Welcome to Leadership Worth Sharing, a podcast in which ACEVO chief executive Jane Ide chats with civil society leaders about their professional experiences, challenges, wellbeing, and their journeys in the sector.
Jane Ide talks to Sanchita Hosali, chief executive of the British Institute of Human Rights. They talk about the misconceptions about human rights, dynamics of good governance, the joy of going to the gym at 4:30am, and filling ourselves with hope for the future.
Transcript
Jane Ide 00:00
So thank you so much for joining us, Sanchita. Really looking forward to having this conversation, it’s a pleasure to meet you. And perhaps we could just start off, just tell us a little bit about your role, about how you came to be in the role and what it is that you really love about the work that you do at the British Institute of Human Rights.
Sanchita Hosali 00:17
I’m the CEO at the British Institute of Human Rights. And we are a small but perfectly formed charity, I like to say, and I think that does mean that as CEO, you are kind of often having to do lots of different things, because ultimately, the buck stops with you. So it’s kind of all of the stuff you would expect around, you know, leadership kind of governance strategic direction, the sort of line management of the senior management team, but then it’s all the other little bits, you know, like kind of making sure I know how the bank works, and how the finances work and kind of being in some of the conversations about kind of relationship management with other organisations and all sorts of things. So I think there is never a specific day of a CEO of a small charity, you’ve got to be prepared for lots of different things. And so yeah, I could be doing all sorts of different things on any any given day, really, but kind of ultimately, it’s just about making sure that the organisation is running smoothly, that we’re kind of doing what we need to be doing, everyone is sort of well supported to do that. I do like a bit of process. So we are quite driven by our strategic framework. And it’s really nice, because the whole team sort of coalesces around that, what we kind of do is I think that probably keeps lots of us here and has kept me here for a long time, because I did not join a CEO. So I joined as an officer, and I’ve worked my way up, but is the kind of whole practical element of human rights. So I think, a lot of the time, I think human rights are seen as a very cork centric idea, or very theoretical idea. But all of the work we do is actually how do you put rights into people’s hands to support them to achieve change. And it’s very kind of practical. And that also means our policy work is really practical, because, of course, we can make all the legal arguments so that what we can bring is the people’s experience and story into that and give those people a platform to share that as well. Yeah, that’s kind of what I do and what we do as an organisation. And how did I get there? It’s such like, it’s such a big question, because I think, probably for lots of years, I’ve always done the like, well, this is my bio, you know how you put it on a website, and you talk about all the things that you’ve done, and like, you know, what you did in your education and your professional career, and then that’s where you got to, and all of that is on my, my website, bio, obviously, and my LinkedIn profile. But I think, the last couple of years, I’ve been reflecting a lot more like what it does mean to be a leader. And for me kind of what sort of leadership means and kind of why it was important for me. And I think that’s because I really bristle against the conception of what a kind of traditional leader is. And this idea that I recognise that I do now have kind of a level of power and privilege, but that I did not come from that place. And I think that’s really informed kind of where I’ve got to so, lots of things growing up for me kind of growing up as a mixed race kind of young woman in the 1980s with lots of racism, lots of sexism, growing up, you know, with domestic abuse in our family, divorce and seeing the power of the law. And actually, what if you have kind of access to good legal advice, what that can mean, and what it doesn’t mean, significant experiences of growing up in poverty, there are some points where we were homeless, and we were regulars at the DSS office, kind of with our stuff hoping that we were going to get an emergency payment to help us that week. So I think there’s kind of quite a lot around, I really saw that education was my route out and was the kind of the way to sort of make things better. My mom was amazing, and is amazing. Probably one of the most amazing people I know. And she tried really hard to get a law degree, kind of what she was looking after four children, all really young. And it just wasn’t possible and the poverty trap and the benefits trap. And then that kind of sparked me actually kind of maybe law is actually a good thing here. And so that was kind of I just was a very boring child that just was like I needed to get my education and I need to get kind of the things in life that I want. Really applying myself and kind of working on that to get to university, which was definitely not a given. And then like this whole world of human rights opened up I was like, all of these things I’ve experienced around kind of poverty and housing and racism and sexism, they all come together in this like, beautiful thing of human rights. And so that kind of really sort of put me on on that path but even then, It was still really difficult like I’m, I’m not a qualified barrister or solicitor because I had to make a choice between doing a Masters, which was going to be really helpful for the career I wanted or doing the thing that I wanted to do, which was to qualify as a lawyer. And financially, I couldn’t do them both. So kind of even at that level, there were still so many difficult choices. And my partner supported me in my master’s, I think we were very unusual. It was not like I had, you know, my mom was able to support me or anything like that. So even then I think kind of lots of choices were were being made, it was great. And kind of through that I really sort of, was able to experience lots of different things around like what human rights could look like, and kind of open up to quite a lot of opportunities for kind of what does that mean, and kind of ended up sort of going to the UN and sort of working internationally, which was great, but definitely not for me. It’s always really interesting. I used to teach up until a few years ago, and it was always all my students ambition was to end up at the UN. And I would kind of say, Oh, I think I did it the wrong way around. Because I did it first. And then I decided I didn’t want to do that. I mean, it’s great. And it’s important. And it’s the standard setting stuff. But I realised, actually, I’m interested in the practical stuff, that if we have the standards, what does that actually mean for people. Came back to the UK, worked in academia, or back kind of worked into the women’s and the women’s sector for a bit. And then yeah, I ended up at at BIHR as an officer more years ago than I care to remember.
Jane Ide 06:23
And the thing that really strikes me listening to you, it’s an incredible story. And you’re so articulate, it’s really tangible, listening to you, that there is that deep connection between the actual experience of inequity as it is lived by so many people and human rights. Lots of threads there, I think, to pull out around your experience of leadership, and so much that you said that I want to I want to explore if we possibly can. But let’s start a little bit if we can, with that whole piece around what actually do you think are the misconceptions people have about human rights? People talk about human rights. And you’re right. For so many people, it’s quite a theoretical, academic, it’s something out there. But you’re talking about some very, very, very tangible, the right to justice, the right to equal treatment, the right to not to living in poverty. How does that actually play out for you?
Sanchita Hosali 07:21
The misconceptions around human rights are many. And but I think kind of, I see so many of them and at different points and kind of think like what space I’m in will sort of determine, like what I think are the biggest ones in that moment. Because something I say all the time. So I still do a little bit of delivery at the organisation. And I think because I’ve worked my way up to a leadership position, that’s been really important for me that I maintain the connection kind of to that work. So I don’t do a lot of it, but I do I still do some. And often what I do is kind of the leadership work. So I’ll kind of work with leaders in kind of local authorities, NHS Trusts, for example. And it’s really confronting for them, because I’m telling them, here’s like, here’s all these rights that the people that you serve, have, but here are the duties that you have to uphold them. And it’s a really confronting moment, most of the time, because most people have never sat in a room. You know, I’ve had a commissioning commissioning leader who’d been working in commissioning for 30 years. He said, This is the first conversation I’ve ever had about human rights. Yet every decision I’ve made about services, impacts the human rights of every person that are our kind of body serves. And I think that’s kind of there are so many misconceptions, because we don’t we don’t ever have the space and we don’t talk about it. We don’t learn about it at school. You know, we don’t learn about it at all different points, kind of in our in our lives. We certainly don’t learn about it in our professional education, even if we have duties to uphold human rights. So there are lots and lots of misconceptions, some of it about it being technical, and being sort of very core focused. I think that’s a very big misconception. It is, you know, there are technicalities, of course, human rights are set down in law, but they’re not kind of insurmountable technicalities. There’s the same as everything else, you know, actually you get to grips with that, right, you know, I can, I can talk to a social worker who is implementing the Care Act, the guidance, the statutory guidance for the Care Act is over 500 pages, the rights in the Human Rights Act run to 10 pages. So often, like there’s this, it’s such a misconception kind of as to how it will all works. So I think that technicality bit is really important. So like we’re always talking about, you know, it’s about the survivor of domestic abuse who’s been failed by the police. And actually, the Human Rights Act is pretty much the only bit of law you can use to hold that police service to account, it’s about the gay disabled man who wants to go to the pub and kind of meet up with people in the LGBT community and not getting that support, because it’s not seen as important. It’s about, you know, your grandparents and their religious beliefs, when they might kind of, you know, be in a care set, it has all of these things that are like so real and so tangible. So I think that’s a real misconception. But I also think there’s something about a kind of optionality as well, which is a big misconception with human rights, this idea that they’re optional, or nice or kind, I have found myself in recent years having a real issue with kindness. Because I think that human rights, often the result of human rights will be kind, there’ll be a great kind of value outcome for someone, but often they won’t be as well. And I was working with a group of young people with additional needs last week. So it’s kind of one of the delivery bits that I was doing was brilliant group of young people so amazing. And, you know, one of the things we talked about was that human rights don’t always get you what you want, as an individual. But what they do do is make sure that everyone is heard and considered. And that’s the bit that’s really important. So that optionality bit is important for me. But I think what’s linked to that is the universality question that they’re for everyone, that for me, that’s the absolute best bit of human rights. But it’s also the thing, that’s a part of all of the challenge whether, because it’s really challenging that the rights that you have, are the exact same rights for everyone you don’t like and who don’t want to have rights. And that works, I think, at an individual level, and it works at a big government level. And I think there’s something for those of us who see ourselves as kind of wanting to kind of be progressive or who want to advance social justice, I think sometimes we have to turn that mirror on ourselves as well. Because I think it’s really easy to look at government and say, government is picking and choosing. I mean, right now there are the government tried to scrap the Human Rights Act. Failed, which was, you know, important that a huge action from lots of civil society to stop that. But what we now see is lots of different laws, the government trying to put in clauses that will dis apply human rights to particular groups, particularly migrants at the moment, so to disapply human rights to one group. And I think in the sector, we can call that out really powerfully. But we also have to remember that that means that the people who we disagree with also have those rights. And I think there’s a bit of a trap forming, that we’re kind of falling into those who maybe we don’t agree with or who we don’t like that we’re falling into that same trap. And I think the lived experience bit for me, in terms of my lived experience is it’s very much that idea that I do not want to become that which I criticise and trying to hold on to that really strongly. I feel like that’s a really long answer.
Jane Ide 13:07
No, no, because I think I think it’s so resonant. And it’s something I find myself having to remind myself of, and challenge myself on more often than you think. Because it is that classic line, isn’t it? I disagree wholeheartedly with what you’re saying, but I will defend to the death, your right to say it. And that is a really hard thing to stand by, when you are hearing people saying things and doing things that that you just feel are just not right. But yes, we have got to be so careful to protect rights for all. But the other thing that’s striking me listening to you, and I’d like to kind of pull this a little bit, I think into the leadership space. And this is this is not meant to sound like a trite question, but I think it leads into a number of other things. You were talking just now about how you very much kind of… the phrase that comes to mind is hold your feet to the fire of people in local authorities, people in systems that you know, this is a duty that. And you’ve also already spoken about your experience as a younger woman leader lived experience, all the different aspects of that. How do you feel your experience of being a leader has been shaped and coloured or impacted by the fact that you are a younger woman with lived experience and so on? What’s that like for you?
Sanchita Hosali 14:35
I think particularly because when I say when I started taking on like trustee positions, particularly I was very young, like I was in my early 30s When I started doing that, and I became chair of an organisation that I took through charitable registration kind of in my mid 30s, potentially. So it was it was quite an interesting dynamic, but maybe we’ll touch on that in a bit because I actually think charity trusteeship is really a really important development space, particularly if you work in smaller organisations. Yeah, I think it has been really shaped by that. I think when I really started kind of having leadership positions, I did a bit of media training with somebody. And I remember asking him, I said, you know, what, if I was doing like a TV interview, my voice comes across as very young, I used to work in a department store, and I did the announcements on one day, I heard myself as I walked through the store, and I just, they’ve let a child loose in the in the office and was like, oh, no, it’s me. So I know, my voice also sounds really young. And I was like, I have long hair. And I feel like I look really young. And he said to me, do you know what to just Sanchita, do what makes you feel comfortable, like stand standing kind of, you know, the power of your own expertise and your knowledge and your experience and that you’re bringing in. And that’s all you can do. And it was kind of like other people’s perceptions about whether you should or shouldn’t be in that role are nothing to do with you. And it was such a great piece of advice. Because I just think I used to really worry about it. I mean, I worked for an organisation that delivered the mayor of London’s domestic abuse strategy. And one of the things that we used to do was kind of go to Metropolitan Police Authority boards. And we would be questioning kind of local police leaders and I stood in for my director on kind of one of these meetings. And I know, I was under 30 at that point. And I know that these very senior police officers in their minds were like, Who is this child, this young woman thinking that she can hold us to account. But I think there’s something also about I’m incredibly stubborn, probably more than I care to admit, I really enjoy proving people wong, I think that’s really been an important part kind of, of it. So kind of seeing the challenge and kind of being well, that might be other people’s perceptions. But actually, this is why I’m going to do this, this is why I think I can do it. And this is how I’m going to achieve it. And just kind of sort of push that. And I hope that that’s something I really kind of tried to practice with in sort of my own organisation as well, kind of really encouraging my colleagues to, you know, be comfortable and confident with their experience and their expertise. Ultimately, other people will have views, but just be sure about what you’re doing.
Jane Ide 17:39
And I’m smiling slightly, because for the sake of our listeners, before we started recording, I mentioned that I can see a poster on the wall behind you. A Shakespeare quote, though she’d be but little she is fierce. And I’m thinking I could imagine you’re pretty fierce in many of those environments. And I think sometimes we can use our differences to our advantage can’t we, leave it in a leadership situation. But I’m also tempted to ask, because this is an area that ACEVO we spent a lot of time thinking about and working on and trying to drive change. And it is a long and slow process. How have you found it as a leader in our sector? Are there other people that you look and think Yeah, actually, that’s somebody, that’s like me, that’s somebody that’s walked this path ahead of me. That’s somebody that I can follow, or do you feel that you’re right on the front edge of the of the pioneer Wild West?
Sanchita Hosali 18:35
Yeah, it’s a really interesting question, because I talk a lot about kind of in my personal life. I mean, I live in the middle of nowhere now. I grew up in like, very deprived part of West London, but I sort of live sort of in the middle of nowhere at the moment, and I am the ethnic minority, where I live. And I do like to talk in my personal life a lot about being able to see people who are like you and kind of why that’s important. But kind of from a leadership perspective, it’s really important. It’s really interesting for me, because I feel like one of the things that really shaped me was I worked at Rights of Women quite early on in my career. I went back there kind of to join the trustee board, like after I’d had like a bit of a gap from working there. And we just we had the most amazing, fantastic kind of leader in a woman called Ranjit Kaur. She’s sadly, no longer with us. She she passed away fairly recently. Lots of women in the women’s sector kind of well knows sort of who I mean when I say when I say Ranjit, and she was just brilliant Indian woman trade union activist, lawyer. Brilliant, and she like just smashed so many different like preconceptions of what you think a leader is. And so I think I was really lucky that very early in my career, the kind of leader that I worked with was exactly the kind of leader that I want to be. So I think that kind of really shaped that journey kind of for me. But it’s interesting, kind of like when I reflect now, I think I don’t necessarily see that in my peers, which is quite a kind of interesting place to be in because I did have it when it wasn’t my peer group. But I also think there is something particularly around kind of like race and ethnicity for me that I do struggle with, because I’m mixed race, there is some thing about, I think, often I’ve seen as well, you’re quite white. So actually, you’re kind of almost one of us, that really gets my back.
Jane Ide 20:42
I can imagine.
Sanchita Hosali 20:43
That’s not my exeperience at all. You know, I have never not been racially profiled at the airport, for example. And so that’s kind of been an interesting dynamic. I think, for me, as I’ve become a leader, young woman kind of from a mixed background, definitely don’t see that many kind of people like me in my peer group. But there’s also been this other interesting dynamic where it’s also some of it isn’t being recognised. And yeah, that’s been an interesting one to, to navigate.
Jane Ide 21:14
But what do you think we as a sector need to do differently on that school? What can we do? What What should all of us as leaders right now be doing that’s different?
Sanchita Hosali 21:25
It’s a really big question. And I don’t know that I have the answers. I think also, because part of why I don’t know that I have the answers is that I don’t think I have, I don’t think I have a usual background or usual journey, including in, you know, if I look at the people who were my peer group, when I was growing up, we are very in very different kinds of worlds. So there is there is obviously things that we can do in the sector, that will kind of help address that. But it’s almost, I don’t know, there’s almost a wider problem around. Well, not almost, I mean, there is a wider problem around the idea that even entry level here is a possibility. So I think there’s some stuff kind of there around, you know, what, sort of what are the opportunities that are opening up there, I’ve been really interested to see things in the legal sector, like creating new routes for qualifying as assistant for example, which are like apprenticeship based, or particular fellowships that are about supporting underrepresented groups in the legal sector to develop their, their careers. And I think there’s a there’s a really, like, that’s a huge issue. I think when I was trying to get into the kind of the field, this idea that you could, you could do unpaid work. And, I, my first job as a researcher, I was also working in WH Smith on the weekends. And I was working as a another researcher at another organisation part time. But basically, I wasn’t working part time because I was working full time and no days off. Because I was like, Oh, who’s like, how am I going to pay the rent and eat, I couldn’t go home and live with my mum, because my mom was on benefits. And that would have mucked up her housing benefit, and then what would happen to my brothers and sisters. So I think there’s something there about the entry level, for sure, kind of making sure that that is a way that enables people to access kind of the sector and the experience, and to then kind of build those people up. And I think I guess from a leadership perspective, also thinking about those routes for leadership, not just for entry level as well.
Jane Ide 23:46
Given ACEVO’s particular focus, it’s something we’re really conscious of, and I’m certainly very conscious of that, it can be too easy to focus all the attention on how you bring people in, in the first instance. And then just that’s fine. You’ll be you’re in. Yeah. And not actually be so conscious of all the systemic barriers, which are multiple, it has to be said, and in a way that leads me on, I suppose to my next question, because it’s a little bit of a segway, because you mentioned earlier about trusteeship and how you find that and I think there’s an element of, it’s a very live debate, I think in the sector about how do we make sure trusteeship is more inclusive? And I find myself quite often saying to people, well, let’s start with the principle that we tell our trustees that we will pay their expenses in advance. You know, and it is as simple as that and people are, oh, yeah, I haven’t even thought about that. You know, and it can be those really simple things but but in that broader sense, you know, you touched on the fact that you really trusteeship and that governance piece is important as well. Tell us a little bit more about about your thoughts around that.
Sanchita Hosali 24:50
I will share it because I haven’t made a decision yet, but I’ve kind of been approached about joining a board for an organisation. I’m also kind of on the board for another organisation I’ll probably talk about in a moment But I think what’s been interesting about that is that the approaches like that I get on normally, because I’m, I have kind of a human rights background and kind of people that, you know, we’re really keen to kind of bring that into the organisation. And I think that’s great. And I really appreciate that. But I think what they don’t necessarily expect is that the thing, the questions I will be asking them are about governance or about charity law, about their financial accounting, it’s about human resources, it’s about culture, people. And I think that’s very much the has been shaped by the fact that I was a trustee before I became a CEO. And I think it’s really shaped kind of my approach to to those things. Because I think, often, I think there can be an element of let’s be a trustee, because I really care about this issue. And I’m really passionate about it. And I think that’s really important, I would never want to be a trustee anywhere where don’t care about the issue. But it’s so much more than that, that caring about the issue is the only thing that kind of brings you to the table, but your responsibilities are so much kind of bigger than that. And in some ways, the responsibility of being a trustee means that you do have to sometimes park your interest in something because you might think something is brilliant and amazing and have these great ideas. But also, you have to make sure that you’re making good financial decisions for that organisation, and your great idea is not a good financial decision for that charity. Right. So I think all of that piece was like so important for me, particularly because my first trusteeship, I ended up kind of being the vice chair and then the chair and registering that organisation as a charity. So I ended up with this kind of vast knowledge of charity law that I never thought I would have ever had. But I am such a charity law geek. And I think in terms of sort of how those things work, I would never have got that experience, I would never have got the experience of how do you do like, you know, financial reporting and accounting? How do I understand these figures to such a detail that I can say Yes, like, as a legal commitment, I believe that these accounts are kind of true and accurate. How can I kind of make these big decisions about where we expend resources, kind of, or if we change a kind of a really key direction of the charity, but all of those things, I would never have got that experience within the charity sector at the speed at which I got them through kind of having trusteeships. And also I have a very particular focus on working in small organisations. I’ve worked in international organisations, I’ve worked in academia, I’ve worked in large organisations. For me, small organisations are what works, that isn’t a value judgement against those organisations. And I know for me, that’s kind of, that’s what works.
Jane Ide 27:58
You pack a lot in terms of your knowledge of how governance works, and the process and the law and so on. How does that then translate into your day job now and your own relationship as a chief executive with your own board?
Sanchita Hosali 28:14
Yeah, I think that’s one of the really big things. So I didn’t know how professional this is to say. But I love my board. I genuinely love them. It’s not that it’s always an easy ride. And they don’t kind of challenge me and hold me to account because of course they do. That’s their job. I have experienced kind of several different boards. And I can honestly say that they are such a great combination of people. And I think partly what helps that is that I have been where they are, I have a level of understanding of actually, if I if I submit a 50 page report to them, that is not helpful. You know, and actually, if I submit this summary to them, they know that they can ask me the detail of one minute point of that, because that’s what’s important to them, and that they need to kind of know that bit of information. So I think it’s actually key to the CEO, and the board relationship. I think there’s a lot not all my board members are but many of them are in either CEO or kind of very high senior leadership roles. And but for the CEO to also know what it is like on the other side of that relationship. I think it’s been like invaluable. Really, actually. So I think, you know, I have a I have a great relationship with my, with my board members.
Jane Ide 29:37
I think that’s the thing, isn’t it? I mean, and you’re absolutely right, and you’re right to put those caveats on. At the end of the day, there is a role for the board. There’s a role for the trustees, there’s a role for the executive and, and they are different but they should be complimentary and I think one of the things we certainly, we say, very close quarters what happens when things go wrong in that relationship and we do talk a lot about that because it is so crucial. I’ve seen it myself it, it can be the the end of an organisation or certainly completely destroy any chance of delivering its mission for quite a long time. But when it works and the way you’re describing it, it is. It’s like magic isn’t so much power, and it has so much strength. And part of it working is that recognition that there has to be the grit in the oyster that this isn’t the cosy little club. But this is a bit of a recurring theme. I think it’s coming up in, in a lot of the podcasts we’re recording, you know, and certainly for me, I would agree my understanding of my role as a chief executive was completely transformed by becoming a trustee and now a chair in my own right. And it just changes that sense of the dynamic doesn’t it, everybody’s advantage. So yeah, I think it’s really lovely to hear somebody describing how good it can be. And also, I think there’s something that we underestimate, and I’ve heard a few people talk about this recently, as chief executives, we can underestimate how important it is that we play a role in shaping that board and, again, not to make it suit our purposes, but to suit the governance of the organisation not just leave it all to chance.
Sanchita Hosali 31:16
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And I do think that’s really important and, and kind of, for example, so we have probably some slightly unusual relationships in that I would whilst kind of ultimately, you know, I do work with the chair. Our chair, for example, is the former president of the European Court of Human Rights is, you know, possibly one of the most knowledgeable people on the planet about human rights law. And I can drop him a text about a question, and he will send me back the definitive answer, which is lovely. But also, our treasurer is a director of operations and the CEO at other organisation who has that kind of that kind of level of experience. So actually, I work to my treasurer, quite a bit more kind of in that sort of day to day stuff. Whereas I think, traditionally, you would work with your chair, but we’ve kind of recognised actually, as a board and a CEO, how does that relationship work most effectively for the charity? And that’s the kind of setup that works for us.
Jane Ide 32:20
Brilliant. We haven’t talked much about your your staff team. And that’s, that’s the other bit of the dynamic. So what’s, what’s the culture that you set? What’s the relationship? How do you feel that’s, that’s worked?
Sanchita Hosali 32:33
When I took over BIHR kind of focusing on the culture and the development of the team was a really big piece of the work for me, and kind of really working on building up our team and sort of what it is that we not just what we do as an organisation, but how we do it, and kind of how we work with each other, then we had the pandemic, as well, I kind of sometimes reflect that actually, in some ways, kind of I’ve been in this leadership role for sort of five or six years, at BIHR, but more than half of that was during a pandemic. And so it’s kind of my timeframes are slightly funny. So yeah, in terms of the culture I, I have such like such great colleagues, and it’s really been kind of building that team. That kind of team culture where, of course, all there to do a job. But we’re really committed to kind of what we do, but that we’re also looking after ourselves, as well. There’s a real recognition that what we do is really hard. But it’s hard in sort of some unexpected ways. So we don’t do casework. So one of the things that we’ve sort of talked about quite a bit is like that holding the secondary trauma but not closing the loop. So often in a session, we’re dealing with really, really difficult things that either frontline staff and public bodies or individuals or community groups are bringing to us. And we do have a programmatic approach, but it’s not a casework approach. So we often won’t know what happens at the end of the intervention that we’ve done to kind of support people to kind of actually approach those issues, sort of using using the tools of human rights law. And often we will kind of do the kind of impact in the evaluation will get kind of great stuff. And that’s really important. But there is a lot of sort of Holding, holding that trauma and that was really evident kind of in the pandemic because we were very small then. And we were just on sessions continually for months. And so we had like quite a big sort of reality check and sort of talked about actually what is it that we want kind of as an organisation so we do things like prioritise, sort of decompression time and wellbeing time within the organisation. You know, we focus very much on if you’re here and you’re working, that’s great, but if you’re not, if you’re not able to work, you’re not able to work like All of those things that are things that should be taken for granted. But I think one of the things that I really kind of, I really try to not have in our organisation that I think is endemic in the charity sector is, well, we’re all here because we care so much about it. So we’re all gonna go, you know, not just the extra mile, but the extra 462,000 miles. And actually, no, like, we’re, we’re here, we’re doing a job that we care about. But we also have to care about ourselves in order to do that job well. And I think that’s something we’ve really being trying to prioritise in in the way that we work lots of things around kind of individual supervision, joint supervisions, kind of lots of spaces for us to be together as many kind of groups within the organisation, you know, that creating space for the team to meet without me, for example, actually, you don’t always want your CEO in every meeting that you have. And actually kind of just making sure that we have lots of those different spaces and tools and mechanisms to make sure that we we are sort of looking after ourselves as much as we’re trying to support other people.
Jane Ide 36:11
That seems like such wise advice. And I know exactly what you mean, that sort of cultural assumption that there’s always somebody worse than us. And we’ve got to be able to serve them. And I think it’s a hugely impactful thing for a leader to do to be saying, no, actually, we’ve got to be here tomorrow, as well. And the day after, and the day after that. And I suppose that’s a perfect leading to what I fear might have to be our last… because we’re going to run out of time because of time, I could sit and talk to you for the rest of the day quite happily. But what about for you personally? How do you hold your own resilience? Because even even what you’ve just been describing, you’re talking about giving that to your team. And that’s part of the job. So what gives you resilience, what gives you hope, what gives you joy outside, outside of all of this.
Sanchita Hosali 37:02
I will say one of the things that I’ve maybe a little before I get on to the hope and joy, just kind of what you’ve said has sparked something for me, which is that doing the practice what you preach thing is really, really important. And it’s something that me and Colin and Phil who together are the SMT that we’ve really tried to sort of confront and to put into practice ourselves. Because if I’m sending an email on a Sunday night to my team, and I’m saying but you don’t do that, come on, that’s not the right thing to do. And it’s sort of thing that I put up kind of, you know, when I’m a trustee at other organisations as well, I’ll be like, actually, I don’t want I don’t want to get an email from you at 10 o’clock at night. Because what does that tell me about what’s happening in the team? So I think there is that element also of like, if you’re trying to say to the people you work with, you need to look after yourself. So you have to also be seen to be doing it. And that’s really hard. That’s really hard because I am somebody who will work and work and work and work and work and work and work until I’ve done all the things I want to do. And that will never happen because… So I think that kind of just sparked for me that thing of actually doing it making sure you’re doing it for yourself is a really important part of the of the leadership piece. But kind of what well being and hope and joy and all those things. I think they’re so important and the well being that I don’t know if you can see actually in the video just here, my stripey wall just here. Yes, so those are my kickboxing belts. So I very much into kind of fitness, I go to the gym every day at 4:30am I love that I love being up kind of before the rest of the world is watching the sunrise and kind of knowing that I’ve achieved something in that morning, doesn’t matter whatever else happens in that day. I have got up out of bed and I have achieved something for myself. And that’s like such a key part to my, my kind of well being. And that kind of led me to kickboxing, which was a dream I had when I was a kid I kind of used to love martial arts movies. So movies and books were like the big thing for me as a kid because they were free from the library. So that was something we could do kind of without cost. So my mom kind of really instilled kind of reading in us and we would always be like, Could we just get a video? I so I used to love like martial arts stuff. And I had always wanted to do it, but we didn’t have heating at the weekend. So the idea I was going to a martial arts class was like non existent. And so as through my fitness class, I kind of ended up starting kickboxing. And then I got horrendously injured in my first tournament and broke my leg and my foot and my ankle, which is related to my leadership journey, because it was just as I took over at BIHR. It was a very interesting experience taking the leadership of a charity and my first leadership role, whilst I also was kind of recovering from surgery and all these things.
Jane Ide 40:11
I can empathise with that because I broke my arm a week before my first ever board meeting as a chair. But I have to say, I did it gardening rather than kickboxing. Not quite as energetic.
Sanchita Hosali 40:25
But I kind of went back to it, which I was really proud of myself, you know, I kind of didn’t sort of feel the fear and stop it. So now I, I kind of help out with the coaching at my club, which I love. But the well being part of it, is that I kind of tend to coach the younger ones. And so I have a group of young girls, who I’ve kind of seen up now from when they were kind of sort of six or so. And I just like the sense of just like such achievement from, from these girls, who would normally be told, Oh, that’s a boys thing. You can’t do that, who are now actually about to grade for their belt that is only two belts below my own. And it just yeah, there’s just like such a brilliant sense of your own achievement, but also like what you can kind of inspire in sort of younger generations and younger generations of women around that, that I really that kind of really does support my my kind of well being and brings me so much, so much joy kind of working with them. But I think also the hope bit, I think is a bit more like work related. And I think it is something I do want to touch on. Because I think coming out of two years of really intense work, kind of battling against a government that has tried to scrap our Human Rights Act and replace it with what can only have been reduction of our rights, kind of looking at the terrible things that they wanted to put in place as an alternative. It’s really hard. And I think that combined with often the issues that we are working on with people are really hard. And I think it’s really easy to be fatalistic in kind of the, you know, the context that we’re living in right now, whether it’s kind of politics, or economics, or kind of social cohesion, or whatever it is, that actually there’s so much wrong, and so much negativity and kind of, you know, sort of falling into, into that trap. But what we get from our work is this kind of immense thread of like hope and joy, because when we are working with people, and we are able to kind of close that feedback loop and see what they do with what kind of what, you know, we’re able to support them to gain around human rights acknowledge. It’s just, it’s just amazing. So we, our monthly face to face meetings is one of the things we always do. We do like a five point review of kind of different programmes. So every month, someone kind of sort of talks about that, and one of the elements is impact. And we had our meeting this week. And we were talking about work we were doing with the Scottish recovery Consortium, which is around kind of people when in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Kind of people who, like from every point of view, are just kind of so trodden down by the system, they kind of, you know, make little videos about kind of what they’ve got from this sort of 10 part course that we’ve done with them. And we were just all in tears, because it was like, it was amazing, is amazing to be part of it. The stories that we hear, you know, we hear kind of people who have been at such the sharp end and have been ignored. And actually, what they take away from the work that we do together massively changes their life. It’s not a headline, it’s not a big campaign win, it’s never going to make the news. But it completely changes the world of that person. And it’s such a brilliant hope that we have access to and we say it a lot. Actually, at BIHR, kind of internally, in all of this negative space, the work we do means that we have access to such an amazing amount of hope. And we really try and celebrate that internally.
Jane Ide 44:24
That is an amazing way to end this. Brilliant, inspiring and very hopeful conversation. Sanchita, thank you. It’s been such a joy, I know that everyone will be inspired by you. And it’s been absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us.
Sanchita Hosali 44:43
Thank you. I really appreciate it. It was really nice to kind of take a moment out and reflect and just chat.
