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The Impact Room Utilities Leadership Podcast
What creates a genuinely inclusive leadership culture?
Policies matter. Representation matters. Targets can matter.
But for Utilities leader Nic Cotman, inclusion ultimately becomes real through the everyday behaviour of leaders: who they listen to, who they trust, who they give opportunities to and whether people feel safe enough to contribute.
In this episode of The Impact Room, Holly Beeston talks with Nic about her career across the Utilities sector, inclusive leadership, diversity and representation, psychological safety and why leaders need to become more comfortable giving talented people an opportunity before they have accumulated every conventional credential.
Nic’s career has spanned senior operational leadership, Energy and Utilities and consulting, including roles with Good Energy and Baringa. Her perspective combines operational leadership experience with a longstanding interest in diversity, inclusion and creating better opportunities for people.
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Inclusion Starts With Understanding Why
One of Nic’s strongest challenges to organisations working on diversity and inclusion is simple:
Understand why you are doing it.
DE&I cannot simply become another policy, initiative or corporate commitment.
Organisations need to understand the people they are trying to support, the barriers those people experience and the outcomes they are genuinely trying to change.
Nic describes the importance of what she calls “respectful curiosity” being willing to ask questions, listen to people’s experiences and learn rather than assuming leaders already have all the answers.
That inevitably means becoming comfortable with some uncomfortable conversations.
But avoiding those conversations because they feel difficult rarely creates progress.
Representation Changes What People Believe Is Possible
Nic talks openly about the importance of seeing women in senior leadership positions during her own career.
If people can see leaders who look like them, they can more easily imagine themselves reaching those positions too.
The reverse can also be true.
Being the only woman within a senior leadership team can feel isolating, and an absence of representation can quietly send a message to other talented people:
“People like me don’t progress here.”
Nic’s challenge to senior leaders is therefore to look carefully around their own leadership table.
Who is there?
Who is missing?
And what might that say to the people developing beneath them?
Representation alone is not the answer.
But visibility matters.
People-First Leadership Doesn’t Mean Soft Leadership
Nic describes her own leadership philosophy as fundamentally people first.
That does not mean avoiding accountability.
It means creating the conditions in which people can perform at their best.
For Nic, that includes:
- trust
- autonomy
- responsibility
- accountability
- psychological safety
- honesty
- accessibility
The argument became particularly relevant through the rapid move towards remote and hybrid working.
If organisations trusted employees to deliver remotely for an extended period, suddenly withdrawing that autonomy simply because working patterns change can undermine the trust that was created.
The better question is:
What working environment allows this person and this team to perform at their best?
That may not look identical for everybody.
Psychological Safety Creates Better Operations
Psychological safety is sometimes discussed primarily as a cultural or employee-wellbeing issue.
But it has operational consequences too.
If somebody believes they can challenge a decision, suggest an improvement or admit when something has failed without disproportionate consequences, organisations learn faster.
Nic makes the point that frontline employees often understand what is happening inside the operation better than anybody else.
Leaders therefore need environments where somebody can say:
“I’ve got an idea.”
Or:
“This didn’t work.”
And still feel able to return with the next idea.
Innovation depends upon that.
Leaders Need to Show They’re Human
Another deceptively simple theme is accessibility.
Nic believes leaders should be willing to acknowledge when they get something wrong.
Admitting a mistake does not diminish leadership authority.
Handled well, it can increase trust.
It signals that mistakes can be discussed, learning can happen and seniority does not require pretending to be infallible.
That matters particularly when leaders want teams to innovate, experiment and take calculated risks.
It is difficult to ask employees to embrace failure as part of innovation when their leaders never admit to making mistakes themselves.
Giving People the Opportunity Before They Have the Title
One of the strongest parts of the conversation comes from Nic’s own career.
At Good Energy, a previous Director recognised leadership capability in her before Nic necessarily saw it herself.
Rather than waiting for her to accumulate years of formal senior-leadership experience first, he gave her the opportunity to step up.
He then created the environment in which she could develop.
That combination mattered:
opportunity + trust + support + honest feedback.
Nic describes it as one of the significant breaks in her career.
And it influences how she thinks about talent today.
Are We Still Hiring Too Much for Evidence of the Past?
Organisations understandably look for evidence.
Years of experience.
Previous job titles.
Qualifications.
Sector background.
Degrees.
But an overly rigid approach can exclude people with the capability and motivation to perform extremely well if somebody gives them the opportunity.
Nic challenges leaders to look beyond:
“Have they already done exactly this job?”
and ask:
“What are they capable of doing next?”
For leadership teams trying to create greater diversity, this distinction is particularly important.
If every appointment requires somebody who has already held exactly the same senior position, organisations continually recruit from the same established pool.
Sometimes creating a more diverse leadership pipeline requires somebody to make the same decision Nic’s former Director made:
take a calculated chance on capability.
Sponsorship Matters as Much as Development
Nic’s story also illustrates something organisations can sometimes miss.
Developing talent is not enough.
People also need opportunities to use that development.
Somebody can complete leadership programmes, receive mentoring and demonstrate potential for years.
Their career often changes when a senior leader actually says:
“I think you can do this. I’m going to give you the opportunity.”
That is sponsorship.
And it is one of the ways senior leaders can have a tangible impact on diversity and progression.
Seeing Is Believing
The theme comes back repeatedly throughout the conversation.
Women in senior Utilities leadership positions matter partly because their presence makes another generation of leaders more imaginable.
Nic talks about wanting more women around senior leadership and Board tables and the danger of people leaving organisations because they cannot see anybody around them with whom they identify.
And this principle extends beyond gender.
People need to see that different backgrounds, experiences, career paths and perspectives are genuinely able to succeed.
Not simply because an organisation says it values diversity.
Because there is visible evidence that it does.
What Utilities Leaders Should Take Away
For Utilities organisations, many of these questions remain highly relevant.
The sector faces substantial workforce, skills and leadership challenges while simultaneously managing technological change, infrastructure investment, regulatory pressure and transformation.
Building the leadership pipeline therefore cannot only mean competing harder for the same established leaders.
It also means:
- creating opportunities for emerging leaders
- recognising transferable capability
- sponsoring talent
- increasing representation
- building psychological safety
- listening more closely to frontline teams
- creating working environments based on trust
- broadening the definition of what a future leader looks like
Diversity and inclusion are therefore not separate from leadership capability.
They are part of how that capability is built.
The Leadership Signal
Perhaps one of the simplest leadership lessons from Nic’s career is also one of the most important:
Somebody gave her a chance.
They saw capability before all the conventional evidence had accumulated.
They provided support, challenge and trust.
And that opportunity helped create the senior Utilities leader who followed.
For organisations trying to improve representation while simultaneously building stronger leadership pipelines, that is worth remembering.
Sometimes the question is not:
“Who has already proved they can do this?”
It is:
“Who could become exceptional if we gave them the opportunity?”
About Nic Cotman
Nic Cotman is an experienced Utilities and operational leader whose career has spanned industry and consulting, including Good Energy and Baringa.
Alongside her operational and commercial experience, Nic has been an active advocate for diversity and inclusion, women’s leadership and creating greater opportunity for people from different backgrounds.
Her current work includes Nic Cotman Consulting.
Building Stronger Leadership Across Utilities?
Douglas Jackson works with Utilities, Energy, Water and Infrastructure organisations appointing senior leaders across Operations, Transformation, Customer, Commercial, Data, Technology and wider Executive leadership.
We help organisations look beyond job titles to identify the leadership capability, potential and perspective required for the next stage of the business.
Talk to Holly about your next Utilities leadership appointment →
