Hello, I'm Richard Wilson, Chief Executive of Interactive Investor, the UK retail investment platform.
And these are my biggest lessons.
My first lesson is to have the courage to be yourself.
I possibly spent the first 10 years of my career, trying very hard to fit in,
and be what I thought was expected to be rather than being myself.
To be a leader, you really have to live your principles,
and you have to live your personality, and by doing that you can be authentic.
That gives you the possibility of creating a space where others can be proud of who they are,
and you can create an inclusive environment, which makes for a much stronger organization.
My second lesson is to stay focused on your North Star.
Find your purpose, find what matters, and stick to it.
Leadership is surrounded by uncertainty, by contradictions,
by trade-offs, by lots of noise.
It's so important as you navigate through that to find and stick to
what really matters so that then you can deliver.
And at the end of the day, you are what you do, and strategy is nine-tenths execution.
So that North Star keeps you focused on what matters, and you stay at it, day in, day out.
My third lesson is communication. With communication you really need to
try and maintain an ongoing dialogue. We forget that we have so many
people around us with lots of conflicting priorities,
and we need to share every day with different stakeholders.
Myself, I have board, direct teams, and indirect organizations.
You need to find a way to stay connected. My own behavior, my own habit,
is that I make sure every day I have a collective conversation with my direct team,
and I have a conversation with every individual on that team.
Why? So we stay connected, so we share and there are therefore
far fewer surprises, and you can be consistent and role model every day.
My fourth lesson is listening. We all arrive in the workplace,
whether we like it or not, with our own preconceived ideas.
We have plans, we have objectives, we have priorities, and in my career,
what's always surprised me is how seldom plans survive meeting reality.
It's so important to take the time to get the facts, to listen to different people's perspectives,
and then to adapt as you proceed. The key question is always
what really is going on here and try and get a clear view of that before making decisions.
My fifth lesson is to trust your team.
Throughout my career, the most powerful experience I've had
is with a group of people together, achieving what we thought was improbable.
That takes a combination of different skills, it takes confidence, it takes tenacity.
As a leader, most of the job is to support the team and help them navigate their own pathway,
and to be there to support. The most important thing for me in all of that
is to keep your promises and build that trust, so that the personal risks people take,
they're happy to do, and ultimately you get there.