Episode Summary
What starts as a conversation between two long standing colleagues quickly opens into something deeper about identity, leadership, friendship, and what it really takes to create inclusive cultures.
Content Warning: This episode includes occasional strong language.
Joanne Lockwood, founder of SEE Change Happen and The Trans Inclusion Toolkit, reflects on building a business while navigating gender transition, and how that journey shaped her thinking far beyond one area of inclusion. Rather than staying in a single lane, Joanne talks about what it means to grow into broader EDI work, and why lived experience alone is not enough without reflection, learning, and strategy.
The conversation moves through personal stories, internalised ableism, friendship, advocacy, and the emotional load of constantly having to explain yourself. Joanne and Esi explore what it means to show up in the world when identity is always being read, questioned, or judged, and why safe spaces matter when the rest of the world can feel noisy and demanding.
Transcript
Joanne Lockwood (00:00)
What we need do really is invest in our leaders to help them develop emotional intelligence, develop culture intelligence, understand about psychological safety, understand about all these things that we talk about with EDI professionals, day in, day out. Most leaders don’t have those tools in their toolbox. And it’s helping, it’s really, really investing the time to develop people in that way.
Esi Hardy (00:33)
Hello everyone, I hope you’re well. Thank you very much for coming back for another episode of the Equality Edit available here on YouTube and also here on Spotify and I suppose Apple Music as well, so wherever you’re watching. Today I’m joined by a, if I say an old colleague, I don’t mean old as in old, I mean I’ve known her for a while, Joanne Lockwood.
I will hand over to Joanne to introduce herself in a minute, but I want to talk about how I met Joanne. So we met both at the beginning of our businesses, didn’t we? It was about, I mean, celebrating disability is nine years old. So it must’ve been about nine, maybe eight and a half years ago at a training session for disability inclusion in the workplace. So I went along to kind of scope out my competitor,
in Hampshire and I met Joanne there and it was really interesting and that’s where the kind of connection started really. We were both frustrated about thinking about how we were gonna launch our businesses and get it off the ground. But I’m gonna hand over to Joanne, do you want to introduce yourself?
Joanne Lockwood (01:44)
Yes, sure. Thank you, Esi ⁓ You’re right. I do remember that day we met. I went along to that session because I was talking to this company about being an associate with them and I had high expectations that this was going to be how to do training properly and it was all around this, that and the other. I thought I’d go there and because I was a new kid on the block at the time, I was just setting up. thought, what do I know about
EDI training and things like that. So I was quite keen to go and learn about them. And as it turned out, I got more out about the fact that we met and we’ve become friends over the years. And it’s been an absolute honor to get to know you. And I always credit you as being my person in my head, when I think about accessibility, how would this impact Esi? How would Esi cope with this situation? Or yeah, would…
would Esi’s wheelchair fit in this lift or it’s up three flights of stairs and then this and then, and could she get up the curb? So I’ve always got you in my head as my accessibility avatar. My Jiminy Cricket on my shoulders to go, this wouldn’t work. So that wasn’t really introducing myself, was it? It was just backing up. Yeah. I’m just, I’m just, I’m just fangirling, just fangirling back.
Esi Hardy (02:51)
You really like giving me more credit. Thank you, yeah.
I’ll take it.
Joanne Lockwood (02:57)
Take it, take it. And ⁓ some of your anecdotes and stories, I hold my head in shame for the world treating you that way. A number of times you’ve been stranded on a train or the wrong point, think Gatwick airport, stranded on a step, Gatwick airport or something, trying to get to a training session. There’s some great anecdotes, great anecdotes. Anyway.
Esi Hardy (03:15)
Yeah, that was,
Yeah Heathrow Airport for another day, yes.
Joanne Lockwood (03:20)
Heathrow, Heathrow, yeah, that’s another one.
But anyway, back to to about, about me, I suppose it’s about me now. So yeah, Joanne Lockwood, for the record, my pronouns are she, her. I set my business up in beginning of 2017 as it happened. So that’s nine and a bit years ago. Just in fact, just over nine years. I think it was the first of March 2017. So that’s nine years and nine days, I guess, something like that.
Esi Hardy (03:38)
Mm.
Well
that makes celebrating disability two years older than SEE Change Happen. Not two years older, two days older, sorry, than SEE Change. So we’re nearly twins.
Joanne Lockwood (03:55)
So 2015 you started, you? Two days older.
28th of February, 27th of February, was it? ⁓ So I always create, I always credit 27th, 28th of February as my freedom day. That’s the day I sold my previous business to my former business partners. And I embarked, that was the last chain that I
Esi Hardy (04:03)
Mm, mm. 27th February. Anyways, sorry, back to you.
Joanne Lockwood (04:18)
that kept me to my old life. I always say the first of March, because that was the first full day. That end of February, it’s all a bit mushy in my head, I wasn’t sure what I doing. But around then, it was freedom day. yeah, so first of March is where I always say it was when I started. I started living as Joanne and working as Joanne and being, that was my 24-7 day.
Esi Hardy (04:23)
Mm-hmm.
I think that’s awesome. Do you acknowledge it every year?
Joanne Lockwood (04:43)
No, when I’m doing talks and things like that, it’s the day I always say 1st of March and I’ve got a story about it because it sounds easy, but on the 1st of March 2017, I didn’t really know what my name was. That sounds really strange, but if you think about life in general, if you don’t know what your name is, it’s pretty tricky to exist. You can’t apply for a job. can’t engage and be taken for
Esi Hardy (04:54)
Mm.
Joanne Lockwood (05:04)
professionally, seriously, unless you know what your name is. And at that point now, I hadn’t fully understood the implications of changing my name with my family and everybody else. So I was sitting on this painful fence about whether I should keep using my old name or use my new name. So I hadn’t changed my passport, my driving license or my LinkedIn profile and all this sort of stuff. So I was trying to
figure out all these sort of things going on in my head and start a business. I was, I was pretty, in a pretty tough place for a few months. The first of March was probably the, the beginning of that, that journey where I had to start taking, knocking these things on the head and saying, I’ve got to deal with that. I’ve got to make a decision. Can’t sit here on this fence for the rest of my life. So yeah, that was the evolution, but the starting point of the evolution. And I guess it kind of crystallized by May, June that year.
Esi Hardy (05:36)
Hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (05:51)
That’s where all the major pieces started falling into place. But for the listeners, what we’re talking about here, although I don’t think I’ve actually mentioned it, is I gender transitioned at that point, leaving my old life behind, whilst trying to navigate family challenges at the time as well. So yeah, and I started off with this vision about, at the time, was all going to be about transgender inclusion. That was what it was all about. I didn’t know what it meant.
I just know that I wanted to get into that. And I think what I realized over that first year is that it wasn’t all about me. The challenges in life go far beyond being trans. In fact, if anything, there are a lot more people who are more marginalized, have less voice, need more amplification than I did. But it gave me a good start and it helped me focus a lot of what I was thinking over that year. And I think…
The work that I did when I met you at that training course and some of the work I did with the Rotary Club at the time around dementia, around deaf awareness and disability grounded me in a broader sense of EDI. And I remember when I joined the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals, and I looked at their certification program, I looked at this and they said,
You know, to be an EDI professional, it’s not just about one thing, you know, you have to be talking about all things. It’s not just about you or your characteristic. So I sat there and chewed that over a while. thought, yeah, you’re right. is to be cast as an EDI professional, you have to have a broad grounding in not just particular characteristics, but what inclusion means to people. I think that’s, that’s kind of where that grounding came from. That’s how I’ve expanded over the years.
Esi Hardy (07:18)
Hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (07:23)
I think I’ve done all right becoming a bit of a subject matter expert on it. yeah, that’s about me.
Esi Hardy (07:28)
Do you think,
Thank you very much. And I’m really interested in that actually. So there’s a lot, it’s really interesting. I was having a conversation with somebody this afternoon actually, and we were talking about the power of our lived, not just our, the power of lived experience and how we were, you know, he started saying, and I said that I completely agree and relate to what he was saying, that, you know, it sometimes is really hard to, to,
to think that your story, your personal story is relevant and that it’s not boring. And I said, I completely agree. And it’s only when people started saying, because when I started celebrating disability, I was very clear, I’m not going to talk about myself. It’s not about me. It’s about disability inclusion, but that doesn’t mean it’s about me. But then when people asked me to start sharing my lived experience, I realized that it’s all wrapped up.
in making it relatable, the way that we make things tangible in inclusion spaces and the way empathy is in the three about experiencing the same thing, the part of developing compassion within people, the developing empathy for another is using one’s experience of a feeling. And so I think sharing that lived experience is so powerful and meaningful in lots of ways.
So do you share your experience now that you’re an EDI specialist rather than just a, not just, but rather than a transgender inclusion specialist? Or do you stick to kind of the broader subject rather than your experience?
Joanne Lockwood (09:02)
I tend to be more subtle maybe about my experience. you know, it’s, it’s hard to leave my identity behind. I am who I am in the same way you are who you are, a young black woman with a wheelchair, you know, it’s hard to ignore that. can’t sort of, you can’t sort of hide that fact. I don’t try and hide the fact that I’m trans, but I, I, if I’m doing broad, generic, inclusive recruitment or employee experience or
equality act or whatever, whatever training I’m working on. I don’t go into the room and go, I’m trans, I know what I’m talking about. I kind of, there’s that implication when people listen, they hear me, they see me and they get a feel for me. They go, ⁓ she’s got lived experience by being trans, but I don’t center it as a, here’s me on the table. It’s kind of implied, Joanne must know about
Esi Hardy (09:32)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
A thing. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood (09:50)
⁓ discrimination, she must know about marginalization, she must know about these lived experiences. I do, not because I’m trans, but because I’ve actually invested the time. You know, we talk about cultural intelligence and that the first competency is the CQ drive. You’ve got to want to find out. I think in the early stages of my new career, I had the imposter syndrome and I was hungry for knowledge. So I went out and met anybody.
who wants to talk about inclusion, belonging, diversity, lived experience. I was hoovering up people’s lived experience and knowledge in all these forums, all these workshops, these conversations. I was drinking coffee with everybody to try and get this. Hence I’ve got you in my head about this. I’ve got a person who could talk about being deaf up here. I’ve got a person who can talk about sight impairment here. I’ve got a person to talk about being queer, being gay, being lesbian, whatever it may be.
I followed that on with knowledge, you know, again, seeking knowledge and put a lot of time into it. But I think where the magic happens for any CQ practitioners out there is the strategy bit. So you’ve got to, you’ve got to try and take that drive and that knowledge and, put it into something tangible. So you’ve got to try and rationalize it. Otherwise, you you become a little armed and dangerous with the little knowledge. You should go firing off, I know about this. Actually, you don’t know about
Esi Hardy (10:43)
Mm. Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (11:05)
And
I think that’s where that empathy bridge comes in. You’re talking about here. I’ve got to try and create those relatable experiences. So I’ve got a story about this. I’ve got a story about that. They’re not my story. And I would always say, in this situation, I remember having a conversation with my friend who’s a wheelchair user and we did this and we did this across London. And I then realized how impactful it was navigating around Victoria Tube station with a person who is in a powered wheelchair. It’s a nightmare. You think it’s hard work taking
luggage on the tube, you want to try and take it, be with a friend who’s navigating it or my friend who has a hearing dog, she has cochlear implants and that experience about being with her. So that allowed me to contextualize a lot of that knowledge I had and now I feel more competent in the CQ strategy to able to apply that and within a context of others lived experience and the learning I’ve done.
Esi Hardy (11:46)
Mm-hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (11:56)
I think when we talk about allyship, what do we want to do? We want to go from awareness to action. So I’m able to take that awareness I’ve learned and I’ve learned how to apply that. And so I can be a better ally and or being a better advocate for people and also be able to spread that expertise on as well. So did that answer the question? I think I think I sort of ticked the boxes there. You know, how to create those relative experiences and just being trans give me
I think it just gives me a forum that people then go, aha, Jo knows what she’s talking about. think if I’d have been a, and there’s nothing wrong with this, if I’d my old life, if the straight white bloke I was perceived to be, I would have felt I had less authority in some of these spaces. And that’s wrong. It shouldn’t be your identity that gives you the credibility, it should be your expertise and your knowledge. Unfortunately, we all get judged
on appearance.
Esi Hardy (12:49)
Yeah, I agree. do think we’re quite as a society in the place yet where where I where identity alone is enough. We need to we need to come with we need to have that kind of visual experience or that tangible experience that we can we can talk about as well.
It does answer my second question, absolutely. And what it kind of articulated to me is that it’s the experience of the marginalization, I think.
Whatever that marginalization means to anyone. And we all know that in one way or another, everybody is marginalized in some different way, but that being able to utilize that experience alone and then turn that into something that is tangible and solution focused for the people we’re working with. Because we do have, and we all know they’re out there and there’s nothing wrong with it.
motivational speakers, I can do it so you can do it too and they’re all good for something but if you want something that’s going to give you something that you can move forward with and actually do something with afterwards I think it needs that as you say that’s strategic that solution focused element to it as well.
Joanne Lockwood (14:02)
The other thing I’ve found, and I’ve got no idea what the cause and effect is here, what the original thing is, I seem to have a greater breadth of contacts and people I deal with. Whether it’s I’m more interested in them and they’re more interested in me, I don’t know. But I feel like I’ve now got a bus pass that says I can go and talk to anybody about their lived experience and have a conversation.
It’s almost like this kindred spirit between people who have been marginalized or something. You always seem happy to congregate together. I always think about it as a bit like the toys in Toy Story, in the house next door where there were all the sort of the bits and pieces that are thrown together. I always think, well, kind of we’ve built our own little family over here and we actually, we love each other and we’re happy to have those conversations that we don’t need to be perfect and polished and princess-like. We can just be us.
Esi Hardy (14:36)
Yes.
Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood (14:49)
And we have a sort of like a kindred spirit that allows us to share and talk to each other without worrying about saying, oh, I don’t know if I can ask this or should I say this? Because when you speak to people who haven’t had that experience, they get very nervous around you about, should I say this? Should I say that? Or you’re brave. And all this sort of bollocks that come out of their mouth. So it’s nice just to be in a room where people go, yeah, we’re all brave. Great. I’ve got the T-shirt.
Esi Hardy (15:10)
Yeah.
And actually in a room of people that are going to hear what you’re trying to say. So kind of going back to what you’re saying now, that the way people react in that kind of charity kind of medical model of however it is that you’re talking about, when you’re with a community of people that already get it, you know they’re going to react in a way that is supportive.
I love those spaces where I can just be in it and be with a group of friends or colleagues and I can say, I’m just having a dropsy day. And they immediately know what I mean. And somebody that’s not in the community, that doesn’t have crappy hands, sorry to swear, but doesn’t have hands that drop everything every 30 seconds is not going to know what a dropsy day is. And it’s really nice not having to say, not having to do it in this kind of
way that people are gonna pity me, feel sorry for me, find me inspirational, in a way that people are gonna say, fuck’s sake, yeah, I get that too, it’s really annoying, isn’t it? This is what I feel about my dropsy days. I will put a profanity warning.
Joanne Lockwood (16:14)
Yeah. I never forget when you were,
We were out for a meal in Basingstoke, I think it was, and we were in a restaurant there and you ordered the steak or whatever, I think it was the steak, and you quite clearly said to the waiter or the waitress or the person serving, could you make sure you cut it up please so that I can just fork it in my mouth? I don’t need to, I can’t do both. I can’t cut. And it arrived uncut. I remember you.
Esi Hardy (16:37)
Yes.
Joanne Lockwood (16:38)
I remember you saying, excuse me, I need this cut up. My hands don’t work enough to do this. They cut it up on your plate in front. And I thought, wow, I never appreciated the level of support you need, but what you don’t want to do is make a big deal of it. You quite clearly said, just make sure it’s cut up and it wasn’t. I thought, I almost thought, well, I could do that. And I thought, you don’t want me, your friend, cutting your food up for you, because that’s even worse.
That’s their job. And I remember being at Waterloo station with you and we’re upstairs in the balcony and we are, there’s a pub up there, I think it was. And yeah, a cool pub up there. And I remember you saying, said, do you want me to go and get the drinks? You said, no, I can go and buy my own drinks if you don’t mind. went, okay. I think you said to me, if I need your help, I’ll ask for it. Don’t offer it. Okay. Okay. Absolutely fine. I remember we’re sitting away chatting away and you said,
Esi Hardy (17:05)
Mm.
Yeah, when they had that really cool pub up there, yeah.
Joanne Lockwood (17:29)
Can you pick my shoe up, please? I went, oh yeah, shoe’s fallen off. I thought, that’s fine. Yeah, I didn’t have to offer because then I soon learned that you are a very powerful advocate for what you need and you will say at any point. So I know that if I’m with you now, I don’t need to worry about you. And the second you say, Jo, can you do this? I go, absolutely. But I’m never going to offer it to you because I know that you’re fiercely independent and you’d rather knock the door down.
Esi Hardy (17:48)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (17:54)
Than you have asking me to open it or expecting me to open it, you make me ask. So yeah, I’ve learned those things about you, how independent you are and how you don’t like having a PA or someone caring for you in those sort of ways. That’s part of our friendship to learn those things. And I think if you don’t invest time in building those sort of relationships with people from different backgrounds, different characteristics, whatever it may be, not just disability, but just different sectors of life.
You don’t truly understand people. think we spend too much time not investing that time to get to know people better and then to remember how that works. Yeah. We’ve got other friends, haven’t we, who some other shared friends who have their own needs in public and the society and help. I know, again, I know very well that I’m not there to be their care or guardian or protector. They will say to me, Jo, can you do this for me?
There are times when I will make it easier for them because I know they’re going to want to sit down at some point and I’ll say, yeah, let me just go and get a check table over there. When you’re ready, come and join me and I’ll make sure there’s a chair there. So I’ll be protective in that way, but only in a reasonable way, not in a kind of mothering way.
Esi Hardy (19:00)
But that, you know, it’s the same kind of protective or kind of forward thinking that you do for any friend. So it’s not because they have a particular barrier or a particular need. It’s because you know that your friend maybe prefers to sit in a corner or you know your friend ⁓ is a vegan. So you wouldn’t take them to a steakhouse, for example. So, you know, we naturally think about things that we would do for our friends.
And I think this is where people get stuck when it comes to disability or other intersectional identities, that they think that the strategy, for want of a better word, of how to be a good, supportive person or friend needs to be different than it would be otherwise.
Joanne Lockwood (19:44)
Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I concur. And you’re right, those examples I gave are just being a friend, you know, in the same way that I’m sure people look after me without me noticing. They just clear a bit of a pathway for you occasionally.
Esi Hardy (19:50)
Mmm.
So what kind of if you because I know people will be listening and think well that’s easier said than done. I have no idea how to engage. I have no idea how to address. So in my line of work, a lot of the work I do is after we’ve developed the strategies for businesses, we then go in and support with the implementation. And I don’t know if you find this but a lot of
support goes into line manager training and line manager confidence developing because it’s not that they don’t want to do it. They just don’t know how to start the conversation and how to go about doing it. So we have those conversations about how to engage, how to initiate that conversation and where you can take it and what you need to know, but what you don’t need to know when you enter. what advice, and I know it’s a big question and we don’t need to solve all the problems, but
What would you say to people that say, don’t, you know, I’ve no idea how to do, but you obviously know how to do that. How do I do that?
Joanne Lockwood (20:54)
I think it’s a well-known sort of ism, if you like, the biggest challenge of inclusion, belonging, equality, whatever you want to describe it as, is the fear of getting it wrong. People are worried, they’re clumsy, people are worried they’re going to get shot down for saying the wrong thing. And there was that incident a few years ago where the black charity worker, I forget her name, Ngozi
can’t remember her full name, but Ngozi was the black charity worker. She was with the late queen mothers or late queens, ⁓ as maid or something, Lady Hussey, think her name was. And Lady Hussey, the white lady, the palace representative, said to her, where are you from? And didn’t have the, if you like, the culture intelligence and know that that was not a great use of phrase. And then
Esi Hardy (21:38)
Mm-hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (21:39)
She was castigated in the papers, in the media, told that she was a racist for saying these phrases and then, and it went on and on and on. Of course, all that does is tell people that if you engage with people and you get it wrong, you’re going to end up being castigated for it. And it’s, we’ve gotta change that. Yeah. People are well-meaning. They don’t set out with any malicious intent or, or mal, mal thoughts. And they get it wrong. And I think what we need to do is
cut people some slack. I know, you know, often the phrase in the, in the disability and inclusion and race, anti-racism work is we’re not your educator. We’re not here to do all the hard work for you. You must educate yourself and yeah, don’t expect me to do all the work for you. It’s all fair and well, but at some point you’ve got to lean into that as I actually, let me call that in. Let me just say, actually that doesn’t quite work for me. And I find, I can,
find something offensive without being offended. And I think what you’ve got to try and do is say, actually that terminology you just use is problematic. My suggestion would be, this is a better way of saying it. There you go. Most people go, oh really? Oh, oh great. And then you have a conversation about it. If you go, and get all hoity toity, I’ll start waving your arms around a bit and putting written complaints into everybody. All that’s going to happen is people are going go, oh God, it’s one of them again.
Esi Hardy (22:37)
Mm-hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (22:58)
you end up with a cold shoulder and kind of really… education doesn’t account, think. I, we, whoever it may be, has to accept that you’re going have to explain things to people in the same way that…
The average white bloke does as well. There is no average white bloke. Every person is different and they all have needs, mental health needs, families problems, challenges in their lives. And we’ve got to, I think we’re going to be more generous in spirit to each other and invest time. And yeah, okay. I don’t, I’ve got a story. I was in a B and B. This is probably going back about seven or eight years. I went to breakfast in the morning.
I sat down there and the, I think it was a lady came over to take my breakfast order and, so yeah, egg chips or whatever, bacon, full English, whatever it may be. She brings it back and she sort of do you mind if I ask you something? And she said, I don’t meet many trans people. Can I just ask you a few questions? I thought, what I want to do is eat me breakfast and you want me to give you a trans 101 or a breakfast. It’s like, no, no,
Esi Hardy (23:52)
first thing in the morning. Haven’t had any coffee yet.
Joanne Lockwood (23:56)
But I smiled through it and I’ve been in the back of a London taxi. You know, you’d think London cabbies have seen it all, wouldn’t you? So I was picked up from Soho, I think it’s probably two o’clock in the morning in Soho. So, you know, on a Friday or Saturday night, pretty queer central. And I get in the back of the cab, we would get about 100 yards under me and I said, all right love, can I ask you a few questions? I was like, oh, gosh, I don’t know. I look at a trans 101 in the back of a black cab, picked me up from Soho. And over the cabbie, it’s like…
Esi Hardy (24:02)
Thank you.
Yeah.
Shut up.
Joanne Lockwood (24:24)
Do
I get a free fare? Can I swap the education? So sometimes it’s a bit, I’m not saying problematic, sometimes it’s a bit, oh God, here we go again. You’re reducing me down to what you can see. That’s where it becomes frustrating. But I think in both cases, I leant in, I went, of course you can. And I’m still telling the story today. We still tell the story in 10 years, 20 years time. So we’ve got to help people
Esi Hardy (24:34)
Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood (24:47)
find that first thing, that first step and not shut people down. So I think that’s the key thing here is somehow as a, as a marginalized person, you have to sometimes suck it up and educate.
Esi Hardy (24:58)
Yeah, you know, it’s really strange because I kind of I do agree, but I think I sit on the fence with this, which is kind of what you’re saying as well. It’s not, you you can’t you’re asking somebody in the back of a black cab at 2am in the morning is not appropriate because you probably weren’t in the best frame of mind to answer the questions. And similarly, you know, in the B &B, you were also a customer wanting your breakfast. And, know, if somebody asked me questions about my identity,
before coffee, I wouldn’t be very polite in my response. I’d end by saying, please come back in an hour, but right now, get out of my face kind of thing. And I think for me, I do agree. I welcome people genuinely wanting to know because that is how they do educate themselves. That’s how they move themselves along. But I think a little bit of environmental awareness is important as well.
So when I go in, use the example of the asking somebody to cut my food up and it comes back not cut, that is not an unusual situation. When I go into a restaurant and it is cut up the way I’ve asked, I’m more surprised than when it isn’t. I’m waiting for that debate. And when it comes back, I’m like, oh, okay, brilliant, thank you. I can actually just get on with my meal. And I think that, and I’ve been to…
places where we have booked in advance so they know that I’m coming and I’m very, I know that some disabled people don’t tell people they’re disabled and we know all the reasons people don’t say they’re disabled but I think the other reason what sometimes wheelchair users don’t mention it is because they think well why should I? Which is fair enough but I think well I’d rather have a good experience than have to you know find my way when I get there because I haven’t given them warning. So we turn up
after booking, they know that I’m a wheelchair user. And I say, oh, can you open the accessible toilet? And they are like, oh, we don’t know where the key is. So they ran around looking for the key. And I was furious because I was like, look, you knew I was coming. You you knew when this started, now it’s started. I’m still waiting to go to the loo. If any other customer who didn’t need the accessible loo had to deal with the situation, I think that you would,
deal with it differently. And I think whilst it is our job, we do have to suck it up and educate. I also think that we should be enabled and people should realise that we are customers and we are people wanting to have a certain experience. And I think that’s where things get a bit tricky.
Joanne Lockwood (27:34)
Yeah, I think to a certain extent we suffer from the same problem. We are professional EDI educators. I’m professionally trans and I do this for a living. Sometimes it’s hard to separate the professional side from the, actually this is me personal now, especially in today’s climate. So I think that’s the tough bit. But if I was not a…
Esi Hardy (27:42)
Hmm.
Yeah, thanks. Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood (28:00)
an EDI specialist, trans educator, blah, blah, blah. I was an accountant. I was a football player. I was something else. Then I would be less willing to want to be an educator at that point. And I’d be less expecting of it. wouldn’t, that wouldn’t be what I do. If you want to talk about spreadsheet, I could talk about numbers and VAT if you wanted to an accountant. And the danger, I suppose also is pushing your need for education onto somebody.
without you understanding who they are as well, means you wouldn’t get that person’s lived experience, that person’s perspective. I like to think that both of us as professionals have a broader spec where we would say, well, if this is my lived experience, I don’t speak for everybody. And this is the other things that you may want to think about when you’re dealing with maybe someone who’s transmasculine or someone who’s non-binary or a younger person or an older person. So I can contextualize my experience and my opinion
as that with some education around why my opinion is just a sliver of the overall experience. So you would probably do that. You can talk quite adequately about being you in the chair, you wouldn’t necessarily talk about being somebody who has a prosthetic limb or something. You could say, look, I understand a bit what I was like, but I don’t have to take my limb off and clean it and do all those sort of things and da da da.
Esi Hardy (29:10)
Yay.
Joanne Lockwood (29:17)
Yeah, we’ve got relatable experience, not, but we can also explain the difference between that. Whereas the average person may just go, I can tell you about me. And that’s the danger. You then get an education on one person’s perspective.
Esi Hardy (29:30)
It’s very true. think that people apply or write to celebrating disability often saying that they have lived experience, so they’d like to be a trainer. And the very first thing I say is how can you use that lived experience to provide tangible strategy for a business who wants to be inclusive of disabled people?
Because it’s one thing having lived experience, but it’s another thing being able to use that to enable people to further their inclusion strategies. I think lived experience is a key part of who celebrating disability is, but lived experience alone is not enough. It needs to be coupled with something else. And you’re right, Jo, when I talk about… I mean, when I’m talking as Esi on a Saturday, I probably wouldn’t say…
But if somebody was blind, these might be the things you want to think about. If somebody asked me a question about me, I’d answer about me. But if I was talking as a business owner and an inclusion expert, I would absolutely use that pan-disability perspective without saying, I’m the blind person.
because I’m not a blind person. And like you, I would never say I represent disabled people because anyone that says that is talking rubbish because how can you represent? Are you like a billion people? No, you’re not. You’re one person. You can’t represent more than yourself. So I’d love to kind of ask as well what you, we’re talking a lot about kind of lived experience and, and
and leaning into the fact that we are professional disabled people, professional trans people, but how do we protect ourselves? Because all this stuff is all very well and good, but it is exhausting. And we are people that have wives, that have lives, that rhymes deliberately, I know, that have lives outside of us being disabled and transgender. So,
how do we work to protect ourselves and save our energy and safeguard ourselves from actually triggering ourselves when having these conversations?
Joanne Lockwood (31:39)
That’s a good point. If you find the answer, let me know. ⁓ No. ⁓
Esi Hardy (31:42)
Okay. Damn it. was hoping I was going
to write it down.
Joanne Lockwood (31:46)
⁓
I’m sorry, I’m just, having my hormonal brain gap here, but those, think the issue here really is, it’s hard to separate me from who I am and my identity. And inevitably I have to be my own advocate. I have to be my own activist. I have to be my own educator. And one of things I would always like you would do is always when you’re talking with service providers, employers, wherever you’re talking to.
is you quite categorically want to ensure that you’re not pushing the onus of advocacy onto the individual. You’re doing the work beforehand. I suppose I do carry a suit of armour. I wear the suit of armour and you’re ready for those questions whenever they arise. Which is why when we talked about earlier about being in safe spaces with other people who kind of get it, it’s so relaxing in those spaces because
you don’t have to then be an advocate or if you are educating, it’s a shared thing. You’re sharing each other’s experiences. It’s more of a kumbaya campfire moment than it is a kind of a real cognitive effort. I don’t know. Can we ever escape it? don’t know. do I ever want to? I I would love to be just accepted as Joanne without being different in any way.
That’s not the reality of the world I live in, we live in, not in 2026 that we’ll be living now. My, who I am, my identity is up for debate in the media day in, day out. I get GB news interview requests week in, week out about some sort of topic where trans people are put in the center. want a trans person to come on and take some flack on behalf of everybody,
put a critical person on the other end of the phone going, you shouldn’t be doing this. Joanne, what do you think? It’s torrent of abuse. But yeah, that’s the world I live in. I kind of expect people to be polarized about me. And it’s not about not providing accessible stairs or accessible lifts into a building. It’s, am I allowed to have a pee when I get there? You know, in the same way you need a radar key. Do I need a radar key?
I carry one in my handbag just in case these days. You never know. And I’m now perceiving a large chunk of the world to be hostile. Not just ignorant, but actively hostile. And that’s a different place. I think anything I can do to dilute that hostility, to mitigate it, is a good thing.
But then that puts a huge responsibility to be a good representative of who you are. Because the community, the communities are judged by how you show up. You hear the tropes around, you’re just another angry black woman. Black women are angry. Trans people are this. Scottish people are drunks. Irish people kiss the Blarney Stone and talk a lot. We all have these tropes and stereotypes and I think I just want to be a good version of being me.
Esi Hardy (34:25)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (34:35)
And that just happens to be me as being a trans person. So I’m very mindful of how I show up in the world. And that, that’s a huge cognitive load. It’s a huge burden to carry because you’re always feeling like you’re trying to be the best person rather than just going, fuck it. I just want to be me.
Esi Hardy (34:51)
Yeah, when you were telling that. All I could think of that sounds exhausting.
Joanne Lockwood (34:56)
Yeah, it is. Less so a year ago, since the Supreme Court judgment on 16th of April last year, it’s turned the dial up and the noise is considerable now. Whereas before it was just a hum. Now it’s like a brass band playing every time you go out somewhere. It’s like this real distraction. And it’s not all real. Some of it is just perception of the world.
And it’s hard not to internalize the media, the politicians, the governing bodies, the regulators, all these sort of people. The language is coming out of people. It’s hard not to internalise that and start to believe what they say. Takes a brave person or a very strong person to ignore that. And yeah, I’ve got earmuffs and I’ve got headphones. I can turn the noise down, but it’s still…
Esi Hardy (35:32)
Mm-hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (35:43)
it still filters in, you know, know, there’s that background stuff there. Yeah, it is, it is a concern.
I’ve got lots of other things going for me. I consider myself privileged in many ways. So I’m not having a pity party. I’m sharing the burden, if you like. But yeah, it is. It’s noisy. And how do I turn off? I just accept it. Just accept it.
Esi Hardy (36:03)
And you know what, it makes me so angry that the, you know, the responsibility for changing this kind of going back to what you were saying a second ago, seems to be on us as the marginalized, as the oppressed people. It’s not the responsibility on the people that doing this to us that are, are weathering our resilience and battering us down every time we walk out our front door. The responsibility,
still feels as though it lies strongly in our corner where we are the ones that have to be a certain way to disprove what people already think about us.
Joanne Lockwood (36:41)
Yeah, it is, you know, but that does fall on also on men as well. White men, there is a perception now around the, incel movement, the toxic masculinity, the, the not all men type campaigns that are out there, fathers for justice, all those sort things. are, there are many, many men who are being categorized as predators, a threat as well, bullies, whatever. And so there’s, think there’s a lot of pressure on
on the average Joe, if you like, to also be a good person and to stand up and advocate and be a good husband, be a good father. So I think it’s not just we the minority or we the marginalised. If society, if every person in took a bit more responsibility for showing up as the best person they could be and being a good representative of them, not community, just represent themselves well, then the world would be a better place.
It’s the people who don’t take that personal responsibility. The Scallies of the world, if you like, other people who, who do a disservice to everybody, you know, just, I know plenty of trans people who aren’t that nice to be around. You don’t become nice because you’re trans, you know, you’re still a human being. You still have all the other traits. You can be a dick.
Esi Hardy (37:49)
People leave people. Yeah. I have
I have probably said once, you know, just because they’re disabled doesn’t mean they’re not a dickhead. But yeah, they weren’t talking about me. I mean, I’m lovely, but yeah. Talk about a disabled person, but yeah.
Joanne Lockwood (37:57)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Yeah.
I would never say you were dickhead. No, not at all. Never, never, never, never, never, never crossed my mind.
Esi Hardy (38:05)
Well, thank you very much.
I am, same here, same
here. So when I was younger, so I’m in my 40s now, and I always talk about the social model of disability. Because for me, it is the way, I mean, it’s what structures the legislation that protects disabled people. But it also is what structures the empowerment that a lot of us face. And I feel really empowered by the social model.
And I used to have, for me, it kind of took away all the internalised ableism I had about myself.
So when I was young, I used to apologise for everything. I’m sorry for being in the way. I’m so sorry for stepping on, you running over your toe because you were in my space. I’m so sorry for crashing into the door because it wasn’t automatic and it’s shut in my face. I’m so sorry. I’m really, really sorry for falling over when there was no ramp in the first place. I did fall down a flight of stairs and apologise when I got to the bottom. But then…
And in that time, I met who is now my best friend, who’s also a wheelchair user, Lorna. And she hates it when I tell this story, but I’m gonna tell it anyway. When we met each other, I did not like her at all. So we met when we were 19 at uni, and we went for the same audition to drama school. And…
She was like, trying to talk to me and I was like, I don’t want to know you. I don’t want to know you. I don’t want to be associated with any other disabled person because I know what disabled people are like. I know that they dribble and I know that they do all these things and I know that they have chips on their shoulder and I know that they’re lazy and I know that they’re not going to be good actors. I don’t want to be around them. So I…
I kind of moved myself away from Lorna. And this, by the way, is not what I feel about disabled people. This was my internalised ableism that I knew that if I stayed around her, then people would make all these assumptions about me. And eventually I said, I don’t want to be around you. And she said, well, why? I said, because you’re disabled. And she was like, well, you’re disabled as well. I was like, yeah, I don’t really have an answer for that. Okay, let’s go for a drink.
And we’ve been really good friends ever since. But I think, you’re going back to what we were talking about a minute ago about kind of showing up and always being the best of ourselves. I think we need to be in a certain state in order to do that. And I think it’s a lot of responsibility that we put on ourselves to say that we have to do that all the time. Because I definitely in my 20s or in my teens and early 20s was not the Esi that I am now. I was not empowered.
I wanted to be rich and famous on the stage and forego anyone that wouldn’t let me get there. Now my work is about kind of enabling and advocating for disability communities in the workplace because I think everybody should have an opportunity to thrive and succeed. But if you’d asked me in my 20s, it would have been a completely different answer because I was a completely different person.
And I just want to ensure that if people are listening and thinking, well, I don’t go out of the house and I’m not always my best self, I should be better, but we can’t always be the best of ourselves all the time. I would say even now, depending on the day, I don’t do that when I go out of the house. There was, I mean, and I did apologise, there was a couple of weeks ago where I didn’t respond nicely to somebody who was trying to help me.
I did then return and apologise and explain where that response came from. And I felt really bad about it, but I had to give myself a break because there was other stuff going on that he obviously wouldn’t have known about and that I couldn’t control and I didn’t know what was coming out before it came out. So I just want to make clear that although this is really powerful and true, that it’s also the case that it can’t always be the case where we can show up in the best way that we possibly can.
Joanne Lockwood (41:56)
Thank
No, we’re human beings and I think we have to be realistic that we’re not going to get it right every time. And we are maybe more cognisant of the mechanisms of getting it right, but we’re not always best practitioners of it. I’m sure even Mother Teresa said, fuck occasionally, or the equivalent. It doesn’t mean to say that you’re holier than thou 100 % of the time. We all have these frustrating moments. We’re all distracted. We all have stress.
And that’s the emotional intelligence side there is recognizing how you show up and then being accountable for those actions. You you said yourself you went back and apologised, there were many people who would have just driven off and not even given it a second thought. Maybe a narcissistic, um, borderline personality disorder trait, going, I’m right, sod them. Uh, let’s do some more road rage type stuff. And I think we, whilst we’re not perfect, we, we at least recognise when we mess up.
Esi Hardy (42:41)
Mm.
Joanne Lockwood (43:03)
And we want to make, yeah, take, be accountable for those actions, I think. I’m far more willing and able today to be realistic and go, actually, yeah, that’s my bad. I messed up there. Or I’ve got a little pause routine in my head that I use and I encourage other people to use it is before you react, before you speak, just step backwards one step and go, what am I thinking? What am I saying? I often slap myself in the forehead to get the prefrontal cortex kicking in going
slow down, slow down, think about it and then be mindful around what you’re doing. I think that’s a learned behavior. That’s a learned thing you can do is slow down your thinking, be more mindful, be more aware of yourself, be more aware of the other person. Be honest with yourself. You’re not going to get it right every time. And if you mess it up, you’ve got a plan for getting out of it. You know, apologise, be accountable, say, I’m sorry.
Esi Hardy (43:44)
Mm-hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (43:52)
Go back and say, I messed up, sorry, you’re right. And people will, if you’re genuine, most people will forgive you. Most people will lean into that. It’s when you’re just being a dick and you’ve got no empathy in there that people don’t want to lean into that and they’ll treat you badly. So yeah, develop those techniques. That self-awareness, that empathy, that, but go into conversations wanting it to be positive. And then hopefully they are positive.
Esi Hardy (44:13)
And realise as well that you can only control your reaction. You can’t control somebody else’s reaction. So as you say, you might apologise and the response might be, well screw you. But you know, if you’re genuine, you’ve done what you can. And you can understand why they might not be at a place where they’re ready to accept your apology. But you know,
you have to be okay with that. You set an emotion. I’m going to share a quote from Robbie Williams, which I can’t remember off the top of my head, but it’s really good. I think it’s something like, life’s too short. I can’t remember. I’m going to share it on screen, but it’s a really good quote. And obviously I saved it because it was from Robbie Williams, but it’s about kind of, don’t beat yourself up about the things you don’t get right all the time.
Joanne Lockwood (44:57)
No, I think I learned that from a good friend of mine, lady called Pam Burrows. And I’ve seen her, she’s a professional speaker, I’ve seen her on stage and she carries around this large inflatable mallet. And her routine basically goes along and she’s hitting herself on the head with this inflatable mallet. And that’s what we all do. We all think, oh, I should have done that, should have done this and should have got that, have, should have, should should have, should have, all that kind of stuff. And sometimes you just got to go.
I’m okay. I’m okay. I don’t need to double think this. I don’t need to overthink it. We can all do better. We can all learn, but let’s not beat ourselves up because mostly, mostly nobody else notices. We’re judging ourselves and we often judge ourselves really harshly. So, provided you can still be proud of yourself the way you showed up, the way you did something, you don’t have to be perfect. The other saying is, it, was it perfection is the enemy of good enough or something or get your progress?
Esi Hardy (45:44)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood (45:45)
And sometimes you have to say what is good enough? What is good enough in this situation? For the brain surgeon, good enough is the person surviving and all their limbs still work. Failure is where they die or they can’t feel their legs, whatever it may be. So, but good enough making a loaf of bread, as long as there’s no foreign objects in it and it tastes all right, it’s well cooked. If it’s a bit ugly, who cares once it’s in the toaster?
Esi Hardy (45:49)
Yeah.
Joanne Lockwood (46:09)
So yeah, it’s defining what’s good enough. And I think if we show up with good intent, we show up with positive intent and accountability for when things go wrong or we’re not doing it right, then I think that as a human being, that’s the best you can do. Yeah, don’t expect to be perfect, but do expect to be, yeah. I’ll say the accountability, I think is the key there.
Esi Hardy (46:30)
I think so and I completely agree. Just I’m gonna say one more thing before we move on. I completely agree as well. I think that that resonates with me on a personal level. I’m always going, oh, you know, that person’s gonna, oh my God, I probably really hurt their feelings. And then I go back to apologise to them. They’re like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. You know, I forgot all about it. And you know, I think we give ourselves such a hard time when as you say, the other person hasn’t even noticed,
or it wasn’t even a blimp on their radar and we think we’ve done the most terrible thing.
Joanne Lockwood (47:01)
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, one thing that frustrates my wife, Marie, sometimes is she’ll say something and I’ll give her a different response. And she’ll say, why do you never take my side? Why do you always sort of stand out for the other person? So I’m not standing up for the other person. I’m not taking the opposite side. I’m just trying to give you another perspective on what’s going through that other person. They might be completely oblivious. You’re getting frustrated by something that they’re probably going, what? I don’t understand.
And that’s what I’m trying to do often is just balance out that frustration with a kind of, here’s another explanation. It may not be what you’re thinking. And of course that doesn’t always help. So I get accused of supporting others and not backing her. Well, if you’re wrong, you’re wrong, I’m afraid.
Esi Hardy (47:41)
I quite often,
you know, if my friends ask me advice, I say, well, which Esi do you want? Do you want the se that will tell you what you actually think? Or do you want the supportive Esi that tells you you’re right? And then I’ll respond like that. Because I am always the person to say, well, no, you know you asked me a question, I’ve given you the answer, but yeah. But that’s why people like it’s behaviour.
Joanne Lockwood (48:04)
Yeah, well, we
both get paid a lot of money to give our opinion. If you want the free version, you can have the free version or you want the paid version.
Esi Hardy (48:10)
Well, we did.
Yes, I’m
going to change it to that. Would you like the free version or the investment version? So turning this to the workplace, so thinking about kind of the responsibility that leaders should be taking to create this environment when they know that all of this is going on for their employees, that kind of this kind of weathering on people’s resilience is happening
Joanne Lockwood (48:20)
Yeah.
Esi Hardy (48:38)
24/7 and even for the leaders themselves obviously, what should organisations be thinking about, when thinking about how to create these safe environments for people?
Joanne Lockwood (48:51)
I look back at my career and being a leader of organisations and it’s a tough gig. You’re expected to, you’re this interface between the people above you and the people below you and also the people either side of you. And you’ve got this, you’ve got a responsibility to do your job. You’ve got responsibility for budgets and payroll and spreadsheets and this and pressures to get the project finished and all that kind of stuff. You’ve got to be seen as very efficient doing what you’re doing.
You’ve got whole bunch of people that effectively pigeons and pussycats that want to wander off and do their own thing. And each one is unique. And what you end up doing is becoming really, really stressed in this. The lower down the organisation you are as a leader, the more stressful it can be. I get it. And often organisations do not put enough investment in that junior leader tier to train them, upskill them, and to help them become a better leader, a better people person.
Not a manager. We don’t manage things. You manage things, widgets. Managers count things. Leaders give direction, strategy, motivation, and other things. Our leaders, at whatever level, should be treating their leadership as their primary objective, not the spreadsheet, not the project. They need to give the first 80 % of their brain to are my people empowered?
Successful? And in right place? I need to be able to look at each one and say, are you okay? You okay, you okay? And that’s going to be different for every person. Everyone is an individual. So you have to recognize the different communication style, different motivations. What’s going on in their life? How to unpack things, to have a challenging conversation with this person is different to having challenging conversations with this person. Yeah. Some people need to go thumbs up, nice job, well done. Other people want to hug, other people want the month award. So I think
Esi Hardy (50:31)
Mm-hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (50:32)
What we need do really is invest in our leaders to help them develop emotional intelligence, develop culture intelligence, understand about psychological safety, understand about all these things that we talk about with EDI professionals, day in, day out. Most leaders don’t have those tools in their toolbox. And it’s helping, it’s really, really investing the time to develop people in that way. I think that’s the challenge that organisations have at the moment is they promote people
who are great technicians and because they’re great technician they become a leader. That doesn’t necessarily equate. You need to find two pathways. You want senior technician route and leadership route. The senior technician has a great experience and can give you great…
Esi Hardy (51:02)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
outputs.
Joanne Lockwood (51:16)
Outputs, great thoughts, great decisions on the technical stuff, the bits, the widgets. Whereas the leader should be thinking about the people side first. And then their manager, all the way up the tree. If every person had that emotion in terms of that empathy and was able to pass that and filter that down, then the organisation would run far smoother because we both work with organisations, big global multinationals,
who we know that their EDI policies, their inclusion ethos, all of their stuff on paper and the way they talk about it, actually, wow, what a company to work for. But what happens is my experience of your bank comes down to the person I deal with. And if that person isn’t being led correctly, managed correctly, expectations are being set, or if they’re just having a shitty day, my experience is going to be negative, no matter what you’re doing at the top of the tree.
Esi Hardy (51:48)
in and out.
Mm-hmm.
Joanne Lockwood (52:05)
I think organisations probably need to invest more in that one person removed from the front line to help them encourage that thinking. And the airlines did it with the black box thinking, the Simon Sinek methodology, where you’re really empowering people at the front line, the service delivery point to deliver excellent service. And they’re empowered to make decisions rather than having to fire it up. And the computer says, no, we want people who can say, yeah, let me take this on board and deal with it with you.
I got on a bit of soapbox there, does that tick where you were going with that?
Esi Hardy (52:34)
It absolutely did. It’s not about ticking the box, but yeah, nodding along, not just because I’m like, oh God, Lord, but yeah, it makes perfect sense. I completely agree.
Joanne Lockwood (52:39)
Yeah, not even a long. It happens to be often
people ask me a question and I go flying off with a thought and I think, I? I got so far away from the start of the conversation, did I actually cover what we were talking about.
Esi Hardy (52:52)
Yeah,
me too. Watch me in the training session. So in Celebrating Disability, there’s four of us trainers and everybody else, I mean, I don’t run over in my training sessions, but everybody else manages to manage the time really well. And I don’t think any of the delegates have been noticed, but in my training sessions, 10 minutes before the end, I’m like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, because I’ve gone on so much about something. It’s either like…
My key topics are the social model of disability, implementing of reasonable adjustments and the charity model. You know, don’t get me started on the charity model. I’ll go on for ages. So I know what you mean about kind of starting somewhere and going somewhere else, but everything was really relevant. I completely agree that I think the problem in business’s is there’s so many priorities and they’re so busy kind of fighting fires at the moment,
that they forget after they’ve developed their strategy that there’s also that kind of supporting of the implementation of that strategy to go. So if your strategy is about creating great customer service, then how are you enabling people to deliver that customer service? Just as you’re saying, before celebrating disability, I worked for a charity and I worked in the care home for a year and a half, I think before
I was promoted to the head office and my job was to enable the residents that lived there to be able to make choices for themselves. And I advocated for my role also to be about enabling the staff to advocate for themselves because how are you ever meant to deliver something for somebody else if you’re not feeling it for yourself? So completely
100 % with you on that and you know ensuring that people have the right tools and that they have the kind of the safety around them to be able to say actually no, I don’t know, I need you to tell me a different way, I need you to walk it through, I understand the words of what you’re saying, but I don’t understand how that turns into reality of what I’m doing. Can you help me please and for that to be okay?
Joanne Lockwood (54:33)
Mm.
Yeah, a lot of the time it depends what brain chemicals are flying around your head. You know, if you’re stressed, you’re angry, you’re frustrated, you’re under pressure, you haven’t slept, you’re worried about your job, you’re worried about this, psychological safety is low. Those aren’t conducive with empathy and compassion, thoughtfulness, mindfulness about other people. So if you’re putting people in those positions as the leaders or even employees and staff who are dealing with customers, you’re creating those negative brain chemicals.
How can you expect them to behave in a way that you want them to behave in? So you’ve to back off. You’ve got to create these environments where people, I’m not saying if you have to sit cross-legged and say, Kumbuya all the time and say, yeah, man, we’re all we need to create environments where people aren’t hyper-vigilant, hyper-active. The Maslow, we’re right above those psychological and physiological and we’re back in their belongingness,
psychological safety there, we trust the people around us, we trust our processes, we relax when we come into the work. If we’re not creating those environments, then people are going to behave in unexpected ways. They’re going be defensive, they’re going to be aggressive, they’re going to be dismissive, uncommunicative, all those things we know happen. But we still put that pressure on people and drive people into those negative brain chemicals.
Esi Hardy (55:56)
Okay.
So Jo, we are nearing the end of our episode. I do have a few more things that I’d like to talk about with you, but is there anything else you would like people to know or understand about kind of the conversations we were having?
Joanne Lockwood (56:22)
Um, I think we said it a couple of times. If this is not your comfort zone, then we get, get it. We all get it. It’s, it’s a bit, you can learn, you you can, you can learn to be a great leader. You can learn empathy, you can learn compassion, you can learn culture intelligence, you can learn psychological safety and what it means. You can learn to be a really effective leader and develop those techniques. So if you’re feeling that you are lacking or you feel like you want to do more.
These are learned skills. If you want to, you know, I go back to the culture intelligence, the drive, the knowledge, the strategy before you take action. If you follow that path and you’ve got the four tenets of emotional intelligence, self-awareness, self-management, self-regulation, and then building better relationships comes on top of that. You’ve got those sort of approaches, then you can start to care about people. I think the first step really is do you want to care more about people,
Esi Hardy (56:50)
and
Joanne Lockwood (57:15)
and their reactions, their productivity, how they succeed? If the answer is yes, then the next step is invest your time into learning about how you create those positive experiences for people. But it does come with self-awareness that that’s what you want to do and it’s a conscious thing. If you don’t care, that’s fine. All I can do is say, when you do care, come back and let’s have a chat, but develop it.
And it may be where you don’t care about everybody. You care about one person or two people. Well, that’s okay. You’re caring about somebody else. Yeah, but it’s your family, your children, your wife, your partner, your parents. Yeah, develop that caring thinking and empathy thinking.
Esi Hardy (57:52)
Amazing, thank you. So I would like to ask you if you have any influences that you would like people to kind of be able to find to signpost to?
Joanne Lockwood (58:03)
You said, we had a pre-chat a couple of weeks ago and you said you were going to ask this question. I said, well, I don’t really have any influence. It frustrates my daughter when she said, what’s your favourite colour? I said, I don’t have a favourite colour. And she said, I know dad, you want the grass to be green and the sky to be blue. And I said, yeah, there are certain orders of things. I want it to look good on me. That’s all I care about. So the colours don’t matter, but my favourite influences. I think a lot of people have inspired me over the years. I’ve mentioned
I gave you some credit, a lot of credit for some early thinking. I quite a lot of people in the space we both coexist in have been significant influences. I don’t think it’d be fair to name names, but there are people in the disability space, in the menopause space, in the parenthood space. My wife and I recently become carers for our parents dealing with
end of life and also caring for people who are still going, but they’re elderly. So my mum’s been a significant influence. I think if I had one medal to give, I’d have to tear it in half and give it between Marie my wife, and my mum, who have both taught me how not to be such much of a dickhead.
Esi Hardy (59:17)
I love that.
Joanne Lockwood (59:18)
Maybe our daughter owes a bit of that because she would always call me out for being a dick. So I think those closest to me have definitely influenced my thinking. And during my gender transition, it was very easy to be a dick. And I think those people, those three people, my mum, my wife and my daughter, all stuck with me in a way and helped me become a better person and keep being a better person.
Esi Hardy (59:42)
Thank you. How can people find you? How can they get in touch with you?
Joanne Lockwood (59:47)
Uh, Joanne Lockwood, um, is Joanne with an E, not an A, never a Joanna. It’s always a Joanne or Jo. Uh, if you Google me, I’d like to think I claim the first three or four pages at least of Google before it gets to no more results. I think there’s a couple, I think there’s a couple of nurses. I think there’s a nurse somewhere in the country who is Joanne Lockwood. She must really hate me because she is getting tagged in on things on LinkedIn. Um, and there’s a couple of people in the States that
Esi Hardy (1:00:00)
Just Edmonds.
Joanne Lockwood (1:00:13)
kind of get tagged in occasionally. But as far as I’m concerned, in my world, I’m the only one. LinkedIn is my stomping ground. So Jo Lockwood I’ve got over 30,000 connections on LinkedIn. So sorry, you’ll have to follow me. You have to follow me. I can’t. It’s one in one out at the moment. So unless you’re lucky and get me on a one out day, there’s no room to go in.
Esi Hardy (1:00:28)
Yeah.
I’m in everybody,
so I’ve got a space, it’s all right. I got in early.
Joanne Lockwood (1:00:38)
Yeah, that’s
okay. You can join you. My website is seechangehappen.co.uk or joannelockwood.co.uk and my new initiative is thetransinclusiontoolkit.co.uk and that’s for helping businesses, organisations, charities, third sectors become trans inclusive and the strap line is trans inclusion, done right. And that’s what it’s all about. Trans inclusion, done right. So the thetransinclusiontoolkit.co.uk
That’s my current project.
Esi Hardy (1:01:05)
Okay, brilliant. So all of that will be linked in the show notes, everyone. Joanne, thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed our conversation. It was nothing like we planned, but it’s been brilliant. I’ve loved it. Thank you very much for your time. Thanks, everyone. I hope that you got a lot out of this episode. I’d love to hear what you think. So as my favourite content creator says, who is Eleanor Neal, a true crime content creator, share in your comments and I will read them. And I look forward to seeing you next time. Okay, thanks everyone. Bye.