continues quite normal, rational conversations of disagreement or contention. Again, we've got to try and recognise within our leaders and context as well, calling somebody love or honey or duck or something or mate is relative because in Yorkshire or some parts of the uk, some people call everybody have a love mate. But it's. It's not meant to be offensive, it's not meant to be this. It's just a perspective. And I think what we're talking about here, with inclusive leadership, trying to get leaders to have their view, but recognise their view is not the only view. And they're not. They don't have a right to be absolute and right about it. So they can. They can have these views which are maybe not in line with mine. I can have a conversation, say I have a different view, you have a different view. Can we still talk about it without getting upset, without defensive, and we both leave sharing a bit of each other's perspectives without necessarily having to change our view to still be. I think that's the challenge, is to be able to, as I say, hold multiple perspectives and paradoxes in your head at the same time, be able to rationalise those out and come up with a context you're happy to exist within. That sounded quite complicated. You know what I mean by that?

Sile Walsh: Yeah. No, I think that's again, the power piece. Right. If I'm sharing my views and they have to be better than yours. That's oppressive. Right now, there's nothing wrong with me holding my views and you holding yours. But if I'm unsettled by the fact you are not moved by mine and wildly agreeing, then we're in a power struggle. We're not actually in an inclusive. And your point about the in group and the out group is most important. The most exclusion, and I say this wholeheartedly, that I've ever experienced, is within the LGBTQ population. That is the place that I have felt the most excluded. Never lesbian enough. Never. I'm not a lesbian. Never this enough, never that enough. You know, who CIS presenting to be, you know, non bi. Like just everything is never enough. And the minute I hear that, I know we're in an oppressive binary or set of rules. I am not interested in that. I'm interested in whoever you are and I am being valid in that moment. We don't have to agree or understand each other. But I don't treat you as less than simply because I don't understand and you don't get to treat me as less than. And I think in the workplace there are some conversations we shouldn't have. You know, I don't think I should go to work and process all my feelings about something. I go to my therapist, I go to community groups, I do my thing. I think at work the conversations should always be connected to what helps this environment be co created as a space that I can feel safe in so I can do my job well. And everything we talk about should be connected to those two things. Otherwise we stray into like mission creep and that become. That's where I think we have, like, the UK has a lot of issues because of mission creep right now in workplaces and I work in workplace in the uk. We're not finding that same mission creep in other countries because we're not finding that same tension in other countries, especially around gender right now as we are in the uk. The UK is holding attention around that. That is not being held quite the same way unless you go to very specific views in the us. The rest of the world is holding a little bit in different ways, different nuances about it. But the uk, because of mission creep in workplaces, that's my belief. It has got into some really unhelpful tensions, in my opinion, that is causing like, locks in this work.

Joanne Lockwood: There's a very polarised and absolutist on both sides and there's work to be done to try and bring people around the table, and that's the challenge at the moment, is to release these prisons of beliefs and look to try and create workplaces where people can thrive. And that's all people, not just people that you like. And that's the hard thing.

Sile Walsh: If it was just people that we like, we don't need inclusion because they'll go into our in group. Inclusion is about engaging with the out group, and that's really challenging. If it's just people you like, that's not inclusion. Work your grand belt away, you're fine. Inclusion work involves the out group. I would frame that is without

Joanne Lockwood: using tolerance, because tolerance is not actually so tolerance is the, the worst case. It's putting up with people. So we're trying to find that way of accepting and embracing. Skipping over tolerance. Yeah. And I think we might have to

Sile Walsh: start with tolerance sometimes because how stuck we are with our own beliefs. Like, I know I have to tolerate others when I hold something very strongly, but then if I can tolerate them, I use this thing called compassionate accountability. So I think accountability to myself is really important with some compassion, but I think the same for others. If I am able to, in the workplace, hold accountability as something that we offer each other because we're obligated to, but with compassion, then I can say you got to your beliefs the same way I got to mine, even if they're oppositional. Now, what do we need to do to share space in a way that is not just not harmful, that's the starting point, but actually might be enhancing. And I, I, I've seen it, so I know it's possible. But when we have big, strong political polarizations, I think it's in people's interest not to find shared spaces, because then they don't write.

Joanne Lockwood: There'S profit in that. There's massive profit. Oh, and face saving and status and become invested in it. And there's a momentum bias. You know, people are, is what we're doing. And I'm not going to listen because I'm invested in this future and I'm invested in being right. That's going on on both sides and all sides. There's more than two sides.

Sile Walsh: Yeah, no, there's. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's an interesting one when we look at the LGBTQ kind of population, because in a funny way, they've moved from one set of rights to arguing for another set of rights. But what's really fascinating to me, that other set of rights was always in the picture. We just didn't fight for them. So there's been this really interesting thing where even within the LGBTQ population, there's been a hierarchy of whose rights are important. And if we look at the history of it, we can see that everybody who's in that community, in that population group that we've lumped together, have always been in that population and have always been active. And we can see it historically, but we pretended it was one thing and another thing, and we decided what was prioritised that shows the oppression within our own population. And now it's like, oh, now, now, these other things. These other things were always there. We just didn't prioritise them because we, again, used a hierarchy set of decisions about what was priority and in a. Lot assumed this word community. That's why I reject the word community. Yeah. Because it. Communities. We have

Joanne Lockwood: communities within communities within communities. The intersectional approach, because we have in common is largely, we're not straight or we're not cisgender. Isn't a binding concept by being not something. Because we're so queer, we're so different, so intersectional in our backgrounds, our thinking, our gender, whatever it may be, that we're not coming together with a common causal mission. We're. We're trying to bunch people together who have different motivations and. Yeah, and that's why I use the word population, because

Sile Walsh: we do fall under a population, which is that the norm in at least Western community? And I have to say this because we talk about it like it's global. It's Western. It's not global. India just confirmed that trans women are women legally under their definition. We're talking about Western cultures here. Western cultures have normed a particular view of validity. The working male and female married children, usually, you know, a house and a dot. Like, there's a norm way. And so when I say population, all of the. Those letters represent parts of general society that be neglected by that norm. And so, for me, it just makes sense to say population, because we're talking about the oppression that has occurred to that population by just not being seen as norm.

Joanne Lockwood: People, population, or communities with an IES on the Internet. I like that idea. Yeah.

Sile Walsh: Yeah. I might. I might look into that a bit more. It's a good one, Joanne. I. I didn't invent it. Someone else told me that, and I thought, right,

Joanne Lockwood: because we're not a homogenous group where people who are queer who happen to press in a similar way. That's all it is. Well, by

Sile Walsh: the same set of rules, of normative. Like, it's the oppression, we Share as opposed to the desired outcome. And which makes it really problematic other. Protected characteristics are also oppressed by societal norms. And actually

Joanne Lockwood: that's where we come together as minorities or voiceless or whatever marginalised people is because we share a common oppression by the majority norm. With Mfine, we're being divided and conquered by competing with ourselves for wanting to escape our oppression in the way we want to escape it. And then we find these beliefs and our entities conflict with each other, not in the majority. Still. Yeah, yeah, it's,

Sile Walsh: it's. It's from a sociological point of view, it's fascinating. From a lived experience, it's a frustrating. That's the best way.

Joanne Lockwood: Completely. Yeah, yeah. I mean, come to Ireland and. And a day with you and drink lots of coffee or something. We could talk all day. We could talk all day. And we have been talking for. Best part of. For an hour and a half plus. Yeah, wonderful. How could people get hold of you? So my silewalsh.com

Sile Walsh: or my company is LS Advantage, so there's a website for that and my book, Inclusive Leadership Navigating Organisational Complexity. I'm on Instagram and LinkedIn. LinkedIn is more like professional thought and Instagram is more in between frustrations and random ideas. Put

Joanne Lockwood: links to all of that in the show notes. So presumably people reach out to you, drop you a message and say, hi. That would be brilliant. And they can find out about you. So. And also give me their point of view.

Sile Walsh: Like, it would be lovely to hear from people that are going, sheila, I don't think that's great because of X, Y and Z, because then it helps me expand my understanding and so I welcome different perspectives from what I've said as well, because I love that kind of emergent learning that we do together. I wholeheartedly agree.

Joanne Lockwood: If you're listening to this right now and you don't agree, tell us, tell me, tell Sheila. If you do agree, share it with someone who won't agree and then let them tell you their opinion or our opinion. But we grow by listening and communicating and understanding and lots of why questions. And it sounds like we both share the same thing, that we want to understand why someone thinks something, have conversations. We could be friends, even if we have different perspectives. Yeah, Yeah, I think that's lovely,

Sile Walsh: Joanne. Thank you.

Joanne Lockwood: As we bring this conversation to a close, I want to express my deepest gratitude to you, our listener, for lending your ear and heart to the cause of inclusion. Today's discussion struck a chord. Consider subscribing to Inclusion Bites and become part of our ever growing community, driving real change. Share this journey with friends, family and colleagues. Let's amplify the voices that matter. Got thoughts, storeys or a vision to share? I'm all ears. Reach out to jo.lockwood@seechangehappen.co.uk and let's make your voice heard. Until next time, this is Joanne Lockwood signing off with a promise to return with more enriching narratives that challenge, inspire and unite us all. Here's to fostering a more inclusive world one episode at a time. Catch you on the next bite.