Beth Stallwood 00:00:00 - 00:01:53
Hello and welcome to the WorkJoy Jam podcast. I'm your host, Beth Stallwood and in today's episode, I am joined by Lauren Neal. Lauren has a history of working in the engineering sector, a sector that is often dominated with men, and we talk today about her experience of being a woman in that world and some things that have been great for her, some things that she's found challenging and how she has turned that, from what someone said to her once, was really great fodder for a book, into not just a book Valued at work, but into an approach around how we can help people, how we can help organisations be more inclusive, and how we can think about doing our jobs as leaders and managers and colleagues and friends and teammates really well, rather than some of the things that maybe don't happen so well in industry and in our workplaces. I really hope you enjoy this conversation.

Welcome to the WorkJoy Jam. I am really pleased today to be joined by the wonderful Lauren Neal, but rather than me introduce Lauren, why don't you tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do, and maybe a bit about how you came to do what you do.

Lauren Neal 00:01:54 - 00:03:03
Hi Beth, I'm really happy to be here. My name is Lauren Neil. As Beth said, I have worked in the energy sector for 18 years as an engineer turned project manager. I am a chartered engineer, chartered project professional and most recently as of last year, a published author. While I stay in my day job, I am an engineer turned project manager. I am really passionate about helping women in STEM, particularly avoid some of the, I'm going to say, more negative experiences I've had in my career, but also I know that it's not just women in STEM that can be impacted being minorities and being the only voices in the room. So I'm really passionate about making sure that everybody feels valued at work and feeling like they are valued for their views, their thoughts, their skills, their experiences. And I'm just very much against ticking boxes for the purposes of demographics.

Beth Stallwood 00:03:03 - 00:03:19
Amazing. Lovely introduction and the image I have of you is wearing many different hats. So engineer, project manager, author. It would be lovely to find out a little bit more about that so tell us a little bit about how did you originally get into the engineering world?

Lauren Neal 00:03:20 - 00:06:10
Well, the funny story that I always share is when I was six years old my dad bought me this Lego Technic JCB for my birthday and it was meant to be age 9-11 or something and he helped me build it and I remember him saying to me, you're my little engineer, and I never thought anything of it. Then at school I remember this girl saying to me, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I said, my dad says I'm going to be an engineer. And she said, you can't be an engineer, that's a man's job. True story. So it wasn't something that I thought too much of as I was growing up, but I really enjoyed maths and computing at school, and it was my tech studies teacher, when I was applying to Uni, asked me what I was applying to. I was kind of going more down the software computing route. And he said to me, do you want to go into an industry that is changing so much, because this was 2002, versus the principles of engineering will never change. And he said, and you're quite good at it. So I thought, well, I'll split the difference and I did electronic and electrical, specialising in computer engineering and I was one of very few women on the course. When I graduated, there were twelve of us in the class who got a masters and only two were female. Now, I didn't think that was weird. I just thought, yeah, I just happened to be into engineering and other people are into art or other things that I am not. I didn't see it as a thing. When I started in the workplace again, it just wasn't something that hit me between the eyes that it was an issue for me. But I ended up working for five different companies in the first six years where when I first started and each time I was trying to find somewhere that fit because especially the first two jobs, I thought I was going to do one thing and then I ended up doing things like being on the IT help desk, setting up usernames and passwords. And the second one in particular, when I raised this to them, they said to me that was all I could do with my Masters in Electronic Electrical Engineering and if I wanted to do something else, I'd have to go back to Uni and do chemical engineering. So I did experience some pretty poor behaviours where I was working for a guy who openly said women belong in the home and in the kitchen and when I spoke up about the poor behaviours I was experiencing, they terminated my contract.

Beth Stallwood 00:06:10 - 00:06:11
Wow.

Lauren Neal 00:06:11 - 00:07:36
And it was 2009 and I even spoke to a lawyer about it and they said I would have a great case for constructive dismissal but the law didn't protect me because I hadn't been there long enough. So I then literally put my CV everywhere, went to a different company and they trained me to be a subsea engineer and it was great. I had a great job, a great boss. He was much, much older. He was in his mid sixties and I remember he just came over to my desk and put this procedure on my table and said to me, Lauren, you need to go to site. Go and witness this test. We don't have an inspector on, you go, and that's what I did and spent about six months going back and forth to this site, witnessing all these different tests of this power cable. And then sometimes they even let me do it because I was there so often that they knew me and then I went offshore with it and installed it and it just kind of went from there. So, you know, I did change companies after that, but it was for different reasons then, it was like growth and so on. But, yeah, I know we'll come back to it, but I'm always wanting to be balanced about it. Yes, I've had some negative behaviours, but that guy's name was Joe who just trusted this person who was new and young and different, and he just said, on you go. Go to site.

Beth Stallwood 00:07:38 - 00:07:52
Wow. It's a really interesting story in many different ways. I've got so many questions for you, so I'll pick a few out that we can go through. Isn't it interesting that even at a young age, when you're interested in something, someone says, that job isn't for you, that's for boys..

Lauren Neal 00:07:53 - 00:07:54
I know, at six years old as well.

Beth Stallwood 00:07:54 - 00:08:19
At six years old, somebody can have an opinion about a gender defined role and they do say by eight years old, you know, in primary school, kids do have gender specific roles in their mind already. So it's not, it's not totally unprecedented. It's actually quite well researched but it's quite a stark thing, isn't it, to think about? You cannot be that.

Lauren Neal 00:08:20 - 00:08:40
I know, and that's the thing. At that point, I just kind of felt like, oh, why is she saying that to me? I didn't, you know, because, you know, you just kind of feel a little bit hurt, I suppose, at that point because I didn't understand anything more than I had just sat and built this thing with my dad. That's what he said. And I was like, yes, that's what my dad says.

Beth Stallwood 00:08:41 - 00:08:49
Yeah, but also like how clever your dad was, knowing that at six years old, that's what you were going to end up being.

Lauren Neal 00:08:50 - 00:09:12
It's really funny. Because especially all those years later when I went into subsea, because he used to be a diver in the North Sea, which is how I ended up being born and grew up in Aberdeen, because he's originally from London. And, yeah, it's a funny thing because then I was like, is that nature nurture all these years later.

Beth Stallwood 00:09:12 - 00:09:44
Something in the DNA maybe there about back to the sea being called there in some particular way? So I'm fascinated by that and then isn't it interesting that you didn't think it was unusual that you were one of the only females in your class, but then you experience what is a terrible experience in your first few jobs around people. I believe that some people still think that about women. I do believe it because I know it's true. Very few people say those things out loud anymore.

Lauren Neal 00:09:46 - 00:12:14
I know. So that happened in 2009. If I think about it, from then until now, I've heard it's kind of all the extremes. Oh, you only got the job because you're a woman. Or don't worry about redundancy, because, you know, even just a few years ago, I was told you tick the diversity box and that was said out loud. And that was only two years ago, which is crazy to me that we are still there. Now up until probably 2020, and I feel embarrassed to admit that, but I was one of these people that, and I'll say one of these women that thought, okay, maybe the reason I'm not progressing is because maybe I don't, I'm not articulate enough, maybe I'm not succinct enough. Maybe I'm not this, maybe I'm not that, and I spoke to a friend of mine who's probably about, I don't know, six or seven years older than me, and she said to me, Lauren, you sound just like me. But that wasn't enough to put this light bulb on in my head. It was when I spoke to another friend of mine, I was having a bit of a vent because I was having a bad day, and I just said, I just feel like it makes no difference if I go to work or not and she said to me, and she is now probably in her late twenties, so she was a little bit earlier than that, and she said, Lauren, I know we're very different levels, but I feel exactly the same. And I went, no, because when you are in your early to mid twenties, you should be it. You're an absolute sponge for experiences and learning and opportunities and all of that. And I was so mad that she was feeling completely redundant because her ideas weren't being listened to and the work that she was doing anybody could have done, and she just didn't feel like she was offering anything unique. And this lady, she is brilliant, you know, you can spot these superstars, and that suddenly just put this light bulb in my head that I went, hang on a second. It's not me. This is happening to a lot of people. And as soon as I saw that and I started asking the questions, particularly when I was doing the research for my book, I started seeing the same scars everywhere.

Beth Stallwood 00:12:16 - 00:12:49
Tell us a little bit about how you go from being, before we get to the book, but how do you go from being a subsea engineer, which I don't even really know what one of those is, so maybe you need to explain to me what one of those people is. I'm imagining you in some kind of diving kit underwater, fixing things, and I feel like that is probably wrong. So tell me what that is and how you go from that to being a project manager, and then how you go from project manager to also writing a book.

Lauren Neal 00:12:51 - 00:15:19
So when I was a subsea engineer, my thing, at least where I started, was the very first job I did where I was going to inspect a power cable, and then I went offshore with it. I then graduated from power cables, which had electrical cables and fiber optics into it, in it, to umbilicals, which are basically power. The same type of power cable, but had tubes, steel tubes in it. And what the umbilical does is connect from a platform offshore to the equipment subsea, and it opens and closes valves. It can also read pressures, temperatures, and it basically sends that information up to the top sides for people to view and so on. So my job was managing the suppliers that make these pieces of equipment. So I would. I think that's where I kind of went from engineer to project manager, because when I started off, I was reviewing all of the documents, reviewing the testing and so on, making sure that all the tests were as expected and then I went into more of performance management. So cost schedule, and as you can tell, I'm a talker, I'm a people person. So I would build these really good relationships with the suppliers because I'd spend a lot of time with them. So that was then when I made that change, also because I changed companies, and they were very clear on, are you an engineer or are you a project manager? Every time someone makes you make that decision or saying you're either this or that. I go, why? Why can't you do both? So I went the project management route and, yeah, I still enjoy it because I like spending time with the suppliers, getting to know them. You ask any of my previous suppliers, they'll all be like, yeah, Lauren's quite hard on you, but I'd like to say I'm a lot more refined than I used to be. I remember sitting in front of them, it must have been over ten years ago now, and they gave me this schedule and I just went, should I just throw this in the bin because you miss it every single time. And they just looked at me and went, thank you for the feedback.

Beth Stallwood 00:15:20 - 00:15:22
Thanks for being a demanding customer.

Lauren Neal 00:15:23 - 00:15:28
Now I'm thinking, I wouldn't say that these days. I think that was a bit rough around the edges then.

Beth Stallwood 00:15:28 - 00:16:35
In your learning zone, you are phasing into who you are today. A couple of things to pick up on that before we go into how you get from there to authoring your wonderful book, is thinking about this and how the world of work is quite often, you have to be this or that. You have to fit into a nice, neat box, and if you don't fit into that nice, neat box, we don't quite know what to do with you. So when you didn't fit on the IT help desk into the nice, neat box of just resetting everyone's passwords and being thankful, etc, and you wanted more from that, people were like, no, you have to go and be a chemical engineer and retrain, but then you go somewhere which maybe you do fit better, and they go, oh, well, we'll train you to do the subsea engineering job. We're going to train you how to do that and then you can go and do this and then we're going to give you a bigger bit of that and then suddenly you're in the world of project management and it's happened almost organically and you probably never set out and said, I'm going to be a project manager in this world, but the opportunities that you were offered and given when people didn't put you in a single box have allowed you to get somewhere in a different way.

Lauren Neal 00:16:35 - 00:17:59
Absolutely. You know, I don't think it's ever been described how you've put it there, but it's been exactly that. And I think for me, when I look back on my career, that it's been those times where people have let me find my space and like you say, grow organically, that I feel it's always worked really well. I mean, after I had done umbilicals, by the time I came out of that, it was five years, and again, I was at a different company by then. It was a different guy and he said to me, you need to be stretched and he put me on this project and it actually ended up taking me out to Azerbaijan for five years. I remember sitting with him and, rather than just umbilicals, suddenly all the subsea equipment was going to come to me after it was built, come to me in country and it was my job to work with three suppliers to make sure that they had their site receipt tests done so they hadn't been damaged in transit, all the mobilisation checks ready for installation offshore, and then provide the vendor personnel to go offshore to help with installation, commissioning and so on. I didn't have a clue about half of this stuff and he sat down with me and we had a whiteboard and he wrote down, these are all your stakeholders. Go figure it out.

Beth Stallwood 00:17:59 - 00:18:32
And it does sometimes take somebody to give you that opportunity and to push you a little bit and to see that you have more potential, but you don't know which direction to put that in. And that's great. So you've had, like, the terrible experiences and that's a really great experience and I always think at certain points in our career, we have to be a beginner again. And that sounds when you've got an expertise, you're like, oh, being a beginner and not knowing what I'm doing doesn't feel great at this point but if you ever want to grow anymore, you have to be accepting of being a beginner again.

Lauren Neal 00:18:33 - 00:19:00
Absolutely. I think I have felt, or I've had the most rewarding roles when it really was sink or swim and it was just chucked out. Go figure it out. I mean, the first times I went offshore, it was very much figure it out scenarios. Going to another country where I didn't even speak the language. That's a figure it out scenario.

Beth Stallwood 00:19:00 - 00:19:11
And I'm just sitting here wondering whether an engineer is the best person to give a figure it out scenario to. It's like, right, let's work out the steps involved. Let's work out what works here.

Lauren Neal 00:19:12 - 00:19:33
It's a funny one. I did this psychometric assessment a couple years ago, and one of them said that in the scale of comfort and uncertainty, I'm very high in being comfortable in the uncertainty and I think that is what helps me throughout all of this.

Beth Stallwood 00:19:33 - 00:19:45
Well, yeah, because, going offshore. I imagine one of those, like, offshore rigs is not the most hospitable place on earth.

Lauren Neal 00:19:45 - 00:20:10
No. I mean, the first offshore trip I had, this one was actually quite nice. It was on a boat and the guy who was on days, it's a really weird, convoluted story because his dad worked with my dad, and we worked that out while we were offshore. And he was on days, I was on night and my trip was only supposed to be maybe a week or two.

Lauren Neal 00:20:10 - 00:21:20
It ended up being six weeks in total, because it really was a what could go wrong, did go wrong job. And the first time, this guy's name was Patrice, took me out on the back deck. He said to me, you're probably going to fall over at some point. Just try not to break any bones. He said it very straight to me and then he said, okay, first thing, look at what the crane's doing and then he went through the induction of what to check out, what to look out for when you're on the back deck. And a few days later, he says to me, so when's the last time you went out? And I went, I haven't. And he said, why? And I said, because I don't want to fall. And he just started to laugh, and he went, oh, that backfired. He said because he'd worked offshore for so long, he'd met so many young people who thought they were invincible, and they go off, and they're just completely oblivious to the risks there. And he said, but you knew it was dangerous. And he went, come on. And then he went with me offshore because by then, we were sailing, so it was a little more wobbly and he was like, are you okay?

Beth Stallwood 00:21:23 - 00:21:38
You see, people along the way to help, support and guide. So tell me a little bit about the story from doing your day job to thinking about writing your book, and how did that come about?

Lauren Neal 00:21:40 - 00:23:10
So I guess it starts in Azerbaijan. I went out to Azerbaijan in 2015, and a colleague of mine said to me, do something for the women when you go out there. And I didn't, you know, she said it to me. It landed in my brain, but it didn't, you know, I didn't really think too much of it then when I went out there, you know. I probably had the first year of just figuring things out and then I had some experiences because we were changing scope from one team to another and it was a big group of guys. Once on an email that went internal and external, I asked a question on it and he replied, Lauren, I'm removing you from this because you're not technical. And I was livid because my role at that point, I was a project manager, I wasn't an engineer, even though I'm a chartered engineer, I don't forget that. But they just deemed me not technical and I had this pretty bad experience with this team where they were sending reply to all emails about me, which weren't very nice and it all came to a thing when an email was surfaced, got reported, and then the company took action, as they should. But when things like that would happen, I would go home and I talked to my partner and he would say to me, don't worry, it's all good book material.

Beth Stallwood 00:23:11 - 00:23:14
And it was, how right could he be?

Lauren Neal 00:23:14 - 00:28:04
It was this throwaway comment that we used to say that, oh, this will make a good book one day. Because it was, I just seemed to be a magnet for this stuff. There were some, you know, big situations that happened and smaller situations, and yet it I couldn't go a year without something. So I became very accustomed to HR investigations and how they all work and all of this, and I can smile about it and say, look, I live to tell the tale. Sometimes speaking up is a good thing. Of course, I experienced in 2009 where it wasn't so I've definitely seen both sides and so then I started getting involved in the women's network for the company I was working for there and I started noticing that, I mean, culturally, it's very different in Azerbaijan, that it's very hierarchical. Women sometimes aren't comfortable speaking out in front of men but also, then when you put the expat layer in there and you get international people, there's that added cultural difference. And what I started realizing was there were certain things that I had just picked up in the UK about how you present yourself at work, how you make yourself visible in the right way. Not that, hey, look at me. It's the how you speak about the work, but you're inadvertently showing what you can do at the same time without being too direct about it. And I started working with these women on how to, clean up their internal CV’s, how do you make your summary? Some of them were like three pages long and I was like, no, it's a paragraph that you put at the top. Who are you? What do you do? What are you passionate about? You know, it needs to just hit people between the eyes and so I got really interested in that and again, listening to their stories. Like I say, it wasn't until later that I got that light bulb moment, but at that point, it was just, oh, I've got some knowledge and experience I can share. So, fast forward to 2020. Where are we now? 24? So it was 22 and I was back in the UK and my partner just says to me one day, are you ever going to write this book? And I just went, I'll show you. And I had been on this course, it was one where I did that psychometric profile and I met Kathryn Bishop and she said to me, she knows somebody who can help authors and connected me with Alison Jones. And Alison was running her boot camp. It wasn't the boot camp yet, it was her challenge. So, yeah, the two week book proposal challenge and so I joined it and I quite enjoyed it. Then I joined the boot camp and then by the time I put the contents page together, that was when I put a post on LinkedIn asking for women in STEM, or people who know women in STEM, to come and share their stories with me and the response was incredible. And like I said, I'm listening to these women and each time I'm thinking, it's the same. It didn't matter that they were in banking or in software or in cybersecurity, it was all the same. It was about, you know, saying something in a meeting room and being ignored completely and then they just continued talking. Or sometimes, someone said, oh, it doesn't matter if you get made redundant, you've got a husband, they'll look after you. And these are things all being said in the last five years? So I just really lit a fire under me. And working with Alison really sort of shaped my thinking, because originally I said, I want to do something for women in STEM, but then the more we talk about it, I said, but it's not the women in STEM that are broken, it's the workplace cultures. And like I said, me having spent time internationally, I saw some really quiet non-Western men also feeling like they weren't being included or they were suddenly being given deputy roles instead of the actual role. And I'd never seen any western person have to do that. So I'm like, well, why do they get the manager job and that person gets a deputy manager? Hmm. And once you see it, you can't unsee it. So now I'm just quite opinionated and I point it out when I see it.

Beth Stallwood 00:28:07 - 00:28:51
And I think this is such a good point and one that I would really, really support in many different ways, is this idea that we need to do all the work with women because they need to be different or, you know, we need to change how women are so they act more in line with how a man would do it. It's just so old fashioned. But actually thinking about how do we change workplace cultures to help people feel valued, to make sure people are included, to take down some of those systemic issues. That's a really important piece of work and I think that's where your book comes at it from, doesn't it? Is thinking about how do we make organisations understand this stuff better and do it better.

Lauren Neal 00:28:51 - 00:30:12
Absolutely. I've had some friends of mine when they've read my book, so the women who have read my book, the general view is either you get it because suddenly they're feeling very validated seeing their stories. And a couple of times people have said, well, yeah, but I didn't learn anything from it and I'm thinking because the book is actually intended for men to read it. So I love it if women read it. Even better if they pass on to a male colleague. Because I have met so many men who are really very good people and they just have no idea this stuff is going on. I even spoke to this guy last year and he said to me, Lauren, am I just sheltered that I've never heard any of this stuff? And I just said to him, but why would you. It's not just going to come to you. You need to ask people, even me, myself all these years ago, I felt the problem was me. And it wasn't until I started talking to people and asking people and being vulnerable myself and sharing, look, this has happened to me, then someone will say, me too. That's what I say to all these guys. It's like, well, how do you know?

Beth Stallwood 00:30:15 - 00:30:27
Yeah. So it has to be an active pursuit of changing what's going on. It can't be a, I'm just waiting for it all to come to me with all the answers. People need to do something.

Lauren Neal 00:30:28 - 00:30:41
Absolutely and the thing is, if someone is not feeling valued, they're not going to go and advertise it because especially if they think the problem's them, because it's like, hey, I think I suck at my job. No one's going to say that.

Beth Stallwood 00:30:42 - 00:30:51
No, because we're all going to be in survival mode going, don't tell them that you think you suck at your job because then everyone else will definitely think you suck at your job and then you won't have a job anymore.

Lauren Neal 00:30:51 - 00:31:21
Exactly. And the thing is, I'm absolutely sure there will be people that will think that they're not very good at various aspects. I don't know about anyone else, but I just feel like you end up going internal and saying, okay, and you become in that fight or flight mode. So what do I need to do next? What do I need to do next? How do I get this person off my back? And you get so focused on the here and now that you don't see the big picture then.

Beth Stallwood 00:31:24 - 00:31:30
And then the challenge comes to you, oh, you're not strategic enough or you're not, you know, it's like, arghhhh.

Lauren Neal 00:31:30 - 00:32:16
Yes, And there's always going to be someone saying, oh, what about this? What about that? What about that? And it's trying to shift that whole piece in there. So, you know, when I coach women on this, I keep going back to, what do you want? Like, do you want to be the CEO? Do you want to be a project manager? Do you want to be an engineer? Do you want to work in commercial? Do you want to travel the world? You know, what is it? It's so important to know what you want, but also what you don't want as well, and then craft a way to get that, and that's outside of whatever the company is saying. These are the career paths because you know what, you can always leave and go do something else.

Beth Stallwood 00:32:18 - 00:32:43
It's so funny. We get stuck in our, can only be in this zone, in this area, and I'm a specialist here. But your career is a great example of showing it doesn't have to be in one place. You can still do work in STEM, but your work in STEM is now as a project manager and not as an engineer. So there may not be a career written by the organisation that says you can go from here to here because they're different skills, but it doesn't mean it's not possible.

Lauren Neal 00:32:43 - 00:32:53
Absolutely. I honestly believe we're going to get more and more anomalies where people haven't just followed that linear career path.

Beth Stallwood 00:32:55 - 00:33:40
I believe so, too and I think if we think about how the world of work is changing, whether that's in STEM or outside of STEM, different jobs that existed 20 years ago don't exist anymore. And there'll be jobs in five years time that we can't even imagine right now because the technology will make things different and we'll be like, oh, it'll be like the equivalent of people. All organisations have a social media manager, well, that didn't exist 20 years ago, but there'll be something that comes up that we will have no idea about. Oh, and someone's going to go and do those jobs. So it will be people who've done different jobs before and I believe the idea that you kind of go into one job and you stick at it, or you have one specialism, I think that's changing.

Beth Stallwood 00:33:40 - 00:33:51
I think people are a bit more open to that as long as we don't get a lot of people in leadership roles doing their, no, you have to fit nicely into our very strict shaped box.

Lauren Neal 00:33:51 - 00:34:26
Absolutely. And I think even I've got this inkling that sometimes people just don't know what to do with me, and especially now I've got the author aspect to it, I had people say to me, oh, you promote yourself a lot on LinkedIn. And it wasn't meant in a nice way. And this was a few years ago, this guy said this to me, and just a few weeks ago, he said, Lauren, I'm looking at posting on LinkedIn. Do you know how IP works? And I was thinking, oh, look who's come around.

Beth Stallwood 00:34:28 - 00:35:09
Not an early adopter of the Lauren way, but one who's now looking at you as a role model. So it's interesting, isn't it, about maybe being, what would I call you, a trailblazer? Somebody who's unusual, someone who kind of pushes the edges of the boxes, somebody who takes that, why can't you be an author and a project manager who's also an engineer? Why not? Why can't you have multiple hats and different people, feel things different ways? I personally find variety to be really joyful and to be able to do different things and learn new things and become different things, I find really, really interesting. And it doesn't mean that you aren't a specialist at what you do. It's just that you can have more than one specialism.

Lauren Neal 00:35:10 - 00:35:58
Absolutely. I remember I had a manager a few years ago now, and he said to me, he said, Lauren, you seem really passionate about…this is when I was helping out with the women's network, and I was a regional lead there for a while, which is great, because I always say to people, if you get a chance to be part of an employee resource group, do it because it opens up so many doors for networking at many, many different levels. And my manager at the time, I don't know, now I'd probably say he was maybe a little bit jealous because of the circles I was meeting, but he then said to me, well, Lauren, if you care about people, maybe you should just go into HR. And I'm listening to him and thinking, well, I actually think good leaders need good people skills, and that could be a leader in any area.

Beth Stallwood 00:35:59 - 00:36:24
Yeah. It's so interesting because as a person who has worked in HR, that says more about that person's leadership than it does anything about you. The idea that only if you can only do people stuff if you work in HR, and you probably could have a very successful career in HR if that's what you wanted to do. But that's really interesting, isn't it, about how people reveal quite a lot about who they are when they challenge and critique other people's way of doing things?

Lauren Neal 00:36:24 - 00:36:33
Absolutely. I've always found that people are desperate to put me in a box, and they don't know which box to put me in.

Beth Stallwood 00:36:34 - 00:36:42
Because you're not in a box. You will not be in a box. You're not a cube. You could be a dodecahedron or something like that.

Lauren Neal 00:36:42 - 00:36:43
Absolutely.

Beth Stallwood 00:36:44 - 00:36:50
That's the right one. Dodecahedron is the twelve sided, twelve sided shape, isn't it? It's one of those.

Lauren Neal 00:36:51 - 00:37:00
It is. Funnily enough, even though I'm an engineer, the reference to me comes from the Simpsons, where Lisa was trying to get Maggie to say dodecahedron.

Beth Stallwood 00:37:00 - 00:37:48
That's probably where it comes from for me as well, because I'm like, why is that particular shape in my head? I have no idea. But maybe it was from the Simpsons. I love that. We don't all have to be nice, square cubie boxes. We can actually have lots of different facets to us and I think that's such a good message for anyone out there who is thinking about developing into a new role or a different skill, who is thinking, this organisation doesn't value me in the way that I want to be valued. So actually, hello, I can go and step and do something else or do something the same, but somewhere different, where you have the type of manager that challenges you and gives you opportunities, not the ones who say, no, please continue doing everything the way we want you to do it. And I think that's a really good segue into our quickfire questions. How do you feel about answering some quick fires?

Lauren Neal 00:37:48 - 00:37:50
Yeah, let's go for it.

Beth Stallwood 00:37:50 - 00:37:56
Right. I know that you have your book, but I'd love to know what book are you currently reading?

Lauren Neal 00:37:56 - 00:38:14
So I'm actually rereading the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. I read it when I was at Unit and it is an absolutely timeless book and I still quote it to people. I'm a complete Covey nerd, but it's a great book.

Beth Stallwood 00:38:14 - 00:38:35
Yeah, it's a great book. And I also love a good read of something that you've read before. Sometimes I do things like I read and then I'll listen to it and kind of do it differently. And I think you always take something new when you re-read great stuff like that and you can't go wrong with the Seven Habits. It's all good stuff. Have you got the newer version where he's got the 8th habit as well?

Lauren Neal 00:38:36 - 00:38:45
I don't. I've actually got the existing one that I had all those years ago that I dug out because it's also nice to have a book that you've read before because it feels read.

Beth Stallwood 00:38:45 - 00:38:56
Yeah, I'm all about the physical hard copy of a book. I love that kind of feeling of them. Excellent. For you personally what is always guaranteed to bring you a bit of work joy?

Lauren Neal 00:38:58 - 00:39:28
People, I think. I mean, okay, I can see people can also bring the complete opposite, but I love working with people at different levels, especially when you get the fresh ones coming in, the brand new ideas and you just see this spark in them. I say when you can see someone and you can see potential and you can see the talent, it lights me up because I think, oh, you're going to have a fantastic career. We just need to make sure we enable that.

Beth Stallwood 00:39:28 - 00:39:53
Yeah. And I think that's an interesting thing, isn't it, about how do we enable that spark to become something thing versus forever trying to dampen it down? And I feel like in your early career, your spark, they were trying to dampen your spark and you're trying to, like, build this up. Love that. And what is one bit of advice that you have received in your life that you always find yourself coming back to?

Lauren Neal 00:39:55 - 00:41:01
So it was something someone said to me at a coffee shop once, and he said to me, there is always more going on than you know. And I sit and now share this with people and I do come back to it because it's so easy to take a situation or take something someone has said to you or various things and think they don't like me or they're doing it to get at me. And it could be absolutely nothing to do with you and it's one of those that now, and again, I'm tuned into it. I hear people talk about it, and now I can say, actually, this is what's going on in the background, if I happen to have knowledge about it, or if not, I say how do you know this isn't happening or that is happening? And they go, oh. And it's just that looking at things from different perspectives. So if you always go along the view of if I don't know what's happening, and there's something that I am not aware of, probably puts you in a good space.

Beth Stallwood 00:41:01 - 00:41:35
Yeah and it's so funny, isn't it? We all internalize this idea that if something's not quite right, it must be something to do with us. And I think, like, 99.9% of the time, it's got nothing to do with us whatsoever but we feel like it has because something doesn't feel right. But if you go in with that, you could be more curious, you could ask more questions. You can find out more. You can, I think, have more empathy for other people when maybe they're not being at their best. There's so many different things that you can do. And I think that's a great piece of advice. And I do think that coffee shops are a place where we get really good advice.

Lauren Neal 00:41:36 - 00:41:58
I read it somewhere that they said it's something about hot drinks. They said specifically, if you put it in both hands, that's a time for being open. I don’t know, apparently there's something psychological about it. If you've got heat between both hands on a cup or a cup of soup or something like that, you are more open to receiving advice. And I thought, oh, that's quite clever.

Beth Stallwood 00:41:59 - 00:42:29
That's fascinating. I've never heard that before. I was thinking more like coffee and cake, like caffeine and sugar may have helped us have a great conversation, but I love that idea that it's actually the coffee and holding something and being more open to it. Well, all of those things can be true, and that could all be good. What is one practical thing that people listening can do today, tomorrow, the next day that you think might help them get a little bit more joy in their working life?

Lauren Neal 00:42:30 - 00:43:00
Advocate for others. I either sway between networking, like building your networks or advocating for others. But I think the advocating is a lot more actionable on the individual and that can be advocating for someone senior, a peer, or someone more junior, but be that person that speaks up for that person when they are not in the room. It's so rewarding doing that, especially when it works out for the person.

Beth Stallwood 00:43:00 - 00:43:46
Yeah, it's so good and I think as well, I call it cheerleading. Like cheerleading for others actually helps remind you that you could cheerlead for yourself as well. I don't think there is a negative involved with this at all. It's like a good thing for them, good thing for you and it helps everyone believe in themselves and it helps organisations understand what people are great at as well. So amazing stuff, Lauren, as we come to the end of our conversation, it's been great. I think we could probably do a few hours and go like, I properly want to know the outfit you wore when you're in the, on the undersea sub sea stuff, but maybe we'll get a picture and put that on our social so you've got any, like in your gear that would be amazing. But where can people find out more about you and your work if they are interested in finding out more?

Lauren Neal 00:43:47 - 00:44:21
Definitely come and find me on LinkedIn. I'll share the link so that we've got them. I'm trying to use Instagram more, but LinkedIn is my platform of choice. So absolutely find me there. I am hoping later this year to have valuedatwork.com operational, right now it's just a landing page. Or as we talked about, my book, Valued at Work, shining a light on bias to engage, enable and retain women in STEM, available from all good bookshops online and in person.

Beth Stallwood 00:44:22 - 00:45:02
And what we will do is we will put all those links in the show notes as well so people can click on straight through and go through them. I also am a LinkedIn person. I think it's a good place to be, especially in the working world. And yeah go have a little read of the book and if you are in that zone of maybe you're a man listening and you're thinking, I really want to be better at this stuff and I want to understand how to support this, a great book for you. If you are a woman, it's a great book for you too. But maybe as well encourage the people around you to think about some of these things and how do we make organisational cultures better for everybody because actually it will be better for everyone if it's better for everyone. That's how it works.

Lauren Neal 00:45:03 - 00:45:16
Absolutely. I can just see it now that you just want these workplaces where people are happy and they want to be at work. They get up in the morning and they're excited about it.

Beth Stallwood 00:45:16 - 00:45:28
And what a difference that that energy can make is incredible. So thank you, Lauren, for being a wonderful guest. As I said, we'll pop all those links etc into the show notes and thank you very much.

Lauren Neal 00:45:29 - 00:45:31
Thank you. I've enjoyed it.

Beth Stallwood 00:45:36 - 00:47:31
A huge thank you to Lauren Neil for joining me on the WorkJoy Jam podcast today and thinking all about how do we help people feel valued in their work? How do we help create workplace cultures that work for everybody and bring people up and help people through their careers, whether we're just beginning or developing on becoming leaders, etc. I also want to say thank you to Lauren for helping me understand the world of engineering a little bit better. It's not somewhere that I have spent a lot of time working and it was really interesting hearing about things like umbilicals, etc so I have learned loads today. I think there's things that we can all think about around, how we can change our specialisms. We can start as Lauren did in the engineering world and then become project managers. And it's not that we lose our specialism, we just have different ways of utilising our skills and being experts in different areas. We don't just have to pick one thing and stick to it. And I think that's a great message for people considering the next step in their careers and how really considering and advocating for others can make a massive difference in their world and in their careers and in their working lives. But also for us and how wonderful it can be for us to do those things.

So many great things to take from Lauren's experience and her background and all of her thinking. And I would, as always, encourage you to consider what's one thing that you're going to do, do differently, consider, take on board, think about, as a result of listening to this podcast. Remember, you can stay in touch and hear more via our socials @createworkjoy and I'd love to hear from you. If you've got any messages or questions, really happy to reply to them. I can be emailed at hello@createworkjoy.com. Have a great rest of your day.