This week I had the privilege of having dinner in the House of Lords where I listened to a fascinating speech by Sir Richard Knighton, the UK’s Chief of Defence Staff. The men and women in the room who have worked with and for him told me that they had nothing but admiration and respect for this remarkable man, who is the first ever non pilot to ever hold the post.
In the Q&A that followed, a retired female Naval Officer asked him about his views on the sexism and demeaning attitudes and behaviours towards women that still prevail within the Armed Forces.
He told the audience that these appalled him, as they should, but when she pushed and asked him what he was going to actually do about it, his answer demonstrated the problem that sits at the heart of so many of these conversations and leadership roles.
He said that where possible women should “simply ignore these behaviours because we should not give these men oxygen” and “to push back where they could.”
Halfway through his answer I remember thinking to myself; “Oh sh*t...no! You can’t say that as the leader of the armed forces.”
His answer surprised me because it demonstrated just how easy it is for even the most respected leaders to unintentionally reinforce the very culture they’re trying to change.
Initially, that sentence appears to be very sensible advice, do not provide the sexist, misogynistic and abusive men any airtime. I understand this sentiment.
However, when you look at the first part of the sentence though, the part about just ignoring the problem where possible; the problems become significant and very apparent.
Only somebody who has never been on the receiving end of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annually sexist views and abuse would ever suggest that ignoring it was the way forward.
Ask women what ignoring these beliefs and behaviours ultimately lead to and they will say rape and murder.
Now, whether every individual act ends in rape or murder isn’t the point here. The point is that women have watched enough of these behaviours go unchallenged, escalate and ultimately become violent that they no longer see them as isolated incidents. They see them as part of the same culture.
As white middle aged men, we have never been exposed to or been on the receiving end of this and so for us, ignoring the problem makes sense because we don’t fully understand it as to do so would mean that we’d have to deal with it and that might become deeply uncomfortable for us for so many reasons.
Yet in a military context, we would never hear a commander, on being told that the enemy was advancing up the left flank, advancing up the right flank and encircling us, utter the command to ignore them and only push back on the battalion they could see directly in front of them.
Yet this is exactly what women are being told, all…the…time.
For women throughout our Armed Forces it is very clearly still in front of them, still all around them and still behind them.
Military leaders spend their entire careers trying to understand the battlefield they can’t yet see. They actively search for threats, weaknesses, blind spots and vulnerabilities because failing to see them costs lives. That’s what good military leadership looks like, which is why I found it so surprising to hear women effectively being told to ignore a very real and present threat they are living with every single day.
The remarkable woman who asked the question spoke openly about being sexually assaulted, sexually abused and verbally abused during her career in the Royal Navy. She also openly said that life for women today in the Armed Forces is significantly better than it was. That said, the bar was clearly so low when she joined the service some 30+ years ago that the only way was up and that also doesn’t necessarily make today’s bar remotely acceptable.
Leadership isn’t demonstrated by recognising unacceptable behaviour.
Leadership is demonstrated by creating an environment where unacceptable behaviour becomes unacceptable to everyone serving under their leadership.
The responsibility of leadership is not simply to react to what it already knows. It is to become aware of what it doesn’t yet know and then lead the organisation somewhere better. Leadership sets the standard. Leadership decides what will and won’t be tolerated. Leadership creates the culture that everybody else either lives up to or learns to live with.
That means saying clearly, “This stops now.” It means backing those words with action and it means consequences for those who do not abide by the new standards of behaviour to create the desired culture.
It means promoting people who live those standards and removing those who choose not to. Anything less simply tells everybody watching that the behaviour is still acceptable.
This level of change can only be led.
It can only be led by the person ultimately responsible for the culture of the organisation. If we are unable to get it right at the top then we can never expect it to change at the roots of the organisation and if, at the roots of the organisation, sexist thinking, sexist attitudes and sexist behaviours are not picked up on and stamped down on with significant consequences, there will always be the risk of sexual, verbal and physical abuse to women.
Personally, I’d go further.
I think this also demonstrates why we need more women leading our biggest institutions, not because women are necessarily any better leaders than men but because leadership teams made up of people with different lived experiences are much less likely to miss what is hiding in plain sight.
I left the House of Lords with even more respect for Sir Richard Knighton than when I arrived because I have no doubt whatsoever that he wants the very best for the men and women under his command and for the country he serves.
What stayed with me though was the reminder that good people, even exceptional leaders, can still have blind spots.
The responsibility of leadership is to find them before anybody else pays the price for them.