Exceptional Female Role Models - Jenny Garrett OBE

Jenny Garrett OBE is an award-winning career coach, author and leadership trainer.

She is the Founder / MD of Reflexion Associates – a consultancy offering a range of training and development programmes to support leaders, teams and organisations, with a focus on authentic, inclusive and adaptive leadership.

Jenny designs and delivers talks and programmes to support the progression of Women and those from Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority backgrounds in the workplace. As well as supporting majority group leaders in making inclusion happen.

She is the co-founder of ‘Rocking Ur Teens’ - a social enterprise that equips teens with essential future proof leadership skills, good mental health tools and self-esteem.

In 2020, she founded the 1st Diverse Executive Coach Directory in the UK, showcasing qualified and experienced coaches of Black, Asian and Ethnic Minority backgrounds

She is the author of ‘Rocking Your Role – The How-to Guide to Success for Female Breadwinners’, a book which explores the empowerment of working women and women in leadership roles.

Jenny was awarded the OBE in 2021, for services to Entrepreneurship and Women in Business.

Can we start by understanding more about your background?

I started off from humble beginnings, growing up on a council estate in North-West London to a single parent teen Mum, with my brother coming along 8 years later.

My Mum was a secretary for most of my childhood, but then when I became a teenager she decided to do an access course to go to university and study a degree to allow her to become a teacher.

This was a big change in our lives, and to see my Mum going back to school to better our circumstances was a huge source of inspiration for me.

At school I was an average student, I was very well-behaved and got on with my work. I completed my ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels, and then initially wanted to become a fashion designer, but simply couldn’t afford to go to university and wasn’t able to get a grant to study.

I decided to start working in admin, and then went into marketing. When I was about 20 years old, I decided to revisit my dream of getting a degree that incorporated my love of art. I enrolled at the University of Westminster on a part-time business degree that majored in art, design and communication.

I was really enjoying it, but then one day we had a visit from a man representing the famous St Martin’s Art School, he looked at my work and then asked ‘do you have a life outside of art?’, I replied that I actually worked full-time and was only studying part-time. He told me ‘What? You simply can’t have a life outside of art! Art must be everything to you!’

I decided that art was not going to be my everything in life, and I switched direction to end up majoring in marketing and business. It took me 5 years part-time to complete my degree, so at age 25 I set off on my marketing career, until in 2005 I founded Reflexion Associates.

What skills do you wish you had learned earlier in life?

Negotiation skills.

When I began my career, I really didn’t have any idea about negotiation skills – or the fact that you could even negotiate. For example, that if somebody offered you a salary there exists an opportunity to discuss rather than just say thank you.

I didn’t appreciate that when somebody says ‘No’, that doesn’t always mean the door is closed, and in fact they are often actually looking for you to make a counteroffer.

I think I was a poor negotiator - about my salary or what my role would entail - I was very much a ‘yes person’ early in my career.

I didn’t realise there was space for negotiation, and that this is an important skill which is accepted and expected, and an important aspect of getting more of what you want.

I now very much see myself as a lifelong learner, so I would recommend people to find books and courses on negotiation, but also to find the moments in everyday life where you can practice negotiating, and maybe to start off by experimenting with small things that don’t matter so much.

Maybe try visiting a market and haggling over the cost of things you want to buy rather than paying the marked price – just try it! The next time you almost buy something for ￡20, just try getting it for ￡19!

You can negotiate with your partner or a family member, or maybe even something like the time you will take lunch at work.

Negotiation skills are like a muscle, the more you practice and the more you use them, the better they will get.

What is the best advice you have ever been given?

‘Nobody is you, and that is your power’.

I encourage people to spend time in self-reflection and to learn what is unique about you. This doesn’t necessarily mean unique to the world, I accept there will always be other people that are good at some of the same things you are, but you do have a unique blend of skills and this makes you really special.

Realise that you bring a unique set of talents to a situation, and that you can leverage this.

In my work, I often find working with women and ethnically diverse individuals and we have often been taught how to assimilate – we have been taught to fit into an often white male dominated environment. This means that not only do we not celebrate our uniqueness, but in fact we often play it down, and anything that makes us stand out is not seen as a good thing.

The best advice I have been given, is to recognise your own unique talents and then share these so that people realise how valuable your own uniqueness really is.

This has the added bonus of allowing you to spend less time trying to fit in and not say the wrong thing, and much more time being productive and being your best self.

What is the biggest life lesson you have learned?

I’ve always been someone who gives an awful lot to my work, I apply myself with energy and am totally committed to delivering to the highest standard. Somebody once asked me though ‘you have so much energy here at work, but can I ask you what do you have left to give at home?’

I suddenly realised that my husband was getting the worst version of me - by the time I got home I was completely spent, I was literally exhausted - and I was grumpy! This was all the wrong way around.

Work has always been really important to me – I have a purpose, and I love what I do. But one of my life lessons has been that all your loved ones around you need you to invest time in them too, so get your balance right.

Look at ‘The Jar of Life’ example and remember that the rocks are the things that truly matter to you and need to be prioritised first – your family, your health etc; then the pebbles – your work; then the sand the other small stuff of life.

Fill your jar by getting your focus in the right areas in the right order to live a happy fulfilling life.

Secondly, I would encourage people to chase their own dreams and not somebody else’s.

When you are a do-er, people will often tell you all about what they think you should be doing. I think it takes strength not to just allow yourself to be pulled along on other people’s tides.

Discover what is important to you, and chase dreams that align with your mission, your purpose.

Now that my work is aligned to my authentic purpose - empowerment, fairness, independence – I never have that feeling of dread when I wake up in the morning, I’m excited about the opportunities ahead of me to enable people and contribute to a fairer world.

So, figure out what your values are, and then spend time working out how you will actually put these into action.

How important have mentors been in your journey?

My initial career was in marketing – I loved this work and thought this was always what I was meant to do, until I found coaching! I had a colleague – Barbara Banda - who challenged me on my career aspirations.

Her first suggestion was that I consider training people in marketing – but at that point I really wasn’t a very confident public speaker, so the idea of standing up in front of groups of people didn’t appeal to me.

Then she said what about coaching. You are a really good listener and people always come away from conversations with you motivated and with actions. She encouraged me to consider attend a coaching programme.

This was a turning point for me, it made me take a hard look at myself and my decisions, the way I was living my life.

I was very fortunate that there was someone quite senior in my organisation that took me under his wing. After sponsoring me to attend a coaching programme he actually asked me what I needed from him, and he created opportunities for me to develop my skills.

He enabled me to get trained on additional skills, like psychometrics. He enabled me to go on every course that was available. He then opened doors for me in a very active way.

I started to see the power coaching conversations have to transform lives.

He used to tell me, ‘Share your vision, and things will conspire to make it happen’ – he encouraged me to tell people about what I wanted, and then to watch it happen.

Nowadays whenever I have a vision of something, but perhaps I can’t possibly imagine how this could actually happen – I just start sharing! I tell people about it, and then people start giving me insight or want to join forces with me. Somehow it just starts to materialise.

His name was Gene Horan – he unfortunately passed away due to Covid last year, but he was a white man who was a true ally, mentor and sponsor to me and had a huge impact on my life.

What are your thoughts about the importance of visible female role models?

I always start with my Mum and my Grandmother as two very important role models for me – they are strong black women who paved the way for me in life.

Then, when I started my business, I looked around to see if there were any black women running businesses to be inspired by. There was a really great organisation called the ‘TwentyTen Club’ made up of black female entrepreneurs doing amazing things who really did inspire me to step up my game.

There is a saying ‘if you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room’ – I definitely wasn’t the smartest person in that room, and I realised how much I had to learn. They were great role models and great support for me.

It’s important to have people that you can aspire to emulate, and also to have people that when you hit a roadblock will be there to lift you up.

Seeing it, definitely meant that I believed I could be it.

I do also believe though that if you can’t see anybody doing what you dream of doing, then go ahead and be a pioneer. If you wait to have enough role models, maybe you might miss your opportunities.

When it comes to facing challenges, what strategies have you developed?

As a black woman in business there sometimes can be additional challenges in terms of microaggressions that could be experienced - maybe feeling that you are walking a tightrope where you can’t possibly make a mistake as all your mistakes are hyper-visible.

You might also feel like you don’t have the same access to power as others might have – especially if the power is held by white men, and your own network is not made up of white men.

You can also just feel like you are different – I’m often in spaces where I am very much in the minority or even the only person who looks like me. In these situations, it really does take a lot more courage and energy to show up and speak up, and not acutely feel like you are an imposter.

There is that feeling of ‘why am I in this room?’ ‘how did I sneak into this room?’ ‘is someone going to realise that I’m not supposed to be here?’

My advice is to develop your coping mechanisms. Think about what you can control and influence, and also learn how to let go of the things that you can’t control.

Look after yourself – if you are deprived of sleep or food or exercise, then you won’t react well to the obstacles you will come across and you won’t make great decisions.

Invest time in developing a great network of relationships around you. We all need people we can turn to when something has gone wrong – we need to ask for advice, but also sometimes we just need people who will support us by listening and letting us vent.

Then also we return to the importance of values, recognise ‘what am I here to do and why am I doing it?’ I believe that when we hit obstacles if we remember our ‘why’ then this helps us to get through and keep moving forward.

Viktor Frankl wrote a book called ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’ and in it he says ‘he who has a why to live, can bear almost any how’.

For me, this means that we know obstacles are going to come up and they will be challenging, but if I know why it’s worth getting through these obstacles, then I’ll continue because my why is more important than anything else.

Finally, journaling is also a big thing for me, I find this really gets me into a good headspace. Each month I journal around a theme, so for example this month my journaling is around the theme of mindfulness. I set myself some objectives at the beginning of the month, then I write before I go to bed each night, and then read it all back at the end of each month.

What does success mean to you now?

Success to me looks like me being able to reflect back on the year and saying ‘I’ve improved’. I want to be better than I was the year before. For me, it’s about continuous improvement.

It is also about challenges – I don’t think that I would feel successful unless I can look back at my year and see that I took myself out of my comfort zone and did some things that scared me a little bit.

It’s a never-ending journey – focused on learning and developing, but also being happy just being me. Contentment is key. So I would say success to me is being content whilst striving.