META focuses on building partnerships with those who have already achieved leadership roles and who can act as role models, mentors and champions. The role of the Leading Lights is to inspire, energise and encourage ethnic minority civil servants to fulfil their potential.
Last updated - 13th August 2009
The Association organises Leading Lights events which provide an opportunity for Senior Civil Servants from across Whitehall to meet junior colleagues from ethnic minority backgrounds and engage in reciprocal learning.
Mentors and support come in different guises - I don’t believe they are race or gender specific. How do you achieve success? Well, you all know it’s by really hard work and application, but you need to have a sense of what the journey is about.
That’s why it’s particularly important for those of us from a black and ethnic minority background to reach back and support others. How do I get from A to B? What is involved? How do I lift up my confidence?
David Lammy MP, META Patron & Leading Light, Leading Lights Reception July 2008
Diversity is not an add-on, it’s not an extra, it an essential part of a civil service that will deliver the challenges we face for the twenty first century.
A diverse Civil Service will help us be more innovative because it brings together groups of people together who come at things from different perspectives […] We have got to create the opportunities, there’s talent everywhere, we must make sure we get that talent all the way through in order to deliver better public services.
Sir Gus O'Donnell, Cabinet Secretary & Head of the Home Civil Service, Growing Talent Graduation June 2009
“Talent is spread evenly across the world, but opportunity is not”… I feel very strongly that those of us who have had opportunity in life have an obligation to spread that opportunity so that others can reach their potential.
What META is about is about spreading the opportunities for that minority talent that might not otherwise get a chance. META is also about supporting mentors and managers to take some risks and ultimately reap the benefits of having a more diverse workforce.
Minouche Shafik, Permanent Secretary DfID & META Mentor, Growing Talent Graduation June 2009
Getting a diverse service from top to bottom is partly about giving the people who are well-positioned, somewhere around the middle in many cases, the confidence and belief that some of these senior jobs could be for them.
… Although we are right to set ourselves targets for getting people into very senior positions in the civil service, if we think of this purely in terms of number we will be making a big mistake. This is more about whether this organisation is authentically diverse and has the strength that comes with diversity.
Sir Bill Jeffrey, Permanent Secretary MoD & META Mentor, Growing Talent Graduation June 2009
