‘Normalising Human Leadership’ with Nicky Lowe

The Evolving Leader

In this episode of The Evolving Leader podcast, co-hosts Jean Gomes and Scott Allender talk to Nicky Lowe.

Nicky started her career working for a Silicon Valley tech company during the lead up to Y2K, where the financial rewards were great but for many their own wellbeing was secondary. After having her first child Nicky experienced burnout on her return to work, as she says ‘underestimating the psychosocial factors that impact women - especially mothers in the workplace’. Nicky became extremely curious as to what had happened and as a result reimagined her approach to her career and motherhood - learning what it takes to thrive both as a leader, mother and woman and for the last 20 years, Nicky has been an executive coach specialising in helping her clients achieve success in their lives without sacrificing their health or wellbeing.

Referenced during this episode:

https://luminate-group.co.uk/

Other reading from Jean Gomes and Scott Allender:
Leading In A Non-Linear World (J Gomes, 2023)

The Enneagram of Emotional Intelligence (S Allender, 2023)

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The Evolving Leader is researched, written and presented by Jean Gomes and Scott Allender with production by Phil Kerby. It is an Outside production.

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Chapters

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. Before becoming a coach, you had a successful corporate career. Can we recap what happened and what brought you here? (00:05:07)

3. What motivates you to want to coach others? (00:11:10)

4. What are some of the shifts that you went through as an individual to get to where you are today? (00:11:41)

5. How does that change how you approach your work now? (00:16:44)

6. What’s the most powerful one for you? (00:18:12)

7. What does the data that you’ve gathered from the Global Leadership Wellbeing Survey show about the gender wellbeing gap? (00:19:08)

8. Is there any difference in the generations in this survey? (00:23:21)

9. Can you briefly outline the four Ms and what the big challenges to solve are? (00:24:23)

10. How do we make it less about ‘what I need to do as a woman to take control of this’. What’s in it for the man? (00:29:59)

11. The monthly cycle is almost never part of a mixed gender conversation at work. How do we get past this being a taboo topic? (00:32:10)

12. The menopause has recently become a more discussed topic – where you do feel we are on the journey to normalising and positively adapting around that? (00:33:53)

13. Another driver around that is the aging workforce. (00:37:05)

14. Miscarriage is a very painful event, and each case is very specific in terms of how it will affect us. What do we need to be discussing here? (00:38:29)

15. What’s your state of the nation on motherhood and work? (00:41:09)

16. Where are you seeing successes? (00:44:35)

17. What advice can you give to leaders who do not have direct influence over policy changes? (00:47:08)

18. Leaders who have been through parenthood understanding the pressures that those who are still parenting are experiencing. (00:49:44)

19. What’s next for you? (00:51:52)

20. How can people contact you? (00:52:48)