Grow Places

GP 30: Empowering Female Talent: with Vanessa Murray of The Circle Partnership

• Grow Places • Season 1 • Episode 30

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Ever wondered how to empower female talent in real estate ?

Join us as Vanessa Murray, a former music student turned senior asset manager, shares her inspiring journey from having zero industry connections to managing high-profile projects like the former BBC Television Centre redevelopment. Vanessa's story is a testament to the power of mentorship and determination, leading her to establish the Circle Partnership—a groundbreaking initiative aimed at empowering mid-level female talent in real estate through mentorship and skill-building opportunities.

Mentorship, transparency, and authenticity are the cornerstones of professional growth, and Vanessa passionately discusses their significance. We shine a light on the transformative power of open dialogue and the fulfillment of guiding others to reach their goals. This episode also unpacks the dynamics of female mentorship in male-dominated industries and explores how men in leadership positions can engage with and support initiatives that address gender imbalances, fostering a more inclusive work environment.

As life in your 30s presents its own set of challenges, balancing career ambitions with personal commitments becomes crucial. Vanessa's insights into navigating these complexities offer valuable guidance, especially through mentorship. Discover practical strategies for promoting inclusivity and diversity within organisations, and learn how everyone, regardless of their role, can contribute to a supportive and equitable workplace. Get ready for an episode that promises to equip you with the tools to thrive both professionally and personally.

Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the Grow Places podcast, where we explore the virtuous circle of people, growth and place Brought to you by Grow Places and hosted by our founder, Tom Larson.

Speaker 2:

Hi Vanessa, hi Tom, how are you?

Speaker 3:

I'm good. How are you?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, good, thank you. We're both in our sort of new lives now young kids, new businesses. Ex-colleagues and now we have to be adults, real adults exactly, or, if anything, I think I might have gone the other way a little bit, to be honest, which is quite refreshing, um, yeah, so it's really great for you to join today and I think, um, for everyone listening, there's going to be some really great topics that we can talk about. So why don't you just give yourself a little introduction first?

Speaker 3:

so I started life as a music graduate with absolutely no network or any kind of intro into real estate whatsoever. I didn't actually know anything about real estate in terms of the jobs that you could do. All I, all I associated it really was like agency or construction workers boots on ground. That was it, and I actually well after my music degree, when I realized that it was completely useless and I wasn't going to be doing any kind of musical stuff, I was, I had a the benefit of like a career advisor who I did some work with and she looked at my strengths and my values and she made me go and explore lots of different options like career options and one of them was real estate and I got into. She made me call someone, I think at the time, who was in a position that I'd want to be in in 20 years. So I at the time called up someone who headed up the country house department of Knight Frank and I was like that sounds fun and I and I asked him if he'd have a call with me and to tell me how he got there and he said, said yes, and I did that with lots of different people and everything that they had in common was a master's degree, and so I had to get special approval to do like a non-cognate master's in real estate to be accepted.

Speaker 3:

And, long story short, I eventually qualified as a commercial surveyor back in I don't know 2010 or something, worked my way up to property management and then, when Savills brought the Broadgate business, some of the clients came across there, and at the time I was working as a commercial surveyor for Savills and I was tasked with onboarding one of the clients that came over, which was Stanhope, and at the time Stanhope were doing the BBC television centre redevelopment and I came over and was comment nine months, absolutely green to development, didn't know anything about it was very much kind of to do with the operational side of things, and five years later which I can't believe it's gone that quickly.

Speaker 3:

You know, I worked my way up to senior asset manager.

Speaker 3:

I built, built the team with Claire Dorr, who's obviously still there as head of asset management and had a really amazing career, and at the same time, I was looking down metaphorically and realized that there was nobody in terms, I was quite often the only woman in the room and there was lots of women who didn't have the benefit of the expertise and the support that I had when I was coming through in terms of senior female role models, and I noticed that loads of women who were working for partner organisations just weren't really going for the roles that they should be and had the potential to to be great at, and that prompted me to start the circle partnership, and I've done that.

Speaker 3:

For the last four years. I've gone into business with my friend and colleague, who was an ex, who was actually my coach. That's how I met her originally and and my role now is, uh, director of the circle partnership, with with Kerry, who's my colleague, and uh, that's what I run on a day-to-day basis great and so, obviously, when we were together at stand-up, I watched your journey through the mentoring circle and you know the amazing things that was going on there and now the circle partnership.

Speaker 2:

But what actually? What actually is that in terms of? You know, what are you doing at the circle partnership?

Speaker 3:

so we we have kind of three circles of specialism and this is, I mean, it's grown very organically. So, as you can imagine, when it first started it was just like a little initiative that I was doing on the side and it's something that built over time. And so our three circles are the circle Academy and that's our flagship program and what we do is our. Our main goal is to increase talent retention at mid-level in real estate female talent retention, because statistically we have a huge drop-off between that mid-level and that senior point and so we want to intervene at that really crucial period to make sure that we've got the pipeline of talent coming up so that we can address gender imbalance at senior leadership level. That's the real focus of it.

Speaker 3:

And so at the moment, the Circle Academy it runs from March to March, so we take a maximum of 100 mentees every year, med level women, and they get partnered with a dedicated senior female industry leader and they go on a two-day intensive in-person bespoke training and coaching program. And we get people like Radha in to help with presentation and public speaking. We have a branding specialist comes in, talks to to us about personal brand and they have touch points throughout the year that are all focused on issues that research tells us that women face, and also themes that come through as part of the application forms that we see. That all contribute to women leaving the industry because, I think you can agree, it's an amazing place to be. There's so many different jobs, there's so many different roles. It's such a shame to lose women at this stage and unnecessary, and we give them the skills, the confidence and the capability to stay and thrive yeah, yeah, amazing.

Speaker 2:

And then there's obviously so much you want to dive into here, hence having you on. But so what? What are some of those issues and themes, then, broadly, that women in that age bracket or that experience bracket are facing?

Speaker 3:

well, I would say depressingly confidence, and I think a lot of it is to do with being a minority in a, an environment, and this is you know, we're only talking about gender, but obviously there's lots of underrepresented identities within that who all feel the same, but predominantly we have women I would say much more on the construction side who are the only women in their roles and find it difficult to speak up. And also there's a kind of expectation, probably around a societal thing as well, in terms of how they should be and how they should act, and so they find it difficult to ask for pay rises. They find that the expectations on them as women in their organizations are quite often around pastoral care and making sure that they're responsible not just for line managing but all the other things that come with it. That maybe the expectations on their male counterparts wouldn't necessarily be the same, and a lot of it is about finding where they're best suited and thriving within that environment, and quite often there's a misalignment between their values and you know where they want to go and what they want to do.

Speaker 3:

Um, and we talk about, you know, we talk about imposter syndrome and we actually, before I came here today, had a really interesting chat with another developer who we did like a breakfast meeting for and we were saying that, and kerry, who, who I work with, she's amazing, she knows all the research stuff and is able to crib it a lot better than I can, but apparently it came. It actually started as a imposter phenomenon. That's where it came from and it was a research study done in America with all these female founders who were incredible entrepreneurs who'd achieved loads, and they did a study on them because all of them identified as being really underconfident, and how that manifested is they worked really hard and they did amazingly Surprise, surprise, because they didn't feel that they were capable of doing it and so they kind of turned it around. So they started it as imposter phenomenon and then roe versus wade came along and it was, uh, changed around to imposter syndrome and made from something that was actually a really positive thing to a negative thing.

Speaker 3:

And actually, if you think about it, if you're standing up in front of people and you're, I don't know, a finance professional and you're talking about I don't know some like development and you've never done it before, of course you're gonna be nervous about it because you don't know, and a lot of the time. Do you have imposter syndrome or is it that it's the first time you've done something? You've not been exposed to it? So what we try and say to the mentees is okay, actually think about where you're at, what your challenges are. Is your lack of confidence, is it misplaced, or actually is it but just because you haven't done anything before? And if so, how do you get more exposure so that you do it again and it's not a thing and you can grow and develop?

Speaker 2:

yeah, yeah, it's, um, it's actually a common thing, I think, in our culture that about you know syndromes and labeling things in a, as you say, slightly negative way.

Speaker 2:

Um, you know, I've I've diagnosed with ocd and that is seen as a kind of, you know, a disorder in the same way as adhd or you know these other things.

Speaker 2:

Um, but actually a lot of this, as you say, is about how you reframe that and actually understanding, um, that people are all on a spectrum of some sort and you can, yeah, and you can divide it out and separate it out as much as you want, but actually, you know, there's a kind of humanity to it and actually, um, a lot of these things you can uh empathize with, with people and kind of understand where different people are coming from.

Speaker 2:

And I do think it's good to to have that self-awareness, to kind of to know that, but then, as you say, not to let it limit you and actually to think about how it could improve what you do and what you offer, and that diversity in a broad sense is actually what makes people and companies and collectives interesting. And I'm quite interested, um, vanessa, about you know you've mentioned a couple of times you know, uh, whether it was your career advice or whether it was working with a coach who's now your business partner, about your values and about some of some of that, um, those traits that you've kind of established in yourself and that you you now look for in other people, um, can you talk a bit about what they are? Oh God, um.

Speaker 3:

I would say that one of my, one of my values is fundamentally honesty and transparency and just being able to have really frank conversations with people, Um, which I think is kind of overlooked, because you take it as a given but actually you never know where you are unless you're able to be honest about what your challenges are and what you need to work on, and being really clear about what you want. I think that's really important. I think lots of people shy away from saying actually I'm really ambitious and I want that role over there, like I want that big role, whether you think I'm capable of it or not. You know, let's not shy away from it, let's be really transparent about it. And I also think cheesy as it might sound I get so much fulfillment from not just helping people in inverted commas, but seeing people thrive and seeing people understand their purpose and really really make the most of themselves. I think that's really a fulfilling thing to do and I think I'm quite a people person anyway and I like I like being able to provide a solution or provide some kind of help in terms of people just getting over the the barriers that they might be facing and actually quite often they just need a nudge, like one of the one of the quotes we had from one of the mentees which I really love is well, it was actually their something that their mentor said to them they, they went for a promotion and they didn't.

Speaker 3:

They weren't going to go for it. And the mentor said just go for it like and and worst case scenario, if you don't get it, they'll give you really good feedback. So it can only be a good thing. And they went for it and they sent a message to their mentor saying thank you very much. Um, I wouldn't have gone for it. And she said uh, you had the wings, I just nudged you off the cliff and I just thought it was such a lovely phrase. And I think a lots of our mentors who mentor with us on the program are people who really resonate with that, because it's fundamental value to them as well, and so to kind of feel like I'm living and breathing those values is really like fulfilling personally as well yeah, yeah, absolutely, and, um, it's always a two-way thing, isn't it actually?

Speaker 2:

and you get a lot more out of it than you put in as the kind of knowledge isn't it. Yeah, you know whether it's doing this podcast or whether it's the foundation. You know we see that as well. And and um, you'd be surprised, wouldn't you, about how you can't get a meeting in a high powered person's diary for three months about project X or something.

Speaker 3:

Why budgeting?

Speaker 2:

but something like this people will be very, very generous with their time. They'll they'll do it in work hours, they'll open their networks up to people and um. I think what you're doing to kind of enable some of these things and to create some of these opportunities for for people to to, to, to be vulnerable and kind of open on on the um, the mentee side, and then on the mentor side, to be very generous and and um accommodating and try to be as helpful as they can.

Speaker 3:

I think it's great and also I'd say, like the, the mentors, they don't necessarily look in the mirror and, like you know, we have I think we have about 130 now and 20 of those are c-suite. They don't, you know open the curtains each morning and go, wow, I'm so powerful and impactful. They don't feel like they are like that and so they really understand the challenges that people are facing. And I think there's a definitely like a perception, uh, the difference between where the mentees feel like they're at and where the mentors feel like they're at. And quite often the mentors, interestingly, are also the only women in the room because they've reached those senior roles and they look around and there's not that many other women who are doing those things. So I think for them, they get a lot out of it because they can meet other women who in the same situation and go, god, we're doing a policy on this.

Speaker 3:

Are you doing that kind of policy in your organization? What's going on? It's it's a. It's a really nice community and I think for the junior lot it's a really nice community, and I think for the junior lot it's a nice community as well, because I mean, you know right, it's such a people business Lots of the times, the mentees are going to be in a room full of people and they're going to be in a meeting with you know, sarah, next week, across the table and doing a different thing, like they're looking around, it's their network of peers, probably their new best mate, their new colleague mate, their new colleague, their new client.

Speaker 3:

You know, you don't know where that network's going to take you, but chances are you're going to meet lots of people who you'll keep coming into contact with, and again and again. And when you go I think when you go up in an organization and you know, for you as, and me as well, starting our own businesses, networking is is absolutely key and having people who you trust and like, most importantly, is really powerful Because you know they're going to stay with you all the way up, aren't they?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So what do the men think about all this?

Speaker 3:

What about me? And it's valid right. It is valid.

Speaker 2:

No, I wasn't actually.

Speaker 3:

It's interesting.

Speaker 2:

You took that. Take on it. I wasn't actually thinking that. I was actually thinking more in the organizations that you're working with, the men in those senior roles who are are you seeing? Companies really, you know, welcome this with open arms. Do you get requests from men in the industry to come to your events to learn about what the issues that women are facing are? Because that's how I look at it, that's so interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 3:

I think that's a really interesting take that you have on it.

Speaker 3:

I would say that in general, the men are really supportive of it, but they feel paralyzed for fear of getting it wrong, and I've said this a few, a few times recently and I I do. We need to be able to not just speak to other people who, like preach to the converted. You know, we don't want to be in an echo chamber when we're speaking to our community, because they get it, they understand, they reinforce. If you actually want to make a real difference, you need to be very inclusive, and I think part of the problem is that the guys haven't necessarily been welcomed as part of the chat, and so one of the things that we've started doing in the last three years is we have an event on our program, which is a male ally panel, and we have really senior leaders who are men coming in from some of the organizations that we work with to give their perspective on it, not to be like thrown to the lions, because I think some of them are worried that they come in and they're going to say something and the community is going to go.

Speaker 3:

You're part of the problem, um, but I actually think really embracing their perspective on it and making sure that they feel they can be heard is really important, because I think I mean, I'd be interested to know what you think actually. Do you feel as like a white, ostensibly middle-class male that you feel like you can't have a voice in it, because you feel like you're perpetuating the problem, because that's sometimes what we hear and that's definitely what we're trying to uh avoid happening um, yeah, no, I think.

Speaker 2:

Well, for me personally, I think it's definitely more a position of kind of uh, intrigue and kind of, you know, wanting to kind of understand a little bit more about, um, yeah, the different perspectives from people and particularly kind of what are those?

Speaker 2:

What does the world look like from their eyes?

Speaker 2:

Because you know, you can, you can never really kind of um, predict what that might be or the way that someone else is going to react, whether obviously it's in this debate we're talking male, female, but it could be someone from a different socioeconomic background, or it could be someone from a different race or different country or whatever that might be. Um, so I'm very interested in with business, very interested in trying to find common ground and try and find where is the consensus, where are the commonalities between people's outlooks. But in order to do that, you have to kind of also recognize where people do have a different experience has worked very hard, but is a white middle-class man, you know it's. It's hard always for you to kind of be in those positions where you can quite openly kind of and inquisitively ask about different people's perspectives, because that can also come across as seeming. Maybe you know what is the basis of that question. Why are you asking? Asking that, is it condescending, is it patronizing, or where an actual fact maybe is actually just about?

Speaker 3:

trying to empathize and try to understand what someone else is going through, especially if you know you're asking from a position of like, gaining more knowledge in order to then maybe support or be aware next time you see something happening where you can not necessarily step in.

Speaker 3:

But we have this kind of expression of calling in rather than calling out. So, rather than standing up and being aggressive and being like, well, you know so and so shouldn't have said that in that meeting, but just making space to bring people in who might not necessarily feel that comfortable being the loudest voice in the room and just making sure that there's space for every voice to be heard, like that kind of inquisitive nature, I think is really good because and most people will recognize people who've got good intentions and people who are trying to better themselves and who are trying to learn more to be able to be more inclusive and welcome that yeah, so.

Speaker 2:

So what are the things that you think um really can create that environment for these things to to really happen? Because they're, you know, in order for people to feel supported, to thrive to, to grow as people, um, within the organization. That's, you know, that's not a short-term thing, that's a long-term thing, but it takes a culture and a kind of consensus to be able to do that. So what are maybe those sort of elevator pitch, two or three things that you think organizations really should be doing to try and enable this growth in women, particularly those people that you talked about?

Speaker 3:

I think the low-hanging fruit would be everybody, no matter who you are, can do something, and the the most impactful will be people in positions of power within organizations, and it actually doesn't matter the size of your organization. So the junior people in say we're talking about a medium-sized organization the junior people will look up to the senior lot to get their cues on culture and how that works, whether it's something that they can feel a part of or whether they'll have to go along with this. You know how the mainstream culture of the of the organization that they're in. So if people in positions of power live and breathe that inclusivity, I think that's really, really powerful because everyone's going to take their cues from that. But that doesn't mean to say that it's only up to the ceo, like it should be filtered down as well as up.

Speaker 3:

Um, so things that things that like practical things that people could do, could be the calling in thing. Like I just said, that would be really, really useful, I think, also just understanding what challenges your particular organization might face and people within that might face. So you know, do you have a friend, do you have a trusted colleague, someone that you can have a chat with? Go for a coffee and say, just curious, like, how do you feel? I mean, do you feel completely supported? Are there any areas where you think we could be doing better as a business? Um, you know what's your experience on a day-to-day basis, so that you actually have some kind of foundation for what you as a person could be doing to support. And that's as much for women, as much as men. It's about making everyone feel inclusive. I guess this isn't really a gender thing now, it's an inclusivity thing. So those two pieces of advice I would say are really important. Just do something like after listening to this, if you then go about your day-to-day role, just do one thing.

Speaker 2:

Those are really really easy things that you can build in authentically without being like I'm an ambassador which is not going to be everyone's comfort zone right yeah, sure, sure, and forgive this very narrow question, but but? But why is this important? Why is it important to have more diversity? Why is it more important to have more, more women in senior positions?

Speaker 3:

well, I think. But you can look at it two ways, right, if you ask that in a commercial environment, my answer would be your organisation is going to be more profitable. Like, basically, we know there's so much research to say that more diverse businesses make better decisions, they are more profitable financially. You're better off. The other sort of technical side of it is that we have a quarter of the workforce that are going to be retiring in the next 20.

Speaker 3:

Uh well, to actually know it's uh, five to ten years, that's massive. And so gen z are coming through. We know that gen z I think the stats are that 87 of them would not go to an employer who wasn't inclusive. So if you're losing quarter of the workforce and we need a quarter of a million new jobs anyway to keep up with the anticipated level of growth, you know you're going to be losing out as a business if you're not onto this kind of stuff, and that's that is the stats. But then, like, my personal thing is because it's the right thing to do, like it just is yeah, I'm still not sure not not convinced yourself, but it is you know, we're not talking about.

Speaker 3:

You know why? Is punching someone in the face a good like, not a good thing? It's just because it's not you know. And so I feel it's good to have the stats because it's an easy win, but also it's a bit like shrug, because it's right. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, I'm glad we cleared that up. So for you personally, why now? Obviously there's been that momentum from what happened with Mentoring Circle, but you're a young mum, you've got a lot going on at the moment On a deeper personal level for you. Why are you feeling really compelled to do this with your time?

Speaker 3:

I think when I started it it which was in 2020 I consciously started something at the time and I'd be interested because you started the foundation at the same time as well, or similar time when I, when I did it, I was doing it because the, the, the day job, the kind of corporate bit of it, satisfied the intellectual side of things. And then I wanted something to satisfy a more personal calling cheesy as that might sound and I but I didn't anticipate that I'd get as much from it as I did and I didn't anticipate the amount of amazing people that I'd meet on a daily basis. And I think when you're doing something with goodwill, it naturally just grows because people kind of uh, people can tell whether you're doing something with goodwill. It naturally just grows because people kind of people can tell whether you're being genuine or not. And what I found was that, like over time, it just it took over in terms of the amount of pleasure that I was getting from it and all the other really interesting things that came out as a result of it.

Speaker 3:

And I really got to this tipping point where the time it was taking me to administer the programme and all the work we were doing was I knew that I wouldn't be able to do my full-time job and this and at the time so my daughter's a year now and over my maternity leave, because it was just me and my colleague running the business. It's not like you can not do that and having the headspace to think about you know what we could potentially do if we had the time to invest in it. It just felt like a tipping point for us and the and you know, you get thinking about what impact would we be able to have if we were able to attribute our lives to this. And so, yeah, I just felt like, if not now, then when? And sometimes you just got to go in feet first and, worst case scenario, hopefully I'll be able to find a job again if it all went, you know, south. I like to think that we have enough of a network to rescue us, but hopefully it won't come to that.

Speaker 2:

But it definitely was scary, to be honest yeah, no, I'm sure, I'm sure it is scary, as I can attest to, but, and I'm equally, I'm equally sure it won't there's no chance of it failing because, um, you know, it's been absolutely remarkable to watch what you've done and I think it's incredible the way that it's taken off and it just shows that there's a real need for it. You know there's it because it wouldn't otherwise. You know, it's like any any venture, you know, you got to got to have a fit between kind of someone taking the action to do it and there being a real need for it to happen. So, yeah, it's incredible what you're, what you're doing and, um, have you, have you sort of thought personally about? You know, you mentioned, obviously, some of the reasons why this gets you out of bed but, like you know, it's not an easy path to be taking, to be doing your own thing with a young family. And, um, I know that myself.

Speaker 2:

You know you're constantly words like, obviously, balance and things which are they're quite hard to kind of contextualize because there never is one answer to that, but you constantly are debating. Okay, well, if I spend my time here, I'm taking it away for spending time with my children or with my family and um, I'm not home for bedtime or whatever, and my daughter's gonna give me the cold shoulder in the morning and um, I'm not home for bedtime or whatever, and my daughter's gonna give me the cold shoulder in the morning because I haven't been home for bedtime, like she tends to do. But you know, we're constantly weighing all these things up and I think it's really um good that we can all talk about these kind of uh life issues. And how does purpose and work fit in with family and um, because that that really isn't just uh. You know something which historically would have been labeled as a woman's issue, that's a sort of issue for, for modern families generally, and um, yeah, so. So why have you, why do you think that you're doing this at this point?

Speaker 3:

I think, um, that's a really good question. Why now? Um, I think that it takes some time of living and, uh, understanding who you are and doing a job and working in a role to get what floats your boat and well, where lots of things come together. And your 30s, I think, are a really interesting time because in that time you're probably getting a bit more financially secure. You might be thinking about having a family Obviously, it's not for everybody, but on top of that, you've got lots of pressures on you in terms of the mortgage and what your next career move is going to be.

Speaker 3:

And I definitely took stock of my life around, you know my mid thirties, and thought what like what? What do I want my? It sounds really cheesy, but what do I want my legacy to be Like? Where do I want to be directing my time? Cause I feel like life is short and, at the same time, your career can be long, like I'm going to be working. Where do I want to be directing my time?

Speaker 3:

Because I feel like life is short and, at the same time, your career can be long, like I'm going to be working, into my 70s probably. So I want to be making sure that if I'm not making my daughter's bedtime, that the alternative is really worth it and that I'm really fulfilled because that will make me happier, that will make me a better mum, hopefully a better partner, so that I'm not know cranky when I come in. And you know you've also got to keep it's not just like the kids side of things. You also want to keep your friendships alive. You want to keep your relationship alive. There are so many different competing priorities and I don't think that happens until there's a certain point in your life.

Speaker 2:

So you kind of need to get there to to be like what, where do I want to go next? Yeah, yeah, no, I completely agree. I completely agree with you and um, and I think it's really interesting because you're well, we both are, but you particularly, you're almost your own customer for the circle partnership, aren't you? Because, because you're at that stage in life that you're kind of describing and the types of people that you're working with are, are and um, do you, do you feel like there's a lot of commonality that comes up? You mentioned some of the kind of issues around maybe confidence or other things that people face. But, uh, is there commonality or or is there quite a lot of different issues that people are facing or wanting to kind of support with from the mentorship?

Speaker 3:

there's lots of. There's lots of different ones, but I think there's an understanding of all these ones that are competing, because there might be people will have different priorities about what they want to get from it, like some of them might have very specific skill sets that they'll want to get from the mentoring and others will be a lot more um directive in terms of I know something's not right, but I'm not quite sure what is and part of it will be exploring with their mentor what might not be sitting right. I mean, when we do the pairings between the mentors and the mentees, we deliberately pair people who don't have the same job role with each other, like, firstly, because most companies do internal mentoring and they could probably get their expertise done internally. But it forces people, and especially the mentors, to think more broadly about how they might be able to help that specific mentee, because they can't just default to their expertise level. And what we find is that the challenges that people bring up, sometimes they might be, uh, really specific and then, when you delve into them more deeply, actually there's a underlying cause that makes them feel a certain way, like the confidence thing. You know. Is it really a lack of confidence or is it a lack of exposure and to certain projects and actually what you might be wanting to do is get more exposure on them so that you can build your experience level on them. And I think when you've got the time period of a year, you've got long enough to really figure it out and delve into it. And similarly, from the mentor's perspective, they've got a bit of leeway with that person to do a bit of in-depth exploration that you can't necessarily get from like a speed mentoring session.

Speaker 3:

And but I but to answer your question on the commonality bit of it there are varying levels of challenge, but I would I would say that most of the time when we get all of the mentees together as part of the emerging leadership program, there's a lot of nodding going on in the room and being like, yeah, I get that, or you know. I would say one of the really common problems we have with the mentees is they're expert at their job and they're not necessarily taught how to line, manage and they want to get up to that next role or the next promotion, but in order to do that they need to be expert at something. They need to tick this box, but in their current role. They can't get exposure to that and in order to be promoted, they need to be good at the thing that they can't get exposure to. So it's kind of like a lot of it is navigating the political maze and that's really hard to do on peer level.

Speaker 3:

So when you get the senior lot come in and they're like well, this is how I did it, you need to think a bit more broadly. This is how you can maneuver yourself around a bit. It helps because you know and this is a sweeping statement, I would say that women are a lot less bombastic than men and putting their hands up and being like I'll give it a whirl, you know, I asked one of our recruiter like I've got a friend who is going to be on a panel for us at the end of October and I asked him let's talk about some gender stereotypes to see if I want to know, from your perspective, whether you think they still exist. And I asked him when women look at a job role and men look at a job role, we hear all this old adage that women have to do absolutely everything on it before they go for a promotion or a job.

Speaker 3:

Men look at half of it and think yeah roughly yeah, I'll give it a whirl and I said, is that really true? And he was like definitely, it's still a thing. And so while these things are still perpetuating, you know there is going to be common common ground and all of this. And that's definitely on our.

Speaker 2:

Our mentees are like that and that's why they're not going for these senior roles that they could definitely do interesting long answer to your question no, no, no, it's really really interesting and um, yeah, I think that that whole area I'm really interested in, as you um evolve as a, as a business, you're going to be gathering so much you could call it data, but so much different perspectives and different kind of understandings about what that particular sort of demographic of people really want and really struggle with. And I think over time that's going to be really interesting to see, as you say, how you can kind um not only help on an individual level with what each of your mentees are going through, but maybe there becomes this kind of like collective thing that it can become about kind of um, maybe like the mission kind of becomes about collectively, kind of what can you say about this community and give it more of a voice collectively as well, would be quite interesting to think about over time.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, definitely um.

Speaker 2:

So that maybe leads me on to maybe my final question. So, so what? What does the kind of future look like, um, and you can take your lens whatever you want to look at, whether it's a few months or a few years or longer.

Speaker 3:

I don't know how you'd approach that um, it's a really interesting time to be asked that question, because my own um, part of my personal challenge about starting my own business and running my own business is that I, for some reason and this is something that I'm personally working on have a find myself having it almost a cap on my ambition, and I don't really know why that is in terms of what I believe I'll be able to achieve. So what I'm working on at the moment is trying to think okay, what, where could we go with this? Like, what could we do? And trying to think much bigger. And I don't know, I don't know why I feel like that and again, it might be societal, I don't know, but it's when you start something as a kind of side initiative. Actually part of starting it properly and being official about it is taking yourself seriously, and so I've been asking that question to myself where would we like to go with it? I think on a for a short-term basis and you drew attention to it just now getting the data to prove that what we're doing is really making a difference rather than just doing something because it's nice to do and it's a fun way to spend our time. Like, what is it? It's, it's not. That's not valuable unless you can actually back it up with data, and we have got data. But the longer we do it, the more data will aggregate and then we'll be able to see the long-term impact.

Speaker 3:

So I'd say that was the. That's the first one, and then I guess the second one would be what? We're not necessarily necessarily limited in terms of industry here, like we could go, engineering, even though built environment includes engineering, there's a big focus on engineering at the moment. They, their stats, are even worse than construction. Um, oil and gas as well. There are different industries that are linked to real estate that I think would benefit, and the more, the more we get the word out, the more it just becomes an industry norm, and then by it being a norm, you're then standing out from the crowd if your culture is not inclusive. And if we can if I, I can retire and, hand on heart, have said that I've made a meaningful difference to the sort of workplace that both of our daughters will be going into and our children, then I think I'd be really happy with that.

Speaker 2:

Vanessa, that's probably a lovely place to end and I'm sure you'll get there and help everyone along the way to to that feature that you've just described. So thank you very much for joining me and everything you're doing.

Speaker 1:

The circle partnership thanks for having me thank you for listening to the grow places podcast. For more information, visit growplacescom and follow us at. We grow places across all social channels. See you next time.