YouSaid · the spoken record

Chris Hirst

lines on the record: 48
first: 2019-08-02
most recent: 2019-08-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I mean, the last ball is the last ball of the extra time of my super over which we just made up on corners effectively is how it was decided. But I think that what was astonishing to me about both of those was the way that the losers carried themselves. Federer, competitiveness and ability to perform under pressure for such a long period of time and then to lose that game and to be able to deal with that in such a gracious way and the same with Kane Williamson, the captain for those that don't know of the New Zealand cricket team. I mean they lost in the way they lost that game would break a normal person. And again his ability to A, create an environment that allowed his team to perform at such an astonishingly high level over such a long period of time and yet be able to. to deal with a”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a great, you know, we're talking, what is it? It's Wednesday today, three days after the two greatest sports contests that ever happened in this country probably in the cricket final and the Wimbledon final.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think there's an interesting debate about spending and saving political capital. And I think that great political leaders are prepared to spend their political capital to get stuff done. Oh, I”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People not I'll give you an example of which in a roundabout way might answer your question. I read an anecdote about Margaret Thatcher towards the end of her life and one of her former ministers went to see her. I think she's lived in a hotel or something, I think, when she was towards the end of life anyway. Anyway, wherever it was. And he went to visit her. And he said, whenever I would go and see her, she'd always, despite the fact that by this point she was very old and very frail, she'd always ask how the polls, how the polls were looking, okay? And he said to her, one of these last visits, he said, well, actually, actually Margaret, you know, they're not looking great. We're four points behind or something in the polls. And she said to him, you know what? That's not far enough behind at this point. Because if we want to get stuff done, we're going to, you know, we have to go through a period of that being unpopular. And if we believe, I mean, it's not really a particular point, if we believe that we're right, we will see the benefit of that in the polls by the time the next election comes around.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would have been an enormous young experience because I've never worked in a newspaper, but I presume that it started off where you had the prestigious, the real zero list. Okay, and then you had the digital department somewhere down there. Younger and less well-paid as well. And presumably a crappy bit of the building. And then suddenly and over time that grows and develops and becomes more important. And then you suddenly get to a point where you think, oh, actually, they can't just be all 22 year olds who sit in the crappiest bit of the building. Actually, this is suddenly going to be our future. So how do I need the other piece as well? So it's not an and or. It's how do I create a new cultural environment. That is a big strategic challenge a lot of organizations face. But what people tend not to write about in leadership books is, you know what? One of the ways you need to do that is address physically where people sit, how people sit and how they interact with each other.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And one of the ways you change a culture is you change the physical environment of the organization. Seating plans are a really powerful way of doing that. So, you know, whether that be you knock all the offices down or whether you build some office, you change it, you know, change it to how it is. If you all sit in departments, don't sit in departments, sit in client teams. Just change the way you use the environment, but do it in a way that is coherent with the story you're telling people. I mean, the critical thing with changing culture is if you just do things as a leader arbitrarily and people just go, I hate having to go and sit next to these new people because I can't, I like my old friends. People still aren't going to be necessarily happy about it. But the critical thing is you explain to them why you're doing what you're doing and you then follow, you know, you follow that through with actions, one of which is changing the environment within the organization and seeing plans are a powerful way of doing it.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say things and behave in a different way, but how do I use the environment we're within to create a different culture? And seating plans are a really interesting way to understand the culture in an organization. So we talked earlier about the Dondrapers. If we summon up Don Draper in our head, we summon up Don Draper in an office, right? We summon up his environment and he's got a big office hasn't he and a drinks cabinet and a safe and a secretary who sits outside the door and all those kind of things. And that says something.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I love a seating plan. And in fact, that sounds such a boring to everybody switches off. That sounds such a boring to say. We talk about leadership is about change. It's about getting from A to B. And a lot of that change in most organizations is at least partly, if often mostly about cultural change. And a reasonable question is to say, okay, right, we understand it's cultural change, but how on earth do I actually do that? And I think culture, you have to think of culture as we think of it as this soft, squishy thing often. Like, okay, we've got a great culture because we have Pilates at lunchtime and free fruit. And my argument is that isn't culture at all. Culture, as I said earlier, is the environment leader creates for their team to succeed and is actually, think of it like concrete. And when concrete is wet, you pour the concrete into the mold, okay? And you can squiggle on it and stick your fingers in it and things like that when it's wet. But over time it sets. And that's what culture is like. And if you then want to change that culture, you've got to smash it. And the way you have to smash it before you can reset it. And therefore you have to think to yourself as a leader. How do I not just...”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that person doesn't just need to be sitting and making sure that we've got to agenda point three in time. They need to be sitting around the table and saying, why does that person on the left, the end on the left? Why haven't they spoken for 30 minutes? Why is it that that person isn't contributing to the meeting? So their job isn't just to hit the agenda points. Their job is to see that meeting as a mini-team and make sure that everybody is contributing. Now, it might be because they haven't got anything to add. If you don't check in, you don't know. And I think it's really important that they are conscious of the environment as well as the agenda. Okay, next one is how do you deal with seating plans? I have rearranged the seating plan a couple of times in companies I've worked with and it was honestly unbelievably stressful, which I think you acknowledge in the book, that people get really very, very tense about the idea that they might not sit in their place. I think it's kind of like little territorial kind of thing going on.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the other thing I'd say about meetings is that person who's sitting in that chair, they need to literally chair the meeting, not be the meeting. I think quite a lot of people whose meeting is see themselves as the meeting. So they write the agenda, they talk for most of the time, they finish. The person in that chair chairs the meeting. And we talk about culture and”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Said, this reading is too short, yeah. And in fact, we, but it's a. It seems like such a kind of trivial point, but meetings are a defining characteristic of many organizations. And again, we're not just talking about private sector, we're talking about public sector, we're talking sports teams, they have meetings as well. And they are defining characteristics of a lot of organizations, and mostly they're run really badly. And a thing we did at a previous organization was we tried to address this. And one of the things we did was we put in every meeting we put one of the chairs in the meeting room, we made a red chair, just one red chair. And the point of that was to say that whoever's meeting it is sits in the red chair. So as much as anything, it's a reminder that anytime anybody walks into that room, hang on a minute, somebody's supposed to be in charge here. Whose meeting is this? They said in the chair. And they literally chair that meeting. Now, that doesn't always have to be the most senior person in the room. Lots of meetings where there's all sorts of mixes of people.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm saying, do you know what? It's an important question, but it's not a difficult question. And in fact, it doesn't even necessarily have to be honed down to the sharpest point. It can be a direction, not a point, because the really difficult thing is the getting between the two, is the doing it. Okay, let's go back to the CRS leadership clinic. How do we make meetings not awful? And meetings are awful, aren't they? Mostly. I think there's a lot of quite good literature, not that I read a lot of business books, but there is quite a lot of sensible stuff written about meetings. So again, I don't have any unique ideas about this, but I think the first thing with a meeting is somebody has to be in charge. I know that's really obvious. What I'm going to say now is incredibly obvious. Somebody has to be in charge. You have to turn up on time and you have to finish it on time. You have to have an agenda. If anything, finish it a bit earlier than... There's nothing more, I mean, even better, even better. Nobody ever...”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fact, I mean, that's an example of where that was successful. Of course, there's also an equal, if not larger list of organizations that where the people that are second or third actually end up being the most successful because the first one, you know, somebody goes not the first. We're not using Os Jeeves anymore, sadly, or Altavista, yeah. So I think that back to the leadership industrial complex, one of the real sort of sources of snake oil and frankly bullshit that leaders are sold is this idea around visions and purposes and all this kind of things. And I'm not saying that those things aren't important. They are important, but so often leaders are told that those things have to be unbelievable insightful, unbelievably unique, unbelievably differentiated, and in fact so high is often the bar is set so high that I have been the leadership teams where they've never even got beyond trying to answer that question.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The same thing happens in those buzzwords, right? Is that everybody wants to be an innovator? And I think one of the things you said in the book, which I think is most important for people to hear, is that people are so hung up on uniqueness, but it is okay to run a company that does a very, was it the phrase, does a common thing better than everybody else? Right. Well, I think that's true of most companies. I genuinely do. I mean, by most, I mean, it's hard to think of ones that aren't, really. It's hard to think of companies that organizations that are genuinely doing something that is unique. I'm sure somebody listening will. But even innovators then end up making a new market themselves because the classic example would be something like Apple inventing the iPad, a completely new genre of product. And we're now a maker of tablets competing with lots of other people. So even if you do make that, but you get a kind of six months to a year to enjoy your lordly innovation, if it's a good innovation.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I met with Chris Hearst Global CEO for Havas Creative Network and author of No Bullshit Leadership. You talk in the book about culture. I think you have a very funny thing about the fact that Enron, the notoriously failed financial services company, its buzzwords were kind of integrity leadership definitely not Embezzling stuff. But actually, I think it's funny because we have this discussion in news journalism all the time, but when people sort of say a compliment, you know, or say they are a thing that no one would ever describe themselves as the opposite, right? So no one ever, you know, says, you know, I pride myself on my honesty. No one ever will come out and say, Thing is, I pride myself on my dishonesty.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you don't have a Chilco inquiry for not doing anything. Right. And actually, and I think that's a really, really important point because actually sometimes maybe we should have Chilcock, but sometimes we should have inquiries about why we didn't do things. But it virtually never happens. There's only action that creates reaction in that sense.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of its own. I think it's okay, by the way, if you say there's some really good reasons why we're going to wait, then that is a conscious decision. I think the problem is a lot of times you write it's a decision, but doesn't look like a decision. It just looks like dithering”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If that never happens. And in fact, I think that if it is absolutely a hundred percent clear what you should do, it's not a decision because why wouldn't you? Right, why are they paying your money to take it? Decisions only exist when there's ambiguity. And so I think as a leader, you have to reframe. And the reason people wait is because they fear failure. They fear getting it wrong. And I think what Colin Powell is saying is he's saying accept that you're going to get some of these decisions wrong. He's saying if you're being geeky and mathematical about it, three out of ten are likely to be wrong. But he's saying you have to trade that off about the need to keep making decisions. Fear not making decisions more than fear getting some of them wrong. Because what is true is, and we see it all the time, is waiting longer actually in reality.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“is exactly the Colin Powell's point, which is they hope that if they just give it an extra week or an extra day or they go and get an extra bit of data or they do a bit of research or they ask their partner or whatever it is, that in some way some Sudden resolution will arrive which will make everything clear. And that just”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that you asked me right at the start why is it difficult? Why is leadership difficult? The best way to think about that is in terms of decision making because the way you actually get from a defined point in the present to a different point in the future is you have to travel between those two points and what does that really mean? That means taking a series of decisions. That is just decisions, decisions, decisions, decisions. Some big, some you don't even notice, some small, some you get right, some you get wrong. The most debilitating thing for a leader and a leadership team is the inability to make decisions. And I've sat in leadership teams, and I'm sure many of the people listening to this probably are right now part of teams where they meet every week and they discuss the same thing every week and they just never come to a decision on it. And there's nothing more debilitating for an individual or a team or however big that team is than the belief that they are unable to make or unwilling to make decisions. And I think one of the reasons that people struggle with decisions.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that is a different thing. That isn't somebody just having a bad month. That's somebody who fundamentally exhibits behaviours that you as a leader. And you, frankly, as a collective team, consider to be beyond the pale. And if that person repeatedly refuses, despite conversations to change that, then that person has to leave the team for the good of the team. And I think that's critical.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think we're definitely, most of us have reluctant to concede to that. And I don't think it's inevitable. But I mean, I don't think... This isn't a binary situation. I mean, all of us in all of our lives go through all sorts, you know, work or the context we're talking about now, your time in a particular team, whether it be a sports team or work or whatever. That's only part of your life. You know, there's a whole and there's a whole load of other things that go on in all of our lives that we can't separate from how we are and how we feel when we're at work. And so all of us go through ups and downs and difficult times and happy times. And it's hard, you know, we talk about work life, but in reality it's one, it's all, you can't really separate them. And I think that a good leader creates a team environment that understands that. You know, you definitely can't be capricious. You definitely got to create an environment where we understand that we all have the human condition and its frailties and all that that comes with it. What I'm really talking about when we talk about people that are, let's say, behave badly within organizations.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Industrial complex tells them to do, but their actual reality of their organization bears no relation to it. And that's why people are cynical, because the gap between what they say and what they do is so big. If you align those two, if you create a cultural, the culture is the environment the leader.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that that is true, yes. And what we've all seen at different times is, I think there's, you know, we talk about people who are talented or talk about talent and therefore by implication there's some people that aren't and which we tend not to talk about as much. And I actually don't think that generally I don't think that's true. I think that you can put the same person, me or you or anybody else, into different environments and we might flourish in one environment and we might struggle in another environment. And really that is another way of looking at the leader's challenge because the leader is the person that creates that environment and that's culture and there's a lot of cynicism around culture. But the reason that we're cynical about the word culture is because it's used and abused, you know, because organizations talk about what they'd like to be the values that they carve into reception that the leadership.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Often those people are very good at managing up. It's actually, you know, and you think, well, they seem kind of okay and they always smile at me and are nice to me when I see them in the lift. Actually, the people that suffer most from those individuals are the people around them. They're the ones that see somebody who takes the credit for their work. They're the ones that realize they're in 8 a.m. and that person swans in at ten thirty and leaves at 4. They're the ones, et cetera, et cetera. And in actual fact, in my experience, they're the ones that are most happy when you solve that, whether that be because you have a difficult conversation with that person and they change their ways or raise their game or ultimately if that person leaves the company.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“their functional role, but that is also the cultural environment that they exist within. And we'll probably come on and talk about culture a little bit in a minute. But I definitely think that leaders shouldn't be capricious. Leaders shouldn't just shoot from the hip and, you know, you have to create an environment where people are very clear where they stand and very clear what is expected of them in all the ways I've described. But at the end of the day, if people choose not to do that, then you have to remove those people from your teams. And in fact, often the people that suffer most from the people you've described are not you as the leader.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no question that an individual can ruin a whole team. I mean, my way, there's the sort of the cliche about your greatest assets getting the lift at the end of the day. And my point is, yeah, that's definitely true, but so do some of your greatest liabilities. And you, it is absolutely critical as a leader that you are clear what you are collectively trying to achieve. But it is also critical that the people that the individuals within that, your direct reports and their direct reports and so on down that they are clear what their part in that is and that is partly”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not about you choosing them so much anymore because they're the one with the power and the choice in that sense. You've got to create an environment where they're choosing you. And at the end of the day, if they feel like you're not good for their career, they're going to go somewhere else.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That all said, I've always so always thought that today more than ever people have choices. And at the end of the day, if you're in an environment and an organization that you don't think you're enjoying or you're not getting what you need out of that organization and you do feel like you've genuinely tried to get those questions answered, at the end of the day, the only answer is to go and work somewhere else. And I think that's the leader's challenge because people are making those choices all the time. And you as a leader, you have to make sure that you're creating an environment that people are choosing you. And, you know, increasingly, we're in a very fluid world now from unemployment point of view. People want to have more fluid careers. A career looks almost going to a point where there's not a standard career anymore. People have all sorts of different working patterns and ambitions. And as a leader, you need to recognize that the more talented people are, the more choices they have. And you need them to choose you as”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, well, it's a question I get asked a lot. And at the end of the day, I don't think there's any really simple answers to that. I think I would encourage people. To be brave and be bold, and first of all to have those conversations. And I don't think, and again, hard to generalize, I don't think you have to necessarily approach those kind of difficult conversations with your bosses. And we've all got bosses. You know, I've got bosses. I don't think you have to approach that in your wrong, I'm right way. But I do think that even if people do have those kind of management styles that I'm saying that I'm not sure that's necessarily that helpful, it doesn't mean that those people are bad people. It doesn't mean that those people don't, you know, they will tell themselves they do want to hear everybody's like nobody ever says I'm right you're all wrong only my way So the first thing is to is to have the courage to go and have those conversations to go and have conversations about I don't you know he is something I think he is my ideas he is my suggestions so the first thing I think is is to push and try I mean there isn't a way around that”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that is exactly the leader's challenge. My argument is exactly that to be an effective leader. You have to create an environment for people to perform at their best and them performing at their best is not trying to copy you.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The problem is within particularly people based businesses, but again, I don't think many, many types of organizations. If you have organizations are full of ambitious, bright, often quite well paid people, all of whom want to get on with their careers. And yet, if you have this kind of parental culture, it does say to those people, do you know what? It really doesn't matter what you think or what you say. Only one person's opinion matters. And not only is that deeply frustrating and dysfunctional to work within, as you mentioned, my argument is actually you fail to unlock the potential of all those other people in that organization. And the real challenge for leader is, my analogy is about height. You know, some leaders you feel like they make everybody feel like they're a foot shorter than they actually are and actually great leaders you want them all to you want everybody to feel like they're two foot taller than they actually are that you know that's what a leader needs to do a leader needs to create environment”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things I was determined, I'm saying I, but actually it was we because it was a leadership team at that point. We were determined to be really quite iconoclastic and pretty well set about smashing up all of the things within the organization and within the culture that we felt represented that style of what I call the Caesars in the book, the people in the corner offices with the white leather sofas and the closed doors and removing everything that showed signs of that. And so that's a physical, that was physical changes to the environment, that was cultural changes, that was process changes to get rid of that. And the point is exactly as you describe it, I think if you have an organization where you have these Dondraper, these Caesar type figures, and by the way, they exist in all sorts of organizations. I mean, you were talking about a very different organization to an advertising agency.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I mean, that's where I've worked in advertising agencies. I mean, those are the environments I spend a lot of my career in. Yeah, I think that what, in fact, to go back to this sort of this tipping point moment for me personally, when I became the CEO finally put in charge of this crappy business,”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of organizations did that hierarchy organizations were quite parental in that sense. And I think there's a lot of class aspects in there as well. I think the problem with the parental analogy is you end up with what I call dependent cultures.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I think also for you to be good for somebody's career you also have to be doing a lot of macro things right you know you have to be running a successful team or a successful organization so I quite like that as a measure and again within that there's nothing about being being liked I do think respect is important I think that is a prerequisite but that's a completely different point I think the parental thing is interesting and I think there are some analogies with parenting but at the same time I certainly think in today's society not just business but society I think our relationship with authorities is very different to what it was, maybe even ten years ago, certainly than it was 20 or 30 years ago.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, and that, by the way, that can be very individual and very different. But nevertheless, I quite like that as a question because you can make that mean lots of different things for yourself. But I think a successful leader, a great measure is if you're good for the careers that work for careers for the people that work for you, you by definition are doing a lot of things right. You both understand them individually. So there's a micro element to it.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That will come to the parent points. I think that is an interesting analogy to explore in terms of the pros and cons. I think for sure people want to have good leaders. And we can have, you know, again, lots of different conversations about how you might define a good leader. But my attempt at that is particularly in a career sense. I mean, leadership exists in lots of other fields as well. But in a career sense, I think one way of thinking about a good leader is somebody who is, are you good for the careers of the people that work for you? And I think most people want to have successful careers. And that doesn't mean that necessarily that for most people career is a be-all and end-all, but if I have to spend five days a week or even three days a week or whatever, nine till five, you know, I want to be a successful experience.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It isn't necessary to be liked to be a good leader. I mean, by the way, it is possible to be a good leader and be liked. I mean, they're not mutually exclusive, but if you think about my definition of leadership, being liked isn't in there as a prerequisite.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think leadership can be lonely, I don't think generalizations are different people's experiences of leadership and anything else, frankly, are quite difficult to generalize about. But I think it can be lonely, and I certainly have found it lonely at times. And I think your point about being liked is an interesting one. I mean, it's the military example is the classic, isn't it? The private who suddenly gets made the Lance Corporal or something, and suddenly he's got to tell the guys what to do. And in fact, there's lots of anecdotes of people deliberately not taking promotions for exactly that reason, because they want to stay as part of the gang. But I think that I agree with you totally in the sense that being liked...”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was right I think it was right because I think I hadn't Worked out. I think one of the key things that defines good leaders is they have a conscious point of view on what leadership is. That doesn't mean it has to be the same as my point of view, by the way. They could vigorously disagree with my point of view. The most important thing, I obviously would say the second most important thing is to agree with me. But definitely the most important thing is to just have a point of view. And I think that I, in common with quite a lot of people, had seen the various progressions of my career as to each next job being roughly the same as the one before only with a bit more responsibility and a bit more money. But actually when you get into real leadership positions like a CEO position of a business, it is a completely different job. And I think I hadn't really got to that place in my own head at that point.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of this still broken agency. And at that point it was literally then that for the first time in my career I thought to myself about what a leader really needs to do and what leadership really is. And the one thing I was sure about at that point, I wasn't sure about many things, but the one thing I was sure about is that I wasn't going to make the mistakes that I'd seen made by myself and others over the preceding six years. And I suppose really that was the start of my leadership journey.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I've screwed my career. I mean, you know, I joined as this kind of part of this rock star team, and now I'm just lost in this crappy agency. What am I going to do? And then I got lucky, honestly, and again the short version of the story is I got lucky and I persuaded my employer to pay for me to go to Harvard for eight weeks. And I went to do the advanced management program at Harvard. And there's a whole separate story about that experience, but the real relevant piece for this is not any great insight I learned about leadership at Harvard. I know I've just knocked business school, so I have the self-awareness to recognize that. What it really gave me was it gave me space. At that point in my career, it gave me space. And it gave me space to reflect on myself and reflect on what I wanted to do next and all that kind of stuff. And I got lucky when I came back in that my new boss got promoted and I got put suddenly pretty well unexpectedly into the CEO role.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we were hired, and within about 12 months, of the five of us, one had been fired, and most of the others had left and gone on to subsequently fabulously successful careers elsewhere. And after six years, I was still there. I'd been passed over at least twice, I think, to be the CEO. And the business frankly was just as much of a dog as it had been at the start. So I could certainly no longer claim to be part of the solution. I'd become part of the problem. I mean, after six years, you haven't fixed it. That's the truth, right? So I was sitting there at that point, so now we're in about 2009 thinking, well.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the very short version of my CV is I have worked in creative advertising agencies for most of my career. Latterly, I have a slightly wider remit than that, but for the purposes of your question, advertising agencies. But I think that probably the most relevant and specific part is the period where I really started to think about what leadership is and genuinely think about, therefore, what is it and how can it be done well and obviously how is it done badly. And my own personal journey along that was that in about when I was in my early 30s, so this is about 2002, 2003, I was hired as part of a kind of young Turks management team, five of us, and to go in and fix a broken business. And it was the unfixable business within the industry.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Often by the leadership industrial complex, we're told that that's a very complicated thing to do. I'm saying that that isn't necessarily. What is very, very difficult is the getting between the two. And it's difficult because it involves action and execution and people and taking decisions and the high chance, if not inevitability of failures along the way. And those things are difficult both to Often it's difficult to do and take decisions, but often it can be very difficult emotionally and personally as well.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then they are the answer. I think it's difficult because how Leadership, I think I probably have to take a little step back and talk about what I think leadership is first in order to be able to really do that question justice. So first of all, what is a leader? Well, my definition of a leader is anybody that has people they're responsible for, which is why I talk about everyday leaders. That's a lot of a very large part of our society. And what is leadership? Leadership for me is the getting of a group of people and is always people from a defined point in the present to a different and clearly defined point in the future. So that's what I think leadership is. So leadership is about change. And the reason leadership is so difficult is because I think the defining of those two end points.”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the leadership industrial complex is a very broad and loosely defined by me, a group of organizations that I would include everything from at one end. Organizations were all in some ways familiar with, by the way. So at one end that might be management consultants, some training organizations, conferences, some conferences, off-site sessions that many of us will be familiar with, business schools, dare I say books. And the common factor between these is that I think the leadership industrial complex has in some instances a vested interest and in some instances may be an accidental interest in making the subject of leadership seem really, really difficult and certainly for those that make a lot of money out of the leadership business, I think it's definitely in their interests to make it sound really complicated because of course”
2019-08-02 · Intelligence Squared · Chris Hirst and Helen Lewis on No Bullsh*t Leadership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source