If your leaders keep asking for the perfect words before every difficult conversation, what they are missing is not a better script. It is confidence in their own judgment.
Brigid McCormack sits down with Amy Smith, Inclusion Campaign Manager at Business in the Community, to unpack person-centred leadership: the idea that fairness does not necessarily mean sameness, that leaders shape people's experience of work and not just their performance, and that inclusion is a leadership challenge rather than a language one.
With over seven years designing and delivering culture, engagement, belonging and workplace wellbeing initiatives across complex organisations, Amy brings a lens shaped by her own lived experience, being mixed race, neurodivergent and moving continents, to how leaders create dignity at work.
She breaks down the psychological contract and why neglecting it surfaces later as lost trust, innovation and retention, the three-part toolkit she leans on in place of a script, and how DEI work is changing as leaders try to sustain connection and fairness in a more polarised environment.
What you'll learn:
- Why fairness does not necessarily mean sameness, and what person-centred leadership looks like in practice
- The cost of promoting leaders on technical expertise alone, and why it only shows up later in trust, innovation and retention
- How leaders weaken the psychological contract without noticing, and why picking apart superficial details signals that uncertainty is unsafe
- The three things in Amy's leadership toolkit in place of a script: accountability, change capability and capacity building
- Why AI can hand you a script but not judgment, and how to interview, develop and measure for the skill that matters
🔗 Connect with Amy
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-smith-yprofile/
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👋 Come and connect with us
We're always keen to hear what's resonating or what you're seeing in your world.
Adam Lacey - https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamlacey/
Richard Ward - https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardpward/
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