Perspectives from the Top

Collaboration, Conviction, and Caring (ft. Justin Welby)

Episode Summary

Justin Welby went from an oil industry leader to a religious leader in one of the most high-profile positions in the Church of England. Along the way, he’s learned a great deal about leadership, love for people, and the way they intersect. Join us on this week's Perspectives from the Top for a particularly enlightening discussion.

Episode Notes

Collaboration, Conviction, and Caring (ft. Justin Welby)

Perspectives from a unique life’s journey

OPENING QUOTE:

“You go in and serve the people in the silos where you don't know by seeking information, seeking advice, bringing their contribution in, enabling them to feel valued, genuinely valued.”

- Justin Welby

GUEST BIO:

Archbishop Justin Welby worked as an oil company group treasurer for much of career, before making a dramatic change of direction and becoming a Church of England curate. He now serves as the Archbishop of Canterbury.

CORE TOPICS + DETAILS:

[1:22] - The Right Kind of Caring

The power of priorities

It’s not enough to combat indifference— people need to direct their passion in the right places. In an organization, if their ‘caring’ is centered on their paychecks, that’s misplaced passion. The caring must be focused, holistic, and centered on something beyond self.

[5:42] - Valuing People and Their Potential

Expecting the best from those you trust

A financial services leader named Siegmund Warburgwas known for being deeply compassionate, but also demanding when it came to standards of work. But this expectation reflected how he felt about the people around him— he valued them, and valued their potential to be the best they could possibly be.

[7:49] - A Community, Not an Organization

The key to sustainable leadership

How did the Twelve Apostles, radically different individuals known for bickering, confusing the mission of their leader, and shirking their roles, go on to overcome the largest empire in the world without drawing a sword? They tapped into effective leadership through a community-centered approach. The values inspired the vision, and the vision was lived out in courage through service and humility.

[12:27] - “The Sheer Pleasure of Making Things Work”

Why giving orders doesn’t work

True leadership isn’t giving orders. It’s enabling others to work together so that things begin to happen, so that they catch the ‘bug’ of satisfaction from making things work. If your people can go home in the evening and think, “We’re doing great things,” you’ve tapped into something much more powerful than authority or giving orders.

[16:28] - Admit Mistakes & Learn

“I got it wrong.”

Justin shares a story of when he was new in his time as Archbishop, when he called out payday lenders only to discover that the church itself had invested in those very lenders. Did he hide from this potentially embarrassing mistake? On the contrary, he went on the radio immediately and said, “I was wrong. I take responsibility.” The humility and wisdom to take this approach can turn potentially disastrous events into opportunities to demonstrate your values to the world.

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Episode Transcription

Justin Welby:

You go in and serve the people in the silos where you don't know by seeking information, seeking advice, bringing their contribution in, enabling them to feel valued, genuinely valued.

Chris Roebuck:

Welcome to Perspectives from the Top. I'm Chris Roebuck, global keynote speaker with unique leadership experience from military, business, and government, bestselling author, and your guide to greater success. Together, we will discover powerful insights from the world's leading thinkers, doers, and trailblazers, the must know trends, thought-provoking revelations, and practical actions you can use immediately. This is your exclusive and personal shop of insight and inspiration to help you get to the top. For Perspectives from the Top this morning, it's my great pleasure to be interviewing somebody who has done certainly a large career change, significantly larger than maybe most of you or me, from oil company group treasurer to church of England curate, and now Archbishop of Canterbury. It's a great pleasure to be interviewing this morning Archbishop Justin Welby. Good morning, Justin.

Justin Welby:

Good morning.

Chris Roebuck:

When we look at what's happening in businesses now, and we think about leadership and what its purpose is, do you feel that what we are trying to do is we are trying to get people to care about what they're doing, because that's what gets the best from them?

Justin Welby:

Well, certainly. I mean, if you turned the question around and said, "Do we mind if people are entirely indifferent to what they're doing?" That makes it pretty clear what the answer's got to be. But you can care in lots of different ways. Contrary of my own experience in the old industry was you had some people who cared about... For instance, I remember at Enterprise, the exploration director who was passionate, not only about exploration, but also about the environment. So there was a holistic nature to the care. You had other people in other companies I worked with, who cared a great deal about what their salary check looked like at the end of each month. So the caring has to be focused.

Chris Roebuck:

So the caring has to be focused, but also from your perspective, do things go better in organizations when the caring is holistic and is focused not purely on self, but the people around you and the organization?

Justin Welby:

I may have got the source of this wrong, but I heard and often quote Einstein as saying, "There's no limit to what can be achieved by someone who doesn't want the credit." And if you have a group that works well together, without all seeking to be seen as number one, the opposite of the Apprentice-

Chris Roebuck:

Indeed.

Justin Welby:

The absolute opposite, appalling, disastrous approach to management, if you have something different from that that actually says, "We're going to make this as a group. And I will get my satisfaction by being able to say, "I worked with that team. I was in that group," then you really will make significant progress.

Chris Roebuck:

And you mentioned the Apprentice there. What I think is interesting is that there are certain things that developing leaders and leaders in organizations see in the media, from the examples of what happens in financial services and other places, they see in terms of the Apprentice about what is publicized as what is effective leadership and management that actually I believe is totally counterproductive. Would you agree with that?

Justin Welby:

Yes. I mean, it's obviously very productive in terms of good drama.

Chris Roebuck:

Yes.

Justin Welby:

But in terms of actually achieving anything in an organization, it's highly counterproductive. I entirely agree with that. Most of us will, at some point, have worked in a dysfunctional team and we'll know the feeling where the best ideas run into the sand because someone cares more about their advancement than about getting a really good project to work really well.

Chris Roebuck:

And it's therefore success is perhaps creating a more we than me culture?

Justin Welby:

Yeah. And that's very difficult because we're in a social culture and the philosophical culture, certainly since the 70s, 60s-

Chris Roebuck:

Right.

Justin Welby:

With the advent, post-existentialism into post-modernity, you are into a culture which does say that, "What benefits me?" I think we're coming out of it, funnily enough, with the post millennials.

Chris Roebuck:

Yes. That's true.

Justin Welby:

Before that, the, "What advantages me?" Is right, is what matters. My truth is my truth. It's very, very, the radical autonomy of the individual. And that makes teamwork very difficult.

Chris Roebuck:

So this thing about caring, therefore, if you look back over your career at the sort of best bosses that you ever had, do you think, therefore, that that element of, "If the boss shows they care about me, that will inspire me to give my best?"

Justin Welby:

Oh, absolutely. And caring is not shown thus or by being warm and cuddly.

Chris Roebuck:

No.

Justin Welby:

It's shown by demanding the highest standards. I mean, some of the legendary leaders in, for instance, financial services, so Siegmund Warburg, for example-

Chris Roebuck:

Yes.

Justin Welby:

Absolutely extraordinary. He was deeply compassionate about his stuff. Maybe that wasn't often known cause he kept it very quiet, but also he demanded very high standards and people interpreted that as him saying to them, "I value you and I'm going to value that you are the best you could possibly be."

Chris Roebuck:

And if you look back at your career, I'm assuming you've had people that have done that for you.

Justin Welby:

Yes.

Chris Roebuck:

Can you give me an example?

Justin Welby:

Yes, I can. So Graham Hern, the then chief executive, subsequently chairman at Enterprise Oil was one of the most remarkable people I've worked for just in terms of he was always challenging you. He was always pushing to see if your ideas had real thinking in them. He was always challenging a team. But he was equally open to being challenged himself. So I remember very robust discussion very late at night over strategy, company policy, where we were going, how we dealt with a problem with a group of us around the table and whatever he felt, he certainly didn't give the impression of caring that people were saying, "No, no, that's not going to work." And then you'd go for it for a while and it was an incredibly stimulating environment.

Chris Roebuck:

So yes, it's where the leader gives the subordinates the ability to challenge as long as they can challenge in a way that provides a viable solution.

Justin Welby:

Yeah. But we knew that once he called it, that was it.

Chris Roebuck:

Yes, absolutely, collective responsibility in terms of the team.

Justin Welby:

Yeah.

Chris Roebuck:

If we look at organizations now in the 21st century, I think one of the key things that all the figures suggest is that you have to break down silos, you have to collaborate, you have to work together effectively to be successful, given the complexity of what's happening.

Justin Welby:

Absolutely.

Chris Roebuck:

How do you think therefore, that leaders, other than their own team, need to behave in terms of breaking down those silos and creating what I call it is it's a community, not an organization?

Justin Welby:

Well, I think and I expect you'd probably expect me to say this. At least I hope you would, given my job. I go back to the model of Jesus on this. He's got 12 pretty radical individuals with him who have a completely mistaken idea of his mission, are constantly bickering with each other and one betrays him and eleven runaway. And yet that group, within 20 years of his death and resurrection, had changed the world. And within 300 years, their successors had overcome the largest empire in the world without drawing a sword. Now that is quite effective leadership. It's sustainable and so on. When you look at that, it had courage of an extraordinary nature. It had a clear vision, had very, very clear values. The values inspired the vision, the vision was lived out in courage, but there was also this element of mutual service and humility. You have the servant leaders.

Chris Roebuck:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Justin Welby:

Which is what in the end came back to them and led the way that they then led.

Chris Roebuck:

Well, that's interesting. And I think you mentioned there the serve to lead element-

Justin Welby:

Yes.

Chris Roebuck:

And as an ex-army officer, obviously the ethos of serve to lead I think is critical. But in terms of the degree to which the serve to lead concept has ever significantly got into the commercial world is extremely limited. But what is interesting is, perhaps you give your insight on this, that where leaders get the serve to lead concept, they naturally become more successful.

Justin Welby:

I think that's right. I mean, one of my heroes as a leader, which has developed very much over the last two, three years, is Field Marshal Slim in the Second World War. They were taking over a division and then a core and then an army in absolute meltdown, defeated, despairing, in all kinds of bits and winning, in the end, turning it around, extraordinary genius in leadership. But of course, one of the ways that comes out in his very interesting book, Defeat into Victory is that there is this service leadership, and you'd mentioned the word silo just now, I'm more and more convinced that silos are our biggest management problem.

Chris Roebuck:

Yeah.

Justin Welby:

Often unseen. We don't recognize it. We think it's one issue among many. In terms of effective organizations, the breaking down of silos is the biggest problem we face and all leaders will be good in one area.

Chris Roebuck:

Yeah.

Justin Welby:

Or several, perhaps. They may have come up through sales, they'll know a huge amount about marketing. They may have come through finance, they're really good on that. They may have come through engineering, but they need to know what they don't know.

Chris Roebuck:

Yes.

Justin Welby:

And when you want to break down silos, the way you do it is not going in and say, "I'm going to break this silo up." You go in and serve the people in the silos where you don't know by seeking information, seeking advice, bringing their contribution in, enabling them to feel valued, genuinely valued, so that that collaborative spirit begins to develop. But you don't break silos by attacking them. You break silos by serving them.

Chris Roebuck:

And I think it's that communication element because all my experience has said to me is that actually you can be the best functional technical expert in the world, but delivering your technical expertise is not the same as enabling success for the organization.

Justin Welby:

Oh, totally. My poor colleagues here, I live off cliches and they get used to my cliches, but one of the ones I keep repeating is that policy's easier, the problem's implementation.

Chris Roebuck:

Correct.

Justin Welby:

And implementation is where you test leadership. Can you turn good ideas into action?

Chris Roebuck:

Yep.

Justin Welby:

And that is where true leadership is seen. And it's seen not by giving orders, because you'll never implement through giving orders. You have to implement through enabling others to work together so things begin to happen and they catch the bug of the sheer pleasure of actually making things work together and the satisfaction when you go home in the evening, and you're thinking, "Actually, we are really doing things here." It gives you a buzz like nothing else.

Chris Roebuck:

And it doesn't matter what field you are in. It's that sense of achievement. On the flip side though, as you and I both well know, sometimes in the implementation of various plans, people make mistakes. I think one of the challenges we face in organizations now is that because of the pressure that organizations are under, be it financially or the NHS or whatever, there's a tendency for a blame culture to start building up. And that I think presents a great challenge because in the end, it's inherently corrosive.

Justin Welby:

I'm thinking aloud about this really. I'm always slightly antsy about the phrase blame culture. I think I would prefer the phrase fear culture.

Chris Roebuck:

Which it is actually. Which it is.

Justin Welby:

Yes. That's the point.

Chris Roebuck:

Absolutely.

Justin Welby:

Because actually, if someone does something remarkably stupid, you need to say so.

Chris Roebuck:

Yeah.

Justin Welby:

I chaired an NHS trust for a while, General Hospital Trust.

Chris Roebuck:

Yes.

Justin Welby:

And we were introducing, and we did call it a no blame culture so that if people owned up to mistakes, there would not normally be a disciplinary process. But actually I think what we were trying to introduce, and I don't think I succeeded by the way, but what we were trying to introduce was a no fear culture.

Chris Roebuck:

Yes.

Justin Welby:

Because if someone said, "I did an operation..." I'm taking a silly example because it didn't happen. But, "I did an operation. I left a scalpel inside someone." Actually, you need to say, "Why did that happen? Whose responsibility was it?" That's a blame thing. But you also need to say, "Okay, mistakes happen." One of the mistakes in organizations, in institutions, again, forgive me for going into theology is we believe in sinless perfection, that it's possible to get everything right all the time and that human beings are somehow not human. But it's an illusion.

Chris Roebuck:

Yeah, totally. But we know it never happens.

Justin Welby:

We know it never happens and yet we pretend it's possible.

Chris Roebuck:

Yes.

Justin Welby:

That will get you into blame and fear.

Chris Roebuck:

Yeah.

Justin Welby:

Because you sound like the captain, the police in Casablanca, "I'm shocked. I'm truly shocked that someone's made a mistake."

Chris Roebuck:

Yes.

Justin Welby:

Well, everyone makes mistakes. Therefore, you've got to have a culture that says, "How do we deal with error?" Not, "How do we ensure perfection?" Because you ain't going to get there.

Chris Roebuck:

But that's the ridiculous thing. When I'm sort of training mentors or whatever, we get into a situation where they're saying, "I'm a chief executive. I don't like to give the impression that I make mistakes." To which the comment is, "I'm sorry, you are expecting your people to believe that you've never made a mistake in your life. You know, that immediately-"

Justin Welby:

Dream on.

Chris Roebuck:

"That immediately blows any credibility you had whatsoever."

Justin Welby:

Well, that's right. And we had quite early, in my time as Archbishop, there was a process where we were talking about payday lenders and there was a bit of a thing about it in the press and the next day, the next day, without any delay, the Financial Times with a clever bit of work, really good bit of journalism, worked out that actually the church finger was invested in the payday lenders.

Chris Roebuck:

Yes.

Justin Welby:

Now I should have thought of that.

Chris Roebuck:

Yeah.

Justin Welby:

I didn't. I would now and I had to go on Radio 4 and John Humphrys at the 8:10 slot, the worst of all things, three months into the job. And he said, "Are you embarrassed?" Was his opening question. And I just said, "Yes, I am," and stopped. There is a point where you just have to say, "I got it wrong. That was wrong. I take responsibility. This is what we're going to do about it."

Chris Roebuck:

Yeah. Yeah. So sort of reflecting on that, if you were to give one or two pieces of really simple advice to either current leaders or developing leaders who are going to watch this that you think would help them on their journey, what would those pieces of advice be?

Justin Welby:

Well, the first one is that pecking order. We always start with vision. I think I'm increasingly concerned that values, the values within us, the values of the institution come ahead of vision. Vision springs from values. Vision then leads onto strategy, strategy to implementation, and policy and implementation so and on. That's your business, you're the business school. But values, I would say, be aware of your values. Challenges to your values almost never, not never, but almost never signal themselves in advance. It's always the surprise sleepy Monday morning meeting when you are not paying attention that something comes up that is really challenging. So first of all, be aware of what are your values, where you get them from? Are they coherent, consistent, courageous? Do they really mean something? Do they direct your whole life, not just your work?

Chris Roebuck:

Yes. Yes.

Justin Welby:

Secondly, I would say, really going back to what we were just saying, service and transparency. I would argue, but I hope, again, you wouldn't be surprised, I would argue that it's better not to have got to the number one position, but to finish your career looking back and thinking, "I did the right thing. I had this real integrity. People will, when they look back, they will remember that." Then to have clawed your way over the bodies of your competitors.

Chris Roebuck:

And be renowned for the fact that you left a trail of bodies with knives in their backs down the corridor.

Justin Welby:

Exactly.

Chris Roebuck:

Archbishop Justin, thank you very much, indeed.

Justin Welby:

Thank you.

Chris Roebuck:

Thank you.

Chris Roebuck:

Some really powerful points there that Justin made. The importance of leaders showing they care, but that doesn't mean they don't also demand high standards. Now don't forget that Justin has also been at the highest levels in business as group treasurer of Enterprise oil before he joined the church. So he fully understands the dynamic within a tough area of business, the energy industry. He made the interesting point that his interaction with the chairman of Enterprise Oil was one of productive challenge, that the chairman would challenge him in terms of what he was doing, but that the chairman also gave him the freedom to challenge him as well in terms of what he was thinking of doing, which is fascinating. Now that's a good approach for all leaders. Then the comment that in Justin's view silos are the biggest challenge to organizational success, that the leader's job is to get people addicted to the buzz that you get when a team is high performing and getting things done well.

Chris Roebuck:

And then finally the fact that for some reason, we seem to have this illusion stuck in our heads that human beings can live and work without making mistakes and that that belief can create a toxic organizational culture. So have a think about how you can use some of Justin's ideas to help you get to where you want to be. And don't forget that in a week, I will give you a more in depth view of the takeaways from Justin, my insights, and some ideas for action in my Reflections from the Top. If you used any of the insights that you've got from previous Perspectives from the Top guests and they've helped you, please send me your success stories. I'd love to hear them. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. And also please share these interviews with colleagues or friends of yours that you think would benefit.

Chris Roebuck:

Thanks for tuning in. Check out the show notes from today's episodes at perspectivesfromthetop.com where you can not only enjoy additional resources from today's show, but all previous ones. If you haven't already, subscribe to the show on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your favorite podcast, so you don't miss any. And if you really enjoyed the show, please give us a five star rating and review. Have a question or comment? Let's discuss it. Message me on LinkedIn. Perspectives from the Top is produced in collaboration with Detroit Podcast Studios. So have a successful week, use today's new learnings and actions. And remember, it's onwards and upwards. See you next time on Perspectives from the Top.