Links:

'Reclaim Time to Read' 2022 reading challenge:  https://www.helenbeedham.com/2022-reading-challenge

Helen's business book: The Future of Time: how 're-working' time can help you boost productivity, diversity and wellbeing

Book into my new programme Time for the things that matter. Programme starts 21st June 2022.

Andrew on Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrew-wallace-1156872/

Leathwaite's Distinctive Leaders podcast

'Leading' by Alex Ferguson

'Turn the ship around!' by L David Marquet

Transcript:

Helen: This week, I'm talking with Andrew Wallace who has over 20 years experience in the recruitment industry. He is one of the founding partners of Leathwaite, the executive search and leadership talent specialists. Andy is currently their managing partner and in parallel, he leads their global strategic initiatives and oversees their EMEA business and Zurich office. Over the last decade he has built and led their governance business and you may have heard him hosting Leathwaite's own excellent podcast, Distinctive Leaders. Before Leathwaite, Andy worked in New York, building the U.S. arm of a leading UK consultancy and with an emerging market search firm where he partnered with investment banks in London, New York, Central and Eastern Europe. Welcome to The Business of Being Brilliant, Andy!

Andy: Thank you very much indeed for having me, wonderful to be here.

Helen: Does it feel different to be in the guest seat for change?

Andy: Absolutely. And I was thinking about it, it's good to have this experience just to realize when you've got your own guests, just what they're going through. So thank you for the opportunity and I hope I do it justice.

Helen: I'm sure you will, and we were just chuckling just now off air, about a few tech gremlins we had trying to start our podcasting session and it was very reassuring to hear that you're no stranger to those as well. So people have heard a very quick snapshot of your work life and your career and your role at Leathwaite. Can you tell us something about you that maybe doesn't normally get mentioned in your bio that might surprise people?

Andy: Very happy to, you mentioned there that I'd done a stint in New York and probably my ambition when I was growing up was not necessarily to be a headhunter but it was actually be a pilot. I wasn't bright enough to be a pilot. In fact I was too tall to be an air steward as well. And when I got to New York, I knew that flying was about half the price of learning to fly in the UK and I got my pilot's license. This is prior to the tragic events in 9/11, so in the mid nineties, and I learnt in an airfield called Teterboro airfield. And about a month after I qualified I asked a couple of mates, whether they fancied going up for a fly and we took off. And from Teterboro, it's very near Manhattan and there's a lot of airspace there. And you've got LaGuardia, you've got Newark, you've got JFK. So they actually keep you low and prior to 9/11 they actually sent you towards Manhattan so we were flying down the Hudson river, right by all the tall skyscrapers. And we went down to about 500 feet around the Statue of Liberty and then out over the Verrazano bridge and we were flying over some water there. And then the engine got into a bit of trouble and I did all the checks I possibly, and I was like, 'don't worry, we'll be fine, I'll get it sorted, having only just passed and done all the emergency type of checks, but whatever I did, I just didn't solve it. And in the end I turned to my guest in the copilot seat and I said, I don't believe this, but we're going to have to land the plane. And we ended up landing in a field in Staten Island, and within about 10 minutes we had five fire engines, five ambulances, and God knows how many cop cars. It was a very interesting experience to say the least! And thankfully I got exonerated because they took it away for a proper FA investigation and they traced it to a faulty part in the engine, a busted cylinder. But it was a very interesting experience and something I kind of treasure: that I managed to walk away safely, but equally it was a real wake up and reminder that being a pilot is a very serious job. And I still love flying today, but it was a really interesting experience.

Helen: Gosh, I felt my heart racing as you were telling me that, because I can't imagine what it must feel like at the cockpit when you realize there's a problem and you can't fix it.

Andy: I'm not really sure what I was thinking at the time, other than just to get the damn thing down. And you're supposed to do what's called a pan pan pan or Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, and I didn't even bother doing that because it was just like, right, concentrate on getting the damn thing down in this field. And it was an interesting experience, but I'm glad we came through it.

Helen: Well, it sounds like you have a very calm head in a crisis. Presumably that might be one of the qualities that they took into account when making you managing partner at Leathwaite with people to look after and big business decisions to make. Can you tell me a little bit about how you came to be in your role today?

Andy: Sure. We set Leathwaite up - in fact, sorry to disappoint you when you mentioned in the run-up I had 20 years' r ecruitment experience, I'm actually just touching on 30 years now, scarily - and when we set up the business in '99 with my fellow founders, Neil, Marty, and Jamie we kind of, all of us look back and think, why did we do that? What was our motivation at the time? And I think actually it was just to create something, you know, we must've had some kind of entrepreneurial instinct going on. Some of it might've been, we actually didn't want a boss! So we wanted to create our own thing. And I don't think back then we had any connotations of right, we're going to be X amount of people or we're going to be this size. I think actually we just thought, actually this could be a really fun adventure and who knows where it's going to go.

I had prior to setting up in '99, when I came back from New York in '97, I was given a team to run of about 15 people. And I did that for a year before I moved into executive search. This was a contingency business called Robert Walters and I loved it. I really enjoyed the people management, the leadership side of it. I didn't want to do it then, because I wanted to move and understand more about executive search, moving if you like further up the recruitment food chain.

And as Leathwaite has built and grown, I've always loved the client side of it, but also I really do enjoy ... leading managing, developing, coaching people. I wouldn't want that role to be a hundred percent of what I do, I definitely need a balance in what I do, but I suppose over time that that has become, I'd like to think, a strength over time. And so when the other guys asked me to be a managing partner about five years ago, which by definition becomes a little bit more focused on that leadership development aspect rather than the emphasis as a headhunter is prior to that nearly always client focused. It's about getting that balance. But that's really how I think ultimately you gravitate towards your own strengths, the further your career. You've got to continue to work on some of those weaknesses and those areas for development. But for me, I always enjoy seeing people develop and flourish over time, especially to achieve the talent that they have. So that's really how the role has developed.

Helen: Yeah, that's really interesting to hear. So when you set out to create Leathwaite with your fellow founding partners, did you have a stated idea of what kind of team and organization you wanted to build around you, what it would feel like to work there, what people would get out of working there? When we talked before you talked to me about how, as an organization, you're very culture-led, did you shape that up front and try and build something to fit a particular mould? Or was it a question of learning and growing as you went and changing a few things every now and again?

Andy: I think a bit of both. So at the start, what has kept us together? 'Cause it's quite unique that four people started a business and we're still very much in business together. And if I'm entirely honest, and I think the others would say the same, we're sort of mates as much as we are business partners. And that has some real benefits in terms of the trust that you have between you and like any good healthy relationship, you have your arguments behind closed doors, because you're going to have differences of opinions, but that's a positive, not a negative. And there's so much respect in those relationships; I liken it to an iron bridge that represents the relationship that you have and any arguments you have is like throwing stones at it. Fundamentally when you walk out of the room, you respect each other's views and ultimately, you know that it's important to come to a decision and then back that decision together.

When I think about that culture piece you mentioned, the principle was, we wanted to work with people that we enjoy their company. That might sound a little trite to a lot of business people, but actually, I don't think it is at all. I think that you spend more of your waking hours with people you work with than you do your home life. When you look at it from that perspective, you might as well spend time with people that you respect, enjoy their company and you feed off it as well. So that culture piece was probably sh aped by the four of us in terms of, we all got on with each other and we all liked each other's company and we thrived off each other. We're actually all very different, so we bring different strengths to the party. And that I think has also been testimony to why we've stayed together.

To your second piece there, is that has the culture developed? Absolutely. Because we brought in some other people as we've grown and they have shaped the culture and they've taken it in slightly different directions but in a really positive way. So they've enhanced the culture, rather than completely pivoting 180 degrees and changing the culture, they've enhanced it in so many different ways. And I think that that still continues today when we've hired recently some new people, for me it's important that you do keep evolving and you do keep changing, with the slight emphasis, without fundamentally changing the principles, the values - that's always got to be the bedrock. But actually bringing new ideas and new thoughts and evolving that culture has probably been the test of the longevity of 23 years so far. And we absolutely want to see Leathwaite go on for another 20 years and so it's important to keep embracing the new without forgetting some of the core principles as to what's held us together over that time.

Helen: That's really interesting to hear and a question in my mind, as you were starting to answer that, was about how as the four of you got on so well and grew the business well in the early days, were you conscious of not recruiting in your own mould and people that fitted the little group that you were but actually consciously trying to recruit different people. And I think you've answered that very well in that you do try and welcome people with different views and experience and expertise.

Andy: Yeah, look, it's a really interesting point because at the end of the day, Helen, back in '99 we weren't talking about diversity and inclusion and diversity of thought is probably the best way to describe what you're trying to achieve. You're trying to get people from different backgrounds with different perspectives coming together because that's where the real value comes from. I think the four of us are different, we have got different perspectives but on the face of it, we are four white guys. And I, like the other three, have always been super conscious as we've become more aware as a society of the damage that that can have, if you are insular, if you are looking at it from a breadth perspective and that diversity of thought.

So, I'm so proud of not just the four of us, but the rest of the company for really embracing that over time. And I'm so proud of the way that we talk now in terms of really trying to make a difference. We still got a long way to go but I'm really proud of the gender diversity that we've managed to create. There's an awful long way for us, not just Leathwaite but as an industry, around ethnicity . I think we've also got an awful lot to do around disability. Great that we've made strides from an LGBTQ as well. Look, you can categorize it all you like, I think there's just a real mindset that you've got to have as a firm around how you evolve and how you make your organization and the culture as inclusive as you possibly can. And when I sit back now, we've still got lots to do, but I love the fact that right now we have a fantastic Inclusion team. And when I say team, they're there to really drive initiatives and we rotate people through it. But the strides we've made in that are fantastic; people genuinely lean into it as opposed to having the opposite, which is a very old school mentality or a very closed mindset on it. So that again is part of the investment you make in a culture around those sort of benefits.

Helen: Yeah. And can you tell me about a recent initiative or change that you've introduced or implemented that's aimed at really helping people to flourish in their roles and careers at Leathwaite?

Andy: I would say, actually, when we set up the Inclusion Council, we got so many people leaning into that, and it's fantastic that we've got people in our Asia team, in our US team, in our Europe team, as well as UK involved because they bring those different perspectives. More recently, we have really harnessed the excitement that people have for the ESG strategy. So if you think about the environmental, the social, it's really interesting. A lot of our newer generation, they care so much about the environment and it's wrong to say or assume that the older generation don't, but it's wonderful to harness the energy that people have.

And we set up an ESG team probably within the last nine months and what they've done fantastically is to educate: really understand first of all, what really matters to people at Leathwaite and what are the things that we can actually do around those environmental and social aspects, and we were doing some of it before, but it's almost accelerating. And then the other side to it is understanding what different sectors in different industries are doing. And then that leaks into how you can help clients in terms of what are the initiatives that some firms in some sectors are doing around sustainability, and around some of their social focus.

And when you get into those topics, you start to realize, look, there is no commercial gain. And, and it's important to make sure that that's not the reason why you're doing it. But actually you start getting into these really good debates about what is just the right thing to do and so for me that ESG team has really taken that to another level for us and it's really harnessing the energy that a lot of people have for these topics. Again, I'm being educated all the time; I have a reverse mentor and I've found that hugely interesting in terms of 'what's important to you?' as opposed to ' what's important to me' in my age group, because I think I know that and really then making sure that you support that.

Helen: That's fantastic to hear that through your ESG efforts and framework, you've found a way of brokering these conversations at work about what matters to people, what creates a good environment, a good way of working together. And I know that you also do research around that kind of thing with your clients through some of survey work, for example. And you mentioned in a previous conversation, your research that you published earlier this year about what's top of mind for HR leaders right now and just to pull out a couple of stats that I was interested to read in that, 48% of HR leaders think that their culture is inclusive in their organization, but even more 54% say that having a good inclusive culture is really important for attracting and retaining diverse talent.

So it's great that you can also have conversations with your clients and see and learn from what they're doing and share what you're doing around creating the right kind of culture to help people succeed and to help your clients attract and keep hold of the talent that's really important to them.

Andy: Yeah, I think all of these topics, everybody's so keen to know what they can learn from each other and the statistics are definitely there with regards to those organizations that are inclusive, that are diverse, outperform. Interestingly, actually a recent article that I read made the clarification that the ones that do perform that are diverse and that are inclusive, are the ones that are well led. So those that are just put together without thought around the leadership and the direction and the strategy of the organization, they don't outperform. So it is important not to see this just as an exercise of filling quotas and those sorts of things, you have to have good leadership and a very strong culture that allows that inclusivity and the diversity to flourish and the diversity of thought to really speak up.  Filling quotas actually has the opposite effect in terms of that performance of an organization. But you can see that people are just very interested to learn, to share, and I don't think it should be in any way, a proprietary thing to gain competitive advantage. I think that we all owe it to ourselves to say, look in hindsight, when we look back now, we can see that we were not diverse, we did not support these discussions, and we weren't anywhere near as aware as we are today. Now as an industry and as a society, we need to embrace those things as a group and as a collective.

Helen: I agree, I'm seeing and hearing a lot more openness and willingness across different organizations not to just be very internal about it, but to actually be reaching out and collaborating with other peer organizations in their industries, because at an industry-wide level, you can then have so much greater impact in terms of the messaging you're wanting to send about your industry, the people that you're welcoming into it and the different career paths that are available to people. I'm hearing that that much more joined up approach benefits, everybody, rather than a more competitive approach.

You mentioned just now that you have a reverse mentor, I was going to ask over your years of being in leadership roles what have you found challenging or stretching as a leader that has led you to perhaps try some different leadership approaches or discover some different leadership tools in your toolbox? What reflections would you have on that?

Andy: That everybody's different and I think you have to flex your leadership style as much as you can do to the people that you're leading. Not everybody loves sporting analogy, so I'll hopefully ask for forgiveness for those that don't love them, but I was reading Sir Alex Ferguson's book on leadership and he talked about how in the dressing room he would change and flex his style to different people. I suppose  The important thing is just understanding that if you are mechanical about leadership and 'this is me, I only do it this way', you are going to get mixed results. You are going to motivate some people, you're going to demotivate others. And I think that it's important to understand the people that you are leading: what are their motivations? What are they trying to achieve? With everybody that you lead, the objective is the same, which is you want them to achieve the maximum they can out of the talent that they have. And it's just about trying to find out how to do that, and so I love the intellectual aspect of that job, of really trying to work out because you're dealing with humans and they're not straightforward and that's the beauty of humans. And therefore it's just working out what it is that really makes them tick and I think that's why the job is never done. It's also never perfect, but I love those challenges of that.

And to answer your question about what are the challenges I found, it takes a while before you get really comfortable at a) being able to identify those motivations sooner and quicker, but also having enough in your own locker with regards to ah! That style might work. Ah! That doesn't work, let me try something else and don't be afraid to experiment. But the important thing is also being truly authentic as a leader; you've also got to be true to yourself and sometimes with the best will in the world, your leadership style is not what that person wants or needs. And that's also something that you get comfortable with, is that you can't be all things to everybody. Ultimately you have to make a call and, and do what you think is the right thing.

Helen: Those are some great reflections thank you. Really enjoyed hearing those and you're right, I mean, humans are just so endlessly fascinating, endlessly diverse, and I love your reflections on how actually it takes quite a lot of self-awareness and conscious thinking about actually, maybe I need to bring in a different tool or a try different approach or approach this conversation in a different way; to have that degree of experience and leadership expertise to be quite thoughtful about that when you need to. So yeah, thank you.

And is there any other resource, whether that's a book or a talk or just some words of wisdom that have really been useful to you in your career that you would recommend to others or share with others?

Andy: Loads! If you want a book that I've read and I will caveat that I didn't read it I listened to the audio book of it, but it was ' Turn the ship around' by David Marquet. And it was about a very underperforming submarine when this captain took it over and basically turned it into the best performing team in the Navy. And I think there are an awful lot of things from that, but maybe the one core message is that It's really important to give accountability to all levels of an organization. Traditional organisations are very much a leader-follower structure where all of the key decisions are made by the leaders and the rest of the organization just do what they say. I think the organizations that are thriving today and will thrive in the future are leader-leader cultures, and that's very much about making sure that at all levels of an organization, there is a level of accountability for decisions to be made. I shared with my own company in the last update presentation that we gave that I get asked a lot of questions, and I sometimes say, am I being asked that question? I mean, am I being asked to make a decision because I'm the best person in the firm to make it, or am I being asked because I'm the managing partner? And I think that it's really important that leaders ask themselves are they the best people to make that decision? If they're not, why are they making it? Why aren't they asking other people in the organization to make it, they're much closer to it. I'm happy to make a decision, I've never found making decisions difficult to the extent of, if I make a decision I'm quite prepared in hindsight to find out that it's the wrong decision because at the time I had the information in front of me that I made it, but I move on very quickly. A lot of people torture themselves about why did I make that wrong decision? Absolutely learn from it. But understand that at that time you had the information, you did the right thing - you thought - for the organization. But it is important to make sure am I making the decision because I'm the right person versus somebody else? And I really took that away.

I think, other things ... I hope this isn't a terrible plug, but you mentioned that Leathwaite do our own podcast called 'Distinctive Leaders' and we've had some amazing people from that, whether it was Tracy Clarke, who used to be the CEO for the US and UK for Standard Chartered, talking about the importance of mentorship. Or whether it was Kenton Cool, who has just summitted Everest for the 16th time, which is the most for any non-Sherpa. And I got to know Kenton over the years and he's a terrific guy, but what I loved about one of the messages he had ... So he's got a particular Sherpa that he has developed a great relationship over the years and done most of the expeditions with and whilst he has helped Dorje, who is the Sherpa, at a time where Dorje lost a number of people that he knew close to him because of a tragic event where they had an avalanche that hit base camp - and actually this was a year that Kenton wasn't there - but it rocked him, it rocked his family, to the extent where he was not going to climb again. But he came out again because he knew that Kenton was going to climb and he knew that they were a team.

But what I loved about that is that you've got to look at a relationship that you have, whether you're more senior than somebody, whether you're a peer, whatever it might be. In order for that relationship to succeed, there must be a two way relationship in terms of the mutual respect that you have for each other, the support that you give each other, the information. All too often leaders are seen as, wow, you're the leader so therefore you must know. And the answer is no, you don't. Often what you learn is that you develop over time and you may develop a mechanism to make decisions, whatever, but it doesn't make you the expert in the room. And I love the lessons learned from that.

Helen: Yeah, that's fascinating hearing those incredible stories from people you've spoken to on your podcast, and I'll include a link to your podcast in the show notes as well, but thank you for sharing those . And, just finally, how can listeners connect with you after the podcast, if they'd like to get in touch professionally?

Andy: Look, I'm not, I wouldn't say a social media guru by any means, but I'm active on LinkedIn and I'm always keen to connect with people. And so LinkedIn, through Leathwaite and any other channel that people feel like! I'd like to classify myself as somebody that's approachable and apologies in advance if time is not my own at certain times. So if I'm not as responsive as I should be, then I caveat, but always interested in meeting new people and wherever I can, I certainly would help.

Helen: Wonderful. Thank you. And thank you so much for coming on the podcast to talk about the fantastic story of how you and your co-founders have grown Leathwaite into the very successful organization it is today and best wishes for the next 20 years there. And for also sharing your own personal reflections on how you've moved into your leadership roles and the kinds of things you practice and thinking that you apply in your role as a leader. Thanks so much for being a brilliant guest!

Andy: Thank you very much indeed Helen, really appreciate it.