Do you think there has been a shift in recent years towards a more collaborative style of leadership? What do you think has driven this change?

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There’s a wonderful quote by the late EO Wilson: “we have Stone Age emotions, Medieval institutions and God-like technology.”

It’s a great quote, but the relevance of it is that most of our human organisations grew up over hundreds of years, and they grew up in a hierarchical way. Throughout  the 1990s there was also quite a lot of the ‘male superhero’ business leader archetype, which played into this as well. 

I would like to think that over the long term, we have started to appreciate that there are dangers associated with that style of leadership, because what you're not considering is humanity; compassion; diversity. 

I do think that we have gradually started to see a more collaborative style of leadership. I think that often, crises that have jolted the world more in that direction -  Covid is the most recent example of that. What was very different about Covid is it was a distinctly human crisis. 

I was leading a retail bank through the financial crisis and you could go home at the end of each day, and however bad the crisis was, you could say to yourself, it’s only money. It's not life and death. 

With Covid, that wasn’t true. It really was life and death. And I think because of that, it really stirred all of our deepest humanity. During that time, I think we reset expectations for care and compassion in the workplace and whilst there's been a little bit of a reversion back from that, I do think that we are still in a better place than we were previously.

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Do you think there is still a belief in some circles that words like empathy and humanity don’t belong in a business setting?

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I think it's interesting to look at the layer behind that. What is going on there? If we have organisations that are unempathetic and inhuman, is it because of the people who work there? Or is it due to the culture we’re creating? 

I've worked in financial services and people were very quick, particularly during the financial crisis, to stereotype bankers in a negative way. But does someone working in a bank love their children any less than someone working in a hospital? Of course not. We are all human beings with a great capacity to love, to harm, to follow the rules, to break the rules…

So if you have an organisation that is creating a culture that is lacking in empathy, then that is the issue. It's not about the people, it's about that culture that is being created. That’s an area I think that leaders need to pay particular attention to. 

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Do you agree that culture is largely created from the top, or do you think it's more complicated than that? 

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I love this question and I love etymology, so let's look at the word culture. Well, first of all, ‘culture’, it's a living thing. It cultivates. It's something that grows. 

But then, you've also got ‘cult’ which talks to the leader, that figure at the top. 

So my personal definition of culture is that it is what grows around the leadership, in time. 

I was the 14th Chief Executive of Nationwide. I was Chief Executive for about five percent of its existence. I'd like to think I had probably a bit more than a five percent impact on the culture, but essentially all organisations reflect the leadership that's been there over time. 

It’s also important to remember that it doesn’t work equally both ways: it takes a very long time to create a caring, trusting, safe culture, but with the wrong approach you can make it disappear really fast.

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You’ve worked for a number of huge, commercial organisations. How do you create a balance between running a business with an ethical, humanitarian approach, and the commercial drive for profit?

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I've been very lucky to have led a number of large businesses that are quite different in their ownership structure. I've worked for FTSE 100 international companies, and also for very large mutuals, where the shareholders were our customers, so it's a different dynamic. 

I've seen some of the extremes of both profit focus and customer focus. I think we all learned through the financial crisis that profit without purpose doesn't work, but purpose without profit doesn't work either.

I've always believed that the way you deliver sustainable profit is by engaging your people to serve your customers, and as long as you make sensible commercial decisions, then the profit will follow. 

I still believe that to be true, but there is a bit of a balance. I think many organisations become so focused on profit delivery that hitting a cost target might become a rule to be complied with. You must hit your target. If that happens, then your business is at risk, because if people feel they have to hit a number, they will bend the rules in order to hit that number. 

On the other hand, you do need a bit of edge. My experience is, if you do give people the information that they need to understand the business performance, they're going to make fairly sensible business decisions. I used to talk about a concept that I called accountable freedom. Everyone is accountable for the outcomes of their decisions at the enterprise level, but they are free to contribute with their whole human capability. 

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People often describe the role of a CEO as ‘lonely’. Would you agree?

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That depends on what you mean by lonely. As a chief executive, I found I would overdose on people. So it's not lonely in that sense, you are surrounded by people all the time, but most of those people you can’t really talk to about the things you want to talk about.

Every chairman or chairwoman will say, ‘you can tell me everything’. But you can't, because ultimately, their job is to fire you. Your direct reports will try desperately hard to get you to open up about what's really on your mind. But again, there's a line of professionalism and some stuff you just can't share. You can't really talk to your friends because they don't really know what you're doing, and you really shouldn't burden your family with it. 

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I've heard you talk about the importance of looking after yourself first as a leader; that it isn’t selfish to focus on yourself. Can we talk a little about that?

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I think the oxygen mask analogy may be a bit of a cliche, but I think it's still true that you can't look after anyone else unless you look after yourself. Emotions are contagious, particularly when it comes to leaders, so if the leader looks tired and frazzled, you can bet your life the organisation will be feeling the same way. If the leader is energetic, they will inject energy into the organisation. 

I also believe that a leader needs to be level. That doesn't mean you never show emotion, but if people are wondering what mood the boss will be in today, that leader is running the risk that people will not come and tell them the important things that they need to know. 

So for a whole variety of reasons, I believe leaders do need to look after themselves, and then it begs the question, how do you do that? People always go straight to diet and exercise, but if you're not getting a good night's sleep, you're going to feel permanently hungry and you're not going to have the energy to exercise. So I always tend to start with sleep.

It can be unhelpful to say to a CEO, make sure you get some downtime. You can't do it. We're in a 24/7 world. If you're the chief executive, you are always on, it comes with the territory. What you can do is put energy into something different that you really love doing. Have a thing to keep you sane, a thing that's not work, that's not family, that's not illegal. It can be anything from volunteering in the community to creative music, writing, anything that gives you energy. It could even be serving on another board. 

There’s nothing more rejuvenating than coming back from doing something that you just absolutely love, something that you lose yourself in. That's the real measure.

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How does this love of exercise and sport tie into your identity as a leader?

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I think it’s interesting to look at what big business can learn from elite sport. So for example, the emphasis on process versus the emphasis on outcome. Business is very outcome-focused: profit, share price and so on. Sport will really teach you to trust the process. Stick to the process, and the results will come.

Another factor is the value, intensity and frequency of coaching that athletes use, relative to business people. In elite sport, you are constantly training to be better, and there isn't that equivalent in business. I think that we could get so much more performance out of the business world by committing to a higher frequency of coaching and feedback. 

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As a leader, have you ever been faced with a problem you absolutely couldn’t solve? How did you deal with it?

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You do come across situations where the issue can't be solved within the constraints that exist.  

Having said that - and maybe I’m an optimist - but I think that anything can be solved if we alter the constraints around it and take it into a business context. 

I have found myself a couple of times over the years in a business situation where the ends just don't meet, so you’re potentially in a position where you're really just choosing where to fail, rather than solving the problem. 

What you can do however, is go back and alter the constraints. This could mean approaching shareholders to say, for example, we need to increase the investment envelope. You would explain the effects this could have, then explain why it might be necessary and why it is ultimately good for the long term. 

In my experience, as long as the narrative around that is compelling, then directors, shareholders and stakeholders will be persuaded by the argument.