Unlocking The Potential To Lead
Chris went from FD to MD, after the whole team took part in a Lemontree Leadership Team ‘Boot Camp’. Here he tells us what this unlocked in him, the Leadership Team and the Business.
As an organisation what were the challenges your company was facing?
Our current MD and founder was departing and with him, much of the strategic thinking and leadership. We didn’t have an obvious successor within the business or the strongest leadership team. The team needed upskilling and unlocking to make us a more effective. We weren’t ready to lead.
There was a lack of decision-making and accountability and willingness to be the one to put your neck on the line and make the big calls. Everyone worked across and managed all areas of the business. The SLT had never had to make tough calls before and if they ever did, they would either ask the MD first or not make a decision, and the MD would make a decision to fill that void.
Something that’s come out of the programme was the realisation all we needed was for people to be unlocked, rather than be told what to do. Realising we had the authority to do it all along and believing in ourselves. We learnt how a business and a team is supposed to run, with authority delegated rather than it all being funnelled through one figurehead.
What does that give the team now?
More accountability and freedom, so it’s up to the team to make the calls. People are embracing it and have been given a new lease of life. It’s given people ownership of their own team, so they don’t see themselves as a small cog but a much bigger cog. People have been given more freedom and trust to do things the way that they think is right with the knowledge that we are behind them and we support them in whatever decision they think is best.
We have set up a biweekly meeting of the senior team, people report back on what’s going on within their spheres rather than being told what needs to be happening. Those meetings get the team together, which would never have happened before the
programme, talking about how they’re going to structure themselves and things that they need to be doing.
What else was needed to be unlocked in the business?
Understanding each other, in our meetings, people wouldn’t listen to each other, if they weren’t talking over each other they were waiting for the other person to finish, before going off on a tangent, not allowing things to be built on. Through the programme, we appreciate each other’s opinions more now. It wasn’t done from a place of disrespect, people needed to understand each other more, get more insight into each other’s personalities and what made them tick. That was huge for me, what I used to see as maybe flaws, I now understand those characteristics and how they can be used as a strength and how to approach people better to get the best out of them. I wouldn’t say I’m perfect, and I always get it right.
But if you understand people more, then you know how to work with them more. There’s more belief throughout the business and communication has drastically improved its impacts down the line, sitting down with people and saying “You’ve got this. It’s within your gift to sort out all these things that you’re coming to me with.” They just needed to be told that. People who weren’t even part of the programme, have grown by being given that authority.
How effective was the programme?
It’s hard to think how it could have been better. We all saw growth as individuals and as a team. We all came away from it thinking it was a really good use of our time that we were being pushed and challenged. This wouldn’t have happened without the programme. People feel like they’ve got more prospects here as well and are now ready to or will be ready in a year or two to take a step up to the next level as well.
What did you want to unlock in yourself?
I was originally moving on to a new role within the parent company! I wanted a new challenge and had one eye on my progression, when I was asked to go on this course. It sounded good and I thought it would maybe help me with that. I was probably going into it with the least amount of objectives of everyone, which is quite funny when you look at what’s happened since!
I wanted, no, that’s not strictly true. Is it? I was going to say I wanted to un-pigeonhole myself from just being a finance person. But that would be a lie, because in my first one on one with my coach. I had pigeonholed myself and it was my coach that dragged me out of it.
So what changed? It was that first coaching session, I said, I’m on the programme to develop myself. I don’t want to be the new MD. I’d love to watch that meeting back. She said OK. Why? So I listed off five or six reasons, she challenged me and said, there’s no reason why I couldn’t do it. You just need more confidence, more belief in yourself and to know that you can do it. It put the seeds in my head that maybe I could do it. And then, with each module as the course progressed, I started realising more and more, that maybe I could. What changed as well was my understanding of what the role actually entails. The MD had been my boss for six years, I associated being the MD with what he is like and not realised that there are other ways to do it. I needed to understand what it would look like if I was to have the role and how I would do it, and to be comfortable with the fact that it’s different and that’s OK. That’s what the coaching session did.
Would you have believed yourself capable of the role you’re in without having had the conversations with your coach? Absolutely not. And more importantly than that, I don’t think other people would have believed I could do it either, because in the same way I started learning and understanding more about what the role would entail, so did the other members of the Senior Leadership Team. I don’t think they would have accepted me coming into that role prior to it, either. They would have pigeonholed me as I pigeonholed myself as the accountant. The finance guy.
How has the programme and Lemontree supported you through this time of change?
First giving me that belief, giving me the toolbox to call upon, even giving me reading materials. During the programme, I went on Honeymoon and I read Turn the Ship Around by David L Marquet. I was in the Maldives, so there wasn’t an awful lot more to do…that shows how tuned into it I was! I was actively taking things like that along on my honeymoon to read. The support the programme gave me worked well. There were classroom modules, then the individual coaching sessions in between, it kept the ball rolling. It gave me objectives, homework, some things to do, so you couldn’t just turn up to the classes, and then forget about it. It kept you engaged. I would honestly say it’s one of the best things I’ve ever done. I could always speak to my coach and she’d come back to me. The course was top notch, you could see it wasn’t something that had been cobbled together. There was some serious thought behind this.Even now, I know Lemontree and my coach is still available to support me should I need them.
So was there an element of accountability in the programme that might not have been there otherwise? Absolutely, I didn’t want to turn up to these calls with my coach and say sorry. I haven’t really done much. I haven’t really thought about it. I also knew it would be just my coach and me in my one on one. And it could be quite embarrassing if you’re not ready, she’ll see straight through you. She’s very perceptive.
What's changed and what's surprised you?
Well now I’m the MD! Belief and confidence in myself that I can actually do it and probably a bit of resilience as well. These first few weeks have been bloody hard work. It could have been too much for some people and possibly for a previous version of myself, But I have to take a step back, where I can see the bigger picture, which is something that I appreciate needs to be done more rather than getting bogged down in too much detail, having that strategic overview of things and realise that actually, I’ve probably done about as much as could reasonably be expected of me and possibly better than anyone and anyone else around it could have done. The development within people and the characteristics that you saw coming out in people that you didn’t think they had within them, that’s certainly the biggest surprise. You think about things that you’ve never thought about before. And the growth and understanding in individuals was the thing that surprised me and pleasantly surprised me as well, It was, “ I never realised he could do that, or he was capable of that. No negative learnings whatsoever.
What would you say to someone who was hesitant about the cost benefit of developing their leadership team? I would say, given what it will give you, can you afford not to do it? The cost of not upskilling your leadership team and not identifying the right person to lead the business can cost you a hell of a lot more than what you’ve been quoted to go through the programme and not just in the first year. It could potentially disrupt the business in a way that it can’t recover from, because if you’re specifically talking about succession planning, it’s crucial to get that right in the top roles because if you get that wrong, it will filter down into every part of the business and can cause a lot of damage.
What about ROI?
The initial investment in the team allowed us to put the right people in place to maximise any opportunities that came our way. This manifested itself almost immediately when the chance to rapidly expand the business was presented to us early on into our new management regime. Had this new structure not been in place, we may have missed out on a golden opportunity to grow the business by
an anticipated 10x our initial outlay on the Lemontree programme.