Business of Yorkshire Conference: Investment in leadership seminar

A group of panellists in an Investment in Leadership seminar at the Business of Yorkshire Conference in Leeds, explored the importance of companies having sound leaders at their helm.

The panel, chaired by TheBusinessDesk.com joint managing director Alex Turner, included Nicky Chance-Thompson, CEO and trustee at the Piece Hall in Halifax, Nick Glynne, CEO and founder of Buy it Direct, Gemma Smith, chief executive of Strata and Dr Jonathan Straight, founder of Planet Straight Advisory.

Straight said: “Leadership makes or breaks an organisation. It’s one of the most important factors in whether an organisation succeeds or fails.

“In difficult times a good leader is a compass in a storm who guides and remains level headed.”

He said his own experiences of supply chain and banking crises had demonstrated how a leader should react during turbulent times.

“However bad the situation was, it was my job to put on a brave face and explain that things would be O.K. and we would get through it,” he said.

“I was focused on what we needed to achieve over the next five or six months to get to the other side. This taught me a lot about leadership.”

Smith said effective leaders put most of their efforts into empowering the people around them. She added such leaders could not operate in isolation.

“You need to have a trusted group of people who can bring along everyone else – it can’t just be one leader in a company, there has to be a team,” she said.

She emphasised how good leaders can inspire and mentor their workforce, using her business’s chairman and owner as an example.

“He told me not to fear failure – a lot of people have this fear early in their career,” she said. “He always encouraged me to have a go at things and not worry if it doesn’t work.

“We have a rule that if you’re going to fail, fail fast then don’t do it again.”

Glynne said leadership requires clarity, strategic vision and the ability to seize commercial opportunities.

“You also need to have decisiveness even in situations where your decision may by unpopular,” he said.

“Many people are naturally conservative and they get into habits so part of my job is to break those habits. You have to challenge people because everyone gets stuck in their ways.

He warned it is harder for leaders to identify talent at larger companies, citing his own firm. “In the old days I used to know everyone but we’ve now got 900 staff,” he said.

“One of my frustrations is that talented people aren’t being spotted. The business has become too big for me to lead it in the way I used to.”

Chance-Thompson said good leadership is about building an organisation with a blend of different types of people with different strengths.

“Some people want to move fast and get things done while others are more ‘steady state'”, she said. “You want to get the right people doing the right things.

“Some organisations think all their people have to be the same, but you then lose innovation and adaptability.”

She stressed leaders should ideally maintain distance from the day-to-day functioning of their organisation.

“I’m an older sister so I’m very interfering,” she said. “I have to work hard to not get too involved. And it’s always best to remain calm as you’re not going to fix anything in a culture of fear and panic.”