We Are Power Podcast

Inspiring Change Through Action with Jayne Little

• powered by Northern Power Women • Season 17 • Episode 21

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Join us as we sit down with Jayne Little, the founder and CEO of Skills4, and our 2024 Agent of Change!

Jayne opens up about her incredible journey from leaving school with limited qualifications to overcoming personal losses and setting up her own business.

Facing bias and microaggressions in male-dominated fields? Janye shares her experiences of confronting gender inequality, particularly within STEM.


Listen to learn:
- how Jayne has impacted the lives of over 10,000 women 
- the role of allies and advocates in creating supportive networks 
-  the impact of small, bold actions in growing your confidence
- how to make STEM more inclusive and accessible 

You can now nominate for the 2025 Northern Power Women Awards to be in with a chance of celebrating with changemakers, trailblazers and advocates on 6th March 2025! Nominate now at wearepower.net

Sign up to our Power Platform to check out our events calendar here.

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the we Are Power podcast Northern Power Women podcast for your career and your life, no matter what business you're in. Hello, welcome to the we Are Power podcast, the podcast where we are talking to different role models every single week, getting some of that top tips, advice, guidance, life hacks, whatever it may be, but things that will help you in your career, your life, whatever adventure you are on. And this series we are speaking to some of our fantastic trophy holders, winners, commended, and finding out what has happened since that wonderful night back in Manchester in March this year. And I'm delighted this week to be speaking to the wonderful Jane Little, who's founder and CEO multiple award-winning, by the way, diversity and inclusion training company Skills4, and was our 2024 Agent of Change winner at this year's awards, Jane welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2:

Brilliant Thanks, Simone. It's great to be part of the celebration and when you.

Speaker 1:

We did like a little winner's podcast in the days following and I asked everybody what the three words were, and you were giddy, grateful to be recognised, buzzing and energised. I'm also noting that these are more than three words, but that's okay. We were building this. I'm feeling really optimistic about the future. How are you feeling?

Speaker 2:

now. Oh, I'm feeling fantastic, Simone, and it's great to see that. You know, Northern Power is keeping the momentum going, keeping the conversation going, and it's just great to see all the positive change that's going on around me and you as I said, were our 2024 Agent of Change.

Speaker 1:

What did the award mean to you?

Speaker 2:

Simone. It meant so much to me because I have had such a lot of change in my life and I left school with four GCSEs and not very good ones. I went traveling for a bit because the thought of a job terrified me. I then worked for an airline for 10 years as cabin crew and then I got married, I got pregnant and I took a career break. Then I lost the pregnancy, my marriage broke down and I didn't have a job. So people say, oh, you're really brave starting your own business. And actually I'm not. I had no other options. But then I got involved in learning and development. I went back and got a better education. I went to Leeds University. So the change in my life has been phenomenal. The change that we create in other women's lives is just beautiful to see. So to win Agent of Change to me was really an emotional night. It was great.

Speaker 1:

And I know the judges were really impressed at the fact that you have helped over 10,000 women through your work. How have you done that? What do you think are your sort of your, what are your hacks, if you like, or your keys to sort of making that impact?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I, think for me, the impact is because I make sure I've got a great product and I've got a great team, so you can't scale. As you all know, when I look at your micro team, what you guys achieve is phenomenal. So it's having the right team around you having a great product's having the right team around you havinga great product. So I'm a real stickler for continuous improvement and my hack really and I know a lot of people do not do this but I delegate everything I can, so I focus on vision, relationships and content. Everything else I delegate out to my team and that's how I've managed to have the reach that I have.

Speaker 1:

Wow, that's amazing. That's so simple, Because I think you're right. I think why do you think we procrastinate?

Speaker 2:

about delegation. I don't know. I think sometimes the most common answer I hear is it's quicker if I do it myself. It's quicker if I do it myself, and I always think, yeah, but you know that that's a short term fix. So when I work with women on delegating I say right, the best tip I can give you about delegating is don't put a lot of work and effort into it.

Speaker 2:

Decide who the best person is to delegate to Tell them what you want them to achieve and then make their first task that they feed back to you, preferably on an email. So it's there and it's black and white what's meant to be achieved, what the timeframes are and what the outputs are. And then that doesn't take you any time but you're empowering that person to put in the time, check their understanding and come back to you. So you know that would be the one change I would say people should make delegate the task but then make it the other person's job to feed back to you their understanding I know we've talked about the, the, why you set your business up.

Speaker 1:

Almost you didn't have a choice. You were going through some awful, had gone through some awful life-changing things in your world. But why? Why skills? For what was that vision? Uh, because you've, I say, you had this masses of experience and different experience. But why, why did you go down this sort of diversity, inclusion, skills, people training route?

Speaker 2:

yeah, well, I've always been really passionate about people and equality and justice. But it's really interesting that when everything went wrong, when everything fell to pieces around me, it was a colleague of mine, a friend of mine, who gave me a choice and said look, we've got a project called Women and Work. It's not doing very well. Will you come in and quality assure it? So I went in to look at it and I said immediately I said right, there's no tools. Women are being inspired and motivated but there's nothing they can pick up and do after they've been spoken to. So I'll write some tools and off we went and it went off and the program's gone from strength to strength.

Speaker 2:

But for me, the real thing there is when I had nowhere to turn, it was somebody in my network that put out a hand for me and that's a message that I really want to pay forward. So that's what inspires me. I work with so many brilliant women who just need to work on their network and visibility to achieve great things. Because there's a phrase in the Northeast and it always makes me laugh. It says shy burns, get out. You know so, if you don't ask, you don't get. But the other part of that is, if you haven't got a network, you've got nobody to ask. So you know, it's those simple tools that I see women achieve great things, and I suppose the vision has been to help women progress their careers to the same extent as men. And it's still that today.

Speaker 1:

And I know there's the phrase, isn't it? Your net worth is your network. But I love this. I'm going to shout out to one of our brilliant, uh, northeast ambassadors, adele, who that was one of. Remember she approached me many years ago and said I want to support, I want to help. You know, you talk about that, give back that reaching out hand, and, and that was hers. That was the first time I'd ever heard or come across the shy burns. Get now.

Speaker 1:

I love that phrase, but it literally does what it says on the tin, doesn't it? Yeah, and, and we've talked um sort of separately around wider advocacy, um, and you know, and we've even just before our chat today, you know talking about that. You know it's not a, it's not a, it's not like pie, is it where you cut it up and you think, right, if we get the guys involved, it means there's less, less kind of involvement for for women, you know, but I know you are massively passionate about gender balance, particularly across the STEM or STEAM sectors. Why has that mission become so important to you? Because you were clearly someone who was driven by that mission of making impact.

Speaker 2:

I was, and I was just thinking as well when I was looking at thinking back to the night and there were so many great, great, fantastic memories of that awards night. But for me, one of the key things was looking up at the advocacy list. At a stage full of men all wanting to be part of this journey and to join in was just wonderful. And I think, simone, I've been on the receiving end and I still feel it so in in 2010 and I went into a meeting and I was the only woman in the room. I took my jacket off and hung it on the back of the chair and one guy said to me keep going, love. And I was like, are you kidding me? But what was really painful was nobody else stood in and checked them.

Speaker 2:

You know, I still hear occasional stories like that because I work in a hard sector, but men want to come along and they want to support and I think it's right that we say, yeah, we all win here. Like you say, simone, it's not a piece of the pie. You say, simone, it's not a piece of the pie. Um, you know, particularly in STEM, we've got a huge skill shortage and yet women only make up 30% of the workforce. So it's not, you know, work having for your jobs. It's if we improve gender balance, we increase innovation, we improve financial performance, we compete, compete on a global level. So we all win, win. And I just do think you know, I know that was in 2010 and things have come along a great, you know a huge amount which is really positive, and the way we're going to do that is all working together and that's why I care about advocacy and that's why I love to see in the advocacy list launched last year.

Speaker 1:

Oh, and it was a powerful piece, wasn't it? But there's also an element of one of. We have great WhatsApp groups, as many of us do listening to this, and the advocacy group is always really interesting. It's a different conversation, but I gathered a gang the other week and I was like here's the irony of almost creating a man's club, if you like, but we've always talked. This is really important. It's the good guys, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

And I think that you know I know you said that that comment keep going was like it's ludicrous, to be honest, and you have to. Yeah, I think sometimes the only way you can think of it. That's just ridiculous in this age, but I'm hearing so many things that are still happening out there and you literally do want that moment where you just get a card out that just goes it's 2024. You know it's ridiculous, but what would you say to anyone out there listening who is kind of navigating their career in you know, whether it be a STEM or STEAM field, or whether it be you know another highly male dominated sector that you know maybe comes across a challenging remark, like you received, or something else? Any top tips there, jane, to kind of navigate?

Speaker 2:

that I do. I do think because we we've done a lot of research. So we always ask the women who've been through our program. You know we're giving you tools personally, but in terms of your organization, what do you think that the organizational barriers are? And sadly, it is still that the top two answers are there's bias and microaggressions and they need addressing. And then there's another piece around transparency of progression process.

Speaker 2:

So you know, if I already feel like a minority, I haven't really got the confidence to go there and have a career conversation when everybody's busy and it's not really my place, and have a career conversation when everybody's busy and it's not really my place. But if we come back to the bias or the microaggression points, when you hear something's not quite right, whether you're the woman on the receiving end or whether you're a potential ally in the room I always think the best way is to just ask a question, because that's normally enough for people to step back. So you know, if you can say what do you mean by that? That is absolutely enough for people to go. Oh right, yeah, and have a little mumble under their breath about an appropriate apology. But also, don't beat yourself up, because in that moment. I didn't say that. I just, you know, sat down quietly and got on with the meeting. But I could have gone back afterwards and said what did you mean by that?

Speaker 1:

the doors never shut and I think that I talk about that. We talk about the good guys and we collect the good guys. When that comment was made to you or you know, other people are probably listening now going yeah, that happened to me last week, the fact that no one said anything. One of the conversations we had with our advocates the last week was you know, actually what we want to be doing is to be saying and, um, you know, sort of calling out behaviors or comments when women aren't in the room, um, and I think that's kind of one of the the big things is, don't just do it as a, you know, actually do do, of course, but don't make sure you're doing it when, when there isn't a woman in the room, I think how do we? How do we kind of um, top tips again, it's all about the top tips today, but top tips for being that, you know, to creating those better allies and advocates.

Speaker 2:

Well, I think, um, obviously, since somebody who runs a training company, I'm going to say training is the best way forward because people have recognized for a long time for women to really excel in their careers they need the tools and the confidence to do that. And you know, whilst men can wake up full of, you know, moral support, they need the tools to know how to do it, but they also need the confidence, because sometimes I find men are a bit hesitant, thinking hang on, is it right for me to step in here? So I would say, you know, look at that. But the other thing is, apart from training and tools, there's that beautiful piece, simone, you know, the 20-60-20 piece.

Speaker 2:

So 20% of people are never going to get on board with the change. They just know this is all ridiculous feminists gone mad. 20% of people are going to be really proactive and they want to drive that change and make the change. But the large pool in the middle, 60%, are looking at what's happening and deciding how to move. So for me, I think things like the Northern Power Advocacy List being launched last year, where 50 men stand up proudly and say I'm on board with this journey, means others will follow.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and I think that's the that's the aim really is is creating that multiplier effect, because what you want the 60 in the middle as I'm looking at it, I'm a piece of paper now but that 60, you want, you want to make sure they're going that way, not that way. Right, you know that's that's the key. You, um, you know is to to do that and go actually come this side, don't, don't worry, like you know, it is that toolkit, isn't it to?

Speaker 2:

to help, help, help our advocates, not be afraid yeah, it's almost like you know, transferring all of the great learning we've done with supporting women and making that available to men too, because do you remember a few years ago there was that huge campaign. If I can see, see it, I can be it. It's the same for men. When we've got great male allies, that's 60% follow.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely 100%. In fact, if anyone's seen my LinkedIn recently, they'll see. I met the King a few weeks ago and I gave him a Northern Power Women badge and he said to me I don't think I qualify and I said, your Majesty, of course you do, because actually look me, I don't think I qualify and I said your majesty of course you do, because actually look at the female businesses in this, in this room, as a celebration for the King's Awards for enterprise and and and it's important, it's you know we can, we can, we need the good guys, we need the good guys to help that. That, that that sort of you can't see it. You have to see it to be it kind of thing. So I totally agree with that. And how do we make this sector more inclusive in the future? What are the steps or the leaps that we need to get there?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think so many organizations well, so many organizations in this sector are doing great things, but they tend to be the larger organizations because they have more resource. So it will take time to filter to SMEs. But it's understanding that it's not one magic bullet. So we need training for women, we need women's employee network groups. We need great things, like you know, award ceremonies, recognizing talent. So it's all of the things that we can do, and certainly with Skills4, we help individuals progress their careers and we're very successful at that. But the organizations can do little tiny tweaks to looking internally and two easy changes.

Speaker 2:

I know some will be doing it, but when we look at performance reviews within organizations, there are two easy tweaks you can make there. If you put in a performance indicator for leaders around inclusion, suddenly they're going to start doing it, and we already know that women sometimes aren't as forthcoming as men in starting a career conversation. Where's my next progression? What do I have to do to get forward? How can I get charted more quickly? Then that should be in their PDR. Okay, we are now going to have a career conversation. So you know it doesn't have to take a lot of time or take a lot of money it's really thinking about. Where can we embed this throughout the sector that is going to make that change quicker?

Speaker 1:

Love that, love those top tips and in this our winners are commended season. We are asking every one of our guests to pose a question for the next guest. Okay, so Jill from Square One Law, who were the winners of the SME business this year. She has asked a question and it's interesting because it's like she knew, because I feel like we've already sort of covered it but what point in your life have you had to be fearless and how did that feel? And she came up with that question because she runs a podcast around being fearless.

Speaker 2:

So I do feel we've already tracked on this, haven't we, jade Well, it really is interesting, because one thing I find fascinating about women is, as I've said to you, I just had a storm in a teacup, an awful set of events that left me with. Actually, I had nothing to lose, lose, so I wasn't really fearless, I just got on with it. Um, but for me, what I find with me and other women is we're brilliant at being fearless when it's for somebody else. If you've got to step in for your kids or your friend or a colleague, suddenly we have all of this courage and we can step in and be a lion, but we don't really do it for ourselves. So, um, yeah, I'm just trying to think.

Speaker 2:

Normally, when I'm fearless, it's because I'm advocating for somebody else and I know that my knees are going to knock, I know that I'm probably going to get flushed in the neck, so those are all the physical symptoms I get. But, um, it's, it's when you know you're in the right, you push forward anyway. You just find your moral courage. So. But you know, my're in the right, you push forward anyway. You just find your moral courage. So. But you know, my message is everybody listening to this podcast is going to think, yeah, I'm probably a bit more fearless when I'm standing up for others and can we start doing it for ourselves?

Speaker 1:

I love that, I really love that, and I look forward to. We'll be passing your question, jane, on which I'll get after the episode, on to our next guest as well but, um, what would you say? We've talked about advocacy. We've talked about if you can't see it, you can't be it. But for those, you've talked about your um moment of the awards and you know what it's meant to you and all everything around that, and but it's, you know, it's the largest event celebrating gender equality. People might think there's no point. I'm not going to win um. You know what we're going to gain out of it. I can't afford to go or haven't got the time, all of those things, because we're not advocating for ourselves, right? But what would you think about? What would you? For those thinking about nominating um, but Archer, what would you say? Why should they do it?

Speaker 2:

oh my goodness, they should absolutely do it, because we're all aware of the great work you do and the noise you make and the celebration you have. And this is about chucking your hat in the ring and being part of it. And sometimes, you know, I find women will say, well, I'm not going to win or I can't afford to go. And I say, well, you're a bit ahead of yourself there, let's get the, get the application in and see what comes your way. So just put your application in.

Speaker 2:

And if we go back to you know that thing about visibility in relationships, and that's the bit that's missing for women, entering the awards is such an important part of building your relationship and your network Because you know you become visible to other people in your sector, to the judges. You can reach out to last year's winners and ask how they put their nomination together, any top tips. So, in terms of visibility, you know it's fantastic and if you're passionate about gender balance and gender diversity, you really want to get on board and be part of that noise. And I know, simone, you've opened the nominations early this year. They're open now. So I would say, just it doesn't take long, fill it, ininate and and see if you're lucky enough to get short shortlisted and it's interesting what you talk about advocating for others.

Speaker 1:

The response that we get from people when they go is sure, this is meant for me, you know. Are you sure that you know? And then we have to we do have to do a little bit of corralling, uh, often to say come on, you know, this is someone has really taken the time to think about you, whether whether it be fingers to their keyboard or doing an audio nomination, because we try to make it as inclusive as we can. So thank you for that. And finally, where is your trophy?

Speaker 2:

My trophy's in the office. Yeah, I've put it in the office. I thought about keeping it at home because you know you said you've won lots of awards. Skills 4 and the programs I write win loads of awards and this was the first one. That was like for Jane Little. So I thought about bringing it home. But I got a bit of peer pressure from the team going oh it's such a beautiful trophy, jane, we'll keep it in the office. So it's sitting in the office where everybody can enjoy it.

Speaker 1:

Maybe one weekend, just sneak it home and have it there, have it there on the side and go. That's me. That's me. I'm agent of change. Jane, thank you so much for joining. I love these chats, post awards. I love to know what people are doing. I love to know and I think it's great for our listeners as well to hear what people's story is, what people's adventure is, and things aren't as you've highlighted. Things aren't always sort of linear and straightforward, are they? So thank you so much for joining me. Thank you, simone. An absolute pleasure. Take care. Thank all of you for listening and please do stay connected on all of our socials TikTok, insta and Twitter. We are Power underscore net, facebook and LinkedIn. We are Power. We love to hear from you. We love your comments. Please leave us a review and do not forget to nominate. It makes a massive difference. Um, thank you for listening. This is the we are power podcast and what goes on media production.

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Simone Roche MBE

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