12 minute read
Leadership at Monkton
Rosie Brown
Co-CEO of COOK
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As someone who failed spectacularly to gain any position of leadership while at Monkton, it’s ironic to be writing about the subject for the school magazine. I didn’t even make house prefect – and it seemed everyone made house prefect.
But here we are, three decades on, and I find myself leading a team of 1,600 people for a business with £100m in sales. If nothing else, it proves even the most unlikely of us have the potential and power to lead. I’ve also come to appreciate that leadership doesn’t reside in my rather grand job title. Rather, it lives in the ability to help others understand and achieve their own potential. I have certainly learned a few lessons about what leadership is NOT. It is not about blaming others, when you have failed to set clear expectations. It is not about responding to drama, from a place of high emotion. It is not giving all our attention to the noisy ones, and forgetting to listen to what might be going unsaid. And, if you want to retain your dignity, it’s probably not about karaoke at 2am. Mea culpa on all counts. Most importantly, leadership is definitely not about job titles, hierarchy or positions of power. They might coincide but not necessarily. Every single one of us has the potential for epic leadership whether as a parent, student, teacher, PTA dynamo or hedge fund icon. At COOK we use a few simple principles to guide our leadership, from which I’m continually learning.
Leaders Excavate Potential
Each of us has the potential to achieve remarkable things. By expecting the best and setting the bar high, helping grow confidence and encouraging learning, leaders uncover the gifts in others. When someone sees our potential and truly believes in us, transformation happens.
Leaders Create Belonging
We all want to feel part of something and thrive when we enjoy strong relationships. Leaders create community by valuing diversity and knowing everyone matters. It’s easy to create division among people; it’s much harder to create unity. Leaders build connection, enable empathy and help everyone feel they belong.
Leaders Give Everyone A Voice
We are all motivated by autonomy, the need to feel we’re authors of our own lives. Surprisingly, this begins with listening: to our own wisdom, to what others are saying and how they are feeling. By listening deeply, communicating clearly and letting others take the initiative, leaders give everyone a sense of agency.
Leaders Put People (And Planet) First
We all exist as part of something bigger, an interdependent network of relationships. By getting to know people well, engaging in our communities and the world around us, leaders encourage people to look beyond themselves to see a world with rising inequality and a planet in the grip of a climate emergency. Leaders have the courage to take actions, big or small, and light a path for others to follow.
Leaders Help Us All Enjoy Life
It’s a joyful world! Nobody wants to follow a leader who is constantly angst-ridden or stressed. Being able to relax and have fun – and encouraging others to do the same – is essential. It means accepting our fallibility, recognising we all have good and bad days, and resisting the urge to beat ourselves (or anyone else) up when things go wrong. Part of leadership is learning to enjoy the ride, so those around us can do the same.
The impact each of us can have on the lives of others is immeasurable. Leadership is about recognising this opportunity and responsibility and leaning into it. It might mean challenging someone to do better; building a relationship with someone on the fringes; listening deeply to someone for the first time; engaging someone in big issues that affect us all; or simply having a laugh with someone who needs it. All are acts of leadership.
Importantly, leadership starts at home, with ourselves. Living a life that is truly authentic to who we are is the first challenge and opportunity for any leader. Only when we start to live in such a way can we begin to bring others along with us. The fancy job title, the big salary, the house prefect’s badge … none of them mark out a leader. Leadership is about asking yourself a simple question: are you helping people become who they were always meant to be?
Marcus Hember
Captain, Royal Navy
I’m lucky to have served 26 years in an organisation that, at every stage of my career, has invested time, effort and opportunities to develop me as a leader. Leadership is an intensely personal endeavour; nevertheless, whilst what follows reflects a personal approach based on my experience, the Royal Navy has a strong and distinctive culture and in all this I ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’.
Mission Command
The philosophy of Mission Command, brilliantly demonstrated by Lord Nelson at Trafalgar, requires a leader to develop and communicate a clear intent (what must be done), set out the strategy and ensure the resources are available, consider contingencies, then give subordinates the independence and authority to deliver with the minimum level of supervision. Easy to describe, yet very hard to do. Setting out a clear intent in an uncertain situation is hard, but vital to enable a team to work effectively towards objectives. Setting out not just what must be done, but why it must be done motivates and empowers a team. Personal investment and belief in the plan underpins all.
Leadership or Management?
There is no yawning chasm between effective leadership and good management. Those who dismiss the vital detail that underpins an effective operation as ‘admin’ miss the point. Equally, an overly ‘managerial’ approach, obsessed by administration and forgetting to invest in the human element of the endeavour, is doomed to fail. In ‘Action centred Leadership’ Alan Adair set out to balance the needs of ‘Task, Team and Individual’ and this established framework is a great mental checklist in a dynamic situation.
Royal Navy Core Values – C2DRIL
• Courage • Commitment • Discipline • Respect • Integrity • Loyalty
From own to team performance
Those who rise to leadership positions will do so as a result of their own strong individual performance. With promotion and a larger team, some are slow to understand that however heroic their efforts, their own direct capacity is dwarfed by the potential of their team; they must ensure team performance is recognised before their own. Learning to accept differing approaches (and perhaps even a slightly lower standard that nonetheless achieves the aim) is part of this journey.
Personal characteristics
A cheerful, energetic, and (reasonably) confident leader is easier to follow than one who is morose, irritable and who vacillates. In an uncertain, dynamic and perhaps frightening situation, communicating certainty enables a team to focus efforts and move past distractions. A leader must take personal responsibility for communicating bad news, accept ownership of a failure or setback as much as they accept the glory of success. Balancing external confidence with a healthy level of internal uncertainty is necessary; building relationships such that these uncertainties can be explored with a deputy, trusted team member or mentor will help to retain balance and perspective in tough times.
Culture
In the Royal Navy we are fortunate to inherit a rich history and culture of success on operations, but culture is not static; it requires constant effort to develop and maintain. Leaders must do much more than pay lip-service to culture and values; they must be clearly communicated, re-enforced, and referred to if they are to be in any way meaningful.
The reality of leading people is often messy! Of course I’ve often got it wrong; fatigue has eroded my ability to be cheerful and patient for example, or I’ve failed to delegate sufficiently. The realities of my time as captain of operational warships reinforced that when I delegated properly and gave space for the team to deliver things went well, and the team enjoyed autonomy and a sense of trust. The transition from focus on one’s own performance, to focus on team performance, is hard where strong ‘hands on’ skills are a vital part of professional progress. Moving from a ‘Head of Department’ specialist role at sea to command of a ship is where, in my career, this transition was most stark and where I had to work the hardest to adjust my approach and habits.
Tanya Ross
Group Director, Buro Happold
When I was at Monkton, (1982-1984) I had little real idea about what I wanted to do as a career. It wasn’t until after four years of University and six years of working in the construction industry that I finally found my metier: leading engineering design teams on large, complex building projects. We called it design management and I guess, certainly in the early days, it was mostly about facilitating good communications across the many interested parties, encouraging good meeting discipline and managing expectations of others. It was only looking back after 25 years of doing it, that I realised it could be called ‘leadership’.
The first project where I undertook this role was the Millennium Dome (1996 – 1999) where we had a spectacularly immovable deadline, very public scrutiny and a decided lack of precedents to guide us. The Dome, whatever you may think of it aesthetically, was a dramatically successful solution to the challenge of hosting an enormous exhibition (details unknown) on a bleak, ex-industrial site on a curve of the Thames. (Of course, it’s not actually a Dome, it’s a PTFE-clad tensioned cable-net forming a hemi-spherical cap, but that doesn’t roll off the tongue quite as easily!)
My role was the engineering team’s gate-keeper – making sure that all the engineers (and there were nearly 100 of them of a dozen different disciplines) had the time and resources they needed to get on and do the design and filtering out queries/demands from others. So I learned how to say ‘no’ very politely (“no, we can’t do that, but we could do this…”), I became an expert in planning and programming, and I unexpectedly ended up representing the team in all sorts of media opportunities (including a live interview on BBC Breakfast, a Radio 2 phone-in and a Channel 4 ‘game-show’ called Demolition Day!)
As a job it was fantastic, partly because it was so varied, but also because I felt I was central to this enormous collaborative team, not just engineers, but architects, landscapers, builders, specialists, caterers – all pulling together to deliver this amazing venue on time.
After this, I was lucky enough to go on to lead the team designing the O2 Arena that went inside the Dome (Q: How do you build a state-of-the-art 25,000 seat arena without tower cranes? A: using bridge-lifting technology and dozens of telescopic cranes with helium balloons tied to the jib end), and then, when it was announced that London would bid for the Olympics, I put myself forward to lead the engineering team for the stadium. So, starting with the first bid in 2005 and running through umpteen design iterations, I was still there when it came to opening night in July 2012 (that’s me in a hard-hat waving as Steve Redgrave brought the torch in).
Throughout these years, my whole attitude was to lead by consensus – I’d make sure that everyone had enough information to make design decisions and if there was any conflict, we’d sit down to review the options and agree on the best solution for the project. That’s not to say that everything went entirely smoothly, but, again, with a spirit of collaboration prevailing, we were usually able to find an answer. The London 2012 Stadium was notable for being the safest Olympic build in history, with no fatalities on site; a testament to the collaborative efforts of all in designing and building safely.
As my career developed, I ended up leading a team of my own, 24 of us, working across a portfolio of projects of up to £3 billion in total and I’ve approached it the same way: try to make sure that everyone in the team knows what they’re doing and why they’re doing it and how it contributes to the aims of the team (and indeed the company) as a whole; then giving them the time, tools and support to do their job. Not always easy, and demands a willingness to communicate and in an appropriate style to each individual, and to have difficult conversations sometimes, but when I see my colleagues successfully delivering the design for another beautifully-engineered building and deriving such pride from doing so, then it makes my job so worthwhile.
Monkton careers
We are on a mission to change how our students see careers. We are not about telling them what job they should have. We are about inspiring them with their options, guiding their decision making and equipping them with the skills they need for life post Monkton, whatever that looks like for them.
Our community plays a vital part in helping our pupils figure out what direction they want to take. We have been delighted that so many OMs are telling their career journey via the School website and are grateful to those who have come in to speak to our pupils or offer mentoring.
Below are a few of the ways you could choose to get involved.
Run a skills workshop
We really want to skill up our students so they are in the best place to apply for their next job or course. You know your industry better than anyone else - whatever skills you wish new joiners had, let us know and help us train up current students. Could you help run a short skills workshop for a small group of pupils? General skills such as CV writing, interviewing and networking, or industry specific skills would all be welcome.
Sign up to mentor students
Help a 6th form student interested in your industry. Answer a few questions, review a CV or offer regular support. You can offer as much or as little time as you are happy to.
Offer work experience
There is no substitute for getting into a workplace and seeing how you might fit. You could offer anything from a few hours watching what you do at work to a multiweek internship or a job opportunity post school and everything in between.
If you have any ideas about how you would like to be involved or what you could offer, please email Matt Pringle, Head of Careers, at careers@monkton.org.uk. We are always keen to hear new ideas.
