Intuitive Insights Podcast | Season 2 Episode 5: Katie Frost

So I really want to hear more about that role.

And I love the fact that you kind of said it out loud that you've manifested it.

You've got a vision in your head for what you want to do.

And it also speaks to something which I'm having so many conversations about at the moment, which is visibility.

And finding, let's say, so many conversations with senior people who perhaps have never had to look for a new role, have never even been interviewed for a new role because they've been in an organisation where there's been a natural progression that's happened over time.

But increasingly... we hear a lot don't we about personal brand and about being out there and networking and connecting that kind of whole visibility piece I think what you've described there is that you made yourself really visible so that when that secondment came up you were an obvious choice because people had heard of you and knew that you had the enthusiasm the energy and the passion to do that job and So I love that you've brought that up.

It feels like it's a real kind of key point for a lot of people at the moment.

And can we take a couple of steps back to the graduate programme itself? And what did you say? Obviously, proper trains.

So this is day one, kind of like realising that.

Oh, right.

OK, it really is.

What would you say when you if you kind of looking back to Katie, the graduate in 2004? What were the lessons, the kind of the leadership lessons in that first bit? Maybe not from you as a leader, but from other people.

What were you seeing?

I think that I was very fortunate that my first like proper job, you know, you go on the graduate scheme, you spend just under a year, in my case, working in all these different departments and getting to know about the company and about the industry.

And my first proper job, as it were, that I applied for and got given and those kind of things, was as a customer manager, looking at the contract between Network Rail and one of the train operators.

And that was the most incredible grounding because suddenly I'm in this industry and I'm realising from day one it's an industry, it's not just a company.

And

so understanding things like how performance measures work, how the incentives work between network rail and the train operators, that was a grounding that I got within my first year in the industry that was invaluable.

There's probably still things now in the back of my mind that I learned about the store model or whatever it might be that I carried all the way, kind of all the way through.

my career in rail so I think that was um that was a a great choice in terms of of a role um but equally I think that at that time um there weren't

very many female role models for me to look to

and so um And that meant that I was looking for the role models that I could see.

There weren't lots of people that looked like me or spoke like me.

And I remember probably on my first day or very early on in that first kind of job and there was a guy that I'd been on the graduate scheme with and he came over and he said to me...

I think now that you've got this, I feel like I'm whispering because he was a bit, now that, you know, looking around the office, now that you've got this job, I think maybe you need to think about being a bit less Katie and he did this with his hands.