Nikolaj Lyngbye Kolbe works as an Enterprise Agile Coach and team lead in Centrica. His many successful initiatives to champion women and DE&I earned him the Centrica Women’s Network Male Allies Award in 2023, followed in 2024 by winning the first ever “Allyship award” at our inaugural “Women in Utilities Awards 2024”. As we see him as a stellar example of male allyship, combining his passion, experience, roles, and network to support and advocate for women professionally and personally, WUN reached out to him asking him to share his experiences and tips to get started as a male ally.

Nikolaj says:

My journey to become a male ally has in many ways been more by coincidence than by choice.

In the 20+ years I have been working in different industries and roles, I have always enjoyed being part of a diverse workforce and have valued the different qualities women can bring to any team or organisation. But until a few years ago, I actually found the concept of “male allyship” quite strange, and thought to myself: “Why in the world would my bright, engaged, awesome female colleagues need a male like me to say, ‘Look at me, I am a man, and I can help you’, when I am sure that they can voice their opinions themselves?”

However, in the recent years it has become clear to me, how the qualities brought by women are not valued equally, and how challenging it can be for women to get the same opportunities as men in all aspects of life. This changed my perception and made it clear to me that male allyship is in fact really important in helping ALL of us on the journey to create fairness, equity and an inclusive workspace where everyone is valued equally, and we achieve the best possible results together.

After realising this, I decided to do my part in improving the working conditions for women to the best of my ability. This has been a journey where I have learned a lot and enjoyed. Below are some of the lessons I have learnt so far, that might inspire others, who are interested in helping us all by becoming a more active male ally.

My top learnings including some of my own experiences:

• Start by accepting/realising that gender inequality exists, and that you as a privileged male might not have noticed it earlier – It is embarrassing to admit, but as a white, heterosexual man, it wasn’t until a few years ago that, through dialogues with my wife, the #MeToo movement and my participation in a company book club, I started to realise how privileged I am and how common gender inequality is. So, for me a necessary first step is this realisation, which also includes helping other males realise this through conversations, examples etc.
• Seek out more knowledge about inequality and diversity to understand the challenges, impact and possibilities – For me, discussions in book clubs with female and male colleagues have been a great way to seek more knowledge, with the books “Invisible Women” and “Rebel Ideas” as real eye openers. Beside books, I have learnt a lot from talking with female colleagues and family members and simply being interested and curious to learn more by, for example, asking them “How do you see this/have you experienced this/what can I and others do to improve the situation?”
• Start small, maybe by focusing on helping individuals – It can often be difficult to get started on something new. For me one of the first steps was to sign up through a mentoring program to be a mentor for two young female colleagues navigating the start of their career journeys. Besides providing these colleagues with sparring that helped them move forward in their careers and create new opportunities for growth, I have also learnt a lot myself about the challenges faced by female colleagues, and have often been challenged on my own beliefs, which always helps me to grow and learn more about how others see and experience the world. But there are also lots of other ways to get started, so why not ask your female colleagues whether they face any challenges, where you might be able to work together with them on improving the situation?
• Use your connections / network to create synergy and possibilities – When we start thinking about it, most of us have a lot of good connections within a company or industry. One thing that has worked well for me is to use those connections to bring people together to create new possibilities. Examples of this are helping female colleagues to be better positioned for interesting job opportunities or helping connect colleagues from different part of the business resulting in the creation of a local women’s network chapter. Often it only takes a quick introduction to bring people together and help create something fantastic.
• Start experimenting with bigger changes within your own circle of influence – Depending on your position in your company, you might have the possibility to experiment with changes that can help reduce gender inequality. As a recruitment manager, I am not directly able to change the general recruitment process in the entire company, but I can experiment when hiring new members to my own team. So based on input, for example, from some of the books I have read, I have tried changing the wording in job adverts to be more “gender balanced” and have also experimented with “blind recruitment” to help remove unconscious biases towards applications. Experiments like this have been very successful, and the learnings can then be used later, when trying to get more leaders and recruitment teams to further improve our recruitment process.
• Realise that it can sometimes be hard to be an ally – Being an ally to others can be fantastic and rewarding most of the time. But it is not a free ride, so sometimes you must go the extra mile, for example, when other men question whether gender inequality is really a thing or make jokes or similar, bring up good examples or go into more detailed discussions to understand their point of view while still being fair to your own beliefs and championing those who are not present.
• Accept that you sometimes fail (but be sure to learn from it) – Trying to understand and support others without being in their shoes can sometimes be difficult, and you might even end up offending or frustrating the people you are trying to be an ally to. For me, the best way to handle this is to accept that mistakes and misunderstandings happen, but if you learn from this and show that you are genuinely interested in understanding and helping, things will generally work out, and you will come out of the situation as a wiser person and better ally going forward.

These were the top 7 learnings that have worked for me over the last couple of years and might work as tips for you to get started as a male ally. It might seem like many improvement areas, but in my opinion, these should be seen as related steps that can be tried out individually. To be a great ally all you must do is start with small steps, learning along the way, and then add more activities and experiments as you go, when you feel you are ready for it or see a need, where you can help others.

Have fun helping ALL of us on the journey to create fairness, equity and an inclusive workspace where all people are valued equally, and we achieve the best possible results together.

To find out how you can become a male ally by becoming a WUN mentor – here

Find out how you can nominate a male ally for the 2025 Women in Utilities Awards – here