Julia Middleton's thoughts on leadership

I spoke at the start of a Frontrunner (our course for university students) specifically for disabled students, which we run in association with Santander. They were a hugely focused and dynamic group who were determined to work across disability and other organisations as leaders rather than stick to networks for people with their specific disability. They felt like a very different generation and I hope they are – one that is not interested in the noise, just the substance.

One young man came to tell me about a conference he had been to recently. To quote him directly, “there were so many rules on access that there remained almost nothing left to be accessed.”

They asked me masses of questions. Good ones, real ones, which you could not answer with one sound bite. In fact every answer I gave was untidy, especially the ones about prejudice. But I hope they were real answers that reflect real leadership, which is such a balancing act with very few absolutes.