How To Train a Dad for Work and Home

00;00;05;12 – 00;00;24;29

Paul Sullivan

I’m Paul Sullivan, your host on the Company of Dads podcast, where we explore the sweet, sublime, strange and silly aspects of being a dad in a world where men were the primary parents often feel they have to hide, or at least not talk about the rules. One thing I know from personal experience is being a dad is not a traditional role for men.

 

00;00;25;03 – 00;00;42;08

Paul Sullivan

Whether you work full time, part time to devote all your time to your family, parenting is so often left to mothers or paid caregivers. But here at the Company of Dads, our goal is to shake all that off and create a community for fathers, for the dad, and to welcome other dads who want to learn more from them.

 

00;00;42;10 – 00;01;07;03

Paul Sullivan

Today my guest is an Dinwiddy, founder of Inspiring Dads. He’s a London, the dad of a son and daughter, nine and 12, and a wife who is a lawyer. He runs the business consultant in the UK whose goal is supporting new dads, improving parental well-being and enhancing gender equality at home and work. And I absolutely love that mission.

 

00;01;07;03 – 00;01;11;16

Paul Sullivan

So Ian, welcome to the Company Dads podcast.

 

00;01;11;19 – 00;01;22;14

Ian Dinwiddy

Paul, thank you very much for having me. And it’s it’s an absolute pleasure to be here and talk about lead dads. It’s not a term that I necessarily have used in the past, but I like it, you know, inspiring dads and leading dads. I think it’s.

 

00;01;22;14 – 00;01;25;09

Paul Sullivan

You’re going to use it going forward though, right? I mean, because.

 

00;01;25;11 – 00;01;26;19

Ian Dinwiddy

It’s got a great ring to it.

 

00;01;26;19 – 00;01;28;23

Paul Sullivan

Yeah. It’s a, it’s a, it’s proactive. It’s a good one.

 

00;01;28;24 – 00;01;31;07

Ian Dinwiddy

Yeah I’m going to own it I’m a lead dad.

 

00;01;31;08 – 00;01;36;00

Paul Sullivan

You’re dad are you dads. Yeah. What else would you call yourself

 

00;01;36;02 – 00;01;43;26

Ian Dinwiddy

Yeah, exactly. It’s it’s it’s it’s a lot I think proactive. I think it’s a lot more. Yeah. More punchy. I think I thought more punchy.

 

00;01;43;26 – 00;02;00;27

Paul Sullivan

And at least over here in the States, there’s this, you know, famous Michael Keaton movie called Mr. Mom and so funny. Funny movie, you know, fish out of water. But, I mean, that’s the pejorative way of looking at it. Men who are the go to Paris, men who step up. And one of the things I want to do with the company dads is get rid of that.

 

00;02;00;27 – 00;02;19;22

Paul Sullivan

You know, as you’d say in the UK, put paid to that and, created this firmly that because it’s more inclusive, you know, you can work full time, you can work part time, you can devote all your time to your family. As long as you’re the go to parent. You’re really the first question. I know enough talking about the dads and company dads serious stuff here.

 

00;02;19;24 – 00;02;23;25

Paul Sullivan

Who’s your favorite member of Coldplay?

 

00;02;23;27 – 00;02;27;28

Ian Dinwiddy

I like them equally. Equally as much.

 

00;02;28;01 – 00;02;47;06

Paul Sullivan

But now that the lessons are gone, the listeners are going to wonder why is he, as Paul, that culturally insensitive, that every time he talks to somebody from the UK he asks him about coal? But the answer is no. There is a reason in that that our listeners don’t know as to why. I’m asking you who your favorite member of Coldplay is.

 

00;02;47;06 – 00;02;51;16

Paul Sullivan

So tell tell us why in the world I’m asking you this ridiculous question.

 

00;02;51;18 – 00;03;08;04

Ian Dinwiddy

So it’s a little bit of a quirky one. So we were very, on my own podcast, that I co-hosted with James Miller called Lockdown Dads. We had on World Champion, who is the drummer of Coldplay, who is a friend of mine, longstanding. So a friend of mine from university days, we used to play field hockey, I should say.

 

00;03;08;08 – 00;03;28;13

Ian Dinwiddy

I can’t say hockey without saying field hockey for, for your audience in particular. I think majority of it we used to by field hockey together. We’re always a center forward. I was defender, I was captain that year, but also by, So. Well, I guess, you know, given that, he, you know, he gives me passes to, backstage bits and pieces every time in the house very nicely.

 

00;03;28;15 – 00;03;42;29

Ian Dinwiddy

So Willie is a great man. And he had it. Yeah. He had really interesting things to say about fatherhood when we had him on. But longevity about masculinity. But also by a quirk of fate, I also used to know Chris as well. We’re all the same.

 

00;03;43;02 – 00;03;45;01

Paul Sullivan

You all went to the same university? Yeah.

 

00;03;45;03 – 00;04;07;02

Ian Dinwiddy

Yes. University College London. You know, lots of people were in bands. We happened to have two of, two of our team mates in the hockey team. We’re in a band, and they used to give us fliers, so it would be. I don’t have any of those fliers. So I’ve had to have a ticket from kind of 1999, kind of time to kind of ticket stub for, for a gig.

 

00;04;07;04 – 00;04;12;07

Ian Dinwiddy

But yeah, we used to go along all the time because, you know, you didn’t you know who was going to be.

 

00;04;12;09 – 00;04;15;24

Paul Sullivan

I didn’t know there going to be any good.

 

00;04;15;27 – 00;04;24;18

Ian Dinwiddy

Time. But yeah. So we’re will is a will is a great guy. Chris. Chris, when I knew him was, was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. People.

 

00;04;24;18 – 00;04;37;17

Paul Sullivan

I love that the drummer went to good stuff. So, Ian, have you met inspiring dad? How did you get the idea for it? How did it start? How did the goals that I. That I list at the top, how did they come about?

 

00;04;37;20 – 00;05;02;01

Ian Dinwiddy

Yeah, I think it in particular kind of go back a number of years. You talked about, you know, children at 12 and nine. And when Lisa and I were working out how we’d have looked after children, how we’d raised them, I guess in terms of not sort of in terms of emotional or any kind of sort of value judgment about, you know, what were values as parents but more sort of practical, you know, who’s going to do what and why and how are we going to make that work?

 

00;05;02;03 – 00;05;23;29

Ian Dinwiddy

We didn’t have grandparents sort of nearby. And my wife was was a lawyer, still is a lawyer. I was working as a management consultant, which, you know, wasn’t working for one of the big, you know, one of the big players. So it’s very niche, very, very enjoyable, really enjoyed the work we did. We did a lot of operational change in food manufacturing, worked in chocolate factories and things like that.

 

00;05;24;05 – 00;05;26;11

Ian Dinwiddy

So a bit of a sweet tooth. So it was kind.

 

00;05;26;13 – 00;05;29;20

Paul Sullivan

Of like Charlie and the chocolate and the chocolate factory stuff. I like this, so.

 

00;05;29;20 – 00;05;48;12

Ian Dinwiddy

I actually have a nickname which is Gus, and it’s short for Augustus Gloop from The Chocolate Factory, which, a colleague of mine, Bob, who runs the works, the runs that runs the company still and, and he gave it to me after a very enjoyable two weeks in the chocolate factory. Not good for the waistline, I can assure you.

 

00;05;48;14 – 00;06;06;04

Ian Dinwiddy

But we were trying to work out, how are we going to make this work? And actually, for practical reasons. Financial reasons? Lisa wrote more than I did at the time. Her career was much more of a kind of straight line law, quite a straight line, sort of full time career in many ways, and consultants. So you could kind of dip in and out.

 

00;06;06;11 – 00;06;23;21

Ian Dinwiddy

There were lots of people I saw from my own work who were working on a freelance basis. So it became it sort of it became the obvious way of kind of constructing our life. I would take a step back from full time employment. And so when I initially when Freya was born, I went to four days a week.

 

00;06;23;24 – 00;06;43;02

Ian Dinwiddy

And then I stopped work altogether in the summer of 2010. And I hadn’t been in a paid employee since for anyone. And so I was nine months of a lead that if you’re going to use the correct terminology, I was a lead that I didn’t realize that at the time, but I was a lead time for nine months full time.

 

00;06;43;05 – 00;07;02;14

Ian Dinwiddy

I struggled a little bit with the identity side of things, you know, what do you do, that kind of conversation or, you know, an environment that I think is probably got better, but still very much orientated 12 years ago towards mums and babies, that kind of thing. So that kind of narrative quite, quite, you know, quite common really.

 

00;07;02;18 – 00;07;13;20

Paul Sullivan

We’ve talked a lot on this podcast about the problems that occur in the playground. You know, you show up as a dad with your child and it’s a sea of moms or, or paid caregivers, you know, I mean.

 

00;07;13;23 – 00;07;36;06

Ian Dinwiddy

And it can be quite challenging. It depends depending on, you know, sort of your own personal sort of preference of how you spend your time and how comfortable we are in those environments. I was always very comfortable. So I, you know, I previously worked in an environment where I was the only I was working in publishing, book publishing, and I was the only man in a, in a team of 12, in the sales team of a publishing company.

 

00;07;36;08 – 00;07;53;13

Ian Dinwiddy

So being always very comfortable with female company generally. So actually that side of it was relatively straightforward. And then ultimately we ended up, did the same with, same with our son, who’s born three years later. My wife was having receiving coaching, coaching support as part of a women’s leadership development course.

 

00;07;53;20 – 00;07;55;20

Paul Sullivan

This is at the law firm where she’s working.

 

00;07;55;22 – 00;07;57;23

Ian Dinwiddy

Not the current one. It was the woman.

 

00;07;57;25 – 00;08;12;06

Paul Sullivan

At a different point, right? The way. Yeah, yeah. When your son was born, the law firm was giving you. Yeah. And what was that like? You know, is that it was that sort of the seed for inspiring dads, watching the coaching that she was getting as a, as a working mom.

 

00;08;12;09 – 00;08;33;03

Ian Dinwiddy

I think it was it was less of my watching. It was more actually as many, you know, behind every great man is a great woman. She basically said this, this coaching I’m receiving seems a lot like the stuff you really enjoyed from consultancy helping people to understand how to perform at their best. You know, it wasn’t all about sort of reducing headcount and making things more efficient.

 

00;08;33;05 – 00;08;52;16

Ian Dinwiddy

It was about people stuff I really enjoyed. So maybe there’s something here that’s like, okay, well, I’ll look into it. I found out I knew quite a few coaches sat down with them, talked about what they did, how they did it, and probably more importantly and thought, well, there’s something here to different qualifications got into that. And also, I guess importantly it was that flexibility as a need.

 

00;08;52;17 – 00;09;05;04

Ian Dinwiddy

Dad, your, your ability, your constraints are perhaps slightly different than the maybe a man who is a lead breadwinner. And when everything’s bill perhaps round his career for for me, it’s it’s.

 

00;09;05;06 – 00;09;12;01

Paul Sullivan

Like the time constraints that you have around your children and whether or not they’re in school or if one of them is secure.

 

00;09;12;04 – 00;09;24;03

Ian Dinwiddy

Yeah. Yeah. And that so that kind of flexibility, you know, I was I was always the, you know, the first one to be called, you know, I was listed number one. How it was have been listed number one in terms of is the problem at school.

 

00;09;24;05 – 00;09;28;02

Paul Sullivan

They actually call you like in London. Do they actually call you first.

 

00;09;28;05 – 00;09;49;08

Ian Dinwiddy

So I think I’ve been more lucky and I certainly I saw it on there. We saw on LinkedIn you were showing something a couple of days ago. I think I’ve been quite lucky in the majority of time. Yes, they did, but I think to a certain degree that was because I was secretary of the PTA from the start with parent teacher association to the fundraising, but I’m not quite sure, not sure what the equivalent is.

 

00;09;49;10 – 00;09;49;17

Paul Sullivan

Yeah.

 

00;09;49;22 – 00;10;08;08

Ian Dinwiddy

So I was a secretary and I did that from when I was in reception. And so they knew who I was. I was very they knew exactly in the office. They knew exactly who I was. The problem would come when they when the regular office staff weren’t on the phone. So if there was a temp in the temp would look at me and ignore me.

 

00;10;08;08 – 00;10;26;05

Ian Dinwiddy

And for my wife. And so 2 or 3 times I was like, can I just check there’s not a problem with the system because you found my wife and I should be listed number one. I made quite a point. I was quite I was probably I was quite nice, mostly. But it’s like I want to make sure that it’s not a mistake and that things are running smoothly, how they should.

 

00;10;26;08 – 00;10;32;11

Ian Dinwiddy

And in the right. I know we’re really some of you are listed first as like okay, then I should be called best.

 

00;10;32;13 – 00;10;53;05

Paul Sullivan

This is reassuring because this is an ongoing problem in the States where you could have, I could be listed first. Then my dad could be listed, then for babysitters could be listed, and then they’ll find my wife. My wife. We could bury her in there somewhere, and they will find her and call her. And she’s like, yeah, I’m listed 17th on this.

 

00;10;53;05 – 00;10;57;10

Paul Sullivan

Why are you calling me that? I’m sorry. You’re the mom. And this is an ongoing battle in the States.

 

00;10;57;12 – 00;11;16;01

Ian Dinwiddy

It’s nuts when we think about, you know, gender equality and opportunities is that we have to see. I think we have to see parents of, you know, whatever gender they are as being equally capable of looking after their children. When we, when we when we look at a man, a man’s name, that’s who it’s been pre-decided in that family that they’re first.

 

00;11;16;01 – 00;11;38;09

Ian Dinwiddy

I mean, they’re not responsible enough. And what do we say about men generally in caregiving? I get it’s it’s really I think every time any man comes up against it, we should always challenge it. Yeah. Grand challenge it nicely obviously. But you should always challenge it because it’s so damaging for this kind of, you know, this idea that men are sort of hapless, that kind of, you know, talking about Michael Keaton’s kind of happiness or homelessness and happiness.

 

00;11;38;09 – 00;12;02;12

Ian Dinwiddy

Parents go break that cycle. Because that’s how we all get ahead. So, yeah, the time constraints we’re talking about in terms of, yeah, need to be that way up and drop offs, you know, school, you know, is great because it’s 8 to 6 I think it was. And then school hours a compresses 9 to 3. So having flexibility of my own time frame was really really important.

 

00;12;02;12 – 00;12;24;26

Ian Dinwiddy

And coaching thing to deliver that got really into it. Discovered that actually what I really enjoyed, which was working with other men, men who perhaps didn’t have the, headspace to kind of consider the challenges of being pulled in different directions, trying to be a great dad, trying to be a perfect partner. Try making sure they’re performing at work and maybe at the bottom, you know, fitting round.

 

00;12;25;02 – 00;13;05;05

Ian Dinwiddy

They have time for themselves as well. Kind of classic working mum. Challenges as well really, but start to see a generation, probably a generational shift in what men felt about, about these, these potentially conflicting roles of caregiving and breadwinning and, and how to make it all work and really, really enjoyed, you know, working with working with men to kind of have this conversation, to hold the space so they could talk about the challenges they were facing and maybe hopefully come up with some solutions that work for them so that ultimately they could, you know, be a great dad, but still have a great career or have a different version of that great career.

 

00;13;05;07 – 00;13;24;27

Ian Dinwiddy

I mean, certainly from my perspective, I’m much happier working, you know, working now on the business and within the business as a coach. And I have a was as a management consultant. So you know, that, you know, objectively possibly, you know, somebody paid more in the old days. But, you know, much more satisfying now to make it.

 

00;13;24;29 – 00;13;45;04

Paul Sullivan

There’s something to really unpack there and how, you know, men who want to take on, a role. And again, they could be the dads. You can work full time and be a leader, but they want to take on more of a role as, as a, as a parent. It is 2022 when we’re talking. But you know, at least here in the States have been a lot of issues around companies.

 

00;13;45;07 – 00;14;06;13

Paul Sullivan

Not being receptive to that idea that if the man raises his hand and says, you know, I want to take some time off and parental leave, maybe. But also, you know, whatever my child is. Seven, nine, 14, you know, 20. I need to do something with my son or daughter. It’s often here. It’s seen as, as the stigma, like you’re not sufficiently committed to work.

 

00;14;06;13 – 00;14;28;28

Paul Sullivan

And obviously, if that persists, how can we have real, equality at work? We we we can’t. I think that’s what you both you and I are working on in different ways. But when you would, you know, maybe these men, you’d coach these men where there’s certain types of, of companies, certain industries that were more open or more eager to bring you in then than others.

 

00;14;29;01 – 00;14;49;08

Ian Dinwiddy

I think it’s a really complicated question, because I like on a, on a level, if you think about sort of parental leave and the length of time that a man can access when they have a new child, you know, sometime usually in the first year, over here, statutory for the UK is two weeks of what we call statutory pay.

 

00;14;49;08 – 00;15;07;13

Ian Dinwiddy

So it’s around about 150 pounds, probably was a $160 or something like that. It’s not you know, almost parity these days. I don’t know where this is data. You know, maybe the pound to be stronger by the time someone’s listening to this go. What do you mean? It was one for what? You pretty much, but we have so we have.

 

00;15;07;14 – 00;15;25;29

Ian Dinwiddy

So it’s a relatively modest kind of baseline. And if you’re self-employed, you can’t access that in any form or other. If you’re an electrician, you can’t plan, you know, you can’t. There’s no way of getting money from the government to cover you having a little bit of time, you know, with your family and that that kind of drives, you know, different behaviors.

 

00;15;26;02 – 00;15;48;10

Ian Dinwiddy

It drive challenges with in relationship, certainly. But some companies are, you know, the leading ones in the UK are offering six months of fully paid parental leave. So they they say actually, it doesn’t matter how you become a parent whether you adopt through surrogacy, whether you a birth mother or whether you’re, you know, a secondary, you know, the non birth mother secondary.

 

00;15;48;13 – 00;16;03;19

Ian Dinwiddy

Parent care was a really clumsy language. But however you become a parent, you get six months of leave and in business, which is a great baseline. But the business is a really make it work, are the ones you understand the culture around it. So certainly I think.

 

00;16;03;19 – 00;16;08;12

Paul Sullivan

The culture around the leave or the culture around the transition.

 

00;16;08;14 – 00;16;31;08

Ian Dinwiddy

Yeah, actually taking the lead. So I think, Japan, for instance, I believe has really good statutory paternity leave, but men culturally don’t think it’s something they can take. I’ve certainly heard of big sort of financial interested institutions where the sense is that men are encouraged to take the leave because it’s a KPI. And so they’re like, you need to take your six months of leave.

 

00;16;31;11 – 00;16;53;05

Ian Dinwiddy

They lift that person out and drop them back in. But there’s no culture around it, around family friendly working. Or it’s just like, well, you’ve been away, now you’re back, and now you work full time, you work full time, plus and whatever that, whatever that, thing that looks like. So you can have the greatest policies, but actually the you have top down great policies.

 

00;16;53;08 – 00;17;11;09

Ian Dinwiddy

But what tends to happen, one of the struggle is if I do come across struggles with individuals within an organization, it’s about the filter for middle management. And so your line manager, what is your what are your line manager’s views about you taking leave? Are they going to sort of punish you in some way? Do they believe in it?

 

00;17;11;09 – 00;17;30;22

Ian Dinwiddy

What do what’s the narrative that you know that they hold for their own? You know, themselves do did they, you know, are they are of a generation perhaps a little bit older where, you know that your sexual relationship, their wife looked after the three kids they went to. They were fully committed. That’s what they think is normal. You and so.

 

00;17;30;24 – 00;17;51;18

Paul Sullivan

This is like, yeah, I mean, this is the anchoring bias that, that so many managers have, like, they did it one way and so therefore others should do it the same way. And it’s interesting you said middle managers because that’s really my focus at the Company of Dads with my belief is when you get up to the C-suite, it takes a lot for you to think objectively about a different path there.

 

00;17;51;18 – 00;18;06;18

Paul Sullivan

You think of all the things you did and you look at like, I did this and and it was 20 years ago when you started on that. That path had the different world. But, you know, I was actually at a conference yesterday, sponsored by this company, Charter Works. It’s really doing a lot in the States with the future work.

 

00;18;06;21 – 00;18;33;18

Paul Sullivan

And one of the speakers was talking that it’s, you know, the target is middle managers and emerging leaders, because if you don’t change their mindset, you can’t really, you know, change the culture of the workplace. And so with inspiring dads, I mean, are you I mean, it it catches catch can and you have a great get good managers who understand this or are companies bringing you in and saying, look, Ian, we need you to work with this middle manager.

 

00;18;33;18 – 00;18;40;22

Paul Sullivan

Because if you can get to get him up to speed, it’s going to help all of these, you know, direct reports that that he has.

 

00;18;40;25 – 00;19;01;28

Ian Dinwiddy

Yeah. So I think I do quite a lot of associate work where sometimes I’ll come in, I’ll just coach the individual dad and then the, the certainly one organization I’ve worked with where all the, all of the managers are coached by the same, same person. So they have they, you know, they deliberately work with the managers who have people who are taking leave.

 

00;19;02;01 – 00;19;34;27

Ian Dinwiddy

And so you work in these two different directions. And sometimes I get to I get to have that relationship up as well. So I’ll have a session, I have an hour long session with the manager. Talk about, you know, what are they worried about in terms of, you know, in terms of this person sort of stepping away from the workplace for a while, what do they worried about in terms of often, often they’re worried about, do I know enough about the pressures they’re going to face for me to be able to support them rather than necessarily, I’m worried that I’m losing a person.

 

00;19;35;00 – 00;19;39;23

Ian Dinwiddy

And I think that kind of circles back around into the culture aspect of it is, I mean.

 

00;19;39;27 – 00;19;54;06

Paul Sullivan

That’s pretty interesting that, yeah, that they’re worried about that is really interesting. They’re they’re sort of admitting like, okay, maybe that person to experience was not my experience, but how, you know, we are in 2022, how do I, you know, treated differently.

 

00;19;54;09 – 00;20;15;11

Ian Dinwiddy

Exactly. And I think and when you see that it’s because the businesses are started to normalize, essentially normalizing doesn’t matter who you are, you’re both entitled to leave and you’re also going to take it. And we’re also going to see this as a positive. Certainly, a lot of businesses, I think it’s driven by a desire to improve gender equality.

 

00;20;15;13 – 00;20;39;22

Ian Dinwiddy

And when you have men taking leave, as well as women taking leave and they become parents, then you start to change the narrative and actually say, anyone can be a parent, anyone can take leave, anyone can progress. And these things start to join up and they start to it becomes a much more, much healthier, probably, environment for, for men and women, women, you know, we get choice, get choices.

 

00;20;39;22 – 00;20;49;05

Ian Dinwiddy

I think, you know, for for many in many relationships really you want to I think we probably want to feel like we have a choice as to how to do things that works for us, you know, our relationship.

 

00;20;49;08 – 00;21;05;24

Paul Sullivan

Yeah. I mean, this reminds me of a study that that you sent me that you and I were talking about from the the UK’s Behavioral Insights team. And it was all about, you know, the perceptions and reality among men taking time off. I just call it up here because there was this, this, this line that really stood out.

 

00;21;05;24 – 00;21;32;01

Paul Sullivan

And and it says your quote simply telling men that their peer support, parental leave and flexible working increases their intention to share care. And that sounds really easy. And I think there’s a stat in there like, you know, when guys don’t know, they think, oh, 60% or so will support this. And when they actually are open about it, that that number jumps to, you know, almost 100%, it sounds really easy.

 

00;21;32;04 – 00;21;43;10

Paul Sullivan

Why why aren’t more companies, you know, doing this? This seems like a quick fix doesn’t cost any money. It’s really just, you know, messaging something.

 

00;21;43;13 – 00;21;46;07

Ian Dinwiddy

Yeah, to talk to people and find out what they actually believe.

 

00;21;46;10 – 00;21;47;27

Paul Sullivan

I think the idea.

 

00;21;47;29 – 00;22;20;25

Ian Dinwiddy

That having amazing kind of research, research you could do, I think, why don’t they do more about it? I think first and foremost, it’s not there are for a lot of businesses looking after new dads would, on the face of it, appear to be a lot lower down the sort of priority list than other, probably more pressing challenges around ethnicity, around gender and sexuality, around religion, around discrimination in a number of different ways, and the perception being that actually dads are probably okay.

 

00;22;20;28 – 00;22;41;26

Ian Dinwiddy

Now, I would say there’s intersectionality there. And actually when we think about, say, 80% of men will become a dad at some stage, I think it then becomes, you know, certainly when you think about new dads, it becomes an opportunity to for men to feel like the, you know, the diversity and inclusion initiatives are for them as well.

 

00;22;42;02 – 00;22;59;18

Ian Dinwiddy

And often, often we struggle. Often businesses struggle to get men to get involved in things around gender equality because of the gender equality. It’s not for me. Now, if we can make looking after dads or friends. Oh yeah, I would have loved to have taken some leave. That’s the conversation you have also. But I didn’t. But I wasn’t alive.

 

00;22;59;18 – 00;23;28;25

Ian Dinwiddy

Work wouldn’t have supported that. Whatever it might be, if you can make taking leave, if you can make fatherhood part of the bigger conversation about diversity and inclusion, you start to spread the net a lot wider in terms of people go, actually, there’s something in it for me, actually, I can I understand this because I now see it as through the filter of I see some of the challenges that other groups have through the filter of my own experiences, and it starts to be levers that we can pull to make make the world a better place, I think.

 

00;23;29;01 – 00;23;48;20

Paul Sullivan

And I think about this, we just we just frame that as excellent because if, you know, a company in, in the UK gives a mum six months off, maternity leave and she takes it like you said, that you kind of come back. It’s like you’re reading the 500 page book and you’ve just skipped 40 pages when you returned.

 

00;23;48;20 – 00;24;09;12

Paul Sullivan

And. Yeah, right. But if that if the father is also encouraged, almost compelled to take that six months off as well. Well, he just has a shared experience. He has a shared experience with the mom at work, and he’s going to have to return and say, I never knew it was this hard to do this. You know, I I’ve missed the past 40 pages of this, this great novel I’ve been reading.

 

00;24;09;14 – 00;24;13;21

Paul Sullivan

What’s going on? Is that something that does that hold ring true to you?

 

00;24;13;23 – 00;24;33;29

Ian Dinwiddy

Yeah, I think it builds empathy, without doubt. I think there’s a there’s a little bit of a challenge in terms of kind of the, you know, what comes first of chicken and egg is that men who are already interested in sharing can were equally at home and more likely to take leave and do is that is that what drive is that what drives a lot of it.

 

00;24;33;29 – 00;24;51;22

Ian Dinwiddy

I think we’re moving certainly in in the businesses who have been doing it for one UK of have been a really good example where almost I think every it’s something that I think every man who’s entitled to leave in the last four years has taken it and the average is, you know, they can take up six months, but the average is about four months, I think, overall.

 

00;24;51;24 – 00;25;12;19

Ian Dinwiddy

And then it becomes so ingrained in the culture that it’s it’s just something you do. You build. Yeah, you certainly build empathy internally. And also what you also find is that we kind of assume that, yeah, I think it’s easy. It’s easy to forget the traditional kind of family set up to work really well for lots of relationships.

 

00;25;12;22 – 00;25;28;05

Ian Dinwiddy

But for other men, their eyes are then open. Actually, I’ve I’ve solo parent. I’ve really enjoyed this and I don’t want to give it up. I want to have I don’t see why I can’t blend, aspects of my career and the things I want to do with my kids. I want to be, you know, I want to be there with them.

 

00;25;28;05 – 00;25;44;04

Ian Dinwiddy

I want to see their milestones. I want, you know, I won’t be just I don’t want to be away, you know, when when things happen that I want to be part or only part much more intimately part of the family sort of fabric. And maybe a generation ago, we weren’t expected to. If we did want to be, then it wasn’t.

 

00;25;44;05 – 00;26;12;08

Ian Dinwiddy

It was kind of, like you said, kind of frowned upon. Yeah. I think, you know, men, men, men gain empathy, they gain skills, they gain connections with their children, they gain. You know, we often talk about quality starting at home. You know, if you if, if, you know, if, if your partner, if your, your female partner and she doesn’t feel like if she can trust you to look after the children, if she’s away on a work trip, that’s it’s going to hold her back and it’s going to be able to give her all at work.

 

00;26;12;10 – 00;26;33;16

Ian Dinwiddy

And, you know, if you’re a dual income couple, you’re probably you’re probably going to need both of you to be, you know, to be fulfilling your, your potential. Certainly in a, in a, you know, in a world where, you know, we’ve got lots of lots of, lots of relationships have got to, you know, well paid or, you know, or, you know, well, well-educated people within the relationship.

 

00;26;33;17 – 00;26;51;29

Ian Dinwiddy

We, we want everyone to thrive. And one of the ways we thrive is for men to have developed those skills, those solo parenting skills that you and I are privileged to have, I think, and I certainly feel that way as a leader, that privilege to have these skills, but also it unlocks potential, certainly in relationships as well, potentially.

 

00;26;51;29 – 00;27;11;29

Paul Sullivan

The best way to put it. I talk a lot about that at the Company of dads, but you know, the whole family fulfilling its potential. But it also allows, hopefully, you know, sort of putting an end to that, that stereotype of the bumbling father. The father comes in and doesn’t know anything and like to say that, you know, Michael Keaton may have been Mr. Mom, but he did go on to become Batman later on.

 

00;27;11;29 – 00;27;33;26

Paul Sullivan

So, he did kind of get it together. Talking about you been doing this great work for quite some time. What have you seen changed, you know, from the pre-pandemic days when you’re doing it obviously whatever was going on for you in lockdown and now how? At least you know the companies you work. I know most of them are in the UK, but I don’t want to name names that you name me.

 

00;27;33;29 – 00;27;53;19

Paul Sullivan

But I know one that you talked about. We talked about, background. Isn’t it really an international company? How have things, you know, take us back to pre-pandemic and then and, you know, tell us the story of how you’ve seen companies, hopefully, you know, think differently about being a working moms and working dad. And, you know what we all learned in the lockdown?

 

00;27;53;19 – 00;27;55;29

Paul Sullivan

Being being home together.

 

00;27;56;01 – 00;28;13;07

Ian Dinwiddy

Yeah, I think I think the biggest single thing that’s changed in the last sort of 3 or 3 years, like two and a half years, it’s like it’s like is this sort of gray area we like, oh, that’s in the box. That was this was a great kind of box. I mean, in many ways, yeah, lots of lots of interesting things.

 

00;28;13;07 – 00;28;50;09

Ian Dinwiddy

But I think, I think the big thing for, for individuals and I think for the business landscape is where you’re, where you’re fortunate enough to be office based. And obviously this doesn’t apply to huge numbers of, you know, people who have to be frontline services and whatever, whatever form that takes. But for those men who were traditionally out of out of the home, possibly, you know, maybe an hour, hour and a half commute in many, you know, in some circumstances and out of home kind of Monday to Friday while the children were were awake, is it suddenly being thrust back into an environment where they were experiencing, a level of, I guess, stress, a

 

00;28;50;09 – 00;29;14;25

Ian Dinwiddy

level of connection at the same time with their family because they were able to remotely work. That’s completely changed. I think the perception of what men, not a lot of men, want to do, a lot of what dads want to do. I don’t see why they can’t in, you know, in a term that we often use in the UK, have it all and often we talk about women, you know, professional women, how can you have it all?

 

00;29;14;27 – 00;29;38;27

Ian Dinwiddy

And actually medicine, you go, actually I want to have it all, you know. Yeah. So things are flawed about the pandemic in terms of in terms of homeworking. And obviously circumstances are very different for individuals. But the connect building the connection and not having to spend time almost dead time, you know, commute can be really good. And my wife certainly, you know, she’s a she’s she would sit normally on this side of me, right.

 

00;29;39;02 – 00;29;59;09

Ian Dinwiddy

She’s not here today, which is why I’m allowed to be in the office. So she’s in the office two days a week. She really enjoys the transition from, home to the office and doing thing and being in a different place, seeing people moving or, you know, being out, not being at home all the time. I think if I lots of people don’t want to be at home all the time, but they also don’t want to be in the office.

 

00;29;59;12 – 00;30;18;13

Ian Dinwiddy

And I think the big thing from the pandemic is we prove that for a lot of jobs, they can be done remotely, may not be possible to do them in a completely kind of flexible way. There’s so many different versions of what that looks like, but we’ve made it look like it’s been made. Realize that it’s entirely possible when we have this idea.

 

00;30;18;18 – 00;30;41;16

Ian Dinwiddy

And also it means that, you know, that kind of stereotypical idea that if you were working from home in inverted commas for those people, those people were listening in on daily, working from home, you were in some way slacking. Yeah. And men and that, some men in a lot of environments seen as a slacker is probably the single worst thing that you can do for your career progression.

 

00;30;41;18 – 00;30;53;20

Ian Dinwiddy

Now, working from home is just what we do, and we get to see the kids more. We get to be more connected where we can do a drop off or pick up at school. We can be there when the school bus runs late, whatever it might be, we can be there.

 

00;30;53;23 – 00;31;10;28

Paul Sullivan

Yeah, and the worst thing about that is, you know, Zoom and Microsoft Teams or whatever you’re using, they don’t allow us to be slackers because, you know, the good old days, you’d be on a conference call, you’d have it on mute, you’d be, you know, doing whatever you were doing. And now people are looking at you. So you have to be engaged.

 

00;31;10;28 – 00;31;29;15

Paul Sullivan

You have to be painted. Well, how does this change? Have you noticed that the companies that engage you have they are they thinking differently in the past? You know, I don’t know how I did in the UK, but, you know, nine months to a year where people are starting to return to office at least part of the time and how they think about, you know, helping parents.

 

00;31;29;17 – 00;31;57;08

Ian Dinwiddy

I think, I think a lot of people who previously thought that it just it was just symptomatic. You’re working from home with symptomatic of, you know, so it’s lacking in some way of being not being committed have realized actually they quite enjoy it as well. And so you you’ve got this kind of I think it’s probably at the moment a healthy tension within the UK as business starting to think towards actually are we going to have less office space do how much do we want people to be in?

 

00;31;57;11 – 00;32;19;07

Ian Dinwiddy

You know, there’s a lot of a lot of I see a lot of conversations on LinkedIn about saying, well, that’s not flexible working if you have to be in on particular days, but actually it’s a hybrid model that actually can lock people quite like in some people will be flexible within that model is, you know, it can be challenging when you need to collaborate on things in a kind of real time way to be fully flexible.

 

00;32;19;10 – 00;32;41;08

Ian Dinwiddy

I think the longer if you’d spoken to me about a year ago, I think I would have been. I would have been thinking, it’s kind of on the cusp. I don’t know which way this will go in terms of the kind of work from home movement. I think now we the longer, the longer these trends persist, the less likely it is that we’re going to have some sort of wholesale return to office based environment.

 

00;32;41;08 – 00;33;00;24

Ian Dinwiddy

I think things that things have changed when they fundamentally changed. Certainly when I worked, I worked with a lot of dads who are new dads, so they’ve had children pre during the pandemic or post-pandemic. Yeah. And they just don’t see why they have to leave their young family and commute five days a week. That’s like that’s not going to happen.

 

00;33;01;00 – 00;33;17;00

Ian Dinwiddy

That’s very much the attitude. It’s like why would I do that? They haven’t got a before and after to kind of compare. So they haven’t got they. This is how it always was when I had children. Therefore I’ve got some sort of muscle memory as to how we did things. And like I have a young child, you know, my wife goes to work as well.

 

00;33;17;01 – 00;33;33;08

Ian Dinwiddy

I do so two days a week. I do the drop offs and then she doesn’t pick up these days and we make it work and and far be, you know, watch out if you’re a business trying to enforce and trying to change that because many, many in my experience are like kind of push back. And so.

 

00;33;33;11 – 00;33;34;06

Paul Sullivan

This is what I mean.

 

00;33;34;06 – 00;33;35;09

Ian Dinwiddy

Energized.

 

00;33;35;11 – 00;33;58;07

Paul Sullivan

They’re energized. But also, you know, the companies that are missing the boat. And there are a couple, here, you know, Elon Musk has famously said, everyone, as you know, David Solomon, who runs Goldman Sachs, wants people in the office and they’re I can’t I don’t know about Tesla, but I do know from Goldman Sachs, you know, they’re they’re shedding a lot of their highest performing employees who said, I don’t want to do this anymore.

 

00;33;58;10 – 00;34;15;26

Paul Sullivan

Wait, I don’t have to do this anymore. And, oh, I have a lot of other skills, and somebody would love to hire me. From Goldman Sachs to go work for. And I’ve done a couple podcast people, and it’s amazing to me because I just don’t, you know, the five day workweek in the office. I just don’t see, you know, why we come here.

 

00;34;15;26 – 00;34;33;11

Paul Sullivan

But at the same time, you know, I’ve talked a couple of law firms, and what you were sort of alluding to is this decision to have a day, a week. Let’s say you have you ask employees to come in 2 or 3 days a week, but there is one day where unless something horrible is happening, you have to be there so the whole team can collaborate and obviously really collaborate.

 

00;34;33;11 – 00;34;47;02

Paul Sullivan

Not all sit next to each other on zoom calls and that to me seems like a fair compromise because, you know, I don’t want to. The flip side of this is people who say, well, I’m never, ever going to go back and work from the office. I want to pass laws. Yeah, well, that, of course, is inflexible.

 

00;34;47;08 – 00;34;50;00

Paul Sullivan

If you’re going to say I’m not, I’m going to. That is very input. Right.

 

00;34;50;01 – 00;34;57;21

Ian Dinwiddy

It’s a trade off between business desires and and the and the employee desires. And somewhere in the middle is a happy medium. It probably works for a lot of people.

 

00;34;57;23 – 00;34;58;11

Paul Sullivan

Yeah.

 

00;34;58;14 – 00;35;01;07

Ian Dinwiddy

I think that’s where we’re going. Certainly.

 

00;35;01;09 – 00;35;11;24

Paul Sullivan

Ian Dinwiddie, founder of Inspiring Dads, thank you so much for being my guest today on the Company Dad podcast. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our conversation.

 

00;35;11;27 – 00;35;14;27

Ian Dinwiddy

Paul, its absolute pleasure to be here and thank you for inviting me.