A Guide to Thriving Personally and Professionally with Rita Collins

Have you ever wondered how the high rollers of finance keep their lives in balance? Rita Collins, regional director for corporate banking at NatWest, joins us to unravel this mystery, shedding light on the work-life balance in the fast-paced financial sector.  Rita shares how NatWest's compassionate culture supported her through family hardships like a loved one's autism diagnosis. Beyond the boardroom, Rita's passion for sports, from the football terraces to the discipline of bodybuilding, illustrates the power of personal passions in cultivating resilience and joy. This episode isn't just another career talk—it's a journey into nurturing a fulfilling life amidst the demands of an ambitious career.

Listen to learn:
- How Rita prioritises health and family
- Ways in which your values can amplify team performance and personal success
- The importance of maintaining a healthy work-life balance in a fast-paced work environment 
- How to seize opportunities that could redefine your career

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:38

The Northern Power Women podcast for your career and your life, no matter what business you're in. Hello, welcome to the Northern Power Women podcast. And this is the podcast which is all about highlighting role models and sharing some brilliant personal professional stories with you. And what we want to do is hope to bring you some of those top tips, strategies, advice, guidance, whatever it may be, to help you navigate you on your own path. And this week I'm delighted to be joined by Rita Collins, who is the regional director for corporate banking at NatWest Rita's over in beautiful York, living with her husband, their daughter, six ducks, 15 chickens and a swarm of bees and Connie the mini-dash I love little dashons. Rita is a total foodie and self-confessed sports junkie and adopted Yorkshire woman.

Speaker 2: 1:29

Welcome Rita to the pod. Well, thank you so much when I hear that, it makes me sound like a farmer and I'm not. We like our animals.

Speaker 1: 1:38

You absolutely do, you really do. Oh, my goodness, that is a menagerie, and I always love on the podcast when I get the chance to chat in advance, and I think we've had a good old chat up front, and one of the things that you talk about is your different mantras, and you talk very much about that. Health and well-being first. That's something that's really important to you, isn't it? And really important in your teams. You're seeing you're in your role, but that's something that is quite key, isn't it?

Speaker 2: 2:04

Yeah, definitely. So I had up a team. I should kind of caveat that it's corporate banking on the Yorkshire and northeast side of the Penn Islands. I think my colleague in Manchester might get a little bit upset that I've used that to them otherwise. Yeah, but it helps.

Speaker 2: 2:17

And well-being I mean fundamentally. I head up a team so I'm not directly responsible for holding customer relationships, and the way I see it is that my team will bring the best of themselves to work if they are healthy, and I mean that both physically and mentally, etc. But I think we were just talking prior and one of the things that I always say to the team is health and family first. Always Things crop up day to day, whether that's something to do with them as individuals or something in their family, and they need to go off and deal with it. And I just think it's super important that that comes first, because the bank will always be here and there are other people that can pick things up in your absence, but you're never going to replace that time with either your health or your family. So, yeah, super important.

Speaker 1: 3:06

And you talk about finance, can have a reputation of having that poor balance in your life. Is that the true reality? I don't know. I don't think there's any sector out there that's really nailing work life balance.

Speaker 2: 3:18

Yeah, I think it's really tough. I mean, fundamentally, we're here to serve our customers, aren't we? So if we've got customer demands at the end of each day or whatever, we will do what we can to meet those. But I think, you know, when I first started the bank and I started in London in 2006, I think it was it felt very different. It felt very much that, you know, you had to work from dawn till dusk and then some, and be in the office constantly, and I think that's definitely evolved. You still have to work hard. There's no taking away from that, but I do think there is a better balance. Like you say, I don't think anybody's nailed it. If they have, if they could, let me know. That would be amazing.

Speaker 1: 4:01

And you have spent, like you said, your whole career, haven't you, at NatWest. How did you know you wanted to work in finance? What was your jump or leap into the, into NatWest?

Speaker 2: 4:12

I didn't. I used to joke I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. And I fell into NatWest. So I graduated back in 2006. Sadly, my dad, who was a massive influence on my life, he passed away between my second and my third year and that was the time where everybody was kind of applying for graduate schemes and all of that. And the time kind of passed me by because my life was about something very different.

Speaker 2: 4:44

I graduated, I kind of got through that final year. I wasn't I wasn't really myself, but I got there and then I thought, oh my God, what do I do? My sister worked for a business who banked with RBS at the time, now NatWest and so she asked her bank manager if I could have work experience. So I started on two weeks work experience and not a graduate, and not on the graduate scheme. I've got a law degree but none of that mattered. I came in on two weeks work experience and I've not left, and I came in on the smallest salary, so that the starting rung of salary in sort of corporate banking, and then just slowly worked my way sideways upwards in different, different directions over the course of the last what 17 years, 18 years and that's really interesting because we do.

Speaker 1: 5:34

We run monthly power ups, virtual power up sessions, which is all about passing on your skills and your knowledge in trying to give people opportunities to see what it's like in the world, because it's hard, isn't it? It's hard, you know. Career's guidance, I think, is always been sort of quite challenging. So I think it you know, to try and find that way, I think the more that people the idea that you had that two week work experience you can actually look under the bonnet to a certain extent and not you know it in those two weeks, but that's amazing and you know, you, the importance of giving back, I think is really keen. I know something that's your passionate about as well.

Speaker 2: 6:08

Definitely. So you know, I've got a kind of mentality of paying it forward and I think you know, ultimately we're on the Northern Power Women podcast. I'm a female in what's perceived to be a male dominated environment or a male dominated industry and it is. You know, it's still very much that, and the bank has been fantastic and change is happening. We've kind of pledged to have full gender balance by 2030. Things are changing but change takes time.

Speaker 2: 6:37

So I'm really passionate at kind of turning around and making sure that I'm talking to the people coming through the organization to say you know, you can absolutely do what you want to do. You know, whatever it is, whatever anybody wants to do, I'm a full believer that if you want to do something, you can make that happen. And I just kind of make sure that I'm passing along any experience I've had good and not so good Because you know, life is life. We all make mistakes or we have difficult experiences that we have and just talk about kind of you know what I've done and some of my kind of mantras and lessons, I guess. So one of the things I always talk about is just say, yes, you know, when you're given an opportunity, you know, and this is more so kind of in the younger years because, as you, as we tend to get older, we get more kind of dependency. So, whether that be other halves, mortgages, children, whatever it is, but in the early years, when you've got the ability to just say yes, so it's.

Speaker 2: 7:31

You know, do you want to work on this project? Absolutely. Do you want to be considered for this role? Yeah, absolutely. Don't worry about the promotions and all of that, it will happen. And I think the thing is is, whilst I go and I had these conversations with some of the youngsters and I was at a talent program last week doing exactly that I come away feeling really inspired. You know it lights a fuel or a fire in me because they're just so passionate and that you know it's exciting. And they were there doing some. They had a task where they had to generate some ideas that interacting with the younger generation in the community, and they had some fantastic ideas, two of which I think might actually go further. But yeah, I really enjoy the kind of development aspect of my role and spend a lot of time outside my day to day kind of responsibilities. Talking to youngsters may land female, but I do, like I say, have a bit of a passion for females coming through.

Speaker 1: 8:26

And time is one of the biggest gifts. We talked about that on the podcast before. Your time is one of the biggest things that you can give, and I know you're particularly focused as well about supporting individuals from diverse backgrounds.

Speaker 2: 8:39

Tell us about that. Yeah, so I'm not sure if anybody will be able to see this, and with a name like Rita Collins, it may not give me away, but I'm, my background is Indians, and both my parents were born in India. I was born in this country, I'm female, I'm working in you know what was historically a male dominated environment. But more than anything, I have a young daughter. She is nine today actually. She is autistic. She was diagnosed with autism about three years ago and I see how differently she sees the world and I see how differently she responds to the world.

Speaker 2: 9:16

So I feel as though I have a duty, responsibility not just to my daughter but, I guess, a bit of a wider civic duty, to make sure that there is diversity of thoughts, because, fundamentally, if we all think the same, then we'll all do the same thing and nothing changes.

Speaker 2: 9:32

It's like an echo chamber, isn't it? Oh yeah, I think that's a great idea, oh, fantastic, nobody's challenging. And I think it's really great when you get people from all kinds of backgrounds, whether that's different socioeconomic backgrounds, whether that's, you know, male, female, it's different ethnicities, whatever it is. The more people you can bring around a table, the better solutions you will come to and, fundamentally, more than anything, as an organization, we need to represent our communities, and our communities aren't just you know. You know God, I love that. I don't know it's been so easy, but you know, it's not just one sort of one aspect of the demographic, it's not just all male or all female or all young or all old, it's across the spectrum and we need to be mindful of that and we need to replicate that in order to best serve them.

Speaker 1: 10:20

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I think when you're having conversations, whatever conversations you have, you need to make sure that you've got representation around the table, whether it be age, whether it be geo location, it's everything, isn't it? And you know we talk about location where you are and adopted and adopted Northerner. When you made the big sort of the big move up north, did you notice any sort of key differences from working in London to working up north?

Speaker 2: 10:48

Yeah, I think so. I mean, first of all, I didn't have that awful commute into London which even now haunts me, absolutely haunts me. But I think what I would say is I've had to work hard in both the north and the south, but in the north there seems to be a better balance of work life and I don't know if it's a geographical point. So in London, if you want to go out every night of the week with your professional network, you probably could. Everyone tends to commute into London and there's a big nightlife.

Speaker 2: 11:21

And, funnily enough, when I first moved to Leeds back in 2012, it was before the Trinity I remember on a Thursday going into Leeds after work to think, oh yeah, I'll just go around the shops and get to know my local sort of shopping scent. It was all shut and I just thought in London it closes a lot later than this. So that was one of my first things. But more than that, it's kind of that work life balance and then also kind of just culturally it feels a little bit different and I wouldn't say this was just unique to that West or anything. But at times in London when I talked to my friends and old colleagues etc. That I've still kept in contact with. At times it can feel like a bit of a rap race in London, whereas I feel as though your time and your energy and things like that, and you know everything you bring to the table it seems to be valued more in the North. But I don't know, that might just be a me thing.

Speaker 1: 12:24

No, I think it is, and I think it's the different opportunities that you have on your doorstep. You know, like you say, sometimes it's the commuting into London for a reason, whereas on your doorstep, from York, from Leeds, from Liverpool, from Manchester, you've got everything, haven't you? Everything you could ever, ever want. Just probably saving yourself some money with the shops not being open as late, that's probably not a bad thing.

Speaker 1: 12:48

Well, I'm not sure every delivery man would agree that that's a different story, Unless you've gone through your career and, like you say, you've not necessarily had a straight route. You've kind of gone. Sometimes it's that which got like a pinball approach, sometimes, isn't it where you're going from left to right and obviously you've grown a family, you've got your daughter, you've got your animals, and what's NatWest or the sector or the industry done to support you on your way up?

Speaker 2: 13:20

Yeah, I mean honestly, I could not have asked for more support from NatWest. I say NatWest it's probably more the people that I've worked alongside and you know when I think about when I moved up I moved up in 2012, my husband was in the army. He got posted and I went into. You know my boss said my husband's going, I'd quite like to go with him. What can you do? It wasn't a straightforward as that because the first response was nothing but sure enough, kind of six months later there was a role creator for me in Leeds After I had my daughter.

Speaker 2: 13:56

I was supported with compressed hours, which was invaluable to me and I know that that's not always supported either within our organization or wider. But I've always taken the view that if you work hard and you know, and you know your job permits it, because it's not always possible and that that is given back to you in one way or another in the support that you get. And when we went through that journey of Eva's diagnosis, my daughter's diagnosis with autism, that meant a lot of time at hospital appointments and all of that stuff. And again, I've only ever had support from the people that I've worked alongside and I think it comes. You know it goes back to what we started this podcast with. You know, health and family first always.

Speaker 2: 14:40

And if I hadn't have been given that time, I would have really struggled to have done a good job because I would have been feeling really guilty about not being there for my daughter and my husband, who was going through it with with both of us. And so, yeah, I've been incredibly lucky. But back to that, I like to pay it forward. I hope if you were to speak to anyone in my team they'd say exactly the same that I look to support them in all of that stuff and make sure that they feel well supported to kind of go out and do what they need to do, whilst also, you know, wanting them to do an exceptional job to the bank as well.

Speaker 1: 15:16

But one of the other things that makes you you is your love of sport, and in any I think it was, I think we were chatting earlier, it was in any any format, sport is something that's really really key to you. Why and what?

Speaker 2: 15:32

And so to watch pretty much anything with a competitive edge, unless you were living under a rock. I don't think you must have seen the darts over Christmas. Everyone fell into the darts and fell in love with Luke Littler a little bit, Just watching sort of a 16 year old lad go in and it was amazing. But generally I can fall into anything with a competitive edge. My first love is football. It always has been one of two daughters to an Indian man. He had no sons. I became his quasi son in terms of watching the football, In terms of participating.

Speaker 2: 16:09

I've always been a sports junkie. So, whether it's team sports and netball has always been a passion and I've run a marathon, a couple of halves. I've cycled. I organized and cycled 72 miles for a few years for charity. Last year I competed in bodybuilding, which is probably a bit random to some people, but I just. The reason why is I'm a big believer in the fact that I am a better and nicer person because I play, play sports or train or whatever it is. I need that time to release energy, frustration, whatever it is, and I come back a better person and I notice it in myself if I haven't trained or I haven't exercised for a while, and the same goes to nutrition. If I'm not eating well, I become a bit crabby and a bit miserable, etc. And I can feel it in myself. So yeah, I've always said that I train to be a nicer person, basically.

Speaker 1: 17:10

And you did. It was last year that you did the bodybuilding and you know that had its challenges. And what's what's going to be for the year ahead? What? What do you think? Do you think it'll be Something you've already done that you'll rediscover, or something brand new?

Speaker 2: 17:24

maybe dark God, I don't think anybody would let me near a dance board, if they're saying and I actually talked about this with my husband over Christmas and for as far back as I can remember, I've always had some kind of sporting goal or some kind of physical goal, whatever it is.

Speaker 2: 17:43

You know, as I was in the dark depths of prep, which was what you call that dieting period before your competition, I signed up to do the Yorkshire Three Peaks, which I did in September for the Yorkshire Beats Cancer. That, you know, fantastic event, really great event. But I have made I don't know if you'd call it a New Year's resolution, but I've essentially said I'm not going to have any kind of physical goal or challenge for myself this year, and I can't tell you how challenging that is in itself. So you know, even the other week I've just gone back to running again and one of my friends was saying that they're now running and I literally went oh, maybe we could, and then I was like no, no, stop yourself. No, no, no, thanks, just get through the year. And if I get there, I'll be very surprised as well anybody that knows me. But yeah, that's my goal to not actually have an objective or goal to do this year.

Speaker 1: 18:37

That's hard. When you've got the, you know. One of your mantras is sort of say yes, say yes to opportunity. So maybe we're just going to have to see what you stumble across on the way. And finally, you talked about being a foodie. What's your favourite food?

Speaker 2: 18:52

I have the sweetest tooth known to man. So I am a bit like you were saying prior to kind of coming on to this podcast. One of my favourite things to do is just to have really good company over what I would call it really good food. I'm cooking it, of course, I say it's good and you know, and a few drinks flowing as well, and I'm known for my desserts, and the kind of one that I say is probably.

Speaker 2: 19:17

Well, there's two that I call my pièce de résistance. So one is my sticky toffee pudding, which my husband's grand dad is a sweet tooth and he's stopped eating sticky toffee pudding anywhere, apart from when he comes to ours, which I think is lovely. But the the other one is have you been to the ivy where they do the, the chocolate bomb, the chocolate sphere, and you know? So I took that and I've put some chocolate brownie in it inside of that chocolate soil, and then a hot salted caramel pouring sauce with vanilla ice cream, and it looks. It's one of those that looks great, but it also tastes okay too. So I probably say that.

Speaker 1: 19:53

Well, you know what we've just done? Our tasting for the northern power woman awards. So we had four starters, four main, three desserts. It was absolutely. It felt like the vicaridibbly sketch while you're eating sort of three, three dinners.

Speaker 1: 20:05

It was absolutely amazing, but is that is how it looks as well, isn't it? Oh, anyway, we could talk about food or down. Well, we will continue. Rita, thank you so much for joining me on today's podcast. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for having me and thank all of you for listening. Thank you so much. Stay connected on all our socials at North Power Women on Twitter and Northern Power Women on all of the others, and leave us a review. We'd love that. I'll get in touch. Podcast at northernpowerwomencom. My name is Simone. This is the Northern Power Women podcast and what goes on media.