Wise Words: Andrea Whitaker_Lindsley

 Andrea Whitaker-Lindsley is one of the funniest and most uncompromising women I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet. We got to know each other through learning about, and doing, stand-up comedy and have been friends ever since those baptisms of fire on the North East circuit.

I’m featuring her on my blog on inspirational women as she has the most positive, effective and kind approaches to leadership I’ve ever come across.

She was born in Sunderland on a social housing estate but her mam made her dad sell his car so they could move to a better area to access a good school.

Her parents didn’t have great childhood experiences and they wanted Andrea and her sister Katrina to get the best education. As a result of her parent’s desire to help their learning, Andrea could read Enid Blyton stories on her own, by the time she was six.

She grew to love Grimms Fairy Tales and took delight in the gruesome nature of them. When she was a teenager Andrea was already reading Stephen King (and getting nightmares as a result!)

She said: “I loved a ‘who done it’ although I never liked the real life crime books that some people enjoy.”

At school she remembers doing science A levels and the boys being taken away for a talk about STEM careers and girls not being included. This could have changed her career path but as she didn’t want to go to university, she decided to join the civil service. After a period in Sunderland, due to personal circumstances she transferred to Wales and the Merthyr Tydfil office. 

She became a union shop steward and this was her first experience of leadership, despite only being in her 20s. There was a major strike for an 8% pay deal and the whole union branch was out on strike. Andrea gave a speech to all the staff and let them know how proud she was of them for what they were doing. There was even solid support from the claimants for the staff’s cause. As a result of everyone’s efforts the strike was successful.

She said: “I think my skill is recognising people’s strengths and encouraging them to believe in themselves. That is what I did in Merthyr. People had assumed the staff would cave in and they just grew stronger.”

Following the birth of her son Cai she decided to move back to Wearside to be near her family.

After time in the Department of Work and Pensions  home visiting team Andrea was appointed to lead a remote team.  This group was where she honed her leadership skills by listening to issues, asking what they wanted to do to tackle them and putting the solutions into action.

She said: “The result showed a host of simple things that could make my staff perform better. For example, people were travelling way too far from their homes so it made caring responsibilities difficult. We let them book appointments around their lives and also developed a portfolio of projects with which they could be involved, to develop. 

“There were opportunities to learn about management and shadow some of my own meetings. The results were great and they were awarded the best-performing team in the country  The productivity improved and I evidenced some of the tremendous thank you notes they had received for their work, which had previously gone under the radar, rather than being celebrated.”

Andrea moved to the HMRC with a promotion and volunteered to be part of a team appointed by the Cabinet Office to deliver their flagship Future Leaders Academy. The people benefitting from the project were from all parts of the civil service including DVSA, DEFRA and Forestry Commission.  

I had some people on the course who didn’t want to talk and were terrified of doing presentations and by the end of their year ended up confidently delivering presentations to hundreds of people.”

One of the projects she supported, the attendees on the skill-building course created  a video about careers in the civil service for young carers. It was so impactful it was accepted and posted on The Civil Service Jobs website. The impact of being part of the academy on their careers has been tremendous with one person jumping three grades and five out of the original eight people also having two promotions each.

Andrea said: “My guidelines for being an effective leader are to be empathetic and build capabilities. People’s confidence grew over the course. Andrea was involved with the academy for over five years, supporting numerous civil servants to advance their leadership and project management skills, and in her final year she developed and supported facilitators to be able to coach the new batch of academy attendees.  Andrea feels being part of the Future Leaders Academies as one of the highlights of her career in the civil service. 

“My approach to leading my people is to give credit to those who have been excellent, but I will always shoulder the blame for anything that doesn’t go to plan.  I also like to take my people with me, leading strongly from the middle of my team!  

Andrea also introduced an initiative to introduce a leadership and coaching culture nationally, she developed her own event and delivered it up and down the country. 

She said: “My interest now is how to tackle negative behaviours people may have and how to change them. I appreciate you can’t always love who you work with but you must keep a professional relationship.”

In her current role Andrea practises her leadership skills and her team outperform their targets every day.

She said: “You must practise leadership all the time. There’s a new generation of people with very different backgrounds to what I had, with different expectations, language and skills. But fundamentally you must inspire people to be the best they can be. And make work fun!”

Sitting alongside her successful Government career is her comedy track record. She began by writing poems for hen parties and personal poems to make people laugh. Then in 2010 she performed stand up in a South Shields  comedy competition and came second.

One of the highlights of her career was being MC for Tiffany Stephenson and Sara Pascoe, getting great reviews.

Andrea’s comedy life stalled when she married her husband David, as she explained, it was hard to write comedy once she was so happy!

Reading is still a big part of Andrea’s life and she loved Janet Evanovich’s novels and Irish comedian Caimh McDonnell’s stories about Bunny McGarry based in Dublin.

The Stand-Up Mam has funny stories do you have one to share?

I’ve always been clumsy and once when I was home in Wales I heard my lift outside and was running out of the door (without my very long laces fully fastened on my boots) I slammed the door shut and my foot shot up in the air tipping me completely upside down - I had ridiculously managed to get my laces trapped high up in the door frame. I had everything on show and couldn’t even reach for my keys. Not my finest hour, I had to be rescued by my friend!!

“I would describe myself as extremely capable and incapable at the same time.”