Leadership Detectives
Leadership Detectives
Lead Like You'd Follow
What does it take to navigate a 40-year leadership journey? Chris Mallon, who recently retired after 36 years at Lloyds Banking Group, reveals the timeless principles that guided him from an 18-year-old trainee to executive leadership.
Chris challenges the notion that great leaders are born, arguing instead that leadership develops through continuous learning and growth. "I kept learning right up to the very day that I left," he shares, emphasizing how this commitment to improvement kept him relevant through decades of technological and organizational change. His powerful guiding principle—"lead the way you wish to be led"—offers a simple yet profound approach to authentic leadership that resonates with teams at all levels.
Perhaps most striking is Chris's insight on team composition. "The worst thing you can ever do as a leader is surround yourself with another eight, nine, ten versions of you," he explains, highlighting how diversity of thought creates stronger solutions. His practical approach to creating space for quieter voices reveals how the most innovative ideas often come from those least likely to demand attention in meetings.
The conversation explores how leadership must adapt across organizational levels while maintaining core values, and contrasts the unique challenges of leading in large corporations versus startups. Throughout, Chris returns to his conviction that people remain any organization's most valuable asset—a truth he demonstrated by choosing early retirement to create advancement opportunities for his team.
Whether you're just beginning your leadership journey or reflecting on years of experience, Chris's hard-earned wisdom offers valuable perspective on creating environments where teams thrive and leaders continuously evolve. Subscribe now to hear more leadership insights from those who've navigated the challenges you're facing.
Welcome to the Leadership Detectives. With Albert Joseph and Neil Thubron, this is the go-to podcast for uncovering clues about great leadership. If you are a leader today, or an aspiring leader, this podcast is a must for you.
Speaker 2:Good afternoon. Welcome to the Leadership Detectives Looking for the great clues to great leadership Neil how are you doing, buddy?
Speaker 1:Are you good? I'm fantastic. Thank you, really excited to be back on the podcast and with a new guest today, albert, who have we got with us today?
Speaker 2:We are indeed, we are, indeed, we are really honoured guys. Today We've got with us somebody that I worked with many years ago in a large financial institution and I'll let him decide later on if he wants to tell you who that company was and then I went on, did other jobs, chris kind of moved through the ranks and then we touched base again back with Chris still in the same company and me doing something different, but met up. But, um, in the time that I've worked with Chris, from an early career and through to his exec leadership position I thought Chris would be somebody really worth listening to here, guys, in terms of leadership principles and what it takes, etc. Etc. Chris Mallon, welcome to the call. How are you doing?
Speaker 3:Thank you very much for such a very kind introduction, albert. Hello, neil, good to talk to you guys, and thank you very much for the invitation to come and join you for today's session.
Speaker 2:Absolute pleasure, absolute pleasure. So, chris, rather than me trying and give some fancy introduction for you, I've just said why don't you introduce yourself in terms of who you are, what you've done and what you, and then we can talk about where you might want to go in a conversation? Of course, no problem at all.
Speaker 3:so, um, as you've said already, chris mallum um been around um, it uh as it's now, or was known uh information technology, since I was uh about 18 years old actually and, as you can probably tell if you can see me on the video, that was a significant time ago, um, and in fact it was 40 years um, and I I'm very pleased to say that I very recently took early retirement, um, in the last 12 months, almost 12 months ago actually, um, but it was 40 year career that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I'm not uh taking early retirement because I was bored or because I didn't enjoy what I was doing anymore. I just felt it was time to let other people who I'd worked with for a very long period of time have the same opportunities to lead big teams, do great things and provide excellent customer service, to have that opportunity that I've had. And if I hung around then that meant that, frankly, they were waiting to fill dead men's shoes, and I've never believed in that and I've've always believed that this is important to know when to go, as it is, to when to intervene. Um so, being in at lloyd's banking group for the vast majority of that 40 years, 36 years of the 40 years we spent at lloyd's banking group in various guises as lloyd's was one of the biggest financial institutions in the uk gave me an opportunity to meet lots and lots and lots of tech companies and the people who are within those tech companies who really make those companies tick, and Albert was one of those uh, neil was one of those and that's why I'm delighted to join them now, because they've been part of my journey and hopefully I've been part of theirs and we all learn from each other.
Speaker 3:And one of the great things I enjoyed through my 40 years and it never stopped right right up until my last day was I learned something new every single day and that's often the twee saying, but actually in my case is totally true Really enjoyed my time in what people would call IT or information technology across financial services. So it's because of who I met, what I learned and just the sheer kind of volume of encyclopedic knowledge that you build up over that time that kept me going as long as it did, and so I can honestly say, yeah, there were some hard days, some really tough days, but the people and the things I've learned that made me a better person for who I am as a human being, and hopefully I've given something back across the years as well. So it's been a mutually rewarding experience, hopefully, albert.
Speaker 1:Good stuff, Good stuff. And, Chris, I know that during that time you've had multiple leadership roles, yes, and you know this podcast is all about trying to help people understand some of those clues of great leadership. So I guess the first question I've got is what do you think makes a great leader?
Speaker 3:So, firstly, I don't think any of us are born as great leaders. I think it's something that we develop over time and it needs a couple of things. Actually, it needs you to have a mindset, which is a learning mindset and a growth mindset. Um, that that's kind of the personal side. But it also needs people to invest in you, right? So, as well as investing in yourself, you need other people to invest in you. And what do I mean by that? I mean taking a risk on you, maybe giving you a job that you are 70 or 80 percent of the way able to do, but they trust you to learn their remaining 20 and they'll help and support you along the way.
Speaker 3:And I've had some fantastic mentors, leaders, um, fellow directors, people who've worked for me and don't think of learning as just something that comes from people who are above you or at your peer group. Learning can come, and mainly comes, from people who actually work for you. Yeah, right, and, and one of the things I learned at a very early stage was don't believe you're good at everything, because you can't possibly be. And, frankly, if you were, then you'd probably be doing something else, like putting human beings on Mars or something like that, right, but as a normal human being, you will be good at some things and there'll be other areas that you need to improve on. So, going into your leadership roles with that in mind, knowing that you are not perfect and knowing that you have lots to learn and, as I said earlier in my roundup, I I kept learning right up to the very day that I left, and I make no apologies for that, because that's how you not only become a good leader, you stay a good leader and you stay relevant because you're constantly updating your, your thought process. You're constantly updating your knowledge encyclopedia. You're updating all of the things that you need to keep regularly refreshing. Never believe you're the finished article.
Speaker 3:There's always room for improvement, no matter who you are, what sphere of life you operate in, right, everyone from donald trump down right and trust me, he has a lot to learn not necessarily from me, um, but yeah, I think I always wanted to lead um teams. Um, it started from my personal life, you know, right up from the age of kind of six or seven, when I started playing football, and I always wanted to be the person who was the captain if somebody wanted somebody to volunteer to lead the team or set things up, I was always the person to put the hand up. It's something that I guess although I say you're not born as a leader, I think you have the confidence and the clarity of thought and you're not afraid to put yourself forward. It helps you get a start and gets you on the ladder. After that. It's all about growth mindset, a learning mindset, and I'll say something now that I'll probably refer to a few times in this call right, but lead the way you wish to be led is something that was drummed into me from a very early stage when I started my career. So think about how you like to be led and invariably, if you think about that and then you lead like that, you won't go far wrong.
Speaker 3:Right, because we all meet good leaders and bad leaders all through our careers and, trust me, even from bad leaders you can learn, even if it's learning how not to do something or there's a better way of doing something right. We can all learn something from everyone. So every experience you have is something that you take on board. You learn from you. Think about the good and bad and having that constant ability to challenge yourself how can I be better? How can I get you know?
Speaker 3:I found that the more teams you had, the harder you had to work about what you built around you, right? So understanding yourself is vital because you need to know what are the things I'm probably a bit weaker at, you know. In my case, it was a little laugh at this because he's heard me say it's a moving time, administration and doing admin type things I was never good at. So surround yourself, people are good at that. All right, because that gives you the time and space to concentrate on the things you're good at. But also there's a recognition there, which is a really good thing.
Speaker 3:When you're sitting down and you're developing your team to say, look, I know I'm not good at everything. I'll give you two or three examples, and here are things I'm not good at. So you, what you do is you get other people who are good at those things as part of your leadership team. The worst thing you can ever do as a leader is surround yourself with another eight, nine, ten versions of you. Right, because if you think about that, if you're sitting in a meeting and you're looking for ideas and insight and inspiration and innovation, you can't have eight, nine people, 10 people thinking the same thing, because otherwise there's a whole load of things you're not thinking about.
Speaker 3:So one of the things I used to do regularly was actually let the conversation flow for 15, 20 minutes when you're throwing ideas around, making a mental note as I sat there about who wasn't really being heard in the conversation, and then, at the end of the 15 minutes, going to those people, not to put them on the spot, not to make them feel uncomfortable, but to give them a voice, because some of the best ideas and best innovations I've ever heard have come from the quietest people in the room, not the loudest people in the room.
Speaker 3:There will always be people in your group, in your leadership team, who want to be heard and want to push themselves forward, but never forget the quiet people, because they're the people who tend to be maybe a bit more introvert, maybe sit there and think about the problem a bit deeper, maybe think about it in a different way and therefore are able to come to a different conclusion and actually, by taking some of their thoughts and merging them with maybe some of the more extrovert, louder people in the group, you can actually reach a much deeper, better, longer lasting and probably quicker solution because you've taken everyone's thoughts on board.
Speaker 3:So two things surround yourself with different people and different thoughts and different ways of working. Get a mix of introvert and extrovert. Listen to everyone. Take everyone's views on board, because that makes them feel valued and actually invariably, as a leader, you'll come to a better answer because you've had everyone's input right. So you're doing two things there. You're developing your team, you're giving them a voice, a space, you're giving them an opportunity, but you're making sure that everyone is being heard and that, in my experience, leads to the people who work for you thinking they work for a strong and a proper team and everyone's opinion counts.
Speaker 2:I'm going to suggest that people are going to need to rewind this a number of times or listen to it a number of times, because you've thrown out so much stuff there, chris, in one sorry, that was brain dump, albert.
Speaker 2:Okay, she didn't recognize it but some of the, some of the stuff you threw out there really important. Just some lessons that were in there, guys, right, one of the things was leaders are here to create leaders, right, that's our job is to create leaders, right. So be careful that you kind of don't miss that, guys, when you're in your leadership role is to develop the people around you.
Speaker 3:The other one it's about creating an environment, albert right, creating an environment where everyone can give the best version and be the best version of themselves. Yeah, if you create that environment, in my experience you will be successful. Yeah, and ultimately, hopefully that breeds in other teams and then an organization becomes successful, because if you've got lots of pockets of goodness, the goodness will all come together and the goodness will spread across the whole organization. But giving people the environment to be successful is probably the most, one of the most. Probably three or four things are important as a leader context strategy, you know um ability to make a decision, but creating that environment where people can bring the best version of themselves, be the best version of themselves and feel that they are contributing, it's probably the single thing I would say which makes successful organizations work.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool, I was going to go somewhere. But, neil, I think you had a question.
Speaker 1:No, no, go, Albert, because I like you. I've just written down loads of notes here and I'll do a bit of a summary no-transcript.
Speaker 2:So if I look at yours going through the ranks, yeah, how did you see leadership differing or staying the same as you went to a different level of leadership, from a junior leader through to an executive?
Speaker 3:so first thing I'd say is um, you can't always be the same. You went to a different level of leadership, from a junior leader through to an executive. So first thing I'd say is you can't always be the same, you have to adapt. So every time you go into a new role and a bigger role and bigger can be more things that you're responsible for and accountable for, or bigger can be in terms of the number of people you're leading, or actually it can be a combination of both Right. So as you move up, you've got to adapt all the time. Right. You can't be the same person. I'm not the same person as I was when I was an 18-year-old trainee operator, right, taking print off the back of a printer and putting you know, so long ago I was putting manual tapes up on a 3420 tape device, which my very good friends at.
Speaker 2:IBM would be very familiar with Neil and I were coming in and fixing those. Weren't we, Neil, Exactly so?
Speaker 3:that's where I started out and I think sometimes when you start, because I was in the same organisation for a long time which is quite unusual particularly becoming more unusual, I think, as we go forward, where more people will naturally move around, join other companies, whether it's for pay progression, career progression or just because they just want to move around and get lots of different experience. I'm probably quite unusual in that respect because I was with the same organization for 36 years, but I think certainly I made it work for me and lloyds because I could relate to everyone, from the person who was doing the more menial if I'm called more junior tasks right up to the person who was the ceo of the company. I'd kind of done obviously not, I had, wasn't ever the ceo, but I could have done all the other jobs in between. So I could relate to and have a conversation with and engage with people who are at every level of the organization and I found that really helped me.
Speaker 3:But you have to adapt as a leader. You have to change your style, you have to change your approach, but fundamentally what makes you the person you are stays the same. So if you like a call it a multi-layer approach. The core layer is always pretty much because that's you right. It's hard to change your chemistry. Of course you can adapt it and you can evolve it. Of course you can, and hopefully, through learning and reading and experience you will adapt and get better over time. But there's a core of you which is what you're all about, right, and if you're a person who wants to be engaging and wants to listen to other people, that comes through and shines through. So some core things stay the same, but you have to adapt and learn some other things.
Speaker 3:So doing a number of things actually, firstly, educating yourself and developing yourself and putting yourself through leadership courses. People look at them, sometimes in the diary, and go, oh God, I've got that leadership course, I've got to go and do, and it can sometimes feel like an interruption to your normal day. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to do those on a regular basis, because thinking changes, people evolve, people evolve, companies evolve, ways of working evolve, whether it's a diversity, whether it's inclusion, whether it's whether it's technical leadership. The world is changing and if you don't change with it and you don't stay in front of that change, you'll lose relevance very quickly and you will not become the person and the leader that you want to be and, more importantly, you won't develop others to be the best version of themselves that they can be so constantly. You know it can feel like a bit of a grind and a bit of an interruption to your busy day job, but taking the time out to go away and just get yourself in a different headspace and maybe go and work with other leaders and learn from them is so, so important. So if you educate yourself, that mindset is also then really useful when you're developing your team and building teams.
Speaker 3:So I've run teams of four or five people in Lloyds. I've run teams of 3,500, 4,000 people in Lloyds and everything in between. And you've always got to pick out who are the people you want in your leadership team and how do you develop them. Because unless you develop as a leadership team as well as individually, you won't have that harmonization and that clarity of thought and purpose that really will help your entire organization move forward. And that clarity of thought, clarity of strategy, clarity of outcomes and time frames for those outcomes is one of the key things. So everyone knows where they stand.
Speaker 3:I always said I want anyone who works for any of my teams if they're stopped in the street to be able to answer two or three fundamental questions about who we are, what we are and what we want to do. And if you can't, and people don't feel engaged in that, you can never be a successful team. Because how can you move forward together if you have no stripes of relevance going from the very top of the organization all the way through your organization? You can't right. Yeah, and just two of those two or three things who are we, what are we and what we're here for right? You'll be surprised how many teams couldn't identify those very quickly, or they'd give 99 versions of the same conversation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, right, if you're all pulling in the same direction, it's like a tug-of-war team. You're all pulling in the same direction in the same way, at the same time. Chances are you'll win the tug-of-war right. But if the front half are not doing the pull in the same way or as well as the back half and you're all pulling at different times, you won't be successful yeah simple analogy, but it works yeah, it's not like being clear on that focus, that direction correct and of course it will mean different things to different levels.
Speaker 3:It's not just that you know we'd all got to do this. You know because I'd have my objectives and my leaders would have their objectives. But they need to align. It needs to be from the bottom of your organization to right to the top if you can get that alignment and clarity around, not in 20 things, because if you stop people and say, what are the 20 things you've got now, do you remember them?
Speaker 1:but if you have two or three things.
Speaker 3:If you have two or three things, chances are there's a pretty good opportunity for people to remember at least two, if not all three.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you said something earlier on which I think is really important statement. You said lead the way you wish to be led. Yes, so I'm curious, and just again to help our audience with this one how do you manage to lead the way you want to be led if you're not led the way you want to be led?
Speaker 3:it's an interesting question, right? Uh, very well put, if I may say so. I think I said earlier on in the conversation that you can learn from good leaders and bad leaders, and sometimes it's about knowing what you don't like as well as what you do like. So if I make a mistake, how do I like to be told I've made a mistake, because we're all different in that respect, right, yeah, and I see you smiling, because you've probably had managers who've been quite forceful, quite robust, if you've made the mistake, yeah exactly You've probably had.
Speaker 3:Other leaders have taken a more kind of approach of okay, so what are we going to learn from that? How are we going to do differently next summer? I'll call it more a gentle, considered approach, and you probably have people that do both right, yeah, yeah, so it's working through those and thinking well, how, yeah, um, so it's, it's working through those and thinking, well, how do I like to be confronted with failure? How do I like to be confronted with something that hasn't gone well? How do I like to be told that maybe there's a gap in my learning, that I need to do something about? Right? And it's quite often, even if you use the same words, it's the intonation that you give to those words.
Speaker 3:Where do you put the emphasis? If the emphasis on but if you do well, we do well and actually, if you grow, we'll all grow, I find that people will invariably get around to that and go. Do you know what? He's quite right, actually, if I, if I go and I used to say to people go away and think about it for 24 hours and then come back and talk to me rather than do it. You know, feedback in the moment is important, but also giving people time to process that feedback and come back with their thoughts on it, because what you can't tell them is here's what I observed, here's what I noticed. But also then you want them to find the way that they're going to deal with that. Not you tell them how they're going to deal with that, because then it feels like their change rather than your change. And if you make it feels like their change rather than your change, and if you make it feel like their change, the chances are they'll embrace it, the chances are they'll embed it and the chances are that you'll see the benefit of it, whereas if you just tell people, this is how I want you to behave, it's a bit like your children, you know.
Speaker 3:When you say, kids, I'd love you to do this, they kind of look at, look and go yeah, we'd love to do that, but it ain't happening. Right, it's a process, right, and you need to give people time to give due attention to the process, but sow the seed. Let them go away for 24 hours and they say, look. Or maybe 40 hours and say, look, let's have another session in a couple of days. And tell me how you reflect on that, tell me what you think about it and then we'll agree together how we're going to go forward on it. I found that was very powerful and worked very, very well. Actually, rather than being the great dictator which is I've seen this, you will now do this. I don't want to ever see that again, and that's what I mean about. I've had that approach, it's been given to me and, I'll be frank, I didn't like it. So therefore, I thought well, why would I lead people the way I didn't enjoy being led? Why about I'll lead them the way that I think I would like to have been led?
Speaker 2:and that's what I meant by the comment earlier I think some of the way that you've described that, chris, and and we've got an expert on this call, by the way to me it's much more around coaching. Yeah, how much of you? How would you reference coaching within a leadership position or leadership style? How so? I think there's two two ways.
Speaker 3:I would reference it one you, obviously. I think you do some every day and probably don't even realize you're doing it right now. That can be a good and a bad way, right, but I think we all coach every day without sometimes realizing when you know whether it's coaching your kids out across the road or, you know, coaching some people on how to do some stuff. And just kind of being visible is sometimes just coaching in itself, right, because you're there if people want to ask you something, right? Just when you said that, chris, did you mean this or did you mean that? So visibility is part of coaching. But what I find is you can get so far by coaching yourselves as your own leadership group.
Speaker 3:I can't tell you the huge value you get from getting an independent, professional coaching to help you on your journey, and I've met some absolutely fantastic coaches, professional career coaches, from a personal perspective. They've helped me out and and helped me to become a far better and richer and I don't mean in a monetary sense, I mean in the kind of learning sense far richer and more curated leader over many, many years. And I can't emphasize, I never think of again. It's a bit like self-development thing where you go. Oh, I've got to spend three days with a coach next week, oh God, and he's given me this stuff I've got to think about. Oh, she's done that, or you know it can.
Speaker 3:You can seem a burden, but the value you get out of it and, in particular, I found people that take you and your leadership team away from your workplace, put you somewhere completely different and give you a series of challenges and and things to think about in a kind of work sense, but in a different sense, in a different environment, in a different way, and then you come back and you talk about it and they talk you through, you know. So why did you do that and how did you say that? It just the richness you get out of it is just immense. And I always found I've never done one of them, even though I've gone away on quite a few and gone. Oh, I really can do without this at the minute. You know I've got a big deadline to do. We've all been there right. Give yourself the headspace and the time, because you will come back a richer, happier and more fulfilled person and actually the team will be stronger for the time out.
Speaker 1:You've mentioned it a lot throughout this, chris. It's about that sharpening the saw the whole time, constantly developing, constantly learning. And I'm just I'm, I'm curious of examples you've got of great leadership, where you've experienced great leadership, where you've, you know, kind of wow, you know that was, that was a great example of leadership. I wonder if you've got any examples you can think of.
Speaker 3:I'll give you a slightly different perspective. One of the best things I ever seen done, one of the best things around leadership, was a person who actually was a bit hot and cold as a leader. If I'm being honest, I won't name him directly because it wouldn't be appropriate to do that, but he was quite, a very senior guy in Lloyds actually, and he got some external coaching about how to develop leaders in his team. And I worked directly for this guy, let's say very senior, sat around the top table at lloyds banking group and he was told how to bring to life different styles of leadership. Because he he struggled with it, if I'm really honest. Right, he was quite kind of he did when he said something, he just wanted it done and he'd never really learned to lead differently until this one coach he got and this coach said to him right, get your leadership team together, put up half a dozen videos, right, and he said to him, you can choose them. He said I'll help you, I'll guide you, but you should put up half a dozen videos of different portrayals of leadership and then talk through the different leadership styles each of the videos gives. So, for example, he gave um you've probably seen it in in goodfellas, right when, um, the big, big mafia boss goes nuts and just basically starts shouting and screaming. That's one style of leadership. Right then there was the guy in gladiator, russell crowe, who was, you know, coming around the troops and talking to people individually. Even though he was the big man, he knew some of the people who he was going to send across as the first phase of people into the, into the battle, right, and he knew everyone from the top to the bottom. That's another style of leadership. And he used half a dozen of these, right, and he then said to you, think about which one of those you all to us, think you sit in and then, within those, we'll talk about the strengths and weaknesses of those type of leaderships. You know, when would that style work? When would that style not work?
Speaker 3:And I thought it was a very simple but very effective way of demonstrating different styles at different times and using intonation in your voice to drive different outcomes for people. Yeah, right, it was really, really powerful and it was. You know the intonation and the voicing. I've done a few of those where it's almost like media training, right, how you say something is just as important as what you said, yeah, yeah, and whether that's one-to-one or in front of a group, how you come across can be the difference between somebody taking on board what you're asking them to do or walking out the room thinking I couldn't care less what that guy says, I'm going to go and do something different. Yeah, right, and sometimes something is simpler. So I learned a lot about language, use of language and intonation Just the way you said.
Speaker 3:Things could really result in far better outcomes, and it's that kind of thing that I think, certainly as you get more senior, you run bigger teams, is really important, because people need to hear from you, they need to see you, you need to be visible, they need to know what drives you, they need to know how you're being measured, how you're being rewarded, because again come back to my tug-of-war analogy we all need to pull in the same direction. So explain to them what are the things that your boss is telling you that he wants. She wants to do right, and then give them something, but make it relevant to them. Don't just give them. You know I've seen people cascade objectives and things like that to them. Don't just give them. You know I've seen people cascade objectives and things like that and they just send the same words down yeah, yeah, but the time I reach the bottom, the person at the bottom goes. I actually know where they are, but I better do it because my boss has told me I've got to do these objectives.
Speaker 3:Right. It's like completely self-defeating. What was the point, right? Whereas as you go down each layer of the organization, make it something relevant to them that plays into that ultimate objective. Right, I didn't just write down charlie nunn's objectives when I was at lloyds? Right, I had to fashion them and say, well, okay, charlie wants growth, right, how can I enable growth? Maybe I can enable growth by making sure the infrastructure runs more highly available than it does today, because that means you've got more up time, that means we should get more customers, that, so you translate it into something that's relevant to you. Did you have an answer?
Speaker 2:did you have an answer, and that's that's good, chris, and I like that the example of the videos right, because it's good for something for us to think about, especially for some of the work that neil and I do actually together exactly did. Did you have a thought on the second part of that question then around not so good leadership, something that you want to highlight?
Speaker 3:yeah, just think when I've had leaders who clearly have they're regurgitating, right they're, they've been asked to do something by their boss. You can generally tell the leaders who turn up to a leadership event who want to be there and don't want to be there, yeah, and are ticking a box right to say that I had that big event that you asked me to, yeah, but how successful? How successful was it? You know, did you set strategy?
Speaker 3:So when people turn up and don't set strategy, just throw ideas around and they're totally different from the ideas you heard from them three months ago. There's no translation as to, well, how did we end up with that idea and we ditched the first idea, right? So I think not setting context and strategy is when I've been involved in some things where I've thought do you know what? I'm actually none the wiser. As I walked out the room, I thought I'm none the wiser and I've actually, rather than me, just think you know me, albert, well enough to know that if I think that I wouldn't just walk away and think it and let it bed in, I'd go and say do you know that event we did and I didn't think it came across and I've had people who've taken it not so well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, we've had the same, by the way. And you have people who put up slides for example, neil right, people put up slides and you can tell they don't know what the slides relate to. Yeah, yeah, but they're just putting the slides and it's like now we'll watch the site. This line. It's like well, how does that?
Speaker 1:work right because, yeah, because they've got to tick the box in their objectives. Correct as Correct.
Speaker 3:Have you run a leadership event with your team? Clearly, some of them just tick the box and say, yes, I did. Now, in fairness, I will say that's a very small percentage of the people. Normally, people at least made some effort to try and do the translation between how they've been led in this sphere and how they want to put it down their teams. But I have had some bad ones where it's very clear that the slides probably turned up five minutes before the person who was talking to them did right and zero context or content in some cases.
Speaker 1:I I know that you do work now. Do you work with smaller businesses today, chris?
Speaker 3:so I, since, I'll be honest with you, in the last 12 months I've done very little, but what I have done is talk to a few startups really small right about how they might get into organizations like the one I used to work for, and I've found one of the things I'm currently contemplating. Actually, I've got two non-exec director kind of offers would be a strong word suggestions of stuff that I might want to invest my time in, and I now am in the position, neil, where I actually want to help others by helping them get to the people that I used to be quicker, rather than the shutters go up and you can't get in, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I get it when it comes to leadership. What I wrote down earlier was I was just wondering what lessons there might be from working in as a leader in a large organization you know very large organization and what lessons would translate or would be really useful for for those small businesses, startups you know the small yeah, it's very different.
Speaker 3:You're absolutely right. You know, if you think about the corporate thing, you're trying to get a corporate identity. You're trying to have a corporate strategy. You're trying to have a corporate way of thinking that ultimately leads to a corporate outcome. Right, it's very difficult and it's a bit like the eulogy there would be. It's like turning an oil tanker right, you're trying to get the whole organization to pivot right, and pivoting 35, in Lloyd's case, 70,000 people at one time was always going to be difficult, right, whereas with two or three people in a small startup, right, you can actually get everyone in the room, you can put a whiteboard up, you can brainstorm. Right, it's a totally, totally different set of things. Now, that doesn't mean that all the things you've learned at the corporate level aren't translatable. Yeah, most of them are right, and it's just thinking about the scale and the relevance of the conversation, and it's much more interactive, I find, in a smaller group, right, and actually even in a big organization. I would encourage people to get into smaller groups and breakouts, because how can you brainstorm with 40 people in the room? You can't. You can you brainstorm with 40 people in the room? You can't even hear 40 people in the room. I've seen people try and do it and it's such a bad. So the startup thing really appeals and I'll just start up a small SME type business because you're able to get in there and you feel that you really make a difference straight away. And also one of the things and again Albert will laugh about this financial and also one of the things and again albert will laugh about this financial control was always something I was absolutely, you know, rigorous on right you're working for a bank. He kind of gets drilled into you right.
Speaker 3:Well, when you're a really small group or a small sme or a startup, you haven't got any money to waste. Every penny, and I mean every single penny, counts. So it's trying to make sure that we all think about the three or four people in the room think about every penny we spend is either money invested or money lost, and it's as binary as that, right. So you have to really be careful. So the level of detail and kind of critique that you give something, an idea or something, you go well, we could do that. But how many people would we need in? How many days would we need them for? Every penny counts, whereas there's a lot of waste and inefficiency in the corporate by default. Right, you've worked for big corporates, neil, so have you, albert, so have I, but it's just wasting there by default, because generally you've got a big budget and you can hide things you know really easily, right, and cover things off. But at the other end of the scale, every moment, every penny counts.
Speaker 3:And I'm very keen to say to people, without giving my commercial position away, which is that I only want to work with you, if I can make a difference, and if that makes a difference, then I'll get something out of it, and if it doesn't make a difference, I'll get nothing out of it. I think that's a fair trade because you're getting my experience, but I don't want to be paid if you're not doing well, because if you're not doing well, my ideas aren't working. Why should I be paid? Whereas in a corporate, of course, you want to be paid because you know you're a salary and you know the corporate makes big business, big billions, big profits, right. So it's very different. So they're some of the big differences I've noticed between what I'm doing now versus what I did previously.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So leaders have got much broader thinking, but everyone's got to be a leader. That's. That's the point in that. Three or four people said everyone's got to think leadership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't have a leader and others is everyone's got to lead and and it's it's what you described also in that small organization is it's easier to get everyone aligned behind the key objectives, the key metrics of the whole organization. It should be by default.
Speaker 3:It should be, yeah, absolutely interesting well then you and you all live and breathe every day, right, because there's only three or four a year. There's no, there's no hiding behind anyone, right? If somebody's not pulling their weight, it's very obvious, very quickly, right?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, I'm conscious of time, neil. I think we could probably go a lot more right, we could probably go a lot more, but I think it's probably a good point for us to kind of summarize and pull out some points from Chris's time with us here. Um, and we may, even we may even consider talking again, chris, because you're gonna be.
Speaker 3:I'm sure you'll get such negative feedback.
Speaker 2:I won't be involved so far we've done really well, so I don't see it no pressure right. That's why we have top quality guests, chris, that's why we've got top quality guests. But I'm just saying, neil, have you got any points you wanted to pull out?
Speaker 1:so I I think for any leaders listening to this, there were so many clues in there, yeah, and but I just want to highlight some of those and I'll I'll read out a few that I've highlighted, highlighted here so you know Clearly that lead the way you wish to be led is a really important phrase. The second one I wrote is create an environment for people to be successful. That's a really powerful statement as well. That's surrounding yourself with people that cover off your weaknesses and be vulnerable enough to accept the fact you might have weaknesses.
Speaker 3:The first thing is to know your weaknesses, because how can you create the right environment with the right people if you haven't examined yourself really closely and really harsh right?
Speaker 1:And I think you mentioned about listening. You didn't say the words listening, but it was about inclusivity of all the team. But what I heard was listening, being able to adapt different leadership styles for different environments. The sharpen the saw came through the whole way through that conference and the first thing you said to write through the conversation was all about developing yourself. It's all about sharpening the saw, the importance of clarity of purpose and giving feedback. Those are kind of the key things.
Speaker 3:Great summary and the only other thing I'd add to that summary, neil, which I thought was excellent, was people are the most important commodity in any organisation, however small or however big people, people if you don't get the people right, doesn't matter how good your product is, you'll never sell any of it if you haven't got the right people around it.
Speaker 1:People- people, people. You know Albert and I were talking before this call and we said you know, it's really interesting. All of the leaders that have come on this podcast have, without exception, said the most important thing in the organisation. The most important thing for me as a leader are the people, yeah, and the focus on the people, not focusing upwards, on keeping my boss happy, on the shareholders. Those are important, but none of that happens without the people delivering and knowing what they need, to be happy as well there's probably one other thing I'll pull out.
Speaker 2:I mean, and all the things that chris has talked about and it certainly went into the bit where you were talking about you know they have to know whether to do it one way, do it the other way or maybe do a combination of both. And what you didn't say was there was an option to do nothing. Because what I've recognized in your style, chris, over the years is having the courage to just get it done, just do what you got to do right and as a leader, one of the talk me and I have done before is about difficult conversations, and sometimes the easiest way to deal with a difficult conversation is not to have it right, which is which is not dealing with the conversation that is not dealing with the conversation, right that's a non-deal right, that's yeah
Speaker 3:exactly, yeah, as trump would say the art of the deal. Well, the art of the deal is all about negotiation. You can't have negotiation if you don't say something.
Speaker 2:Exactly, exactly. Honestly, chris, so much material in there, and it wasn't a joke when I said earlier, I think people will have to stop and rewind or go through this again. It's like when you see a really good film, you go back and you see something else you didn't realise. Was there the first time? Sure, they're the first time, sure, so genuinely, thank you for your your time with us here, neil.
Speaker 1:Anything else we wanted to go. The only thing I want to emphasize to people listening to this is that one of the things we want to do in these 30 minute conversations is try and accelerate people's learning in leadership, and you've just got 40 years of leadership knowledge in 30 minutes now. That took chris 40 years to learn that, and you know so. Please do take note of that. And you know, so you can learn from.
Speaker 3:And I'm still learning now yeah exactly if anyone stopped me in the street and said you think you're a good leader, I'd just say I'm getting there that's a great.
Speaker 1:I think that's a brilliant line to leave it on, actually. So, albert, I'll let you close off that's yeah, absolutely, guys.
Speaker 2:So listen, when this does get published, obviously it'll be up on linkedin. There's opportunity there to ask chris any questions, if you want, in the comment section when you get there. Um, and, by all means, if you need to drill into anything that we might have touched on, but you want a bit more information, we're happy to do that. Thank you very much, guys, for dialing in and listening to us today. Hope you've enjoyed the session. Keep looking out for the clues to great leadership and we'll be back for another one in the future. Thanks, guys.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much indeed, Chris. You're a gentleman. Thank you very much indeed, guys. Cheers, now Take care.
Speaker 4:Thank you for listening to the Leadership Detectives with Neil Thubron and Albert Joseph. Please remember to subscribe, give us your comments and your feedback. Please also visit leadershipdetectivescom for all the episodes and more resources and support.