Angela Lidiard
Bio
Angela Lidiard has established a distinguished career in the nuclear safety sector, currently serving as a Principal Nuclear Safety Inspector at the Office for Nuclear Regulation, where she is the lead for licensing nuclear installations.
Angela started her career in the nuclear industry as a chemical engineer at the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) at AWE. Her extensive experience with MOD includes roles such as Safety Assurance Manager in strategic systems where she worked for over five years. Prior to this, she contributed significantly to the MOD’s major change initiative, Materiel Strategy, as Deputy Head of Engagement and Communications.
She held several key positions including in UK deterrent policy and assurance of the performance of the UK's deterrent systems.
She is a chartered engineer and a chartered manager. Her academic credentials include an MSc in Defence Leadership from Cranfield School of Management and an MBA in Project Management from the University of the West of England.
In addition to her professional roles, Angela is dedicated to STEM education, having earned a STEM Ambassador certification from STEM Learning UK.
Angela's Mentoring Background
"I started out as a as a chemical engineer and I did my placement at Harwell and that set me off on that course of a nuclear career.
And I went on to the Ministry of Defence Graduate engineer scheme and did a whole range of jobs around waste management, decommissioning, project management materials and move to ONR about 5 and a half years ago.
Now I'm a Fellow of the Nuclear Institute and also chartered manager with Chartered Management Institute.
All the way through my career, I've, mentored people. Part of being a professional engineer is obviously about bringing people through the Chartership process and bringing along the next generation of people. I started out as a line manager, but realised there's a lot more to people than just a transactional “here's a task. Now let's get the outputs”. As I got more senior, I realised that that part of that responsibility was giving something back and bringing people up and through the ranks.
That's kind of what I get out of it to a great extent. It's really rewarding to watch people grow both personally and professionally; it makes you feel like you've had a good career and that you're given something back to people.
As far as mentoring is concerned, it's a bit of everything in a way? It's coaching, it's counselling. But it's really based on that sort of mutual respect, mutual trust between the mentor and the mentee. And so I think that establishing that good relationship and having a rapport between the mentor and the mentee is very important.
I think if the if the relationship doesn't start to gel quite quickly, there's no shame in in sort of deciding that it that it's not going to work.
I think when I first started mentoring people I was a bit…well, I'm an engineer, so I'm was a bit directive, instinctively wanting to solve people's problems for them!
But now I've realised that you've really got to give people the space and tools to solve their own problems.
I think I also initially assumed that people had the sort of same objectives as me, that they had the same kind of ambitions. And I've really changed my mindset over the years.
So I'd echo what Claire said about it being really important to agree, really clear objectives at the beginning and to understand what the mentee is trying to get out of it. I find with some people, it's quite handy to go through a sort of priming process. So I've asked them in the past to sort of fill in a wheel of life and sort of tell me “what are you looking for? what's your balance between family, work, leisure, how much do you want to sort of dedicate this?”
It depends on the circumstances, but I find people find that fun and it's helpful to them. And I always say you don't have to share that with me,, go and talk to your family and decide where you want this to fit into your at your overall life 'cause I think it can be hard to set that balance. And the problems that the people want to solve, they don't have to be big. It could be just one thing and let's just work on that, it might be just one session.
So it can be as big or as small as you like, really. And it's just important is to set some realistic goals. I think I think what I'm saying is the most important thing is to listen, listen to the mentee and figure out what it is they're trying to achieve and what they want and not sort of impose your thoughts on what you think they want.
And obviously there's all the practical stuff, making sure you understand where you're meeting, when you're meeting, etc. And you know how much time you are willing to give and the mentee is willing to put aside.
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