Dr Jo Salter MBE, Britain’s first female fast-jet pilot, has become one of the UK’s most inspiring leadership speakers. Breaking barriers in aviation, she flew the Panavia Tornado on operational missions and paved the way for greater diversity in the RAF.
After her military career, Jo transitioned into business leadership, taking senior roles and becoming Director of Global Transformative Leadership at PwC. Today, she shares her expertise on transformation, resilience and strategy with audiences worldwide.
In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, Jo reflects on inclusive leadership, employee wellbeing, and the traits that define effective leaders in today’s fast-changing world.
In your view, what defines inclusive leadership, and why is it so vital for today’s organisations?
Inclusive leadership for me is really about understanding the people that you’re working with and coming to them with a humility that respects who they are and what they bring to the team. It’s really understanding your own impact and having that self-awareness that the experiences that you’ve lived with might not be the experiences and the view that others have.
I think that the benefit that that brings is people can bring themselves to work, they can be authentic with who they really are and focus on performance rather than anxiety, and filling that level of psychological safety which you might just not get in another circumstance.
To what extent does corporate culture shape employee wellbeing and performance?
When you think about turning up to work every day, we bring all of the anxieties that we have from our childhood, from our everyday life, all of the different stresses, and the culture within which we work and how safe we feel psychologically has a massive impact on our ability to feel well, to be who we are.
Really that culture, of course, is only made up of all of the people that are within your organisation.
Transformational change can unsettle employees. How should leaders sustain motivation during periods of disruption?
Well, the first thing I’d start with is if you have a demotivated team, it’s important really to get to know them, to understand why they’re demotivated. What is it that they’re unhappy with?
I’m a massive advocate of the Ted Lasso leadership style, and if you haven’t watched it then I highly recommend it. There’s so much to be learned from that.
When we think about transformation and overlay that on top, again people are worried about what that means to them, to their future. We aren’t naturally people who want to undergo change, yet we live in a world which is encouraging change all the time. Change has become almost the new norm in many, many ways.
So, communication and engagement with those right people, and listening and having empathy to the journey that they’re going on, really helps build that motivation and it helps drive that successful transformation.
Having navigated a male-dominated environment yourself, what guidance would you offer to women entering similar industries today?
So, as a woman who lived in and worked in a very male-dominated sector, I would say to other people that it’s so important to be yourself.
Because it can be hard to… well, we can think that we should change who we are slightly, and I certainly did that when I was younger. I think if you can just be honest with who you are, and again authentic—which is a theme that I suppose I bring to almost everything I do—and put your brave boots on and don’t accept things if they’re not all right.
Because again, we are human beings who are trying to achieve and succeed in what we’ve set out to be, and that diversity of thought and diversity of individuals that we have is what helps build a high-performing team.
Looking back, which leadership traits stand out to you as the most critical for success?
I have learned and seen… oh, and there are a few, and I know that we haven’t got too long for me to talk about them all.
The first one I’d mention is being a binder—somebody that brings people together and forms a team that recognises each other’s strengths and works with trust, and therefore you achieve results.
I think others that spring to mind are authenticity, empathy, and clearly those are really important because it’s so important to have, I suppose, clarity and understanding around who you are, your own values, your own purpose, so you can anchor to that when you need to make decisions fast and they need to be the right decisions.
And I think when I think about everything going on in the world, that’s so important today.
And finally, the most important leadership trait that I’ve seen is when someone has, I suppose, presence—you know, when they walk in a room and they make a difference to the energy in that room. Being someone who has presence makes you stand out again.
This exclusive interview with Jo Salter MBE was conducted by Jack Hayes of The Motivational Speakers Agency.
