Standing with your team.

Helena Hawthorn, general counsel of Legal & General's institutional retirement division, in conversation with founder pip richardson

H: I'm on the leadership team of my division of about a thousand people so that's where I get my most theoretical leadership experience. I don't mean that it doesn't get applied but I am looking at a more strategic leadership way of working, whereas my more hands-on leadership is in the legal function itself where I'm running quite a small team of lawyers in the UK and the US - that is probably more leading by example.

P: So you're running a small team, hands-on with more strategic leadership across a division. What leads on from that in my mind is the difference between leading and managing?

H: Good question. It makes me think back to when you and I started as lawyers, over 20 years ago now, and how terrible both the leadership and people management was. You'd get leaders of the law firm who were professionally extremely successful at what they did and in that sense were kind of inspiring sometimes, but were not investing in thoughtful leadership. There was no pace or messaging or delivery of how do we manage the business well? How do we create future leaders? How do we thoughtfully involve people in our strategy and the narrative in a way that helps them feel they've got ownership?

“I’ve got to be able to step back and let people have space to fail very well, and learn from it.”

I think over the last two decades people, lawyers in particular, have become more thoughtful about leadership - how it's part of the career arc, not just seniority forcing people to follow you.

For lawyers I think it's quite hard to not be hands-on and step in when you can see the answer to a problem, to allow people space to both make their own mistakes and then find their own solutions. Especially in insurance where the numbers get very big quite quickly and that becomes really terrifying.

P: A big fear many lawyers have given the potential for professional liability for negligence...

H: Yes, and yet I've got to be able to step back and let people have space to kind of fail, and sometimes fail very well, and learn from it.

P: The courage to let people make their own mistakes.

H: Oh, hugely. But not in a blame way. I'm very transparent myself when I make mistakes and own up about not knowing stuff. That's the thing. For me what is really important, having had good and bad bosses, is being one who you feel you can fess up to if you've made a mistake, making it a safe space for your team to mess up - the sheer importance of that trust and creating a space of psychological safety for my direct reports.

“You've got to be willing to take accountability with the responsibility.”

P: Yeah, I think trust is totally at the core of all of it. Within your team, what do you do, any intentional training or development, to help foster that trust and help yourself be able to trust?

H: The CEO of our division is very thoughtful about leadership and how important it is to put time and attention into it, not take it for granted, which is probably one of the first times I've experienced someone being so deliberate about leadership as its own discipline. We have off-sites four times a year, a leadership team where we talk about feedback culture and building trusting relationships. There's an external facilitator for it sometimes as well. It strengthens our working dynamic. Then we try to filter down a version of what we do.

We often split the time into the how and the what: a bit on strategy, what we need to focus on for the next quarter, but actually that's the easy bit, right? The how is the difficult bit; working on our relationships and investing in them - it's like going to the gym, if you don't then the muscle gets flabby. Especially when we've got colleagues based overseas and in different time zones. I've learned how to model it, I hope, for my team.

P: So you're really leading by example.

H: I'm sure I don't always get it right but yeah, every week we have two team meetings; one is a what are people doing, the other is how is everyone.

And I have amazing people working for me who spend time themselves having 1:1s with each other to check in on each other and make sure they're okay. The cultural importance of looking after each other as a team is really important.

We talk a lot about our behaviours as well as an organisation, a whole group, not just a divisional thing. It's a work in progress, but I'm increasingly seeing it being something people are paying attention to, which is great.

Being a leader is not about status. You have to live it and earn it. It's about the responsibility that comes with that. It worries me if it's just like there's a hierarchy, get on the ladder.

P: Yeah, not just a long climb. And what about hierarchy in the sense of command and control, or perhaps being a relationship that feels parental with people above and below? Do you experience that?

H: I think structure is important. Whether that has to be a very linear hierarchy as in law firms or whether it's a much flatter organisation with decisions by committee, I guess some things suit some people and some things suit others. For me the importance is transparency and meritocracy, and being a team.

Most of all I've got a brilliant team which makes an enormous difference. It's not easy but it's doing little things to take care of each other that's so important.

Helena's way of leading is in sync with our approach at The Circle Line. This kind of leadership gives me hope that other modern-day captains of industry may lead in a similar way - harnessing the power of the team and the human spirit to achieve a good kind of success. The kind that's good for us all. Success that leads us not to step on each other in our striving for wealth and status at any cost, but to consider and include each other as part of the bigger evolutionary process. It takes empathy. Helena has that in spades.