Let's Talk Disability

Let's Talk Disability: Bringing Your Whole Self to Work: Disability, Leadership, and Authenticity.

JACKIE: Hello, I'm Jackie Carter. I'm a professor in Statistical Literacy and the Academic Lead for Disability Inclusion at the University of Manchester. I live with a disability and a long-term condition and often describe myself as deaf, dizzy and disabled. Here's a fact of two. 24% of the working age population in the UK has a disability. 80% of disabilities are hidden or invisible, as are mine. I started the Let's Talk disability podcast series to provide a platform to raise awareness of what it means to be a disability -inclusive university. The podcast is a series of conversations which I host on the lived and living experience of our colleagues and postgraduate students of being disabled or having a long-term condition. On each episode, I host two guests. One is a senior leader at the university, a person with influence and responsibility. The other is a member of staff or postgraduate student who is open to sharing their disability or long-term condition. The aim is to demystify what being disabled means and create a culture of sharing. But, and this is important, each episode moves from dialogue to deeds, from talking to action. The senior leader is invited to commit just one thing, an action they will take away as a result of the conversation. The disabled guest gets to say what one thing would make the difference to their lived experience as a colleague or a student at the university. So let's dive in and find out what today's guests want to share and what they will commit to to make our university more disability-inclusive. So, hello and welcome to today's episode of Let's Talk Disability. I've got two guests in the studio and without further ado, I'm going to go straight to you, Craig. But before I ask you to introduce yourself and say why you're here, I'm just going to note on record how you came to be a guest on today's podcast. And it was because I read one of the posts that you put up a few months ago now on LinkedIn and was really moved, first of all, that you were sharing what you were sharing, which I'm sure you'll go into in a little bit more detail today, but also the, let's call it role modelling you were doing by doing that. And you had a huge response to that repost, as I recall. So, Craig, if I can ask you to introduce yourself, please.

CRAIG: Hi, I'm Craig Best. I'm the director of student academic services at the University of Manchester.

JACKIE: Thank you very much. And why are you here today? Why did you decide to accept my invitation to come on? Well, it's hard to resist your invitations, Jackie, that's for sure. But no, I think it's important to be able to be visible, even if those that are talking about visible or invisible disabilities feel uncomfortable about sharing, because I think it's important for, and I don't like necessarily the word role model, but I think it's important that people can see other people in places that they may not think they fit or belong. And that's been a journey that I've had to face. So, putting myself in a space of uncomfortableness sometimes is important.

JACKIE: Yeah. Thank you, Craig. That's very honest. I don't like the term role model either. I think it's much maligned, isn't it? But thank you very much for being here today as one of my guests. And Ele, over to you, please.

ELE: Hi, I'm Ele, Ele Morrissey, and I'm the exec director of people at the University of Manchester. So, I lead the people function for the university.

JACKIE: Brilliant. So, as the listeners know, and just to make clear for anybody who's listening to this for the first time, on each episode, I invite two guests, I host two guests. The conversation is really between the two of you, but I will try and intervene and draw out themes as they arise in the conversation, particularly where we haven't heard about that theme before. And the purpose of the series is to invite a person who's willing to share their lived experience of having a disability or long-term condition with a senior member of the university. You're both senior members of the university, but with a senior member of the university. And the aim of the conversation is to then move to action. So, at the end of each episode, you each commit to an action, and I, as a host of the series, then follow those actions up. So, without any further delay, who wants to start? You happy to share some of your experiences, Craig?

CRAIG: Yeah, no, no, no, definitely. So, as Jackie mentioned, a couple of months ago, I posted something on LinkedIn sharing about partly who I am. So, I have both a physical and invisible disabilities and neurodivergence. And I talked about mental health and the kind of that hidden pain of living with a disability or a mental health, you know, that emotional, that physical space and some of that kind of constant day of dialling up and presenting yourself in a way that society for you feel needs to accept. So, someone who is, has a panic disorder and anxiety and ultimately around functional neurological disorder, it is continually challenging. But I do think it's important to be visible, even if I and the generations when we were talking briefly before, generations ago, that I perhaps have a disability phobia, you know, internalised phobia around my own identity as a gay man, as a disabled individual. And how do I fit into a society? And I think what the biggest thing to come out of where my leadership has taken me is around that reflection piece and about kind of looking at self-worth and valuing uniqueness and it not being an inadequacy. And I'm not perfect. And I think partly wanting to champion inclusivity and equity enables me to reflect on who I am. So, I think I win-win by championing it, but also makes me realise that I should have a bit more self-regard for who I am. But there's always a work in progress.

JACKIE: Oh, that was so beautifully put. I'm going to hand over to you in a second Ele. What I really took from that was the words on the page, as in on the screen that I read, you know, you really touch people's hearts. I think what you shared really resonated. And we often hear about people being brave and courageous. But actually, wouldn't it be great if we just had acceptance, you know, and we don't have to go that extra mile to share who we are. We just are, OK? And people accept us and we accept people for their differences as well. Ele, as our head of people at the University of Manchester, what does this mean to you?

ELE: So, I was really moved by Craig's post when I read Craig's post on LinkedIn. And I have a really important role to amplify voices in this space and to create an environment where individuals, whether they're leaders, colleagues, whatever level or standing within the university, feel comfortable and confident to be able to be transparent about their seen or unseen disabilities. And we've had some really good conversations around what do we need to do within the university to be able to enable people to feel more comfortable declaring to their manager or within their team, within their work environment, what their disabilities are and what does that, but more importantly, what does that mean? Because we're such a large employer and this should be our superpower that we have such great depth and breadth of diversity. But I think the first step is creating that safety and that comfort that you touched on Craig, that people feel able to talk about their disability in order that managers can then understand or teams and colleagues can understand what does that mean in practice? So, what support or adjustments may need to be made for this individual or actually, you talked about hyper focus to me before and that being one of your real superpowers. So, how are we using that or enabling that skill to really contribute powerfully to the university success?

CRAIG: Absolutely. And I think it's around harnessing our uniqueness is really key. And I think we were also talking around, there's a generational shift. I am of a generation where you go into the workplace and you mask. I was told how to dress, how to act in meetings, how to chair, how to not disclose or share that I'm currently having feeling panicky and I need to have a safety mechanism. And it gets to a point where masking drops and you have to, I always used to say, if work was successful, the rest of my life was burning because what I did was focused so hard on work that I had failed relationships, weekends weren't relaxing, they were recovering. And it got to a point in 2019, I'd lost my mum to motor neurone disease and it just kicked me in the bum, if I can say that. And it made me go, I can't be anything other than myself. And actually, the biggest person holding me back was me because I don't think I realized what accommodation looks like. And I think it's around inclusivity. You know people won't naturally ask, but they don't understand that actually we should be approaching it as you don't need to ask because how you come to work, who you are, is what we want to see. And be comfortable being uncomfortable in that space. And I'm not perfect. And I'll tell people that. But I do think sometime in leadership, we're perceived to not get things wrong. And that goes back into being vulnerable. But it is uncomfortable if you're not in the environment where you have people going, yeah, I'll be there. If it's a tough day, we've got you. And it not being seen as, oh, it's going to be performance management right now. And I think it's absolutely improving, but I think it's about us discovering what does it mean to be an inclusive workplace.

ELE: And I'm interested, so post 2019, when you did take the decision and the bravery to bring your whole self to work, how has that impacted your contribution to how you lead your team? How you feel at the weekends? How has being able to cross that bridge enabled you to be a better leader?

CRAIG: Yeah, I think it's scary because we all talk about management books saying, one, I want how to be a manager. You've got to learn to do it. I think what it shows me, goes back to what is it core to be a leader? What value is it to be a leader? And it's about showing, you know, being there, showing that you care, being accountable. Those are the two things that I think I learned most. Now, hopefully, my teams will probably be listening that without doubt, they know that I care, but it is about being accountable as well. So for me, caring about people working together is absolutely the way that I show who I am. And I'm happy to get things wrong. I'm happy to be challenged and questioned. And I love it. I love debate. But it is as finding ourselves comfortable in that debate and going, someone's going to have a really different view of us. You know, we talk about academic freedom, we talk about freedom of speech. It is okay for someone just across the table and say that my view is wrong. If they're aggressive, no, that's not acceptable. Or I don't think you're helping. Well, how do we learn if we don't bring people to the table and have those questions? And in regards to the weekends, sometimes there is a, I don't mind a Netflix binge at the weekend. But you know, I'm sharing personally, I'm in a two and a half year relationship with someone. That's the first time in my life I've been able to maintain a role and a healthy relationship. And that brings so much, rounded me. You know, I can feel like I contribute differently. It helps that they work in mental health and they accept me for everything I am. But I do think that it makes me feel like I'm living and I'm not just surviving.

ELE: That's wonderful to hear. And I know you will have inspired others, not just within the university, but through your wider network, through LinkedIn, to have that brave conversation or bring that honesty about who they are and disabilities that they may have. What more do you think we could do, should do within the university to create more conversations around this? So more people feel both brave to declare, but also that managers feel safe to ask the questions. Because sometimes we hear from managers a real sort of nervousness around, I don't want to say the wrong thing. I don't want to do the wrong thing. You know, so it's both sides, isn't it? It's creating that safety for the individual, but it's also supporting managers to maybe recognize some signs and then have a conversation, hopefully then create that environment that the person can then declare. So I'm interested in how we create more of that across the university.

CRAIG: Yeah. And it probably picks up on one thing that I went, I looked for. I think people are going to share their disabilities much more. Mental health has absolutely, and men and mental health is improving. It's still a massive issue. You know, even a group of my friends, we don't necessarily talk about our mental health. I think sharing and disclosing will continue. It's about how we equip people to able to have awareness of others. So I am a big believer on emotional intelligence, and I feel that that was one of the biggest skills I continue to learn around. How do I have awareness of others? How do I see that things are not just working? And it's not a, sorry, this policy does not work for you. You don't fit within. It's having policies and procedures that have a bit of flex. Having an ability for the awareness of others, having regard for yourself, demonstrating it as a leader, and actually going to take some time for my wellbeing. And it's like, Ooh, what do you mean? Or, you know, as simple things as don't send emails later at night, because you're building a sense of, oh, this is the way I have to have to be on. But I think it's about equipping and it's around not training, so to speak, but having the environment where you can get it wrong. Oh my goodness. I work in EDI conversations. And if I have a black heritage person, when I first met, I tell you what, I probably made all the mistakes in the world, but they were empathetic. They knew I wanted to learn and I was able to make the mistakes. And I think we're fearful for making mistakes, but that shouldn't stop us pushing forward.

JACKIE: Yeah. I'm going to come in on that because you've started a really good conversation here about how we educate ourselves and others. And I'll focus in on disability. Actually, what we're talking about here is intersectional. Okay. Let's just say that because it's very obvious. We all have multiple identities and Craig, you shared yours, but in terms of disability, there's some really good work. So I will move in a lot of disability advocacy circles, as you know, and there's a really good book that I recommend to people who don't know where to start. And it's by somebody called Emily Ladau and it's called 'Demystifying Disability'. And it's about where do you start? You know the book, you're nodding. Yeah. And it's written precisely to answer that question. Where do we start having the conversations? And then how do we have the conversations in a self-reflective manner where we are willing to put the work in? So, you know, it's not about disabled people educating us in this case, right? It's about us putting the work in to understand what it means to have a conversation with somebody who has a disability or long-term condition to open up the conversation and learn how we can change and adapt. Because it's not just about adapting ramps. You know, the usual, you know, I've got a bugbear about this whole thing about invisible disability. 80% of people with disabilities, their disabilities are hidden. So, how do we deal with the optics of disability when so much of what we do is around the optics? So, how do we do that in disability spaces? Well, we need to start by having the conversations exactly, exactly what you did on LinkedIn and saying, this is my lived experience of condition X. And then open up those conversations. And even if we don't like the role model, to model that behaviour so that others feel comfortable sharing, you use declare, disclose, we tend to use share, what their conditions are, but also what their needs are. Because ultimately, that's what it comes about. So, what are your needs so that you can come to work or study? We haven't talked about students yet. I want to get on to talking about students so that we can give you the best experience because you're at this amazing university and you can get the best out of coming. So, I'd like to sort of turn the conversation in that direction, if I may, please. So, how do we identify needs and address them so that everybody gets what they need?

CRAIG: If I can circle slightly back, I think where I talk about accommodating and opportunities, it's about harnessing self-worth and that's partly how I've dealt with it because I think asking for a rising desk personally is an inconvenience or can I not come into a meeting until 10 o'clock because I'm in chronic pain and I feel like it's an inconvenience. When I started thinking about it, it's an expression of self-worth, links into wellbeing. I get on board with that.

JACKIE: I love that. And I think that's a way of really bringing the conversation. It's not about accommodating. It's how do we bring our authentic selves, our identity, but how do we express our self-worth? Because don't we all want to have good self-worth?

CRAIG: Sorry, I've shifted a little bit. No, I really love that because you're reframing because that internalised ableism that you have that most of us with disabilities or long-term conditions have and we feel we're an inconvenience to the people who are not like us. We have to reframe that ourselves, but we also have to do that in a way that helps others see that actually that chronic pain is real. You're not putting it on. You really cannot come. Or at a four o'clock meeting, you have to go home and rest because you've been in work all day. So some of the training, some of the training runs two days solid and there's evening events. Lots of disabled people just don't have, we call it the spoon theory. You don't have any spoons left at the end of the day to engage with that. And I think it's what we can't see. The most common phrase on this podcast so far has been, I just didn't think about it. And I think we often don't just think about it because we can't see it.

ELE: And I think that's one of the key points I'd like people that are listening to this to take away so that there is some real tangible action that comes from this. And if people that are listening, whether you're in a leadership role, management role or a colleague role, that you feel comfortable asking that question or enabling that conversation with the team at a team meeting, is everybody comfortable with how we operate, how we work together, do individuals feel safe being able to declare or raise issues. So I think it'd be great to know that this has triggered some real action in teams or with individuals. You touched on training there, Jackie, in terms of the model of training delivery that we've deployed historically within the university. We're going to make a big shifts in this space. So Sonal Patel, who's the new Talent Development Director, so responsible for our learning and development offering amongst amongst other things. We've created a new model that we will check against accessibility, but we believe will transform the accessibility of how we learn and how we bring people to learning. So not just having face to face full day events being sort of the main tool for delivering training, but that we've got much greater accessibility. So all of our current training offering in the next academic year, we'll be going through an accessibility review and any new learning that's created is going to be sort of a three pronged model in terms of here's some pre-reading, here's some self-directed learning that you can do to read and podcasts or development materials. Then you'll come to a session, none of which will be full days. And then the post, the third stage of the model will be that reflective that how you transfer the learning, what tools, what reminders or quick reference guides have you got that will keep that learning event alive in your brain. So there's a big intention there to both look at what we're doing now, but in terms of how we build learning in the future, that it is much more accessible to our diverse community.

CRAIG: And I'm conscious we haven't talked about students and I think the accommodations that I've made, AI has revolutionised how I engage with material. It takes me a long time to read, but I read and I've learnt to do that. But now I can use Notebook ILM, put it into a podcast and I think that is absolutely revolutionised how I see. And I think we have to be bold and confident not to cycle back on things. Hybrid working absolutely changed the game for people. It has allowed me to progress in my career and be proud in being a leader, but bringing me in to be just actually presenteers doesn't work. And I think it's being firm that when the rest of the world is, or you hear all university organisations, bringing everybody back in because they're not trusted or they're not working. Well, that is a failure in regards to accessibility. And it's the same with the fear in our academic community around the use of AI in assessment design. Well, actually, when you look at those students, when they studied during COVID, those with disabilities, those that need adjustments, excelled because they were able to use online learning, they were able to deliver it in a space and environment that worked for them. If we move back to on-campus delivery of all of our exams, we are doing a disservice to our community. And I think it's about being bold and holding up to, you know, let's lead in it, let's not follow. And I think that's an important thing I'm waffling.

JACKIE: I wish the listeners could see your body language in this room because it's so active. It's absolutely wonderful. What you said about, I love this reflection because you've talked about coming in and just because we've always done it like this doesn't mean we have to continue. So that historical model doesn't need to be the model of the future. Then you've talked about, let's not cycle back. Okay. Let's sort of learn from what is working. And COVID, the great disruptor, you know, is an opportunity for us to realise that we didn't have to be in the office all the time. And there are different ways. And then you've talked about the benefits of that to people who might really thrive from having that optionality. And we've talked on other podcast episodes, as you can imagine, about having options, having choice. I think you used a term previously about flexing policies, you know, there'd been some flex. So this is really nourishing this conversation because it feels for the first time in a long time, probably since I was appointed to this role two and a half years ago, there's a real willingness to change. And Ele, you used that term intention to change intentionally for the right reasons. Okay. And the right reasons are that everybody benefits. It really is that straightforward, isn't it? Everybody gets something out of this. So could we segway into talking a little about students? Because we've talked about people, but let's just focus in a little bit if we can for the moment on students and some of the stats we were talking about earlier and some of the challenges that disabled students have had to face.

CRAIG: Yeah, no, definitely. So part of my role within the organisation and something I've been working with over the last 15 years is around inclusivity in education, in access into higher education. We are really good as a sector to get people in. We've honed our skill of bringing people into the university to get them to study. What we don't do very well as a sector is how we keep them here, how we support them. You know, as a Russell Group University, we are second in the Russell Group with a number of students that come in and disclose compared to others. You know, we are doing well on the access point of view, but when we look at students and particularly students that have declared disability, their continuation, their progression, there is a differential gap, attainment gap, awarding gap between them. And that's the bit we have to pick up on. And we don't need to reinvent the wheel. We have to go back to about how do we make it inclusive? How do people learn? How do we approach it differently? One standard way doesn't work. So why don't we have an optionality in all of our assessments? And that doesn't mean it's losing academic rigor, but actually we're equipping our colleagues to understand what does academic rigor look like in portfolio or open textbooks or podcasts? And being excited that the way our students learn, engage with society will be different. They are not going to go in and do one career. So this focus on just delivering discipline isn't the way the future is going to be. How do we give them competency skills? You know, we talked about service learning, experiential learning. That is where students who won't fit, and I put my fingers up in the studio, the norm or the perceived homogenised group of students will really revolutionise the world. And it goes back to your point earlier around how exciting it is to have so many different people in the space. And I think we're at the cusp of that change agent and we shouldn't be afraid to push the dime on that. So that's where I would think on students.

JACKIE: Well, that was very powerful. Ele?

ELE: That's really interesting. I mean, you talked about the successes in attainment for students through the Covid period. Do you think, you know, have we lost some of that? Have we diluted some of that as we've come back with the, back to normal, whatever that is? And did we lose some of those modifications that really advantaged those students?

CRAIG: 100%. And it's not a Manchester thing. It is an absolute sector thing where we were forced into a space to accelerate. And what we didn't, I would say, brought people, we chucked everybody in to, you've now got to deliver online. We had to make it work and actually we saw real benefits. What we haven't done is perhaps as a sector taken stock of that and then AIs come in and all know everybody's going to play, and I'm stereotyping, everyone's going to plagiarise. So the best way of maintaining that is to bring everybody back to campus. And half of it is about workforce planning. And how do we equip our community, the time and energy to have that reflection? Because we don't, we haven't got enough time or perceived enough time or prioritised enough time to do training or think differently. And I think if we as an organisation really want to live the principles around inclusivity and all the things that bring people to the university, we've got to give them time. And we might not be able to quantify it in metrics and service measure, et cetera, but actually telling people and encouraging people to take a portion of their day to learn, engage is really important, I think. And I think that will be the bit that changes us.

ELE: And we want people to feel empowered as well, that where they have seen great practice or ways of working that have benefited students in this context, that they feel confident and empowered, that they can challenge and they can push those ideas forward. We want to raise the degree of innovation within the organisation. We want us to be advocating and real ambassadors for doing things differently. Manchester doesn't always follow the norms. And that's another one of its superpowers, isn't it? So I guess part of my role is making sure that we can remove those barriers or those institutionalised sort of constraints that are there, perceived or real, to enable people to say, well, no, no, no, hang on a minute, at all levels. That's really, really important.

JACKIE: Yeah, I love the way this conversation is going. You've both talked about us being ambitious as an organisation within the sector that contains us and not always doing things the same. I always think of Manchester as a radical city. Okay, so I'm doing some work. I've just written a book, actually, and it's got reformer in the title. And I think what we're talking about here is reform of some of the systems and structures that have held certain people back, certain groups of people back. And I wonder, I'm thinking about one of my sons is a civil servant and they get an hours, they get an hour every week to put in their diary as a wellbeing hour. Okay. And you were talking about time to think. Well, time to think actually means that you have to be in the frame of mind to think. So, you know, you can come from a full day of work and have an hour to think, and it's probably not the best time of day. It certainly isn't for me. It wouldn't work for me. So I think there's something about creating an environment that's culturally acceptable where people do have time to think. I've got a friend who's a professor of philosophy, and I asked him what his job, and he said, I think, you know, that is his job. He thinks he writes, he's obviously incredibly successful. But I wonder if there's something here about sort of stopping and introducing something as simple as, you know, the civil service model, an hour a week for people to have time to do something outside of their job and whether or not that's something we should be exploring. And, you know, maybe we could consult on that. I don't know, but that wellbeing piece is so important because it's not just the time. If you have the time, but you don't have the head space to do what that time could be spent doing. What do you think of that in the context of this conversation of wellbeing and disability support?

CRAIG: So I love the idea, and we encourage it within our division. We have wellbeing champions, we do days. I think the one thing Manchester does really well, it does innovate, it is ambitious, but we do one thing really bad and we don't stop things. And we do so much. And I think that, and myself is understanding our why and being clear on that and not apologising that we're going to focus on these four things, or we're going to focus, because before we know it, we're doing 220 different actions, all action plans. And I think if we want to invest in the spending the time on the wellbeing or spending the time to think, then we have to stop something. And that's a difficult thing for us to do. And that's about leading with our values and our principles. And that's where I think sometimes from an inclusivity point of view, you watch and go, they're telling me they value, or we tell we value inclusivity, but hang on a minute, I've still got a workload that is double the amount of my capacity. So I can't engage in it. And I think it's getting to the bottom of that and being confident. But I love the idea, you know, and I agree, I don't think well at four o'clock in the afternoon, but I guarantee that's probably in my diary where it says no meetings and time to think.

ELE: Yeah, it's about creating the environment, isn't it? That people feel empowered to stop the things that are now no longer contributing to a change of direction or aren't as important. We have to prioritize better, I think, as an organization around what really matters and the sequencing of how we do things. I've certainly -having to do a lot of that within my area, because there is a lot of things that we want to do differently and we want to improve on, but actually we have to be mindful of our capacity you know, and not just how much we can do as a function, but actually how much can we push out into the organization. My preference would be that we create an environment where people feel they can dip in and out of that. I think having a very rigid, you will have an hour a week for this, as you say, might not work. It may be that you take half a day or you concentrate as and when it suits you. I think rigidity of a solution like that makes me a little bit nervous in that it can be a bit tokenistic almost, rather than creating an environment where people know that actually I've been three weeks full on dealing with clearing or student enrolments or whatever the period is. As you say, we're now going to take some time to actually reflect on that cycle. What worked? What didn't work? What was the student experience through that? What was the colleague experience through that? And what would we want to do differently next time so that we do build in that time to think and reflect and continuously improve, but in a manner that works for people.

CRAIG: That shouts to me is the principles you were talking about, but there's agency in that. And I have an aversion to standardization, and I know it's a nuance. I love consistency. So you've got a level of consistency, but you don't have to standardise because of consistency. You've got advocacy. I can choose because people trust me. And therefore, if I want to adapt how I learn or how I work, I feel trusted. I feel respected and trusted and I've got agency. And I think that's what people are starting to see coming through with the approaches. And I think that's what's exciting with the, we haven't mentioned yet, the 2035 strategy. And I think I'm really excited that people feel they've got ownership of it. They understand the why and they've got agency in helping shape that. And it's not just being done to us. And I think that's the challenge in inclusivity. A lot of us can't buy into some of it because in times it felt like it was being done to you.

JACKIE: Well, that's a perfect point at which introduce the mantra that goes alongside a lot of EDI and particularly disability inclusion is nothing about us without us. Disabled people have to be at the table in the room making decisions, not just about buildings, excuse me, but about everything that we do. I'm losing my voice. So I'm going to move us towards the end of the conversation about the actions. Where do we go from this and what will you commit to?

CRAIG: I'll ask you, what one thing will you commit to do as a result of this conversation?

ELE: So I think from my perspective, there's a lot of work already in train in my area. So I'm reflecting on what impact I can bring and what I'm going to do or what I'll commit to is the leadership conversations that I have with lots of leaders across the whole organization that I'm going to start asking the question much more regularly around the diversity or the disability makeup within the team. And are they having regular conversations? Are they creating a safe environment for people to declare and bring their whole true self to work as you described at the beginning? So that is my commitment that I will bring this into my regular mantra of conversations that I have with leaders across the whole university.

JAKCIE: Fabulous. And what about you? What's your question, Ele, for Craig?

ELE: So what one thing would make a positive difference to your experience here at the university?

CRAIG: As growing in a space where we feel comfortable being uncomfortable and having those people at the table, hearing lived experiences, I think generally doing more of that would enhance our experiences here. I think it's uncomfortable conversations, but I think generally if people are coming to that table with a clear why we want to, we love the university, we want to be here, I think we can overcome anything and that shift on this is about self-worth and we don't want anyone, generally no one, to come to work and not feel valued. We don't want anyone to spend most of their life in a place that they don't feel respected. And I think if we just keep going back to that, I think there's so much we could do.

JACKIE: Yeah. Wow. Thank you both so much. I was in a meeting recently that Duncan was at. I don't know if you were there, Craig, because he was discussing students and we had a conversation about belonging. And then somebody said, well, it's not just about belonging, it's about knowing that you matter. And it's what you've just said about the values. If you can be authentic and align with your own values and that aligns with the organisation where you work or study, so it's study as well, and you know that they acknowledge you, you may have different views, but you're still acknowledged and valued. I think that's where we're all aiming to get to, isn't it? Thank you so much. I'm sorry, my voice has given up a little bit. Is there anything you want to say before we finish the episode?

CRAIG: No, just thank you for your time and thank you for listening.

ELE: No, and thank you, Jackie, and thanks for your honesty, Craig, and your bravery in creating that transparency around your particular disabilities and how that is empowering others.

JACKIE: Yeah, for sure. And I want to say thank you for that post on LinkedIn, because that started all of us. Thank you both so much. Thank you.