We Are Power Podcast

Changing Lives through Mentoring with Chloe Fletcher

• powered by Northern Power Women • Season 17 • Episode 19

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This week on the We Are Power podcast, we chat with Chloe Fletcher, co-founder of the Job Share Revolution and 2024 Northern Power Women Awards' Mentor of the Year commended winner.

Chloe shares how her award nomination came at a pivotal moment in her career, and the moving testimonials from her mentees.

Join us to explore the power of mentorship and advocacy through the inspiring story of a finance director turned passionate mentor.


Listen to learn;
-  about the Northern Power Women Awards' mentoring programme 
-  the multiplier effect of mentorship 
-  the benefits of job sharing
-  where Chloe keeps her trophy!

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Speaker 1:

Hello and welcome to the we Are Power podcast Northern Power Women podcast for your career and your life, no matter what business you're in. Hello and welcome to the we Are Power podcast, the podcast which, every week, I get to talk to brilliant role models who get to share their inspiring personal professional stories, and we want to be able to pass on some of those top tips, advice, guidance, hacks, whatever it may be, whether it's to navigate your career, your adventure, whatever journey or path you are on right now. I said journey. I always think I'm never going to say that word, but I just have. And what I would say.

Speaker 1:

We are kick-starting the first of our conversations with our trophy holders from the 2024 Northern Power Women Awards and this week I am very, very excited and delighted to welcome Chloe Fletcher, who is multidiscipline co-founder of the Job Share Revolution. Artemis Thrive, who was indeed our Mentor of the Year commended winner this year. Chloe, welcome to the pod. Oh, thanks for having me Excited to be here and I always want to. When we did the winners episode episode back. Uh gosh, the day or a couple of days after I, I asked you what sort of the the three words that were describing you at that moment you talked about being really excited, proud and uplifted. What, what do you think your three words would be now?

Speaker 2:

oh, a good question actually. I think probably really inspired, um, and really well, still like energetic, inspired, energetic and determined to kind of do new things, um, so yeah, that would be my three words, probably.

Speaker 1:

I like determined. Someone asked me a few weeks ago what my superpower was and I had all this. You know I love to convene or connector, and then I'm, like you know, impatient. I think was my kind of focus at that point. And you were recognized this year because we love being able to reflect and come back to our, our beautiful trophy holders, because sometimes you have our fantastic brochure and everyone can see who's won or who's been commended. But actually I always love to get into the story of why.

Speaker 1:

And you were recognized for the immense impact that you've had across the mentoring network, both as a personal mentor and creating sort of mentor circles. And one of the things that really jumped out of me was the amount of commendations, if you like, and and and, real recommendations, that sort of sat and testimonials that were on that nomination. Um, how did that make you feel? For? Because, for those of you um may not be aware, with the, the nominations which are open now, by the way, um, when you get nominated, someone will write fabulous things about you, but then you have to respond how, how did it feel to to get that in and how did you attack it?

Speaker 2:

filling in those questions, it was a really interesting point in my career actually, because I was. It was a point that I was made the decision to leave out there and I was quite uncertain about kind of what I was doing and some of the decisions I was making. And then I got the nomination through and it I can really remember getting the nomination it was actually a conference and I opened it up on my email and I was like, wow, I've been nominated for this. And then within the nomination, like you said, there were kind of a couple of testimonials from people that I'd impacted through the coaching that I'd done and it was actually just like such a profound experience because I was so touched that actually they had taken the time to write about the impact I'd had on their lives and I probably hadn't realized the work that kind of I've been doing had impacted them so much. And then I think like the whole process is really interesting to them because then when you write your own kind of reflections, I think it really helped me to realize one how much I absolutely love mentoring but actually like how some really simple things can impact people and actually change their lives.

Speaker 2:

There's one particular person who was in the testimonial and she has actually said to me since Chloe, you've actually changed my life and I wouldn't be here in this position without you. I don't know if that would have happened without the nomination, because it kind of sparked a conversation between the two of us and yeah, so it's had a real impact on me actually, and I think, even since, like some of the people I've met, I've now got a mentor as a result of the um awards and, like some of the conversations I've had with him and some of the work I'm doing with him is now starting to kind of um really help me in the stuff that I'm doing in our new business. So it's been absolutely brilliant.

Speaker 1:

Oh, and I love hearing this because if you were shortlisted in the awards, we also create a mentoring program that sits around it. So a 12-week mentoring program where, again, whether win or lose, you're always sort of part of something else. That's why we all say that the awards are more than one night and it is that wider community. So I'm loving hearing, I'm loving hearing that feedback about that.

Speaker 2:

That community approach isn't it, and I think that's like my mentor is somebody I would have never met and never come across like our path just would have never crossed because we're in completely different industries, we're completely different like individuals. But that has been absolutely fantastic because actually, like the advice and kind of um, you know, experience that he's able to share with me is just eye-opening and I love meeting new people. I love like meeting different people to me and it's like he's just brilliant and I would have never met him if it hadn't been for the awards. So that is great, great.

Speaker 1:

Oh my life. Well, I love that. So what would you say then to anyone who is deliberating or has been nominated, that are maybe procrastinating about filling in that sort of self-celebration, if you like, or self-storytelling, when you get that nomination?

Speaker 2:

I'd say to people, just like you've got nothing to lose, like, almost like you know, believe in yourself and like, think what somebody would say about you. What would your best friend say about you? What would you, you know, your work colleagues say about you? And actually it does feel a bit uncomfortable, doesn't it? You know, I think, being British, you don't like to like talk about yourself and um, but you know, if you can maybe like step out of it and think what would somebody else say and then just go for it, there's so much benefits to be had of that because, like, actually it doesn't matter if you win, you know, even if you then get to maybe go to the awards ceremony and meet some new people, you know it's, it's just a really nice experience and actually it's something that different to kind of what you would normally do. So I'd say, go for it, and you know it does feel good. Then you know when, if you kind of win, or if you get commended, it's, it's an amazing feeling, it's really good oh, I love that.

Speaker 1:

So let's take us back to because I find it's interesting. You're the mentor turned mentee now and gaining and gaining from that experience. But what inspired you to um become a mentor and, in particularly, focusing around gender?

Speaker 2:

yeah, well, I guess, um, I really love people. So I'm a finance director by trade. I'm not like a typical, but I guess I was always a bit different, like within our finance teams, in that I'm drawn to people. I really like people, people really interest me and I really like developing and working with different people and I guess I've experienced the benefit of people who've given me that opportunity to shine, particularly when I was in the beginning of my career and I had some real advocates who just gave me like that allyship and, you know, gave me a voice and gave me an opportunity to do things that maybe I would have never done in my career. Like they've got a few people that really stick out and I guess then when I like started to become a leader, like I almost have seen the benefit of that.

Speaker 2:

I want to do that more because I believe in allyship. I believe that actually sometimes people need a bit of a voice and it's not something massive that you need to do for people. It's about giving people the confidence to speak out for themselves, and particularly women. So you know, I have been in quite a male-dominated industry and having people who have really given me that chance to shine has made me really want to like, um, you know, give that opportunity to other people, um, and that's particularly like where I work, um, so I worked with my job share partner doing a lot of the stuff. But the mentoring circles in particularly were for kind of high potential women and for women of color um, and they're groups that actually, when you invest a very small amount in them, you see a huge, huge benefit and you see like these people really coming into themselves and really starting to sparkle. And I think that's where that's what I love doing in my career, like helping other people then kind of find that light inside of themselves.

Speaker 1:

And it's so satisfying, you know, for yourself and then to see the progression of the people within your team who then just like find that fire, I think, and talk to us about those mention circles, because it's very much around that multiplier effect which I'm a I'm a big fan on. And you've talked about advocacy, having sort of created and launched the advocacy list last year. That's the kind of the real aim is that multiplier impacts.

Speaker 2:

And tell us about your, what you created for these mentoring circles yeah, I mean it was very much around the multiplier effect because I so I was a director at Alster and I was getting a lot of requests for mentoring and I you know I was really busy, I didn't have a lot of time and that was really the thought process behind the mentor circles because it was effectively, if I can get, you know, 10 people into a room and we can run a mentoring circle on really common themes. So we would always work around things like you know, resilience, confidence, imposter syndrome, and the kind of deal when people joined that was that they would then pay it forward, so like, if you know, I would create some materials for it, we'd run a mentoring circle and then almost you'd get the multiplier effect because those 10 people would then get a group of individuals together and it would also go down the organization because, you know, I worked with women who were kind of kind of mid-management and then they worked with women next down the level and you then got this multiplier effect broadly across the sphere and down within the organisation and it gave people confidence then to do something they loved. I think it really helped retain people within the business because it gave them something outside of the day job that they then had permission to do. They had permission then to, you know, like, they had permission then to go and run a coaching circle and, um, you know, it gave them a purpose as well and the belief that they could do something different, and I think that's the same. So we started with, like, the high potential women.

Speaker 2:

That was the first idea. Let's do that because they were kind of the people who were coming for mentoring and then kind of, as I worked a bit um longer in adzronic, we're like right, actually there's real benefit in other marginalized groups. And so, you know, then set it up for, um, women of color. I've now set it up for a job sharing network. So, um, now I've left asdo, we've set up kind of a group called the revolutionaries which is around. How do we spread the word on job sharing and get that multiplier effect out to coach job sharers? Um, it's just such a simple idea. It doesn't take a lot of effort. You can run an hour's like coaching circle and you can impact, you know, probably 10 people and then it's very little input to kind of drive a big, a big ripple effect through the organization talk to us more about the Job Share Revolution and Artemis Thrive.

Speaker 1:

I can see where the motivation come from. You already said you know you talked about being determined, so tell us about where you're at with that and what impact have you already?

Speaker 2:

seen. Yeah, so I got to Job Share at Asda. So that's kind of where it all came from. So I had previously worked part-time, really struggled in big jobs. Doing four days really wasn't thriving personally. And then I discovered Job Share and Job Sharing no underestimation, job Sharing changed my life. It allowed me to do really senior, ambitious jobs but also have like the balance. So outside of that, I could like do my coaching, I could do.

Speaker 2:

I work for a charity, I've got two young kids and I saw like the transformational impact of job sharing and I really believe that job sharing can change lives, particularly for women who want to work part-time, or people who have caring responsibilities, or even people who are like nearing retirement, who just don't want to work part-time, or people who have care responsibilities, or even people who are like nearing retirement, who just don't want to work full-time anymore. So there's there's a lot of use case to job sharing, but it's very rarely used and so, um, we were getting asked more and more about job sharing and basically at the end of this year last year gone we decided to leave after and set for business, and that business now helps companies implement job sharing successfully. So we support organizations to be able to run job sharing within their organization effectively and effectively move the burden from an individual asking for job share to an organization being able to implement it as a standard way of working. And it comes from my passion for supporting marginalized groups and from seeing the power of a new way of working allowing people to really thrive in their careers, and that's the whole. It's got a real purpose behind it, which is why I talk about determination.

Speaker 2:

It's tough because people don't necessarily want to do things in a different way and people don't necessarily want to embrace new ways of working. But I've seen how this can transform businesses and how also it can transform the lives of people who just don't want to work full-time. So it's almost like creating power part-timers who can really accelerate their careers, not have to make a compromise and opt out of their careers, but really do something that they're passionate about whilst also maintaining the balance that they need at that point in their life. So that's kind of one thing, and then the other thing that I'm running like side by side with it is Artemis Thrive, which is our coaching and leadership development business. So kind of I've taken my passion for mentoring and we've now like launched a business where we're supporting organizations with leadership development but also kind of in executive coaching, um one-to-one coaching for individuals, so been very busy since the end of last year it's like a, like a two-for-one, isn't it?

Speaker 1:

and you are that massive advocate for flexible working in it, and that's the importance of role modeling, isn't it? You've got to role model that because if you, if you can't see people doing that, then they're not going to feel like they can do it right absolutely.

Speaker 2:

I think you know you said, if you can't see it, you can't be it, and I think that's so true. Like when we were job sharing a senior director, so two remain job sharing in asda, it created a ripple effect of other people seeing that they could do that and that they could work part-time. They didn't need to make compromises. And often the problem with job sharing is people have all these preconceived ideas of how difficult it's going to be and all the challenges, whereas actually if you start to share the stories of all these amazing people who have successfully job shared in really senior roles, you start to create that belief and you start to like smash some of those myths that this is too difficult and actually you showcase the side of it that this is an absolutely brilliant model to really drive successful individuals into into roles and, like one of the things we're doing is we just actually create a podcast to share stories with that exact thing in mind of actually let's show stories of people who are doing this really well.

Speaker 1:

So, chloe, clearly there is no stopping you, no stopping you at all. So what is next for you, using the power of the recognition and what you've created with your two new businesses and the clear determination, what is next? I think?

Speaker 2:

the next thing is really to try and change the game on job sharing, um. So to get it, you know like there's been a change of government, I think there's a real backing potentially for like closing the gender pay gap. I think there's a real momentum that we can get on the back of to kind of really change the game through job sharing, and that's like what we're going to do. So myself, I'm a job share partner, laura. We aim to make this a widespread way of working that people can use, um that is just adopted by organizations and and that's our aim um so doing that alongside running our coaching business, where we're going to support individuals to really thrive through change. So that's the goal.

Speaker 1:

And obviously you will have a huge list of people to nominate because you're a great champion, as you say, for marginalised groups as well. So what we say, you know we always want the awards. Even though we get 1,400 nominations, we have 1,000 people come. It's a big event, largest event, celebrating celebration in celebration europe. We always want to keep unearthing those role models. Um, so where will you start? Which communities are you going to look at, to nominate and and get them to share?

Speaker 2:

and let's highlight and find those great role models in places we may not find I think the people that I'll look for are people who don't quite believe in themselves and actually could really benefit from that kind of boost to their confidence of believing in themselves through a nomination and really then encouraging them to kind of fill out the form, do the nomination themselves and kind of see it through it through um. So I think you know, I identify if you're a leader, identifying those people that could really benefit from that booth, who maybe go and recognize, maybe go a bit under the radar, but absolutely are phenomenal contributors to either the team or the business or, you know, society, and they're the people that, um, I'm going to nominate love that.

Speaker 1:

That, and as the first of our trophy holders to be on this particular series of the podcast, we're going to each week challenge you to give us a question for next week's guest. Okay, so I know you're going to scribble that down for me, but we have a question for you which is from the wonderful Anna who is head of our comms. Um, for our, we are power massive. So, chloe Fletcher, where is the trophy being housed in your home or office? Where is it?

Speaker 2:

it's right in the middle of the lounge above our tv. We've got like some shelves and it's pride of place.

Speaker 1:

They're amazing. That's what we like to see. To be honest, it's brilliant because sometimes we will get. We've got it in the office. Some people have their part of a bigger organization take it on tour, which terrifies me because it's very fragile. But yes, oh, it's very fragile. Yeah, chloe, thank you so much for joining us. We look forward for you paying it forward with your nominations. Keep doing the phenomenal work you're doing around mentoring and just keep being determined and unstoppable. Thank you for having me and thank all of you. Please do get those nominations in.

Speaker 1:

You can never underestimate the power of putting your fingers to that keyboard. It's never about one night. It's everything. The stuff that we've just talked about today with Chloe, the impact that it has that I don't even know. The team don't know. So that's why we love revisiting those amazing individuals who have been part of the 2024 MPW Awards. But thank you so much, chloe. Please stay connected on all of our socials. We are Power on Facebook and LinkedIn, and we are Power underscore net on tiktok, insta and twitter. Thank you so much for joining us. We look forward to our next guest and chloe's magic question, and this is the we are power podcast of what goes on media production.

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