POWERful Women's Energy Leaders' Coalition

POWERful Women (PfW) is working for a gender-balanced, diverse and inclusive energy sector. They’re a professional initiative that seeks to address women's continued underrepresentation at the top of the UK Energy industry and in the leadership pipeline. ?

I was delighted to be asked to chair this year’s Energy Leaders’ Coalition (ELC). The ELC comprises sixteen of the leading CEOs from the UK’s energy sector who are making a public declaration to improve gender diversity in their companies, and their sector as a whole.??

The ELC will meet five times throughout the course of this year, with each meeting focusing on a different topic. The first meeting took place on Thursday 25 January in SSE’s London office where 13 of the leading UK energy company CEOs, as well as Jonathan Brearley, the Ofgem Chief Executive, joined me.??

It was an insightful meeting, we were fast-tracked through the extensive behavioural science knowledge of Nuala Walsh – offering us insight into what drives human behaviour and how truly appreciating this, helps us behave more inclusively.?

Nuala is an Independent Non-Executive Director,?behavioural scientist, and visiting fellow at the London School of Economics.?She’s recently been invited to join?Trinity College?Dublin's School of Medicine as?an adjunct assistant professor.??

Nuala is recognised among the 100 Most Influential Women in Finance,?she spent three decades in global asset management with Blackrock, Merrill Lynch and?Standard Life Aberdeen as?Chief Marketing Officer.??As?MindEquity?Consulting CEO, she advises blue-chip companies such as Uber, Asics, Handelsbanken, and the BBC.???

At the session - we were each asked to list the three people we would reach out to if we needed guidance and then to reflect on how similar those listed are to ourselves. An exercise many of us have done before – it does go to show that to benefit from all the innovation and creativity diverse perspectives can offer?– we need to recognise that we should be actively seeking the voice of dissonance, not actively avoiding it. ??

This makes sure that we don’t fall foul to only seeking the opinion of those who will agree with us, that confirm what we think. This bias to retain the status quo is too risky in a world that relies on us challenging our thinking so that our decisions and actions stand up to the robust probing from the many different people and their differing needs that we serve. My biggest takeaway is the simple reminder that if you are not actively including others, you are actively excluding them – encouraging different viewpoints and encouraging healthy challenges takes deliberate action.?

The focus for the year ahead is ‘engaging the majority whilst spotlighting the minority’. So what are some ways we’re going to do this you might ask? Well, we’re looking forward to a year of webinars with female role models that employees, both prospective and existing, from all companies can gain inspiration from.?

We’re also looking at opportunities to collaborate and come together as an industry to promote better gender balance – the Empower Her campaign is now in its second year, with a deliberate aim to attract more women into the array of apprenticeships and graduate programmes the energy industry has to offer.?

I’m looking forward to updating you all when I have my next meeting in March.