My Leadership Musings

Not long before I realised I had little choice but to listen to my body and medically retire, I was asked to speak at a Women of Influence networking breakfast on the Gold Coast, Queensland.

A few months prior I had been awarded “Leader of the Year” by the Bank where I was working and my speaking invitation was on the back of this award.

My career was at an all time high. I have often reflected, in some regards it was terrible timing having to say goodbye to it all but I was leaving with so many wonderful memories. Maybe there was no better time to walk away.

I felt honoured and blessed to lead so many people throughout my career and as I said goodbye, it was humbling to learn from my team I had positvely influenced their lives.

I have learned so many lessons in regards to Leadership and there will always be so much more to learn.

I thought I’d share some of my “Musings on Leadership”,  which includes excerpts from my talk at the Gold Coast conference. It hopefully gives further insight into who I am, aside from someone with a rare disease.

Here I share my Leadership style and a little bit more of what I was doing in my working life prior to medically retiring and starting my blog…

My Musings Begin

Leadership! Where on earth do you start? The Business section of our major bookstores, and online searches, provide us with books from those who are experts on the subject and who have very cleverly come up with 5 or 7 or 10 points of Leadership.  I am definitely not an expert, despite being in leadership positions for 30 years, I am learning every day what works and what doesn’t.

I have read many of those Leadership books and attended copious amounts of Leadership conferences. I have explored many and various models of Leadership but I’m not going to be referring to any of those today.

What I want to talk to you about is what Leadership means to me and how I went about Leading my team and my business. First I want to take a trip back in time to discover how I became a Leader in the first place.

Born or Bred

There has always been a lot of discussion about whether you are born a Leader or whether you can learn to become a Leader. I think it’s a bit of both.

As a child growing up in Western Australia, after migrating from the UK at the age of 3, I was so shy I couldn’t go to school unless my best friend went with me. Even as a teenager if I had been asked to speak in public I would have been physically ill.

I sometimes wonder looking back if perhaps the 6 weeks voyage in a ship from England to Australia and being uprooted in that way, may have contributed to the shyness I struggled with for many years. However, I remember in both primary and high school I was always singled out to take some kind of leading role in the classroom or in small groups.

My teachers saw something in me I had no idea existed. They could see that from an early age if I was given a task I somehow managed to bring my classmates happily together and lead them in a way that ensured the task was done.

My teachers also discovered early on I could sing and as a result I was in choirs for most of my childhood. As a young child I was very comfortable being in a choir as my family was very musical. My Dad was a church organist and gave organ and piano lessons. Being surrounded by music I didn’t consider it anything special to sing, I thought it was just what everyone did!

It wasn’t until my late teens and early 20’s, when I began to be asked to sing solos at church at Christmas, the nerves and anxiety set in. Oh my goodness! That would mean standing up on my own in front of people and not being part of the comfortable choir team. What if I coughed or worse needed to sneeze in the middle of a song? How on earth was I going to survive with everyone looking at me? The very thought of it sent me into a spin and I just wanted to hide.

Despite my lack of confidence there was a sense of responsibility that lay deep within me from a very early age. I didn’t want to let people down and I also wanted to desperately overcome my fears. I didn’t like feeling scared and I was annoyed at myself I felt that way.

Well, when it came to those first solo singing performances I got through it but talk about performance anxiety. My legs would shake and my knees would knock so intensely, I had to make sure I could stand behind a piano or hang onto something while performing so I didn’t fall over and land flat on my face! I also gave myself constant pep talks…”You can do this, it will be over soon, what is the worst thing that can happen and if it happens so what, you’ll find a way to recover.”

Without realising it I was already beginning to learn how to risk mitigate and problem solve on the run. How could a shy, young woman with little confidence in her abilities, ever get to the place where she would and could successfully Lead a  Contact Centre with 350 staff?

The Turning Point

On every journey there is a turning point and mine came at 22 when I was given a Regional Role in the bank I was working in at the time. I was responsible for 12 branches to bring about a change in culture. It was the late 80’s when banks realised they could no longer just service customers in a non caring way but they actually needed to focus completely on the customer and create both a sales and service culture, where the customer was the centre of the business.

I had 12 “old style” branch managers allocated to me who I had to convince this was the way forward and help them find ways to inspire and lead their teams to change. Their solution was I could do the inspiring and leading and make it happen for them. Not the best decision they ever made as most ended up redundant after a 2 year transformation period but it was the best thing that could ever have happened to me.

I found my passion and my calling and it was leading people and helping to inspire them to become the best they could possibly be. I was appointed to lead one of the Banks largest branches as a result of the success I had during the transformation process.

At 24 my Leadership career had “officially” begun.

The joy I felt from helping someone to find a way to accept change, by taking the time to understand their concerns and objections and seeing their anxieties replaced with confidence as a result of being coached, listened to and nurtured, was just amazing …..my Leadership journey was in full flight.

It’s Not About You – It’s About Your People

If as a Leader you spend most of your time focusing on your achievements, worrying about how others perceive you, how much money you can earn, how “on trend” your clothing is, you might fluke being successful but how long will it last?

I believe a Leader who focuses on themselves will find it difficult to really connect with their people and inspire them to follow and support their vision for their business or organisation.

The people we lead are not stupid. They know if you genuinely care for their wellbeing, their development, their career aspirations and they will not flourish under someone whose first concern is for themselves.

So How Well Do You Know Your People?

I led a team of 7 direct reports who were all Senior Leaders in the Banking Contact Centre I managed. They each had up to 5 Leaders reporting to them and in total we had a Leadership team of 19.

Reporting to my Leadership team were 20 Support Specialists and 310 consultants. Now I couldn’t know 350 people intimately but I could know my 7 direct reports intimately, the other 12 Leaders extremely well, the 20 Supervisors very well.

The 310 consultants?…well, I needed to find ways to connect with them and make the business I led relevant for them and their needs as individuals. I also expected my 7 direct reports to do exactly the same. We would spend a good amount of time in our monthly one on one’s, discussing the team individuals by name so I could learn how my Leaders were connecting with their staff and ensure they were making them their priority at all times.

By getting to know and understand our customer facing staff, they felt valued and would in turn be much more inclined to make our customers feel valued, resulting in a higher customer engagement.

So How Did My Leadership Team and I Connect With Our People?

Formal regular meetings play a big part. They are important to discuss business issues and plan together ways to grow the business and care for your people. I did that with my direct team 3 times a week during scheduled but informal catchups in my office. I had formal one on one’s monthly when we really drilled down into the performance of their part of the business. That’s all pretty normal in the modern business world.

What is equally, if not more important, are casual catchups, daily catchups, coffee catchups, team lunches, phone calls to check how the kids doctors appointment went and how the family pet got on at the vet appointment. How was the visit to the solicitor for the divorce papers and were they happy with the plumbers quote to replace the leaking bathroom?

They are the moments that counted to my people. The times I took to know what was important to them and the times I showed that I cared for them by “knowing” what was important to them…. this made a difference to their engagement in the workplace. This made them feel genuinely cared for as a person not just an employee.

Serving My Leaders

My Leadership team also knew I was available 24/7 to take a call from them if they needed support or to debrief about work or a personal situation arose.

We were running a 24/7, 365 day a year Contact Centre business, so my Leadership team and I often ended up talking at very odd hours if issues arose. This alone helped in getting to know my people and their families!! My husband will vouch for that.

We often joked that he was as much a part of the Contact Centre as I was. He certainly was an integral part of the team and I would have been struggling without his support, particularly the cups of tea he would bring me at midnight when my phone often rang. He would be on auto pilot…phone rings, I grab it and run to the home office and he followed into the kitchen to put the kettle on…Go to love that!!

The other key to my Leadership style is I didn’t lead alone. I led with my Leaders. We were a unit, a team, committed to the same vision and all desiring to create a community and culture within our workplace that allowed people to grow and develop and know their worth as individuals.

I also believe if your focus as a Leader is firmly on your people at all times, then the business or organisations needs will be met and it will be successful. In fact it has been my experience, the more focus my Leadership team and I had on people engagement through coaching, developing and caring, the business metrics to a large degree took care of themselves.

Coaching and Reward and Recognition is so important. I don’t want a team of followers. As a Leader I want a team who are empowered and developed to a level where they outshine me and in many regards make me dispensable.

Some Final Musings

I medically retired in 2014 and as I look back on my career, my greatest achievement as a Leader, is my team continued to thrive without me.

Although we were all devastated our time working together had come to such an abrupt end due to my health, I am so proud of each and every one of them as they have continued to thrive and prosper.

Why? …As a Leader, I served my team. I was there for them, to guide, coach and develop them to succeed.

It was not about me , it was about the people!