Inspired by the likes of Dan, Cassie and Richard.

  • In a team, collaborating with thoughtful, supportive, talented people. I like working remotely, but also get a buzz from the office environment and in-person coffees a few days every month. I like to be positive I’ve been told I’m always smiling at work – although I’m sure that’s not true, and it’s helpful to me to be honest if I’m feeling down.

  • Regularly, openly and honestly please! The more we can normalise this the better. I find the COIN framework helpful.

  • I work from 9am to 6pm when I have dinner with my family. All work devices etc are off beyond these times. I encourage others to do the same and I think leadership has an example to set, to help people achieve a good work-life balance and not burn out.

  • Please be yourself – I appreciate that we all have different communication styles. But I’m also a sucker for a polite ‘how are you?’, please, thank you and light-hearted emojis. Slack’s fine for simple, short messages, but for anything deeper or complicated I much prefer to hop on Zoom. I may prefer to have a night’s sleep before responding to something tricky.

  • My imposter syndrome, which often makes me think that everyone else knows better. I can get defensive during disagreements (did you know that’s hard-wired into our human brains?), but much less so than I used to.

  • Awkward silences (my colleague Helena calls me the king of awkward silences) – I think they’re such a helpful way to get other people to speak, particularly quieter members of a group. I also love other teammates contributing to the design process, whatever their role. And dad jokes.

  • I’m ENFJ - a protagonist, although I reckon I’m on the border of extrovert and introvert (and Myers-Briggs is unreliable at best…)