In celebration of International Men’s Day, we're thrilled to bring you a unique edition of our Employee Spotlight series, focusing on men as role models. This edition celebrates the positive impact our male colleagues have as mentors, leaders, and inspirations, both within our company and beyond. The special edition commences with Richard Sargent, Director of Managed Services. We caught up with Richard to learn more about his experiences leading up to his career to date and hear his thoughts what he believes men can do to contribute to a more inclusive, supportive environment.   

What was your dream job as a child and why?

When I was at school, I wanted to become a teacher. I just really enjoy sharing knowledge and helping others with learning. I soon realised, if you go straight into a job as a teacher, then you never leave the education system and that didn’t appeal. At university, the computing side of the Maths degree had resonated with me, and decided that was the domain I wanted to work in. Early on in tech, I specialized in Unix and high availability, growing deep knowledge quickly thanks to being thrown in at the deep end. Then whilst working with delivery and support engineers, whose skills needed to be broad, I realized they quite often lacked essential knowledge in the Unix domain that they needed to support our customers. This was an opportunity and I discovered that teaching could be part of my role in tech and working with the technical training department, I went on to write and deliver many courses. A few years later, I became a trained facilitator of a course for managing personal growth, which I delivered with HR. Now in my role I wear many hats, one of which is coach. That early passion for teaching has stayed with me throughout my career and my career has allowed me to teach.

Can you share a significant moment in your career that has shaped who you are today? 

The first management training course I ever attended was amazing learning experience. We were given 2 days to plan a full week’s activities for young kids that came from less privileged areas of Bristol. The week is based at an outward bounds camp and the cost of the training includes covering the cost for the kids to stay, so it was good to be giving a little back to the community. This was such a challenging and rewarding course. When we got it right, we built good teams, and the children had so much fun. When we got it wrong, then chaos soon started to take over and the children would make it obvious all was not well. I learnt the 7:1 rule on providing feedback to your team members. Find the things your team are doing right and let them know. Do this all the time! Then when they are not getting something right, they are more likely to listen to feedback and fix the issues.  

What advice would you give to your younger self starting in this industry? 

Learn more.

What are some of your go-to activities or hobbies for maintaining mental and physical health?

Running and cycling. I think I probably talk about it more than I do it, but when I do get the bike out or put on the running trainers it is massively rewarding. Physical exercise has always been my go-to activity to destress as it’s like an antidote for stresses of work where things might not go right and all the pending deadlines that you have to deal with in front of your laptop. 

How do you believe men can contribute to creating a more inclusive and supportive environment?

I think it’s important to realize that we need teams to succeed, and the best teams are diverse and value everybody’s contribution. To make that work requires a culture where we respect each other and hold each other to account. As a leader I know it’s on me to set the tone, and so I spend time in group meetings saying that we need diversity, and we need to hear all the voices of the team. We can disagree, but we must do it respectfully. When I joined Celebrus I inherited a global team which was full of diversity from different countries and background, but the gender balance in my group was horrendous, a common problem in tech, but I am sure this was worse than industry average. Working with my hiring managers and HR, we are turning this around (still some unfinished business). We are hiring excellent candidates who have knowledge, experience, and add to our diversity. 

What book, podcast, or resource has had a major impact on your personal or professional development? 

I was given a book called “Black box thinking” by Mathew Sayed by a department leader. He bought a copy for every member of the department after a product we had developed with a customer had received bad press after its initial launch. We must learn from our failures, and this is what the book is about, taking lessons from the aviation industry. The good news is the product did go on to be the customers most award-winning offering. I have now bought copies have gifted them to team members and customers. Since reading the book, I have become obsessed with failure. If you want to talk about failure you have come to the right place. I now listen to a podcast “How to fail” by Elizabeth Day who summarises it perfectly that “Failure is just data acquisition”.