The Responsible Business podcast series is produced with the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). In this series, our host Professor Veronica Hope Hailey (the Dean of the Business School) and Katie Jacobs (former Senior Stakeholder Lead at the CIPD) speak with business leaders to explore the revolutionised responsible business movement and the topics that have influenced this change. Designed to guide, inspire and inform, we’ll hear from experts across a number of fields.
While many leaders and businesses are attempting to put the pandemic behind them and focus on the ‘new normal’, have we thought deeply enough about what we’ve learned and what it means for future crises? In this episode, Professor Veronica Hope Hailey and her guest Professor Evelyn Welch, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Bristol, discuss why everything is still to play for and the role we all have in co-creating a brighter future.
Find out more about the Business School’s research: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/business-school/research/
Read their Thought Leadership articles: https://www.cipd.org/en/views-and-insights/thought-leadership/insight/responsible-business/
Image Credit: Adobe Stock / metamorworks
Transcript:
00:00:04 Katie Jacobs
What is the role of business within society? We build organisations that contribute responsibly and sustainably to the communities in which they operate, and what does responsible leadership look like as we continue to lurch from crisis to crisis? This.
00:00:20 Katie Jacobs
As a responsible business leading the way podcast from the University of Bristol Business School, working with the CIPD.
00:00:30 Katie Jacobs
I’m Katie Jacobs from CIPD and over this limited podcast series myself and Professor Veronica Hope, Hailey Dean of the University of Bristol Business School, are speaking to a selection of inspirational and insightful leaders about what it means to be a responsible business.
00:00:46 Katie Jacobs
We want to know, in the aftermath of the pandemic, what has changed about how we work, how we lead and how we think about responsibility and trust in business.
00:00:55 Katie Jacobs
Because when it comes to building more responsible, resilient businesses and a fairer, more equitable society, there is still everything to play for episode 6, building responsible leadership for the future.
00:01:09 Katie Jacobs
Last November, Collins Dictionary announced its word of the year.
00:01:13 Katie Jacobs
Perma crisis.
00:01:14 Katie Jacobs
The.
00:01:15 Katie Jacobs
Collins team of lexicographers explained, describe the feeling of living through a period of war, inflation and political instability, and given the year we’d had war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis and in the UK, getting our third Prime Minister in as many months, it couldn’t have really been anything else.
00:01:33 Katie Jacobs
The pandemic may have felt at the time, like the crisis, to end all crises, but ever since other seismic events have been coming at us thick and fast.
00:01:42 Katie Jacobs
We have got used to living in a state of permanent unrest with the recent Israel Gaza conflict adding to the tragic global load and with the ever present threat of the climate crisis and the increasingly rapid pace of technological advancement, all of us, not just leaders, are being buffeted by a wide range of geopolitical and socioeconomic.
00:02:01 Katie Jacobs
Boxes.
00:02:03 Katie Jacobs
We wrote in our original research, the world has shifted not just because of COVID-19, but because the disruption has had a domino effect. Changing work and personal lives for leaders and followers alike. We remain in the throes of a major disruption.
00:02:17 Katie Jacobs
This remains true. There is still everything to play for.
00:02:21 Katie Jacobs
Throughout this series, we have heard from some brilliant purpose driven leaders who exemplify responsible leadership.
00:02:27 Katie Jacobs
They have offered insightful reflections on how the world we live in and the role of the leader has changed since the pandemic as well as practical ideas on how to live and breathe. These new leadership requirements with responsibility at their core.
00:02:39 Katie Jacobs
So in this final episode, we wanted to explore how building responsible leadership for the future and how leading through crisis has shaped how we address new, unforeseen challenges. And God knows we should be expecting them.
00:02:53 Katie Jacobs
To explore how we can set ourselves and our institutions up to lead confidently and responsibly through the crises to come, Veronica and I were joined by her boss, the Vice Chancellor of Bristol University, professor Evelyn Welch.
00:03:05 Katie Jacobs
But before we moved on to discussing managing the crises to come, I asked Evelyn to cast her mind back to her experience of leading a university, Kings College, London. At that point, through the pandemic.
00:03:16 Prof Evelyn Welch
In March 2020, my husband, who is a respiratory virus specialist, turned to me and said we’re getting out of London and we got in the car. We told our kids to move into our house in London so that they could be together and we drove about an hour and a half to a small cottage that we have.
00:03:37 Prof Evelyn Welch
On the Blackwater in Essex, where we stayed for almost two years, where he watched online autopsies and tried to figure out what was happening with COVID and I as Provost for Kings College London and often acting.
00:03:53 Prof Evelyn Welch
president tried to work out how we navigated our staff needs our students needs in an extraordinarily volatile and very emotional 18 months, two years time, and what it did to myself as a leader.
00:04:13 Prof Evelyn Welch
Was recognize how you cope when there isn’t certainty how you cope when everyone around you is looking at you for the answer.
00:04:24 Prof Evelyn Welch
And you need to give both reassurance but also help them find their own answers. So very different type of leadership was needed through COVID very different type of leadership was needed coming out of COVID as we build back to whatever that future looks like and that.
00:04:45 Prof Evelyn Welch
Sort of millage of those old emerging and new forms of leadership. I think of what we’re all grappling with now.
00:04:53 Katie Jacobs
And what did that extreme experience teach leaders? Here’s Evelyn again.
00:04:58 Prof Evelyn Welch
So what COVID taught us all was when no one has the single answer, it’s actually incredibly important to have multiple voices and multiple perspectives in the room, but that also the leader needs to be willing to take that hard decision, not necessarily because they.
00:05:18 Prof Evelyn Welch
Absolutely know what’s right to do, but because her decision has to be taken now, a decision avoided is not a good decision. A decision avoided is actually the worst possible decision. So the leadership that’s needed.
00:05:33 Prof Evelyn Welch
Now is seemingly contradictory, but makes perfect sense to me. You need extraordinary bravery and courage, and you also need extraordinary empathy and ability to bring people together to ensure that they trust that you are actually looking after the wider community, not just after your own.
00:05:55 Prof Evelyn Welch
Yeah.
00:05:55 Katie Jacobs
In her research work Professor Veronica Hope Hailey has been closely observing leaders from all types of organisations for decades.
00:06:02 Katie Jacobs
00:06:03 Katie Jacobs
Given that richness of experience, I wanted to know how she believes the pandemic has changed the concept of responsible business and leadership for the future, and what lessons leaders at all stages should be taking forwards into this new, ever more uncertain world.
00:06:18 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
If I think about what is the legacy that we’re living with now in terms of responsible business and the impact of COVID on how we think about this, five things, number one is actually those leaders that fared.
00:06:37 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Well, particularly in the first few months of COVID were those that went in with the connectedness.
00:06:46 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Beyond their own organization.
00:06:49 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
You only really survive those first few months. Well, if you knew who to pick up the phone to if you had a good relationship with people.
00:07:00 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Who were in the public services? If you were running a bank or a supermarket or whatever you needed to know who were running the local public services.
00:07:09 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
The second thing I think is a big legacy is that leaders have lost the get out of jail card. What I mean by that, it’s pretty hard.
00:07:19 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Now, to claim that you shouldn’t tackle some of the environmental issues or you shouldn’t tackle some of the social justice issues because everything’s too complex. You can’t say things are too complex. How can I possibly make a difference? Well, actually, you’ve got to make a difference. The third thing is something about.
00:07:39 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
What do leaders do in a crisis? What are the behaviours that actually help in a crisis situation which is leaders found it was OK not to know all the answers it.
00:07:50 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Was all right.
00:07:51 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
I mean, in fact, it was the most sensible thing to say. I don’t know the answer to everything, but I do know people who I can go and ask. I think the other thing was what Joe Garner from nationwide, the chief exec at that time called directive empathy. So.
00:08:10 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
You’ve got to take some decisions. You can’t be 100% sure in a crisis that they’re the right decisions, but you have got to take those decisions, but you have to be incredibly empathetic because it was a people crisis.
00:08:25 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
I think the fifth thing and I don’t know how well we’ve learned this or not, but I think this is what you pay chief executives to do, which is this ability to gauge the response. So I think remembering sitting in a senior team myself in March 2020.
00:08:46 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Trying to gauge is this a crisis at this point?
00:08:51 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Do we think very big, but the worst? Some people on that table who did not want to face into that crisis and I think this gauging and judgment calls are really, really important. You don’t want to cause panic. You want to create reassurance.
00:09:11 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
But willful blindness didn’t serve anyone, and in some cases, had disastrous effects.
00:09:19 Katie Jacobs
So responsible leaders for the future need to be well connected to other organisations and institutions.
00:09:25 Katie Jacobs
They need to understand that nothing is too complex to be tackled, that it’s OK not to know all the answers, to act with directive, empathy and have a canny ability to gauge the appropriate response.
00:09:37 Katie Jacobs
Easy, right? But when you’re beset by crisis after crisis, it’s tempting to lose focus and revert to old habits. Here’s Evelyn on dealing with the challenge of leading through constant, uncertain.
00:09:48 Prof Evelyn Welch
The only thing you can predict is they’re going to be unpredictable crises coming towards you. And actually that’s what we have to expect. No single institution company, NGO’s can afford to stand in isolation, either from its civic community, from what’s going on in government, from.
00:09:48
Yep.
00:10:09 Prof Evelyn Welch
Its employee zone hinterlands, so that connectedness is really absolutely vital and under.
00:10:15 Prof Evelyn Welch
Handing who to go to, but also whom your employees are going to or your clients are going to for their information so that you’ve got real insight into the worlds that they’re inhabiting at that particular moment. And then complexity that’s just a given. Now, a good CEO’s job is to.
00:10:36 Prof Evelyn Welch
Cut through that complexity.
00:10:38 Prof Evelyn Welch
Both by an understanding of past actions and what they’ve done to the organization you’re leading, but also how far you can stretch your current organization, what’s its capability for change and absorption of the sort of shock of change at that particular moment kind of getting us all to exercise our muscle.
00:10:58 Prof Evelyn Welch
So that as the shops come, yeah, OK, that’s just another wave. Just another wave. Just another wave. When everything around you looks really scary.
00:11:09 Prof Evelyn Welch
You need to generate an absolute sense of calm.
00:11:13 Prof Evelyn Welch
It’s my job. It’s our job as senior leaders. Yes, when we go home, we can say, can you pull me a double din this time? Darling, you will not believe what’s coming at us. But at work, you absolutely have to say while I don’t know all the answers, I’m not frightened by the.
00:11:33 Prof Evelyn Welch
And our tone of voice, the way we walk, how we show up, has to give across that considered compassionate calm that allows other people to go you as someone. Actually, they may not know what the future holds.
00:11:52 Prof Evelyn Welch
But they’re holding us and I trust them. I trust them to look after me. I trust them to look after my future.
00:12:00 Katie Jacobs
So the only thing we can predict is unpredictability, but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn to horizon scan more effectively.
00:12:07 Katie Jacobs
Here’s Evelyn again on the need for leaders and all of us to learn to look ahead a bit more clearly.
00:12:13 Prof Evelyn Welch
It’s not just the job of leaders to be horizon scanning. We all need to be horizon scanning and then bringing back to whatever centre we hold those different perspectives and to be willing to talk to a multiplicity of people at every level and to really listen hard.
00:12:32 Prof Evelyn Welch
Veronica and I’ve been going out and talking to some amazing business leaders, political leaders, about what the world needs from a new University of Bristol Business School. And alongside all of the things that you might expect bright graduates trained in all of the basics of business management.
00:12:52 Prof Evelyn Welch
Accounting and finance able to start work the right way with the right attitude, we’ve also heard new types.
00:12:59 Prof Evelyn Welch
Of employees and new types of leaders, above all, those who are really able to situate themselves in a complex global world where supply chains might be disrupted by anything from disruptions to the Suez Canal to changes in particular countries.
00:13:19 Prof Evelyn Welch
Approach to fossil.
00:13:20 Prof Evelyn Welch
Deals and that it’s not just enough to know your own area of specialists, so you really need to be open and listening to, you know, people who are in government, people who’ve left government, people who really understand the histories of the regions, whether they’re within the UK or beyond.
00:13:41 Prof Evelyn Welch
People who speak different languages from you who are able to actually go and really understand the new rules of what’s being said in a particular meeting. No leader can do it all, and you need a much more flexible, much more agile approach to who is in your team at what time and when you draw.
00:14:02 Prof Evelyn Welch
On that expertise.
00:14:04 Katie Jacobs
Dealing with complexity requires not just curiosity and creating the space to educate oneself on what’s happening in the world. It also needs leaders who are expert in forming and maintaining relationships with multiple stakeholders, as Veronica explains.
00:14:17 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
The world is very, very complex place at the moment. Understanding what is happening politically, what the implications are for potential conflict and escalation of conflict.
00:14:31 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
How business operates within different legislations within different cultural mores. This world is a volatile place. It’s an uncertain place. It’s a complex place. We’ve got to have people that don’t know every single to you political nuance.
00:14:51 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
That they know they need to understand it and maybe they need to go and ask some people some advice before just taking a decision we’re talking about.
00:15:00 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
This stakeholder engagement, the need for people to be able to establish relationships way beyond the workplace boundaries. So you need leaders who are going to work well with local government. You need leaders that are going to be able to work well with local.
00:15:20 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
NGO’s or charities, all big multinational NGO’s and charities. You need people with an awful lot of interpersonal skills that can engage people very easily and get a bigger sense of the world in which we’re operating.
00:15:39 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
A bigger sense of other, I think, is what I’d say that my reality is not the same as other people’s realities.
00:15:47 Katie Jacobs
The scale of the challenge, the multiple relationships to manage the wide variety of skills and behaviours, to exhibit being a leader now is perhaps harder than it’s ever been, and it’s all taking place in the fierce, often unforgiving glare of public opinion in the Court of social.
00:16:04 Katie Jacobs
This could mean some simply opt out of leadership altogether, warns Veronica, unwilling or unable to take on the potential personal cost.
00:16:12 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Leaders are much more exposed than they were 20-30 years ago. Public opinion is a much more overt and swift.
00:16:24 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Through social.
00:16:25 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Media to judge very often when they don’t have a great deal of data or information on the situation that I think is a big question for us all going forwards. I mean, if everybody’s going to be judged every single minute of the day on whether they get 100% of the decisions they take.
00:16:47 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Right. We’re going to have some real difficulty getting future leaders to step up because in the end, you’ll just get people going. You know what? I can’t live with this barrage of judgment.
00:16:58 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
To me, I think we’ve just gotta be in the same way that we expect empathy from leaders. I think a degree of empathy towards leaders wouldn’t go unless, frankly.
00:17:09 Katie Jacobs
The level of expectation and external and stakeholder judgment is particularly true for leaders in the university sector. Let’s hear from Evelyn on how she manages that difficult balance.
00:17:19 Prof Evelyn Welch
Now that the job of Vice Chancellor has become really difficult, many, many more of us are women, and I think the two are connected in a.
00:17:29 Prof Evelyn Welch
They it’s a very positive thing because you know, I have three children of my own and three stepchildren. You wake up every morning and you expect someone to complain. You expect a robust conversation and a lot of disagreement with your point of view around the dinner table. Really, really good families, really good preparation.
00:17:49 Prof Evelyn Welch
For senior leaders.
00:17:51
That.
00:17:51 Prof Evelyn Welch
When you translate that into the workplace, and particularly a university workplace, we are an environment in which all of our staff have to feel that they are able to speak their mind. We have a commitment to freedom of speech. We have a commitment to academic freedom.
00:18:11 Prof Evelyn Welch
And sometimes that’s a very uncomfortable place, both for those who work and study here, but also those who lead it. I actually have to leave my political opinions and my social opinions at the door when I am the vice chair.
00:18:27 Prof Evelyn Welch
Answer It is really important that no one knows what I personally think or what whom I personally vote for, because as soon as I give even a hint of what the right answer is, I then disenfranchise the voices of those who feel I might.
00:18:47 Prof Evelyn Welch
Would be antagonistic to them. That’s a hard place to sit in because it means that everybody is mad with you, for example, and Israel goes.
00:18:57 Prof Evelyn Welch
My job is to make sure that our Jewish students are Muslim students. All our students feel that they can be safe. They can express their views, they will not be attacked, that they are not just physically secure, they are emotionally secure, and that we as a university.
00:19:17 Prof Evelyn Welch
Are looking after them. That’s hard when everyone says.
00:19:23 Prof Evelyn Welch
I want you to fly this flag or I want you to fly that flag. We don’t fly any flag and we have rules about appropriate flying, a flag to protect all of us and to protect that sense that you can have a robust, considered debate that might actually lead to some.
00:19:43 Prof Evelyn Welch
Who created solutions not simply to an argument between two groups who are deaf to each other’s problems. A tough place to sit, but one that I’m well accustomed to from many dinner table conversations over many.
00:20:01 Prof Evelyn Welch
Yes.
00:20:02 Katie Jacobs
So how do we teach those skills when many of us choose to live in a comfortable echo chamber, for instance, how does leadership development need to evolve to ensure those leaders of the future are seeking out diversity of thought and learning to collaborate with those they might not always necessarily agree with? Here’s Evelyn again.
00:20:19 Prof Evelyn Welch
You need to not just work with people whom you already know already agree with who are already like you. How do you get voices that might disagree?
00:20:30 Prof Evelyn Welch
With you into your network, how do you get someone who hasn’t got the same background as you to work effectively with you? How do you let the kind of little bits of irritation actually translate into whether it’s a better product or a better program, etcetera, so.
00:20:50 Prof Evelyn Welch
Teaching teamwork is a teachable skill, whether it’s by asking a business student to work with an engineering student and a humanity student to solve a global problem, or actually just solve a really simple problem like how do you reduce the number of people in a?
00:21:09 Prof Evelyn Welch
Line queuing to pay for lunch. Those really pragmatic take the theory, create the team, put it into practice, and then most importantly, reflect on it and learn from it. What did you get wrong? What did you get? Right. And rather than grading someone.
00:21:30 Prof Evelyn Welch
On whether or not they’ve produced the perfect answer, actually grade them on their ability to learn from and reflect on so.
00:21:38 Prof Evelyn Welch
Team project and where you get an individual grade and a collective grade team projects where your team members grade you. These are all sometimes for students quite controversial ways of doing university assessments but are much more like the world that they’re going to enter where they’re going to be dependent.
00:21:59 Prof Evelyn Welch
On their colleagues for their own success, not just able to reduce.
00:22:04 Prof Evelyn Welch
235 or 10,000 words.
00:22:08 Katie Jacobs
Leadership is increasingly A-Team sport then, as Veronica goes on to explain.
00:22:12 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
I think we’re at a bit of a crossroads here between the sort of era that we’ve been in of celebrity leaders, you know, the individual leader representing both the product, the institution, their character or personality somehow reflecting the organization.
00:22:32 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
The individual.
00:22:33 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
That actually can take all decisions almost messianic in the way that we view these individuals. I think we’re leaving that behind. I mean, one of the great things about COVID was there was no one individual that could solve this. The whole thing was that, you know, people.
00:22:54 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Operated as teams, I mean whether that was finding new vaccines, that wasn’t one scientist in the laboratory that was decades of research in team.
00:23:05 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Operating in government too, it was team behaviour. One of the things that I reflect on is this. The end of the sort of cult of the individual messianic leader. Are we returning to a slightly more sober view?
00:23:25 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Of yes, the leader that ultimately takes the judgment.
00:23:29 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Call that listens to everybody and then says this is the way forward.
00:23:36 Katie Jacobs
As we’ve reflected throughout this series, whether leaders like it or not, leadership is changing expectations and requirements are shifting and organisations will only survive the inevitable crises to come with a more connected.
00:23:49 Katie Jacobs
Responsible and human style of leadership.
00:23:53 Katie Jacobs
Some more traditional leaders are finding this a tough shift. Others are thriving. So how does Evelyn feel about the future of responsible business and leadership?
00:24:03 Prof Evelyn Welch
I’m really optimistic about the future of responsible leadership. I’m extraordinarily pleased to see business leaders moving into leading charities charity.
00:24:14 Prof Evelyn Welch
Leaders moving into leading corporates that there is much more of an acknowledgement that you don’t just have to be a technical specialist in area, but that you need wisdom. You need resilience. You need courage. You need bravery and ability to form a team.
00:24:34 Prof Evelyn Welch
And as more of those leadership styles.
00:24:38 Prof Evelyn Welch
But used to be called in old money servant leadership as more of those leadership styles become just the norm. And it doesn’t mean, and this is really important to me, at least it doesn’t mean holding back. It doesn’t mean always standing back and not saying anything, allowing others to lead. That is part of it.
00:24:58 Prof Evelyn Welch
Sometimes it means.
00:25:00 Prof Evelyn Welch
Really, being clear, really being determined, really being courageous, but being open about it.
00:25:09 Prof Evelyn Welch
There are people and there always will be those who disagree with you. They have a choice. They might decide not to follow you and that’s OK.
00:25:20
Hey.
00:25:21 Katie Jacobs
And with the series drawing to a close, let’s hear Veronica’s final thoughts on the future of responsible business.
00:25:28 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
The future of responsible business is to demonstrate the importance of business in society. But in demonstrating the importance of business in society, in terms of economic development, social development.
00:25:44 Prof Veronica Hope Hailey
Political development. It’s also for business to recognise its duties and obligations to others within that society, and that’s the future for me.
00:25:56 Katie Jacobs
Amen to that.
00:26:01 Katie Jacobs
Thanks for listening to the responsible business leading the way. Podcast produced by the University of Bristol. Working with the CIPD.
00:26:09 Katie Jacobs
Find out more about the business schools, research courses and opportunities to [email protected] and if you want to read the original research, this series is based on search responsible business through [email protected].
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