Yearly Archives: 2022

Fifteen years ago today, at 00.15 in the morning to be precise, I received the gift of life from someone I have never met and can never thank.

To celebrate my 15th second birthday, I’ve put together this brief list of 15 things I’ve learned over the last 15 years. It is far from comprehensive, but it’s a start.

1. People are good more often than they are bad. If you spend too much time on social media, you will come to believe the opposite. Don’t.
2. My nieces and nephews have grown, or are growing, into wonderful people. In 15 years I have met three nieces and two nephews who wouldn’t know who I was other than from the stories my family told them, and I’ve seen the other five become adults.
3. If you think you’re immune to hangovers, it’s a good idea not to test the theory too strongly.
4. Long-term, loving relationships are indescribably precious. They take work, they take patience, they take kindness and they take a willingness to open your heart in a way that you know would all but kill you if it was betrayed, but they will repay your commitment more times over than you can ever imagine.
5. Kindness always wins.
6. Children have the best outlook on life. You will learn more from spending an hour in the company of a five year old than 10 years in pursuit of the meaning of life. What matters most to any five year old is what they are doing at the specific moment you encounter them; they have no concept of or care for the future. More than that, their imagination runs free and utterly wild. They can take themselves to the furthest reaches of the absurd or the most mundane of the domestic, but they will love their journeys.
7. Related: our greatest sin is to dampen a child’s imagination and teach them it’s wrong to embrace it.
8. Read more. Ideally more than Twitter and Facebook.
9. Learn to think for yourself, to be able to acknowledge the path that others have laid out, but still to explore ideas for yourself.
10. Never believe the source of a quote unless you’ve researched it yourself. There are two quotes from Abraham Lincoln that I love: “Never believe everything you read on the internet.”¹ and “That would have been very good if I had said it, but I reckon it was charged to me to give it currency.”²
11. Finding good coffee is harder than you think, but once you’ve tasted it everything else tastes like mud.
12. Clichés are only clichés because they contain truth. Don’t simply dismiss them, but examine them instead.³
13. Paris is an incomparable city, Kauai is an incomparable island and Hungary is an incomparable country.
14. Embrace your heritage, whatever it is. I’m three-quarters English and a quarter Scottish, which means I have a wild temper but I’m too polite to do anything about it. I love both of the countries that I’m from and I’m proud to be British (even if I’m not proud of some of the things that we have done in the name of empire or progress).
15. The most important thing in life is gratitude. We all have something to be grateful for, even if sometimes it can feel like we’re drowning in our troubles. Look for the one thing each day you can say you’re grateful to have in your life, whether that’s a roof over your head, a loving partner at your side, a pet, Netflix, food on your plate or even – if you’re really stretched – Twitter.

A lot of disabled people in the workplace don’t “declare” their disabilities. Even I don’t share all of mine (I collect them). To help people be their best at work, we have to create a safe, open space that shows how we can help, not just that we can.

It’s no use being willing to help people and having a supportive attitude to creating reasonable adjustments if you sit waiting for your people to come and ask you for them.

The best way to support disabled people (and, frankly, the whole workforce) is to let everyone know the things that you’re prepared to do.

Someone with chronic pain may need a better chair and a footrest. If you’re willing to do that, tell everyone (especially new starters).

Someone with sensory sensitivities may work better if they’re allowed noise-cancelling headphones in the office. Tell everyone it’s OK to wear headphones.

Someone whose condition causes fatigue, or fluctuates on a daily basis (like many chronic, hidden disabilities do), may benefit from being able to be flexible with the days they come into the office. If that’s cool, make sure everyone knows.

Someone who suffers (and suffer really is the right word) with endometriosis might really benefit from being able to adjust their working pattern based on their cycle. As a male manager, I know that my female team members may well not want to talk about “that sort of thing” with me and they may not want to talk to anyone about it. By telling people that’s ok, it opens the door for people to be able to either open up about it, or just request that adjustment.

Disabled people don’t need much. Almost every adjustment you may ever need to make for us won’t cost you very much at all.

What we want, what we need, is to know that you care enough to offer us options.

And it’s not going to hurt to show people you care.

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This post first appeared on my Linkedin profile.

“You should know better”. Maybe.

Maybe I’ve made the mistake before and should have learned.

Maybe I haven’t.

In which case now, post-mistake, not only should I know better, I must know better.

If I’m a leader, I’m also duty-bound to try to pass on to others the things I know better, based on my own mistakes.

That won’t always mean they know better.

But they will once they’ve made the mistake.

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This post first appeared on my Linkedin profile.

Maybe it’s my British blood. I find it really hard to write job applications focused on my achievements. Thing is, I wouldn’t have achieved any of it without my teams. It our achievement, not mine.

When Sean McVay became the youngest head coach in NFL history, he brought a simple focus with him to the LA Rams: “We, not me.” That’s the basis of how I’ve built the teams I’ve been part of over the last decade in the charity sector.

The work we’ve done, the results we’ve achieved, the impact we’ve had has only been possible because we’re a team. If everyone is working only for themselves, it achieves nothing but confusion, disagreements and resentment.

The best teams are the ones that recognise that “greater than the sum of its parts” is only a cliché because it’s true.

When people make a big effort to do something, it can leave them tired in the evening. When many disabled people make a big effort, the after effects can last a lot longer than that.

People with mental health issues or anxiety disorders can push themselves to do something, only to have the knock-on impact hover in their minds for days.

People with physical health problems can push themselves to do something, only to be flattened by the effort and barely able to function the next day.

People with depression can push themselves to do something, only to find that the effort of masking can leave them hollow the next day or even longer.

And disabilities don’t come in tidy little boxes. (I can tick all of those boxes at various times.)

Yesterday, I travelled into London to spend my first day in the office for almost three years. It was strange, exciting, scary, wonderful, joyful, fearful.

The physical effort of driving for two hours there and two hours back (no way I could cope with the train yet!) put more strain on my concentration than I’ve had in a long time.

The physical effort of being on a different, less supportive chair with a desk not setup how it is at home caused a bit of a flare in my chronic back and neck pain. (My fault for not spending more time adjusting.)

The mental effort of smiling, being cheerful, engaging with people in a more casual, off-the-cuff, interruptive kind of manner stretched by introverted tendencies a chunk.

None of these is a reason for me not to have gone. None is a reason to find an excuse not to go another time. None is something that would prevent me doing it again.

But today is a tough day.

If you have disabled people working in your organisation, just be mindful that the impact of the things you (collectively) do may well be far greater than the impact you (personally) experience.

Make space for disabled people to feel able to recover well, whatever that looks like for them. Make space for them to be able to adapt: I had no idea which bits of yesterday would be hardest, but I know them now and I know how I would need to deal with it again.

Allowing our people to work, rest and recover in the best possible way will, in the short term and the long run, help productivity, loyalty and (ultimately) the bottom line.

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This post first appeared on my Linkedin profile.