Engineering Inclusive Excellence

Joanne Lockwood is joined by Claire Angliss, Head of Learning for Thales UK and an inclusive coach, to explore what “inclusive excellence” looks like inside an engineering organisation.

They unpack the real-world tension behind “bring your whole self to work”, focusing on choice, masking, and the cognitive load created when people feel they must sanitise or hide parts of their lives. The conversation also looks at how leaders can respond when someone shares something personal: listening without trying to fix, and creating space where trust can grow.

Claire and Joanne then move into the organisational mechanics of inclusion: shifting from diversity as a headline goal to inclusion as a business-critical capability that improves problem-solving and innovation through collective intelligence. They discuss psychological safety, avoiding tokenism, and the need for robust talent and hiring processes that reduce bias, widen candidate pools, and value capability and growth over narrow “done it before” criteria.

Across the episode, the emphasis is on building cultures, policies, and leadership practices that make inclusion tangible and measurable, while being honest that progress is iterative and imperfect.