5 minutes with Ceri Moyers

Ceri Moyers is Director of The Circle Partnership, the leading mentoring, development and networking organisation for the UK Built Environment. The Circle Partnership aims to change the culture, composition and capability of the Built Environment through raising awareness of issues relating to gender diversity, improving mid-level female talent retention and increasing gender balance at senior leadership level.

At the core of their offer is their annual Circle Academy, which offers spaces to up to 100 mid-level women per year and provides a 12 month programme of mentoring, training and networking designed to give them all of the skills, confidence and connections they need to stay and thrive in their roles.

Collingwood’s Head of Built Environment, Mark Goldsmith, connected with Ceri through his network to explore her work and passion for the industry.

Here’s what they discussed:

Mark: The Circle Partnership is now entering its fourth year, and you’re about to welcome a new cohort into the Academy. What inspired you to create this program, and how does it help women thrive in the industry?

Ceri: My business partner Vanessa Murray and I both have backgrounds in the property and construction industries and have first hand experience of what it feels like to often be the only women in a room or on a team or project. We essentially designed a programme that we would have loved to go on when we were at mid-level – the age and stage where research shows that businesses really struggle to retain women. We want to have a positive impact on this retention problem through showing women year on year that there are so many others who look like you, have similar experiences to you, and here are the tools, resources, insights, training that will help you to succeed. We know from all of our application data that whether we like it or not and whether it’s real or perceived, that there is a real confidence block for women when they are working in the minority, and simply the experience of being around other women and realising they’re not alone can be incredibly powerful in helping to unlock this barrier.

Mark: After placing a senior leader or completing a leadership programme, aligning expectations between direct reports and C-suite teams is often a challenge. After completing your programme, how does The Circle Partnership work with employers to create environments where talent can truly flourish?

Ceri: This is one of our key priorities for the next few years. DEI initiatives are getting a bad rep at the moment, and we look to counter this by facilitating open and curious conversations around culture and environment and the reality of women’s experiences in the workplace, where there’s no such thing as saying the ‘wrong’ thing. All real change begins with raising awareness and building insight and that’s the area in which we’re working at the moment. We also prioritise a feedback culture and we ask explicit questions about whether the environments in which our academy partners work are conducive to them performing at their best – their responses enable us to give targeted support to their employers. 

Mark: Construction isn’t an easy sector for improving female representation in leadership. Some male leaders, despite good intentions, display cringeworthy behaviours. Have you worked with boards to tackle this? What strategies have proven most effective?

Ceri: I think the ‘good intentions’ element is key here. We really don’t believe that anyone goes into work intending to offend or upset or be inappropriate but what happens in certain instances is a gap between intent and impact and a lack of awareness or understanding about the lived experience of those different to you. In the past few years, we have had a male panel event on our annual programme comprised of C-suite male leaders with whom we chair a discussion around women’s life at work before opening up a Q&A. It’s proven incredibly powerful for these men to hear directly about the challenges that women feel they face and to take responsibility as leaders to do something about it. This is a very specific example but what it illustrates is the importance of feedback, curiosity, data gathering. Awareness of the reality of this problem is still low.

Mark: When recruiting for director roles, clients often ask me for female representation on shortlists.  However, depending on the function being headhunted for, talent pools can be limited. What’s your take on setting targets for female inclusion on shortlists and ensuring gender balance in boardrooms?

Ceri: Having targets is better than not, but they need to be proportionate to the sector. An arbitrary 50/50 target doesn’t help anyone and only feeds the sceptics who’ll tell you that things have now gone too far. What’s much more important is blind sifting, training on bias in interviewing, coaching around the ways in which women and men show up differently in job applications and interview situations and challenging this defensive stance of ‘I just hire the best candidate.’ The reality is that in some sectors we have to work a bit harder to find that ‘best candidate’ and to bring them out of their shell.

Mark: What advice would you give to organisations that want to build a sustainable pipeline of female talent but don’t know where to start?

Ceri: Be prepared to invest. We’ve never had a meeting with a business that doesn’t think that what we’re doing is ‘brilliant’ and ‘much needed’ – but many seem to think that organisations like ours can run on passion alone. It’s not enough to set targets for gender balance, you have to actually invest in programmes to enable this – just like you would if you had strategic targets for AI. Women’s only development programmes, mentorship and sponsorship, coaching – all of these are proven interventions that help to progress women in the workplace. But it all starts with listening – survey your women about what they feel they need to succeed and then get specialists involved to meet their needs.

For more information on the work The Circle Partnership is doing, or to see how they might be able to support your business’ gender goals, review their website or contact info@thecirclepartnership.com.

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