Social mobility often gets less airtime than other areas of inclusion, although I’m pleased to say I have seen an increase in recent months.
It can feel awkward to raise. Hard to pin down. And for many leaders - particularly those who’ve benefited from privilege - it can feel personal in a way other topics don’t.
And yet, time and again, when we create the space to talk about it properly, it’s the conversation that stays with people the longest.
When inclusion isn’t about intent
One of the challenges with social mobility is that exclusion rarely shows up loudly or maliciously. More often, it seeps into the everyday moments that feel neutral to some and loaded to others.
It’s not policy. It’s not process. It’s not even behaviour we would instinctively label as “wrong”.
It’s things like:
- The assumption
- The in-joke
- The casual conversation before a meeting starts
These moments are easy to dismiss - unless you’re the one they exclude.
A story that stayed with me
During the pandemic, we were upskilling the senior leadership team of a large PLC. In one session, we explored social mobility.
One executive spoke openly about his journey, growing up in a less privileged socio-economic background. He talked about the obvious barriers - financial pressure, limited networks - but also about the smaller, more cumulative moments that shaped his confidence and sense of belonging at work.
One example landed heavily.
Before meetings, colleagues would often chat about skiing holidays. Which resorts they loved. Where they were going next. It wasn’t boastful or unkind, just easy conversation between people with shared experiences.
For him, skiing represented something distant and elite. It wasn’t part of his childhood. It wasn’t part of his early career. It felt like a world he wasn’t meant to belong to.
He couldn’t join in. He didn’t have a story. And once again, he was reminded that this space hadn’t been designed with him in mind.
The moment privilege notices itself
Some weeks later, in a separate coaching conversation with another leader from the same group, the story surfaced again, but from a different angle.
This leader told me how much his colleague’s experience had affected him. With all work happening on Teams, he’d become aware of his own backdrop: photographs of him sailing on various yachts over the years, alongside a picture of his beloved Porsche.
He’d taken them down.
Not out of embarrassment. But out of concern. He worried they might be alienating. He wanted to be inclusive. He wanted to do the right thing.
Another senior leader disagreed entirely. He argued that these symbols were positive - aspirational even. Proof of what hard work could lead to. Things for people to strive towards.
No one in this story had bad intent. Everyone was trying, in their own way, to be thoughtful.
And yet, the discomfort remained.
Why social mobility is so hard to navigate
This is what makes social mobility such a challenging inclusion topic - particularly for those with privilege.
So much of what feels “normal” has gone unquestioned. So many signals have never had to be interpreted. So many spaces have quietly said, you belong here.
When someone finally names that experience from the other side, it can feel destabilising.
Leaders often ask:
- Am I meant to hide parts of who I am?
- Is ambition now a bad thing?
- Where does personal authenticity end and inclusion begin?
These aren’t bad questions. They’re human ones.
But they also reveal something important: inclusion isn’t about having perfect answers. It’s about being willing to notice the impact of things we’ve never had to notice before.
Inclusion lives in the ordinary
Social mobility work isn’t about banning skiing conversations or removing every symbol of success. It’s about recognising that what feels effortless to some can exclude others.
A photo on a Teams background can feel like nothing. Or it can feel like a reminder that you’ve entered a space built by - and for - someone else.
Inclusion breaks down less in big, dramatic moments and more in the ordinary ones we don’t interrogate because we’ve never needed to.
What does “Doing the Right Thing” actually look like?
The truth is, there isn’t a neat rulebook.
Sometimes it is about adapting. Sometimes it’s about staying visible. Often, it’s about curiosity rather than conclusions.
That might mean asking:
- Who might feel left out of this conversation?
- What assumptions are baked into how we signal success?
- Whose experience feels effortless here - and whose doesn’t?
And being open to the fact that even with good intent, we’ll get it wrong sometimes.
Sitting with the discomfort
Inclusion work - especially around social mobility - requires us to sit with ambiguity.
To resist tidy answers. To stay in the uncomfortable middle. To listen when someone tells us that something we never noticed has mattered their entire career.
And perhaps most importantly, to remember that belonging isn’t created by grand gestures, but by our willingness to notice the small ones.